fundraising – iLearn Technology

The Vulnerability of Words on Paper

October 22, 2026Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment49 views

“My alma mater was books, a good library…I could spend the rest of my life reading, just satisfying my curiosity.” -Malcom X

I love books. To me, they are among the most wonderful communication devices we have. They allow us to learn, in a handful of hours, what might have taken the author decades to learn. They let us peer inside someone else’s experience, and learn the lessons that have taken a lifetime to learn.

I published my first book last week.

It was so much more vulnerable than I expected it to be.

I’ve been writing and sharing ideas publicly for years through thousands of blog posts, reflections, resources, things I’m wondering about, and things I’m still working out. Writing has always helped me make sense of the world and my own thoughts. It helps me connect ideas and notice things that I might otherwise miss.

Which is why I was surprised by how different publishing this book felt.

There’s something about committing words to bound paper that feels different. More comprehensive and permanent than a blog post. Instead of starting a conversation or sharing a partial thought, this is me showcasing decades of trial and error and saying, Here. This is what I have to offer for the last 14 years on this topic.

And then you hope it does what you intended. That somewhere, someone will pick it up and find something useful, that a hard-won lesson might make their journey just a little easier.

This book isn’t one I ever imagined myself writing; I’m not an expert on this particular topic in the traditional sense. I started Anastasis Academy because I had ideas about what learning could look like, what a school community could feel like, and what might happen if we built a school on a different set of assumptions. Fundraising was not part of the original plan.

As it turns out, keeping a dream alive requires more than having a good idea. It requires resources, relationships, and a willingness to ask people to believe in something they may not have experienced themselves.

So I learned, which, if you’ve followed me for any amount of time, you know is pretty much my MO.

When I was hired as a computer teacher and found myself in charge of a new Mac lab that I had no business being in charge of, my first stop was the library, where I picked up Macs for Dummies.

A book that I could read in a few hours that encapsulated years and years of experience.

Anastasis was different. When I needed to figure out how to fundraise, I went looking for resources. I found plenty of books about fundraising, nonprofits, and philanthropy. Nothing quite fit our community. I wasn’t just looking for fundraising strategies; I was trying to figure out how to invite people into a vision for a different kind of school. How to build relationships and create opportunities for people to participate in something meaningful. How to raise the money we needed without losing sight of the reason we were doing any of it in the first place.

I wanted to learn from someone who had been there, who understood the particular challenges of a tight-knit community and didn’t want fundraising to feel extractive or gross. I wanted it to feel like us. I was looking for the kind of book that would show me what another community tried, the surprises along the way, what they would do differently. I needed the mentor who had been down this path.

I couldn’t find that book.

Fundraising Was Not on My Bingo Card is the book I wish I’d had when I realized that fundraising was going to be part of keeping our dreams alive. My sincere hope is that it makes someone else’s journey easier and offers a shortcut/cheat code. That someone building a school, leading a small organization, or trying to bring an idea into the world will find a story or strategy that helps them take their next step a little more confidently.

One of the joys I found in writing this book was the remembering. As I revisited each story, I kept remembering the people who showed up for our community, people who said yes when we weren’t entirely sure what we were doing, people who gave their time, creativity, and resources, and people who believed in what we were trying to do.

So many of these stories include some of my favorite people in the world. We were figuring it out and learning together. We were becoming different versions of ourselves along the way. This book is less a collection of fundraising stories and more a collection of moments when people made something possible for one another. It’s a record of how our community showed up. I feel a little protective of these stories; I got to live inside them. I remember the conversations that happened before the moments made it into the book. I remember what we were worried about, what we were hoping for, and what it felt like when something worked that we weren’t sure would. I know what each of these moments means to us. Will someone who wasn’t there feel any of that? Will the story translate? Will someone find what they need in it?

That’s the vulnerability. Blog posts don’t have to be complete ideas; a book asks you to gather the ideas and shape them into something and trust that the result will be useful to someone whose life and story you may never know. You hope you’ve gotten it right. I don’t expect this book to be perfect; none is…but I want it to be right because the people who might need it deserve something honest and useful. They deserve more than a list of top tips and tricks; they deserve to understand the messiness, relationships, missteps, and small moments that changed everything.

I can’t promise that every story will resonate with every reader (but gosh, I hope they do!). I can promise these stories are real; they come from 14 years of trying, learning, making mistakes, asking questions, and discovering what happens when passionate people decide to build something together

I’m proud of this little book because of the years of learning it represents. It’s a lovely thing to hold something in your hands that, until recently, existed only as a collection of ideas and stories you were trying to make sense of.

The paperback and hardcover editions are now available, alongside the Kindle edition. All the versions are out in the world, which feels like a milestone worth celebrating.

If you’re building something that matters to you and trying to figure out how to fund it, I hope you’ll find something here that makes the road less lonely.

Starting Where Everyone Is: Back-to-School Night

August 20, 2026Kelly TenkelyLeave a Comment14263 views

There’s a moment at the beginning of every school year when something almost unheard of happens…everyone shows up.

The families that we spend the rest of the year trying to catch through emails, SignUpGenius links, newsletters, volunteer requests, fundraising appeals, and increasingly desperate reminders are all standing in the same building, eager for the new year.

Back-to-School Night.

Most of us use this night to transfer information: the schedule, where to drop off, everything your child needs, how we’ll communicate, the rules, the calendar, and don’t forget to label the water bottle!

At Anastasis, we discovered that this night held the potential to be so much more. Because the people walking through our doors weren’t just parents and guardians.

They were designers, dentists, business owners, photographers, gardeners, and accountants. They had grandparents, neighbors, friends, and coworkers. They knew people who owned restaurants, printed signs, built things, fixed things, and knew how to get things done.

They had gifts we didn’t know existed, because we hadn’t thought to ask.

We had a full year ahead of us that was going to require a lot of help.

Historically, at our Back-to-School Night, we would have a row of clipboards listing all the volunteer opportunities, waiting for someone to take notice and sign up.

We learned that’s actually a pretty terrible place to start. The clipboards sat largely untouched, with a few faithful volunteers filling in spots here and there.

That changed one year when, feeling a little jaded about how the previous year’s attempt went, we decided to try something different.

Before Back-to-School Night, we made a list of the opportunities we knew were coming that year:

Volunteer roles.
Events that needed leaders.
Projects that needed underwriting.
Things we needed donated.
Places where a particular skill or connection could make something possible.

We had our learners create a poster for each opportunity.

Then, we took photos of every sibling group in the school and printed their faces onto round Avery sticker labels to hand out to families as they arrived at Back-to-School Night.

The posters lined the lobby and hallways that families would pass through that evening. Each poster helped them see what it takes to create a successful school year. Rather than signing their names on a clipboard, we asked families to place their stickers on an opportunity they could support. And as they placed their child’s faces on the opportunity, they were reminded of who we were all there for.

In our first year of doing this, not only did we have every volunteer position filled for the year, but we also raised $35,000 in underwriting and sponsorships to support our needs. Families could see exactly what was needed for the year and put us in touch with their employers for event sponsorship, their network for a connection to a resource we needed, or another family member who LOVED reading to kids.

It’s so easy in education to make the mistake of beginning from a place of lack and scarcity. We need volunteers. We need sponsors. We need $10,000. We need someone to run this event. We need someone to donate that thing.

It’s from the place of lack that we look at our community and wonder who we could get to do this.

At Anastasis, we began addressing these needs from a place of abundance. Who is already in our community (who, by the way, cares about these kids!)? What do they love? What are they unusually good at? Who are they connected to? What could become possible because this particular group of humans happens to be gathered together?

Your community is the asset in the deeply human sense that communities are full of people who know things, make things, love things, have relationships, and genuinely want to matter.

Our job is to make the possibilities for their contribution more visible and invite them in.

Before you add another fundraiser to your calendar, try mapping what already exists. Do you know the builders in your community? The artists, photographers, grandparents, business owners, organizers, people who love throwing parties, or people who know everyone? The person who will happily spend three hours making something beautiful but would rather disappear into the earth than sell wrapping paper to their coworkers?

They’re there already, but you won’t find them on a clipboard labeled VOLUNTEERS NEEDED.

You have to notice them, then build invitations that help people recognize themselves.

I’ve been writing a book called Fundraising Was Not on My BINGO Card: A Small School’s Guide to Community-First Fundraising.

It’s the book I wish I’d had when I started a school and discovered that, apparently, school founder also meant fundraiser.

I’m also building a companion journal full of the experiments, prompts, ridiculous ideas, lessons learned, and tools I wish we’d had.

And now that schools are back in session, I pulled out the Back-to-School Night section to share. It’s seven pages designed to help you look at that first gathering differently, including our Sticker Wall plan, a Community Asset Map, Community Activation BINGO, and prompts for designing your own experiment.

It’s free because before I invite you to purchase a book about community-first fundraising, it seems only right to start with generosity.

GET THE FREE BACK-TO-SCHOOL COMMUNITY ACTIVATION KIT

How does your community approach Back-to-School Night? What have you found wild success from that someone else could learn from in the comments? If you try the Sticker Wall, or create something even better, I’d love to hear about it.

Happy back-to-school season!!

|Kelly Tenkely|