TL;DR - By following this account and upvoting our posts, you can make the difference for a student who wants to participate in a once in a lifetime marching band experience, but can't afford it. You will also be helping to demonstrate the validity of a new fund-raising model based on the Steem block chain, and you will be helping to promote the arts for the next generation.
Introduction
Image Source: pixabay.com, License: CC0, Public Domain
Our first post was mostly intended to introduce the Rustin Marching Band community to Steem. In contrast, this post is intended for the existing audience here on the Steem block chain. In this post, I will provide three reasons (in addition to the fact that we hope to create engaging content) why you will want to follow this account and up-vote our posts.
In brief, the reasons are (i) that you'll give a student the financial ability to take a once in a lifetime trip with the marching band; (ii) that you'll be demonstrating the viability of a new fund-raising mechanism that can be replicated in communities everywhere; and (iii) this is a new way to fund the arts, which is valuable for its own sake.
Help a student who can't afford it to participate in marching band
Image Source: pixabay.com, License: CC0, Public Domain
As we noted in our introductory post, the goal for this fund-raising experiment is to raise enough money (after tax) to send one student on this year's trip from Pennsylvania to Florida for marching band performances in the Citrus Parade and in Disney. The estimated cost for that trip is $1,450.
The idea for that goal came about during the band's opening meeting earlier this month. Marching band is always demanding for parents and students in terms of both time and money. With this year's trip to Florida, though, it is exceptionally so. Still, most of the families will be paying for their own students' trips. However...
During the kick-off meeting for the 2018-2019 season, the director mentioned that if students have a financial hardship, they should speak with him, and the band boosters will generously provide whatever assistance they can. For good reason, I don't know how many students that might include, but I wanted to do something to thank the boosters for this generosity, and thus was born this experiment. Will the Steem platform provide a viable fund-raising mechanism to reimburse the boosters, at least in part, for that generosity? We'll know in January.
Demonstrate a new fund-raising protocol that makes use of the Steem block chain
Image Source: pixabay.com, License: CC0, Public Domain
In summary:
- Parents and students can raise funds without spending money or spending a lot of time selling stuff.
- Steem gains value from the additional content.
- Steem gains value from the additional users (Metcalfe's Law).
- Over the course of a childhood, all those Steem fund-raising activities could conceivably become a college savings program.
Here's how:
With all the dynamics at play, I am convinced that fund-raising on the Steem block chain can be a symbiotic activity for all involved. Imagine, for a minute, the circumstances of a parent with a young child today. From the time "Susie" or "Johnny" hits 6 or 8 years old, almost every single organized activity is asking parents to raise funds (personally, this has always been one of my least favorite parts of being a parent).
Now imagine that some of these organizations start doing some their fund-raising on the Steem block chain. Year 1, they probably don't make much, because no one knows what Steem is, but in Year 2 you have some veterans who still have last year's stake as well as some new sign-ups, and you do a bit better. Meanwhile instead of costing the parents money, their stake is growing because their own funds are earning interest as Steem Power, and hopefully also even gaining in market value. As a parent, I'd much rather buy Steem so I can vote for the organization's posts on the block chain, then to buy yet another case of candy or pizza dough that I don't really want anyway. After a few years of Steem fund-raising, parents have developed a substantial stake, and fund raising is now much easier. Then, finally, how nice would it be to get back all the money I've invested in Steem fund-raisers over the years when Susie turns 18 and needs college money instead of more fund-raising?
Of course, the rest of the Steem community will be out there to curate the content and make sure that the posts, themselves, are providing value to their readers and viewers.
And, imagine what happens in the (real-world) community when one organization succeeds this way. For example, say that this experiment is successful for the Rustin Band Boosters. Do you suppose that the Football Boosters or other marching bands in the area might take notice? By using the block chain as a fund-raising tool, we're bringing people to Steem and thus increasing the value of our own holdings (Remember Metcalfe's Law)!
In short, by helping us succeed, you help Steem to succeed!
Helping to fund music education stands on its own as a valuable result
Finally, by voting for our posts, you would be helping to fund the arts. According to a handout from the band director, music education is important to students for the following reasons:
| Emotional Awareness | Students learn to express themselves in multiple ways and become more sensitive to the preferences and feelings of others. |
| Reflective Learning | Students reflect on failures and successes through the creative process, and derive a sense of their own competencies, interests, and challenges. |
| Process Orientation | Students develop the ability to consistently refine their thinking as part of the creative process, developing an ability to re-evaluate goals and objectives and, if needed, adjust their approach to the objective. |
| Decision-Making | Through both the creative and reflective learning process, students gain greater capacity to question, interpret, and influence their own lives. |
| Grit | In a high-level performance environment, hard work and dedicated practice predict success far more than innate ability. Music performance offers opportunites to fail. Students learn the value of persistence, and of working hard for an uncertain outcome. |
| Multiple Ways of Knowing | Music study promotes fluency in knowledge systems beyond the linguistic and mathematical, enabling a deeper and broader understanding of our world and of the human experience. |
Plus, marching band gives the participants a decent amount of exercise, too!
How very cool is it... that you can now support our students in pursuing those benefits just by up-voting our posts?
Conclusion
In this post, I gave you three reasons why you should follow this account and consider voting for our posts in the coming year and a half or so. You'll be helping a kid to afford the exciting trip to the Citrus Bowl parade; you'll be demonstrating the viability of a new fund-raising protocol that is symbiotic for all participants; and you'll be supporting music education, thus providing all of the benefits that entails to our students.
Our posting will probably be light during the spring and summer, but hopefully we'll have lots of cool stuff to post for you when the school-year starts again! Please consider following early, so you don't miss anything.
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