The Garage
Location: Burnsville, Minnesota
Cost: $325,000 (2009 fiscal year budget)
Teens are the driving force behind The Garage, a program of after-school, weekend and summer activities housed in a 6,000-square-foot onetime maintenance facility for the city of Burnsville, Minnesota. Focusing on music and the arts, The Garage bills itself as a community resource, music venue and safe place where young people can excel. Teenagers lead efforts to bring speakers, classes, music concerts and parties to the program, with the help of adult staff.
Every week, The Garage is open from 2:30 p.m. to 8:00 p.m. on three weekdays and from 6:00 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays. Regular participants, mostly 13- to 19-year-olds, pay a sliding fee for regular and weekend programs ranging from $3-10. Teens who occasionally drop in are not required to pay anything. Other fees include $25 to $50 per week for participation in summer day camps, which are targeted at a slightly younger crowd, children 10- to 12 years old. Scholarships are offered based on income guidelines from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Attendance at the center averages 150 teens per weekend night, and 40 each day after school. Most participants are drop-in, with about 20,000 visits each year, but more than 200 teenagers are registered for programs.
Initial funding came from donations from: civic organizations and local businesses; the city of Burnsville, a suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul with a population of about 60,000; and the Minnesota state departments of public safety, justice, and children, families and learning. After subsisting on grants and community fundraising efforts for eight years, The Garage worked to prove that its programs had a positive effect on children and won a $74,000 appropriation in the city’s 2009 general budget.
For 2009, The Garage expected to receive $63,000 from the federal Community Development Block Grant program and $80,000 from the Minnesota Department of Public Safety to help pay for full- and part-time staff and program supplies. Program supplies are additionally funded through a combination of revenue and interest on savings totaling $73,000. Also, The Garage receives a $35,000 grant from The McKnight Foundation.
Updated January, 2009.
7th Floor