24-25 School Year Impact Report

Another school year has passed, and with it, I have new data to share! During the school year, we keep track of attendance, meals, and those in the community who come and make a meal or share a skill with our students. Tracking things like this is essential to us. It shows how much we are growing, retaining students who visit, and how active the community is in our doors! After looking at the data at the end of this school year, I am excited to report that WE ARE GROWING!

This school year, we had 184 unique visits. One unique visit represents one student, regardless of how often they attended our program. This number has increased by 80 students from the previous school year! We served students from 5th to 12th grade from Rochester and Caston Schools. 

We had 3,046 total visits during the past school year. This number is how many times a student walked through our door. Our daily attendance numbers have been added to create this number. We have a goal to increase this number next year. This number tells us that, on average, a student would have visited our facility 16 times throughout the school year. While we had a good core of students who attended every day, we would like to see that number increase in the next school year!

With an attendance of 184 students throughout the school year, we served over 3,500 meals. Many students eat multiple meals a night! We also saw over 20 businesses, individuals, and organizations come to cook a meal, run a program, or volunteer their time with our students. Thanks to Fulton County's United Way, our grocery bill was completely covered for the school year! Knowing this support is here for our students is a blessing! We also want to thank the many community members who have donated meat to fill our freezers. 

Food wasn't the only significant cost we had this school year. We spent $989.61 on fuel, picking up students from school, taking them to practice, and taking them home at the night's end! While we don't put a lot of miles on our van, this is still a regular expense! 

We also spent $1,082.72 on Community Assistance. This money goes directly to our students! We helped our students play the sports they wanted to play and helped them get new shoes, socks, and other basic necessities. Kids cannot be kids unless their basic needs are met. Getting involved in clubs and sports is vital for their social, mental, and emotional growth! We want to help when we can and support parents who can't always afford some of these things. We want to thank our monthly givers for supporting this! We have a group of individuals who sponsor a student every month. This money helps us provide for the needs of our students!

Finally, we spent $14,303.59 on Programming. These costs include dollars for food, activities, experiences, and program supplies for our students.  Programming costs include the supplies for all our clubs, games, trips we took over breaks, and outdoor equipment for the students. 

These dollar amounts are the direct costs for our After School Program. While these costs added up to $16,375.92 for the 2024-2025 school year, this number does not include expenses for building maintenance, utility bills, vehicle maintenance, salaries, etc. All of these expenses indirectly support our program indirectly. You can see we need all the help we can get financially! The more funds we can raise, the more students in Fulton County we can serve. I hope and pray you consider helping fund our programs. We believe our donors to be heroes, and you can be one of them! We need the support of those in our community to help keep our doors open and our students safe. We need your help to make next school year even more successful than the last!

There are many ways to give to The Outlet. Checks can be sent to PO BOX 286, Rochester, IN 46975. You can also give online or find more information on Sponsoring a Student and donating to our Endowment Fund at www.theoutletyouthcenter.org/donate. I would love to chat with anyone who wants to learn more about our programs and mission. We can't fulfill our mission without the support of our community. Thank you to all who have supported us and will continue to do so in the future.