Welcome to the homestretch of an extraordinarily challenging year. We are so grateful for the support you all have offered over the tumultuous course of 2020, from your willingness to attend masked outdoor classes in chilly weather conditions to the outpouring of love we received when our beloved Ryan Tibbs passed away in September. Thank you, thank you, thank you for being such vibrant, resilient individuals who dare not only to partake in the devotional practice of yoga but to do so in the context of crucial community connection.
If this year has taught us anything it’s that we are so much stronger together than we are apart. We at Asheville Community Yoga fully believe in collective people power and we want to offer a recap of the last 9 months as well as our vision for the future.
As we have stated recently, we do not intend on opening up for indoor classes in the coming months. The current spike of the virus that continues to grip our planet is too significant to risk the health and possibly even lives of the community that we love so dearly. Thank you for your continued understanding.
We do however have our sights set on an eventual, safe opening once a trustworthy vaccine is available and we can all breathe close to each other in good conscience. To that end, we are committed to rehiring staff members. As you know, when COVID hit the states hard we made the difficult decision to close the studio. What you may not know is this meant we furloughed all thirty of our incredibly dynamic, creative, dedicated staff members. For the last 9 months ALL Asheville Community Yoga operations have come entirely from a small group of volunteers. We are so so grateful for the folks who were previously staff members who have offered any amount of their time and skills as we navigated setting up an online platform, kickstarting outdoor classes, and just generally staying afloat as a non-profit in the height of a pandemic. We won’t claim to have done this whole thing perfectly, but it would have been a whole lot less perfect if we hadn’t had folks willing to come in to mow the grass, weed the flower beds, maintain the entire campus, or check social media for us. Asheville Community Yoga will be able to eventually re-open in a recognizable way because of the time that these volunteers put in over the long months of the spring, summer, and fall.
Therefore, after 9 months of total volunteerism and congress still not reaching a deal for a new unemployment package, we’d like to bring a few key positions back on payroll to keep our online programming ramped up over the winter months, maintain the website and social media platforms, keep our connection to the community alive and well, and to gear up for in-house programming when it’s safe to do so once again. The three part-time positions we need to bring back to sustain the next phase of the pandemic include those of our Associate Director, Teacher Liaison, and Programming Coordinator.
In addition to raising money to pay for staff, we need funds to pay our mortgage. We’ve relied entirely on SBA loans and grants to pay our mortgage and utilities throughout these long months of closure. Those funds are however quickly dwindling.
Our monthly financial breakdown follows:
Mortgage – $8800
Utilities – $600
Subscriptions – $400
Salaries – $5000
Total = $14,800/month
We have approximately three month’s worth of savings in our account. We are so very grateful for the SBA loans and grants we received but those funds are not enough to sustain us through the winter and spring.
Today is Giving Tuesday, a post-Thanksgiving holiday on which non-profits across the country ask their community to offer financial support. And so, in the last month of a very very long year, we are fundraising for our future. This money will go directly towards staffing Asheville Community Yoga and securing our building so that we can re-open our beautiful space when it is safe to do so.
Please remember that as a 501c3 non-profit organization, we will provide you with a receipt for your tax deduction. If you have any specific questions, please contact our Executive Director, Michael Greenfield. michael@ashevillecommunityyoga.org
Donations can be made by clicking the donate button on our website. You can also mail checks to:
Asheville Community Yoga
8 Brookdale Rd.
Asheville, NC 28804
We are so very grateful for all the donations we’ve received over the past ten years to get where we are. This community is truly magical and has somehow managed to create and sustain what we now know as Asheville Community Yoga. We trust that together we will continue to create and not only sustain, but THRIVE in the months and years ahead.
With love and gratitude we say, Thank you.
