Spring Initiative Inc.

“Board of Directors during 2014-2015 Fiscal Year Amanda Johnson, (870) 714-0264 643 West Second Street, Clarksdale, MS 38614 Allie Grant, (214) 587-7910 11445 Moorpark Street, Apt #3, Studio City, CA 91602 Anthony Philipp, (917) 725-1650 135 West 96th Street, Apt. 12G, New York, NY 10025 Jason Shelby, (662) 313-0590 392 Sandy Cove, Clarksdale, MS 38614 Jon Levingston, (662) 902-4968 155 Westover Drive, Clarksdale, MS 38614 Mary Thompson, (662) 902-3700 221 Clark Street, Clarksdale, MS 38614 Meghan Tooke, (770) 364-6390 1543 Holly, Clarksdale, MS 38614 Robin Cocke, (662) 902-4321 2 Oak Knoll Drive, Clarksdale, MS 38614 Zedric Clayton, (901) 949-3401 3339 Shuster Cove, Memphis, TN 38118”

“A completed copy of the Form 990 will be emailed to all members of the governing board of directors for review, and the President of the Board at the very least will be expected to carefully review the entire document and provide feedback. We will not require the other members to review the document, but will encourage each of the aforementioned voting members to do so.”

“The organization maintains open lines of communication with all board members to ensure that the conflict of interest policy is not compromised in any case. In addition, both the Co-Founders/Co-Executive Directors (Anja Thiessen and Bianca Zaharescu) and the President of the Board (Amanda Johnson) are aware of the Conflict of Interest policy and committed to maintaining its integrity in the practice of maintaining the board as well as considering any new members.”

“Our scale for employee compensation is informed by data provided in the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook. Most of the salaries we are providing still fall below the national (or even state) average; during the 2015-2016 Fiscal Year, all of our full-time staff received annual salaries at various levels between $20,400 and $36,000 depending on the position and number of years successfully served within the organization. Our goal is to build up the financial sustainability and health of our organization so that we can offer all of our employees an annual salary that is more competitive with the average teacher salary in the State of Mississippi, in order to increase our ability to recruit high-quality employees as we continue to expand our services in the future.”

“We have not shared most of our organizational documents (Conflict of Interest policy, detailed financials, etc.) beyond our board of directors. However, we send out a newsletter detailing all of our programmatic activities to over 600 individuals each week (via email). Within these newsletters and accompanying emails, we report on many of the organizational updates we encounter, and we also open up a clear channel of communication, asking for recipients to contact us with any questions, comments, or concerns they might have. We would be very open to sharing our documents more broadly with the general public if that was suggested to us as a productive step we should take.”

“During the 2014-2015 fiscal year, Spring Initiative underwent some significant expansions as far as the number of participants we were able to reach, as well as the age ranges served. All of these remain fully in line with our original mission and vision, which we have slightly adjusted to better reflect the work that we are doing in our community. Spring Initiative is currently running three daily after-school cohorts covering three ages of students: Little Spring (2nd-4th grade), Junior Spring (5th-7th grade), and Big Spring (10th-12th grade). We have also expanded our adult education component to a fully fledged program called Baby University, which provides an intensive series of 9-week classes for parents of babies 0-3. Baby University's specific mission statement is as follows: "The first three years of life provide an unmatched window of cognitive, emotional, and physical development in a child's life and create an unparalleled opportunity for positive intervention. Baby University strives to harness this window of opportunity by helping parents develop the knowledge, skills and introspection necessary to raise happy, healthy, successful children. We believe that one of the most vital components to raising healthy, happy children is the establishment of a strong parent-child relationship. As a result, our program focuses heavily on guiding parents in building lasting and loving bonds with their children that increase parents' enjoyment and satisfaction in their roles as mothers, fathers and caregivers."”

“Expenses listed under "Travel" include travel costs related to Professional Development opportunities for the staff (totaling $2,867) as well as travel costs related to the direct program time with the students (day trips, overnight trips, etc.).”

“The initial Total Net Assets that our accounting firm reported for our 2013-2014 year end financials was $58,039. However, they have since gone back and adjusted the financials to reflect the more accurate figure of $56,512, which is also equal to the Unrestricted Net Assets we started out the 2014-2015 fiscal year with. In our first four years as a young nonprofit, we depended heavily on the advice and expertise of the local accounting firm we hired, Ellis & Hirsberg, as far as coming up with and reporting our financials. As our organization continued to grow we realized it would be very important for us to have the ability in-house to create and maintain our own books, that could be more comprehensively accurate (in the sense of tagging our income and expenses into much more specific categories) as well as constantly available to us. We are very happy with this shift and with the level of depth and quality that our financial records are now able to reflect.”