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• Program Costs & Funding Sources

School Administrators are invited to order our Funding Toolkit, a guide for fundraising opportunities and sample letters to donors to support Safe School Ambassadors program. To request your copy, contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

Home / Programs / Safe School Ambassadors / Program Costs & Funding Sources

Program Costs & Funding Sources

Investment/cost for the program

A school site investment of $4,300 provides: start-up materials, the 2-day Safe School Ambassadors training, pre and post-training program support and on-going coaching.

Schools also cover the travel-related expenses for a trainer for the 2-day training. These are estimated and typically range from $200 - $1,300, depending upon the location of the school and trainer.

Some of the adults who participate in the training may need substitutes. These costs are paid by the school or district. The host school also provides basic training supplies, such as Flip Chart paper and post-its, food for participants, and transportation if the training is not held at the school site. In most cases, schools have limited direct costs for these items because they are either already available, are donated, or are covered by the district.

Acquiring Funding Support

The Safe School Ambassadors program has surpassed the minimum requirements for designation as an evidence-based program. It has been submitted to the National Registry of Evidence Based Programs and Practices (NREPP). This designation makes it easier to use federal, state, and other grant funds for the Safe School Ambassadors program.

Schools also secure funds from their Site Council, the general operating budget, principal’s discretionary funds, funds for student activities, funds from PTAs, and funds from school safety grants.

Some schools have found additional funds from external sources like police departments, businesses, service clubs, hospitals, and local or community foundations. Others have turned to regional and national businesses, corporate foundations or private foundations. In your search, it might be helpful to consider these funding opportunities.

To support your efforts to secure funds from local sources, Community Matters has developed a Funding Tool Kit. To obtain a kit, contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

Please contact .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) if you would like additional assistance to help you secure start-up funds.

Return on Investment

Our Loss and Cost Calculator can help you quantify the actual monetary costs and losses associated with bullying related incidents. This financial “bottom line” provides real data to underscore the “return on investment” when schools and districts implement the Safe School Ambassadors program.

Schools often see a decrease in discipline incidents. If one suspension costs a school roughly $300 in lost Average Daily Attendance (ADA) and administrative time, 25 suspensions prevented by Ambassadors recovers the cost of the program. More details on the Suspension Cost Analysis are available for download. The Clear Creek Independent School District saved more than $200,000 in its first year of the Safe School Ambassadors program because Ambassadors reduced the number of on-campus incidents that would have caused students to be sent to the District’s Alternative Educational setting at a cost of roughly $2,500 per placement.

Attendance typically increases, which increases ADA funds. This occurs as Ambassadors create a more welcoming climate, which reduces the number of students – many of whom are chronically targeted by their peers – who stay home due to fear of how they will be treated at school. It is also common for Ambassadors’ school attendance rates to climb.
Consider the cost of more unlikely but serious events:

• a lawsuit against the school because a student was bullied. Settlements of $10,000 to $100,000 are not uncommon.
• a bomb threat, with the associated costs of response and investigation exceeding $10,000
• an actual attack on the school, or a bullied student committing suicide, with the incalculable costs of lives lost.

Costs in the Second and Subsequent Years

Schools have several options for continuing the program.

• Community Matters can conduct 2-day Expansion Trainings that add “new” Ambassadors and adults to the program. These are $4,100, plus expenses as discussed above. The 1-day Refresher Trainings for current Ambassadors are $2100, plus expenses.
• School staff who participated in the Initial Training are free to combine their innate expertise as educators with their experience and materials from that Initial Training to provide training for “new” and/or “current” Ambassadors at the school site that received an Initial Training from Community Matters.
• Community Matters can conduct a Training of Trainers that equips a cadre of site-based and district-level staff with the knowledge and tools to conduct Expansion and Refresher Trainings at school sites that received an Initial Training from Community Matters and purchased a one-time.

Click here for a detailed list of SSA program options and costs.