Attachment C1
2010 REPORT OF THE FINANCIAL AID COMMITTEE
October 4, 2010
Elizabeth Yermack, Chair
The All Star 1 Financial Aid Committee’s purpose is to provide up to 50% for old shoalers and up to 25% for new shoalers of their Room and Board bills for the All Star 1 Conference.
The members of the committee, which is relatively small to insure confidentiality, are Elizabeth Yermack, Shelley Powsner, Joy Close and Holly Hunnicutt. Also included in the discussion process this year were Scott and Annie Stewart, Registrars, who had some institutional memory of past needs and awards. Bill Tibbs, who served in this position in the past, has agreed to be Registrar for the coming year while Scott and Annie are chairs. Our Treasurer, Bill Gimpel, wrote checks on-island directly to the Star Island Corporation to cover whatever portion of the applicants’ bills had been granted by the committee.
Most Star Island conferences have a mechanism for providing aid to their conferees. In the past, All Star 1 had done this on a very limited basis. The following is a history of aid over the past three years.
* There was only $1400 granted in 2008.
* In 2009, $4889 in aid was awarded to 9 family units totaling 25 individuals. In addition, 2009’s figures were supplemented by a one-time-only corporate “stimulus grant” of $7065 that went to 22 AS1 family units having 45 family members.
* In 2010 the committee processed 20 applications covering 52 people, 44 of whom attended the conference. We believe that these individual awards were instrumental in enabling 44 beds to be filled, that otherwise might not have been. This year’s AS1 awards totaled $11,740. (However, as noted on the attached spreadsheet “Final Financial Aid Decisions, September 1, 2010”, a total of $13,650 was actually requested. Due to a variety of reasons, $1,910 worth of applications were withdrawn.) Note also that there was also a reduction in room and board rates made this year by the Island’s management that permitted children who were under six years of age to attend the conference without charge. Without this reduction, we may have had a larger number of applications for financial aid.
* The committee is requesting that $14,500 be provided for financial aid next year in 2011.
The rise in the need for aid seems to be caused by (1) a combination of higher rates for room and board (which when adjusted for inflation, appear to have risen by around 250% since 1980) and (2) the economic recession, which now places 1 in 7 American families below the poverty line. On this year’s application for aid, which should be submitted along with the application for admission—though both are completely anonymous and are blind decisions independent from one another—we received a number of reasons for requests for aid. These included loss of jobs, single parent situations, medical expenses, mortgage problems, overburdening by college tuition expenses, reductions in wages, the desirability of encouraging the young generation of AS1 families to attend, and other similar reasons. Each was evaluated individually and considered to be legitimate by the committee. Incidentally, these requests for aid continued to come in until the week before the beginning of the conference, as we worked to fill as many beds as possible.
Both the current AS1 program and the corporate booklet on financial aid dating from 2001 have identified such issues as the value of an economically diverse community; the fact that the island is more than a “vacation”—it is a “spiritual home” to many; the desire to share the island with as large a community as possible; and the deepening of connections in a strong conference community. Although we have no way of knowing, we may have lost members of our community over time due to rising costs, and we would like to prevent this from happening in the future.
There are still some areas of the policy that may need to be worked out, after we look at our own experience and the experience of the US economy. This year, the Star Island Corporation, as part of the incentive to fill beds, made available an amount of $20,000 to be spread over all conferees for the entire summer. All Star 1, which was initially oversubscribed, received only $200 from the corporation, which would not grant money to supplement any conference grants and which felt a need to spread the money through all conferences. Because we felt the need for early decisions on ability to attend, and because we had little communication with the SIC’s program, we will need to discuss all of these areas with them, if there is a corporate aid program for next year. Hopefully, a way might be found to reward those conferences that are able to operate at capacity.
Another area we may want to examine in the future is the part of the policy that restricts aid for a period of three years, regardless of the amount of aid received. Our society does not compensate a number of professions—the arts, teaching, ministerial, and social services—to the same extent that others may be compensated, yet it is members of those professions that bring special gifts that enrich our AS1 community. This is also true of a number of younger families who are part of the multi-generational families who regularly attend and new shoalers who may not be able to attend because of the cost. These problems don’t need to be addressed in the coming year, but we should be aware of the issues that they present.
We are grateful to the Financial Fundraising Task Force that was able to raise $5,093. We are also aware that the Star Island Corporation continues to struggle to meet the expenses of running the island. We hope that in the coming year, not just the chairs but the entire community will recognize the need to support both the Island and the Financial Aid program. We look forward to discussing ways in which this can be implemented, while preserving our very special Star Island community.