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Thank you for all of the ways you showed your support throughout 2021. You helped us build momentum by engaging with us and imagining all that a new public aquatic facility will do for our communities.
Having access to an aquatic facility looked very different in 2021. Feelings of gratitude mixed with the desire to see greater access, especially for Learn to Swim programming, fueled our collective efforts for new and more accessible public aquatic facilities.
Serving on the King County Advisory Board for the King County Aquatic Facilities Grants Program has given us a lens to see that we are truly at a turning point for new public aquatic facilities in our region.
In Bellevue, we grew closer to achieving our shared dream for a game-changing new facility. Looking back, 2021 brought us closer to the day when community members will meet each other ‘at the pool’ for fun and access to basic water safety skills.
A few 2021 highlights...
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Bellevue Airfield Park will be explored as a possible site through an update to its Master Plan commencing in 2022.
- SPLASHForward will enter a Memorandum of Understanding with the City of Bellevue to lead the private fundraising effort and explore partner development.
- Thanks to Amazon and Tim Adkisson, we secured our first corporate and major individual donor respectively. Both enabled us to take big steps forward.
- We crested the $300,000 mark in our seed funding goal of $500,000.
- We launched our first vision video to share our story for how aquatics transforms lives and makes our communities stronger.
- We supported 16 High School students to become Lifeguards at Bellevue area facilities.
- We held our first Water Safety Workshop with Boys and Girls Clubs of Bellevue and Rainer Athletes and the first SPLASHForward in the Water event with Olympians Elizabeth Beisel, Megan Quann Jendrick, Rebecca Soni, Margaret Hoelzer, and Tom Malchow.
- We made new connections and friends on every platform!
We are beyond grateful for these milestones and are excited for what 2022 will hold. We share three big goals we have for 2022.
1. Raise the remainder of our Seed Funding ($193,000) to pay for professional services such as fundraising, marketing, public relations, aquatic consultancy, and early architectural visioning.
2. Formalize our Fundraising Plan to assess private fundraising capacity from all private funding sources (individuals, foundations, grants, businesses, and corporations).
3. Engage and activate the broader community to raise awareness and build support for the Bellevue Airfield Park site during the City of Bellevue’s master plan update process.
We are thankful and happy to have you in our SPLASHForward family. We look forward to doing great things together in 2022.
If you would like to make a year-end tax deductible gift before we say goodbye to 2021, you can do so here.
On behalf of our SPLASHForward Board, we appreciate YOU and wish you the very best health in the year ahead!
With gratitude!
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