A foundation in Hastings with the goal of helping Hastings High School students continues to operate in the area, as
iMaGine helps to fill the gaps of funding including teachers and students needs, sponsoring field trips and attendance, and more.
Founder Jessie Ritter said the funding requests are often smaller items that either would have to come out of the teachers pocket in order to have in the classroom, or items that kids would not be able to take advantage of.
“So we just have on our iMaGine website, we have where you can fill out a mini-grant request, and that’s up to $250 if you need something for your classroom. We have done brooms, we have done paper cutters, art supplies, you name it. We just sent a classroom of books for 4th graders to Pinecrest so they could each have their own book to read while they did a project. So we’ve done everything under the sun. We’ve sent Kleenex’s, we send anything the teachers really ask for we try to support. Each year we do probably $25,000 to $50,000 to the schools.”
Ritter also said it is easy to fill out a request for grants.
“Hop on our website, and it is www.imaginehastings.org. There is a bar across the top that says mini grants. You can go there, it gives you all the details on mini grants. You can fill it out. We typically say give us a couple of weeks to fill the grant. Sometimes they get filled immediately just based on if we are looking at them that day or if you just missed us. We get an email, and we do reply right away. It’s super easy, you just put in your name, your email, the school that you are doing, the grade that it impacts, if it impacts a lot of kids or just one specific grade, and why you need it. And if you have a specific thing, you can even give us the URL.”
Hear the full interview on Community In Depth on KDWA and KDWA.com.