Earlier this year, the Leonard-Litz LGTBQ Foundation (“Leonard-Litz”) awarded us $7,500 in grant funding for the Paul Fortoul Fellowship Program (“Fortoul”). Thank you Leonard-Litz for your generous support. This award more than doubles the current balance of our Fortoul Fund.
Since 2007, we have raised over $25,000 for our Fortoul fund prior to this $7,500 award, and we have disbursed almost $20,000 in financial assistance to our members in the past 13 years. On average, we have raised an average of $2,000 per year for the Fortoul fund and disbursed an average of $1,500 per year. Together with other fundraising, including almost $1,800 from our 2020-2021 One Hour Swim Fundraising Drive, we have raised almost $10,000 for the Fortoul fund in this calendar year alone. We have already disbursed more than $1,800 in financial assistance from the Fortoul fund to our members this year (this figure does not include financial assistance and subsidies for programming with resources outside of the Fortoul fund).
This generous funding from Leonard-Litz allows us to provide more financial assistance this fall & winter than we usually do in an entire calendar year. This increase in financial assistance provides us with more resources for our diversity & inclusion efforts. Our diversity & inclusion efforts this year have included our clinics, such as our brand new Adult Learn-to-Swim Program (ALTS) and our reopened Low Pressure Zone Program (LPZ). We exhausted our generous grant funding specifically earmarked for those 2 programs earlier this year. Even though we are now charging our current regular rates for members participating in our clinics (ALTS and LPZ), Fortoul provides financial assistance for those that cannot afford our regular rates.
We encourage anyone that cannot afford our current rates to apply for financial assistance through the Paul Fortoul Fellowship Program! For more information about our financial assistance programs, visit: www.tnya.org/fellowship
