Autistic Wings Dance Company's Schedule Announcement

Leta and Amanda discuss Autistic Wings Dance Company new class offerings and seeks support through donations, sponsorships, and community engagement. The organization aims to provide inclusive dance programs for autistic children and emphasizes the need for financial support to sustain its operations and expand its impact.

Keywords

Autistic Wings Dance Company, dance classes, neurodivergent children, inclusive programs, fundraising, donations, sponsorships, community engagement

Takeaways

Autistic Wings Dance Company announces new class offerings for neurodivergent children, expanding its program to cater to a wider age range and offering a variety of dance classes.
The organization seeks financial support through donations, sponsorships, and community engagement to sustain its operations and provide affordable dance classes for neurodivergent children.
Transparency and inclusivity are key values for Autistic Wings Dance Company, as it aims to create a supportive and empowering environment for neurodivergent children through dance programs.

To pre-register for Autistic Wings Dance Company's daytime, homeschool dance classes, please visit:
https://www.autisticwingsdancecompany.com/dance-with-us

Transcript

0:00

I'm gonna stop this one. This is Leta get from Autistic Wings Dance to Studio And this is my mom. So mom, I heard we have big, big announcement. We do. As president CEO of Autistic Wings Dance Company, I'm excited to announce that we listened to you, Pikes Peak region. We heard that a lot of your kids were either too young for our pre -professional program or weren't quite ready for a pre-professional program. So what does that mean? mean? That means we're going to open our class offerings and have more classes for more students during the daytime hours. So when can people drop off their kids and pick up their kids? That depends on what classes your kids are in. We're going to offer a pre -k program on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We're still finalizing the time with our staff. We're going to offer an early youth, are you kidding me? Of course she's yawning We're going to offer an early youth program. That's going to be between the ages of five and 11. And those classes are going to run between 10 am and noon on Monday, Wednesday, Fridays. The full schedule can be found on our website. We're also going to offer our later youth program from nine to 18, Monday, Wednesday, Fridays, from noon to three. Full class schedule is on our website. So when are we going to? babies will be Tuesday, Thursday. We're currently planning on having an early class for them so that it doesn't interfere with the time we are being told that the school system does their early child find and their early childhood intervention class at preschool classes in the afternoon. So what classes are we going to have? For the early babies, we're offering more movement classes than anything else, though the older they get, the more that's going to turn into ballet and other classes. For our early youth classes, we're offering ballet, musical theater, and jazz, the same offerings we're offering for our later youth classes at the moment. As we get more students, those classes will expand over time. So what else is going on? We are seriously looking for a studio space for the evening. As much as we love Barbara Ellis' Studio of Dance and we appreciate them letting us in, we have heard a lot of parents say that they need a later class. Barbara Ellis' Studio of Dance will always be home and they will always be family to us. But we can't offer any more classes in the evening until we have more. We're also looking for teachers who can teach classes like hip -hop and such. Finding teachers to teach dance classes during the day though can be a little difficult at times. Can we bring cash with us? I don't know. You gotta talk to Miss Suzanne over whether or not you can steal her dog. Okay. In my defense, it is a normal certified therapy dog. Very true. Anyways, we do need to know what teacher we are keeping our class sizes small our classes will be less than 10 kids a class We need eight kids to make each class But we aren't going to have more than 10 kids in the class 10 kids in the class is a lot for a neurotypical class It's extremely a lot for a neurodivergent class Wait, so what would be like a lot a lot for a neurodivergent? Class I think 10 is as much as the max of students we can get as a neurodivergent I mean you're autistic I'm autistic Do you do better with small classes or some of these large classes in studios which have like 20 kids in them? Definitely small Definitely small the board is still working on what the cost of classes are going to be the more students We have the cheaper we can get we're trying to get our studio tuition down to about$200 a month. The only way we can do that is to have more students, but we can't have more students in class. So that's one of the reasons we're extending our class offerings. Also, if we can find donors and sponsors, especially small businesses in the area who want to sponsor us, we can definitely keep class costs down. Well right now we're doing the last bit of our Facebook fundraiser. It ends early June. We are hoping to raise $1 ,200 on it, but if we at least raise $100 we get the money from it. If not, that money is returned to you. We're also running an Instagram fundraiser. If you are at a state, these are probably the best ways to donate to us. If you are in state or you want to donate a lot of money on a recurring basis or even a small amount of money on a recurring basis, we do have donation forms on the website for recurring donations. Yeah. When do we get cupcakes out of this? Cupcakes! Of course that's what she's looking for. So one, August 3rd, we are having an open house at Barbara Ella Studio of Dance. We are going to do an audition and a community class from 11 to 1230. At 10 a though, the doors are opening so you can mingle with the staff, you can talk to our board of directors who are in town, and you can see what this is all about. If you're kind of wondering if your kid fits in, that's probably the best way to find out since we're not currently hosting classes. And also, so will we ever be able to do like big, like not really that big, but at least some like fun little dance assist shows to everyone? Yeah, we're working on that. Ms. Zetta wants to get the kids into class to see what they can do. The problem with those big dances and with recitals is they cost a lot of money up front. So we would need roughly 30 to 40 thousand dollars just to host a rehearsal or recital. And that's a lot of money when we have a few hundred dollars in the bank. So, I mean, that's why you see a lot of even your local for -profit studios selling advertisements in their recital stuff is because they have to come up with 30 to 40 thousand dollars before they sell a single ticket. Grown -up money is weird. Grown -up money is weird. Now I have so much questions about grown up money. Do you have any more questions about what we're doing? The only thing I question is how much money are we putting into this? Right now, a lot of that money is coming from our family, of course. You know, your dad and I truly believe in what you're doing. I'm not taking a paycheck as CEO until we can get enough money to pay me. Yeah. But more importantly, pay an entire staff before paying me. Pay for scholarships before paying me. Keep the class costs low before paying me. Your dad and I are going to fund a lot of the background stuff until Autistic Wings can do it. Our... If you're looking for something to help us with monthly, our website cost us $32 a month for hosting fees. Our newsletter cost $20 a month. Our emails for the staff and for the website cost us about $31 a month because Google gives us an amazing discount as nonprofits. Advertising costs more than you'd even begin to imagine. All that is broken down over on the website. If you are looking for in -kind donations, we could use people to donate food on August 3rd. So we have a party when we invite the community into our first community day. That's a lot of money. That is. Don't get me started on how much insurance costs. I don't want to. It's way more money. We also have to pay rent, we have to pay salaries. When do you get paid in all this? Right now, your dad and I are putting more money in than we're ever going to get out. I mean, we believe in the cause. Yes, I feel my help. Please give us enough money so we can pay my mom because my mom deserves this because my mom is the best mom. I appreciate that. But what we need probably more than paying me is to be able to pay our staff. Yes. Right now, we would love to give our staff a living wage. I know hearing living wage and nonprofit probably don't go in the same category for a lot of people. If you're curious right now, McDonald's workers in some situations make more than non -profit office workers. Yeah. Is that McDonald's? It is McDonald's and they do have to deal with people. Yeah. But we would like to be able to offer our staff even health insurance. And that means we've got two fundraisers. We also want to host a gala so that we can bring in some of those big donors and convince them to give us more money. A lot of grants, we need to have a donor base in order to go to the grants. So if you can even do a $3 reoccurring donation a month, if we could get... 100 to 1000 people doing that, that would go a long way in convincing grantmakers and philanthropists that people even outside the studio want to see these kids succeed. Wait, what's a gala? It's when you have to dress up in really fancy clothing. What? Like fancy ball gowns. Why? and go and sit and listen to people talk about how great it is to support autistic wings. Sounds evil -ly good. There will be cake. I promise you we will have cake at all your events. So there's at least one good thing out of Gala. There is. Gala sounds evil. The other thing we need people to do to help support us of course is to follow us on all social media platforms. If you can follow us on YouTube, if you can follow us on Facebook, If you can follow us on Instagram that shows and they're free to follow just in case you're wondering If you can like subscribe Comment on the YouTube videos that they will allow you to comment on YouTube does Limit videos with kids to have comments if you've seen comments on like tick -tock you understand why YouTube limits comments on kid videos but That also shows the grantmakers and the philanthropists that we have a lot of people who want to see this succeed. Are you yawning again? No. Also, subscribing to our newsletter shows an active support community. Even if you don't have a child involved in Autistic Wings, even if you don't know anyone who's autistic and you just want to support this great cause, go to our website, subscribe to the newsletter, and I can take that to grantmakers and go, look, here, we have people giving $3 a month, this many people giving $3 a month, we have this many people giving X dollars a month. We have a huge Facebook following. We have a huge newsletter group. That also helps us when we're going to sponsors with businesses like Sodonza, Capizio, Local Mom and Pop Shops going, hey, sponsor us. We're going to put your name out there. And people might come buy stuff from you. Because we all love to support businesses that are supporting good causes like this. And also if you have any cute reptiles, water puppies, or kitty cats, I want to know how adorable they are. Feel free to post. If you're on Facebook or Insta and you want to post pictures of your kitty cats and puppy dogs, I guess Lita would like to see them. Yes. Or reptiles or whatever other cute ones you have. Cute. You're like, I want to do a video of all this. Yes. We are also in the process of trying to figure out how to do level two and level three. Level two autistic is slightly easier, if they're verbal at least, to bring in with level one kids, but we would like to give them their own space. Level three, I don't know that we're going to be able to do until we have a studio of our own where we can build an entire room specifically for level three. Entire room. I mean we want to make sure there's not stuff, especially the younger they are, that they can get hurt on while they're at the studio. Yeah, I don't think anybody want babies getting hurt. No. But, you know, neurotypical studios aren't looking at things like bars and going, well, you know, they have screws, they have nails. Wait, babies, bars, murder weapon for babies? Well, not just for babies. I mean, if you've got a kid who's level three, sometimes... it's harder for them to understand not to scrape their hand against a nail or a screw that's loose. And we want to make sure that they're not doing that. We want to make it as safe as possible, which takes money, money we don't have yet. Also, if you are a small business or a grant maker or a philosopher. Philosopher? You know, I have a stuttering problem. Get off right now. I too went through speech therapy and all the therapies one could go through. Back then though, we did not have as many cool things as you guys do now. I mean, seriously, y 'all are spoiled compared to my generation. Yeah, but I hate you, corncaller. Yeah, but I mean, the fact - You know, I get the fact that I get to make my dad fell old and it's funny Let's be honest. The fact of the matter is you guys have more support and this will be one more support thing a lot of us older people and Gen X Millennials we did not if they even diagnosed us Especially girls. We didn't get that support. We were told you'll just grow out of it and you'll understand social cues and everything That's one of the reasons I think your dad and I support autistic. At least there was Pacman! There was Pacman. NEON! But, and I know a lot of older people on the spectrum will agree with me, stuff like this is important for the younger kids, especially because you'll be surrounded with other people like you. You're not going to be told to mask. Because, and adults aren't trying to be mean when they tell you that. That was just how we grew up, was mask, mask, mask. You have to fit in as neurotypical, because if you're not neurotypical, you can't. work you can't do anything. This is the arts. The people who succeed are not neurotypical. They're all a little crazy and they're probably all on the autistic spectrum if they were get tested. And I can buy you like a puppy dog if I want to. Why are you laughing? Because you're funny when we do these things. I mean, the big announcement though is we are definitely going to have classes. We're going to try, if we can get 40 kids right back of the napkin math, and do not quote me on this, is we can have classes for under $280 for you to take all the classes. it would be helpful if we could get some grantmakers. And if you know any grantmakers, I know a lot of them are invite only. Feel free to talk to them about it. We definitely need donors so that we can talk to them about it. And like I said, $3. I wish we could go down to $1 a month. I truly wish we had Patreon's ability to do it. The problem is we use a company called DonorBox. And as much as I love DonorBox, I truly do. It's a box? It is not a box. What? They have a cap at $3 as low as you can go. The reasoning for all the crazy people like me out there going, why is that? It is because people will steal your credit card and charge $1, and they'll charge them at nonprofits. So that makes us think we're getting a lot of money, whereas in we're not, because all that money gets clawed back after you go and tell your credit card it was stolen. Donor box not a box. It's called donor box. So isn't it the box? The idea though is donor box is used to back in the day you would have boxes everywhere for donations So that's where they're coming from. Is there just now the online box? Bucks. Wait, what? Bucks online? This makes no sense. I know Anyways, We are going to offer individual classes, but we're going to give priority to our kids who take all the classes. We are going to continue fundraising. I know summer is not the best time for fundraising because everyone's out doing vacations. That's why, you know, we're definitely looking at smaller donations. Honestly, everyone has their trains. Mine is numbers. Hers is monarch butterflies. If you haven't noticed through everything. But I've done the math. And one person giving me a hundred dollars. I am not going to ever say no to a hundred dollar donation. But. I mean, I get one person giving me $100 and I don't have nearly as much as if I get 100 people giving me $3. 100 people giving me $3 is $300. Ugh, grammar math makes no sense. It probably helps if you also don't have dyscalculia. What? Yes. But we are trying our hardest to keep classes as cheap as we can. The issue though becomes, the issue becomes and it remains, Dan, there's a lot of overhead. We have our rent, we have our insurance. If you've ever priced insurance, good insurance for a dance studio. It's expensive. I can't do this. But, you know, the more kids we get in the programs, we'd like to cap each program this year at 20 kids. That's because we have two studios where it can have and 10 kids in each studio would give us 20 kids. If we can expand, we are definitely going to expand. But we do need to keep that cap. And keeping that cap means our tuition is going to be more expensive. Which definitely means we need more donors. I love my donors. I like them. I mean, if you're asking me, I would like, I would love to see us get $200 ,000 from our gala this year and probably a few hundred thousand after that. We do have to pay for the gala, which is probably your Christmas present this year. It is a big, big fancy gala. But I mean, it is what it is. the more donors we get, and the more reoccurring donors, because reoccurring is probably the biggest thing we need with donors. One, it shows you, you're yawning again. Reoccurring donations really do look amazing to the... grant makers and the philanthropists and to the businesses we're gonna work with because reoccurring shows you have really bought it. Reoccurring shows that you're willing to give us three, five dollars a month. I mean, five dollars a month is less than a price of a Starbucks depending on where you're living. reoccurring means you're a really nice person who probably has a really cute pet. True. And the recurring also helps us budget more because instead of getting one lump sum during the year, we know we have your money to look forward to every single month. Every single month. It does help budgeting. And it makes the board less annoyed at me for coming up with like 500 different on the back of the napkin things. We. Yeah, I'll say on the back of napkin. It's a phrase, kiddo. It's a weird one. It's from back in the day where you would write it on the back of a napkin while you were working at work lunches. This makes no sense. I know. Anywho, If you don't have the money to donate, do not donate. We're not asking you to give up something you can't afford. We really are not. But if you can help us out by liking the Facebook page, search for Autistic Wings Dance Company, liking our Instagram page, Autistic Wings Dance Company, liking the YouTube channel, whether it be LIDA's or Autistic Wings Dance Company, we're building them both up at the same time so that whichever one gets to where we can use stuff first, we can get there. Lot of that Really is weird like if you we are talking about like our YouTube we need at least a hundred People subscribing as a nonprofit to get to some of the cooler YouTube Creator stuff. Yeah, they have dropped that number from a thousand to one hundred, which is nice We need It used to be a thousand, but Google just redid a whole bunch of things with Google Ads and they dropped a bunch of stuff to 100. What the like? What? What what? The other thing, I mean, it used to be 1000 subscribers and 4000 watch hours. Yeah, there was a whole thing. You were like in a bedroom not wanting to listen to all the new stuff Google was doing for marketing while I was. Yeah, I know. Good one. Anywho's, Facebook and Instagram, we cannot access data or analytics until we get to 100 followers on either of that. Even with MailChimp and our newsletter, we have to have at least 100 subscribers to the newsletter until I can get analytics. MailChimp. That's... No, they have a monkey or chimp as their chimpanzee as their thingy. Does it have a chimp? Fancy? Yes. Is it cute? It's a cartoon character, so it's not really one way or the other. So it's not a real chimpanzee? But they have a lot of analytics that we cannot access until we have a thousand subscribers. Like, we don't even know, I know kind of how many people are opening. We don't know where they're coming from. We don't know where they are, what age groups they are, whether they're male or female, or prefer not to answer, or somewhere else on the gender spectrum. I thought they had cartoon chip. No, we don't get a lot of information until we get to that mark. Also, this is going to sound weird. We get free ads from Google Ads. We get $10 ,000 a month in free ads, which is amazing. But one of the ways you can help is if you see our ad while you're searching on Google, click through it. Because we have to have a 5 % click-through rate to keep that grant. And that's a $10 ,000 a month in ads is not shabby, especially when you can't afford your own ads. Once we have 100 subscribers and a few more watch hours, so you can rewatch our shorts and everything over on Autistic Wings, we can use that ad money for YouTube ads as well, not just plain text ads on Google Ads, which is, you know. Can I play? No? OK. No. Another cheap free way to support Autistic Wings is just click through on the ads. Go to our website. Just going to the website starts showing Google and Bing that people are organically going to the website. And when you organically go to the website, they assume that people really enjoy this website. If you're old enough to remember back in the early days, very early days, of websites, people used to get paid to just refresh going to a website over and over again for an hour to try and get the SEO and everything, convince people were going there. I am not suggesting that, but maybe showing up once a day. What are you doing? Okay, I'm doing something. Yeah, all of this If you know a small business or you are a small business and you're willing to let us put flyers in your business put pamphlets up about our classes That would help a lot and you don't even have to give us money and you You're yawning through this whole thing. I feel like you're trying to say how boring I am. Are you saying I'm boring? No. preteens. You can't... These are ways to really support not only- I walked too hard. There's water in my eyes now. I walked too hard. You're great. I love you. We definitely one of the other things not just getting our pamphlets out we're trying to get the word out and if you know of you know If you know of a child who would benefit from this okay, you know Just letting them know if you have a contact at one of the local Autistic support centers and they're willing to let us Talk to them about what we're doing. That would be great We're gonna do podcast here in the near future about what our plans are because We are not planning on staying like this. We're going to expand We have a strategy. The board does have a strategy. It is not Lita that's making the strategy. She does have adults around her. Because apparently because I'm 12, I'm not the one to run the thing because apparently they figure somebody else has my accidentally do this and climbs. No, it's more the state of Colorado does have laws that if you are under 18, you cannot be on the board. Why? It's just the laws in Colorado. But you do come to all the board meetings, which is really fun when you're 12. Because you are the founder and you get to come to board meetings. I don't even know anything! Yeah, that's predominantly a board meeting, is everyone not doing much but listening to all the boring stuff. I don't even know why I'm there half of the time! And donations really will help us keep our costs low. We're going to put up our current budget, which is kind of not exactly our budget at the moment. One of the reasons it's not our budget is there's a few budget items we can't afford yet that we're just not going to do unless we can afford them. But we're putting that up on the website soon. It that way you can go and see what the budget is we are putting the strategy up on the website more than just the roadmap we have on the website right now so that everyone can see where we're going. Honestly, we want to be as transparent as possible with our stakeholders and let them know where their money is going because we don't want you thinking it's just going down the drain. There are a few things that we definitely have to pay for on the budget, like salaries. We have to pay for the rent and we have to pay for the insurance. And then there's a bunch of stuff that, like I said, Lita, her dad and I are paying for. Right now, it's stretching the budget, our personal family budget, but. But we're making it work. You can't get back here. And honestly, we really could. I know that there's support out there. Every time I talk to people about what we're doing, they're really excited. They think it's amazing. We just need to show people it's amazing. I think you keep laughing. Because you're cute. What? We need to show the grantmakers and the philanthropists and the businesses that people do support this. And, you know, a $3 or a $5 reoccurring donation monthly. or an annual reoccurring donation, DonorBox will actually let you do a weekly reoccurring donation. So if doing $20 a month is hard on your budget, but doing $5 a week is easier on your budget, have we got a plan for you. It's not just money though, like I said, it's subscribing to the newsletter. It's joining. Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and following us on there and subscribing on there. People have asked why we're not doing TikTok, haven't they? I know a lot of people are on TikTok. We've got young kids. I don't know that I want to put them forward on TikTok. It's TikTok. One of the trending hashtags, and I know it's trending on Instagram as well. I know. Yes? How funny autistic kids are when they dance. Yeah. Very hard for. Just gonna say, very hard for. To all you people who are watching those things, very, very hard for. Autistic kids are hashtag autistic kids are always funny when they dance thoughtful I Don't know that we want these kids seeing people commenting stuff like that. Yeah Which is you know, it is hurtful. I thought I mean one of the reasons we're doing this is because of how Hurtful it is to feel like you felt in studios before yes And I know people are meaning it in the best light. They want to show how they're supporting you guys, autistic kids, by saying how funny you guys are. And also, if you're one of these people who have done this, it is not helpful. This is very hurtful. And also, you wonder why the world isn't really that good. I mean, but it could be good. I think things like autistic wings brings joy into the world. I think it brings a light on the good. I think that light on the good though has to acknowledge that there's light on the bad. You're yawning at me. If you're listening to this on the podcast, by the way, we also have a YouTube podcast that you can go hear this in your car and not have to see all the yawning Lita is doing on me. But if you're watching on the podcast, she is yawning nonstop. watching listening on the podcast let's see if mom can talk today but yeah our big announcement like I said we've got class new class schedule we also you know really do need the support of donations follows and subscribing I will leave you're just gonna laugh again I'm meaning too young, but I'm not. My body hates me today. Anyways, I think I broke it. You didn't break me. Are you sure? I'm sure. We are going to leave links below for us signing up at our website. If you're already sure you're going to join us, we have pre -registration going on. You can sign up at www.autisticwingsdancecompany .org backslash dance hyphen with hyphen us. I'm leaving the link in the comments or in the description below or the comments below because I know that's a really long website. Right. It is dot org though. I want to point this out because even some of our board members keep thinking it's dot com. Okay seriously it is dot org. Yes, well one of these days we're going to hopefully get an Amazon wish list going for you guys right now, you know Yes other things But We're also going to see, we have one board member who has a dancewear store and we're gonna see if we can't figure out how to do a wish list for our dancers on there where you can go and buy them the dance shoes, especially because, I mean, reasons. It is extremely expensive. Expensive. For dance, well, for dance, yes. And it's extremely expensive for therapies. yeah, we were going back to how to help us, weren't we? ADHD, yeah, that works great. Okay, well, it's not your fault. You got your ADHD from both parents. It's how this works. Got it from you, got it from Dad. I was basically doomed at the beginning. Very true. Anyways, let's think this through. Back on track, back on track, back on track. You know, I am certain there are families out there that don't have... so much ADHD and autism under one roof, but I don't know how they survive. I mean, we have way too much fun with all the autism and ADHD under this roof. If you're also a family whose whole thing is where everybody under your roof has autism and ADHD, or just autism, or just ADHD, just comment. Can we get back on track here? The Facebook is Autistic Wings Dance Company. The Instagram is Autistic Wings Dance Company. Our YouTube channel is Autistic Wings Dance Company. I think basically everything was just Autistic Wings Dance Company. Everything is Autistic Wings Dance Company. Just listen. Hold on. I'm having issues, of course. shoot. Hopefully this clip doesn't get destroyed.