Spring Initiative Inc.

“Not applicable.”

“This form 990 has been reviewed by the president of the governing body, as well as the organization's accounting consultant and both co-founders/co-executive directors, before being submitted. These individuals are given at minimum 2 full days to carefully review the document and respond with any questions, comments, or concerns. Those are addressed directly before any document is submitted.”

“Board members are made aware of the policy when joining the board, and their situation is discussed in depth in a series of face to face interviews with the current board president and the executive directors/co-founders of the organization (Bianca Zaharescu and Anja Thiessen).”

“Our process of determining compensation for all of our employee positions is informed directly by data gathered from the Bureau of Labor Statistics' Occupational Outlook Handbook. The Program Director of Spring Initiative, Anja Thiessen, is hired through an H 1-B visa, so her compensation level was determined in collaboration our lawyer and was developed to reflect the average salary held by her position in other similar nonprofit organizations throughout the state of Mississippi ($36,000 per year). As far as the other staff, compensation levels are also developed carefully, with input from the governing board, and with the goal of being able to provide positions that are somewhat comparable to a salary level for a first-year teacher in our region of the Mississippi Delta. We have been growing the compensation level slowly, beginning at $20,400 and then moving our employees into the $24,000 range. Our plan is to reach the much more sustainable salary level of $28,000 for each of our Cohort Directors by January 2017.”

“We have not taken the initiative to distribute our governing documents to the public, beyond of course our staff and governing body. We are always ready to make any and all documents available to anybody who is interested in gaining more information about our organization, however, and it is clear to anybody who is familiar with Spring that two of our most important values are integrity and transparency. We have a weekly newsletter list, for example, where we send emails to 700 of our supporters on a regular basis, sharing not only the successes that our students are experiencing at Spring, but also speaking very openly about our challenges as well. We make it very clear to our wide network of contacts that we are always open for them to share any questions, comments, or concerns that they might have, so we hope that anyone who might desire more direct access to any of our organizational documents would feel that they have an open pathway of communication.”