Our Metrics

Many of you received this via email but for those of you that aren't signed up for our emails here's our report on this last year...

One Year
It’s been just over one year since Seattle Free School started. While we don’t report to a board (YAY) here’s some metrics of our success…. All made possible by you!

Press- We’ve been featured in most print magazines and newspapers in Seattle. Listing everywhere we’ve been is pretty hard with so many great neighborhood papers around Seattle so let’s suffice it to say that we haven’t been in the Stranger, Seattle Metropolitan or Seattle Woman’s Magazine. We were also part of a panel on KUOW. If you want to see the press we’ve received you can check out our website and past press here.

Classes- Our first class was on March 15th, 2008. With 45 people attending it was a huge success. For this year total we had 71 classes offered throughout the year which is about 7 classes offered per month. Attendance ranged from 1-2 people to up to 65+ depending on the class.

Mailing List- In this first year we outgrew gmail but thanks to Seattle Central Community College we now have this great mailing list and 1088 people signed up as of today.

The big news and what I’d like to really report to you, our “board” as it were, is that all of this was done without any cash donations. Most of you know that but I’d like you to take a second and think about this. We were able to get into these print publications without anyone running press for us (and no, we’re really not pros at media- trust us on that!). We had lots of teachers volunteer their time and lots of students excited to learn. We managed to spread the word to over 1000 people without paying a dime for advertising. We’ve got a beautiful new website for free and it’s hosted for free. Our only cost for that was the $10 to register the domain, an amount that doesn’t require a fund raising effort.

We were told time and time again that all of these things wouldn’t be possible. We’d have to raise money to get advertising since it would be difficult to impossible to spread the word without it. We’d need someone to help us get press, etc etc etc. All of this turned out to be completely unfounded, driven by fear and the “way things are”.

While we don’t tend to get philosophical here I’d like to take this change of the new year to ask you what might be possible in your life if you questioned “the way things are” and went forward with motivation, joy and wonder? The biggest lesson I’ve learned from Seattle Free School is that far more is possible then I’d ever anticipated.