Open Letter From Our Executive Director
Executive Director Katrina Owens shares an urgent message about the most challenging fundraising year in DC SCORES’ recent history.
Dear DC SCORES Community,
For the first time in fifteen years, some of our poet-athletes won’t have a program to come back to when school begins this fall.
That’s hard for me to type. I started with DC SCORES as a teacher and coach, and I’ve been part of the organization for more than two-thirds of its 30-year history. If you’re reading this, it’s because you’ve been part of that history, too.
You’ve helped grow this poet-athlete movement from a team of 15 girls into an award-winning nonprofit serving thousands of kids every year. You’ve seen our poet-athletes grow into professional soccer players, Poet-Laureates, public servants, and even the presumptive mayor of DC!
When the U.S. won the joint-bid to host the 2026 World Cup, we were ecstatic. As a legacy of the `94 Cup, we saw this as an enormous opportunity to build on that grassroots history. Even when DC was passed over as a host, we still hoped that momentum from the tournament would help us attract the funding necessary to chip away at our 20-school waitlist.
Instead, we are facing significant financial challenges. This upcoming school year, we have been forced to cut our Junior SCORES program at 20 schools, and pause our program entirely at 9 schools.
It costs us about $1,400 to serve one poet-athlete for an entire year. That’s close to a 50% increase just since we restarted in-person programming after the COVID-19 pandemic. DC SCORES removes all barriers to participation in our program, and we don’t cut any corners when it comes to quality. That’s precisely why our program is as impactful as it is.
Unfortunately, our fundraising hasn’t kept pace with inflation in an increasingly challenging environment, local government dollars have decreased, and the World Cup revenue bump we hoped for has largely bypassed direct-service organizations like ours. Until now, the strength of our partners and donors — all of you — has helped us maintain programming in the face of these headwinds, even as peers were forced to scale back. But the difficulty we face now is unlike anything we’ve ever seen.
To protect programming, we need our community to step up. Will you sponsor a poet-athlete through our new Poet-Athlete Impact Fund with a gift of $1,400 (or $117/month)?
If you can’t give $1,400, please support how you can. Every donation will help us work towards restoring programming for poet-athletes. And if you can give more, this is the time to make a strong investment in our youth. Your gift will never have a greater impact on our work than it can right now.
Independent data shows that DC SCORES poet-athletes are safer, healthier, and more confident than their peers. They attend school more regularly and perform better while there. The program supports their mental health. They are committed to making their schools, neighborhoods, and city brighter for their own and future generations. DC needs more poet-athletes.
This is the most urgent fundraising appeal DC SCORES has made in my time here. But I think it has the potential to be our most inspiring, too. I know that if we come together at this urgent time, we can protect DC SCORES for the kids who need it most.
As the school year starts, I’ll be sharing the joyous images and uplifting success stories you’ve come to expect from DC SCORES. But I am also committed to being transparent about the challenges we face. This may be the most difficult fundraising year I have faced during my tenure, but I know that, together, we can get back on track. I look forward to building Poet-Athlete City with you.
With gratitude,
Katrina Owens, Executive Director, DC SCORES
