Fall-Winter Fundraising Drive for the CBA Youth Program

Jan 6, 2020 | Welcome Column

We began our annual Fall-Winter Fundraising Drive for the CBA Youth Program in October. Last year we met our goal of $8000 and all those funds were distributed in scholarships. The goal this is year is $10,000 and we have raised $4000 so far. The CBA Youth Program is funded entirely by donations with no money coming out of the CBA General Fund. We are able to keep expanding our programs and the numbers of young people we serve because of the generosity of our supporters and the little income we derive from Academy tuition and merchandise sales.

The CBA Youth Program now consists of: Kids on Bluegrass, the Instrument Lending Library, KidFest, the Academy and our new Mentorship Program. We support two pub- lic school bluegrass programs. We printed a second edition of the CBA Academy Songbook last year. We issue significant amounts of money in scholarships to both the Academy and the CBA Music Camp and issue travel grants to our young musicians chosen to play in the IBMA KOB program. We pay our young musicians to lead Youth Jams, act as Teaching Assistants in the Academy and other events. We also have a CBA VolunTeen Program which high school students use to fulfill their community service school requirement.
Our young people are the future of the music and our Association. All donations are tax deductible The multiple ways to donate are listed be- low:

1. Checks made out to CBA Youth Program may be sent to: Darby Brandli, 2106 9th Avenue, Oak- land CA 94606

2. You may donate when renewing your membership online or when purchasing online tickets to any of our events.

3. There is a donate button on the website under “Learning Youth Programs”

4. You can give cash or checks to your Area Activities VPs at jams/con- certs/events and they will get your donation to the Youth Program account.

5. Email us at cbayouthprogram@gmail.com and we will direct you to the easiest way to donate.

You may designate that your donation goes to a specific program e.g. Lending Library, Scholarships, Mentorship, KOB, etc. You may also simply donate to the Program and let us direct your dollars where they are most beneficial. Our only monthly expense is for Instrument Storage in a climate-controlled storage facility in Roseville and we pay annual insurance premiums and fees to run security checks on our volunteers. We direct dollars to our events at the Father’s Day Bluegrass Festival (snacks, shirts for KOB, supplies for KidFest etc). We will start issuing scholarships upon request to students enrolling in the Academy and/or CBA Music Camp beginning February. Scholarships are available to all CBA member children under 18 on demand as funds last. We issued over $8000 in scholarships and grants in 2019.

I want to thank the CBA members who donate year after year to our program and encourage more of you to consider making annual donations to serve our CBA Youth. We just had the (youth) band North Country Blue donate money to the Youth Program and encourage all other California bands to make annual contributions to support the next generation of CBA Musicians and Leaders.

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