A barrier has a price. A museum director set out to raise $6 million so its $20 adult ticket could go, a pilot with a $400,000 first-year budget is paying down child care bills for Nashville child care teachers, and a lender stepped in to cover the wait for a federal payment on a North Carolina food pantry's solar project.
You probably know what keeps people from your programs or keeps staff from staying: a fee, a bill, an upfront cost. In each of this week's stories, someone treated that cost as a line item. One cost got a name, and money was aimed at it.
This week.
- A Rochester museum that says it has raised an endowment so general admission can be free.
- A Nashville pilot paying down child care bills for child care teachers.
- A North Carolina food pantry with new solar panels and batteries.
- Two Microsoft products that lost support on October 13.
- Free tax preparation some of your clients may qualify for.
- An AI prompt that prices one barrier. A second that builds a survey for people to answer.
- A board exercise for choosing the barrier to fund. And
- A column about the costs you absorb quietly.
A Rochester Museum Put a Price on Its $20 Admission Fee. It Says It Has Raised More Than $9 Million So General Admission Can Be Free.
On October 8, the Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester announced a date. Starting May 1, 2027, general admission will be free for everyone. The museum calls the effort "Free for All, Forever." An adult ticket now costs $20.
What interests me is the order of events.
In February 2025 the Rochester Business Journal reported that the museum's director, Sarah Jesse, was working to secure a $6 million endowment to cover its admission fees. That is a price: one barrier with a number on it. An endowment is a fund that is invested so that part of it can be spent every year.
Then came the announced gifts. In October 2025 the university announced a $3 million commitment from Abby and Doug Bennett and the Sands Family Foundation. A $2 million commitment from Mary Ellen Burris followed, and then a $1 million gift from Alexander and Lucy Levitan. In May 2026 the museum said it had raised more than $9 million and that admission would be free in 2027.
The exact date came last, nearly five months after the museum said it had raised the money.
What does the money do? In the university's words, the endowment "will replace admission revenue and help cover the costs associated with welcoming more visitors." That second clause matters. Free admission costs the museum its ticket revenue and also the cost of serving a larger crowd. The endowment is meant to replace the first and help with the second. The university says the museum's free days have drawn more than six times its typical attendance. That is its own figure, and it has published no counts.
Jesse has called the fee an "economic barrier." Burris put it this way: "The Memorial Art Gallery is a treasure in our community, and everyone should have access to it."
Here is what makes this replicable. You probably do not run an art museum, and you may never raise $9 million. Here is how I would apply the idea to a $40 program fee or a membership requirement.
First, name one barrier. Second, estimate what removing it would cost you each year, including the cost of serving the people who then show up. Third, ask donors for that one thing by name. A donor who is asked to "support our programs" has been asked for nothing in particular. One who is asked to make a program free has been offered something to buy.
My advice: say what you are raising money for as loudly as you like, and do not name a start date until the money is committed. The $3 million commitment was announced in October 2025. The museum named May 1 about a year later, after it said the money was raised.
One honest limit on the evidence. Nearly everything here comes from the museum and the university, which is the museum's parent and its fundraiser. None of the announcements I read says what the museum collects in admissions each year, so I can't check the price against the purchase, and I do not know how the museum did its own arithmetic. The three named commitments and gifts add up to $6 million, and the amounts of the other gifts are not published. The price also moved: the reported goal was $6 million in 2025, and by March 2026 a university page described the museum as seeking $9 million and mentioned expanding programs such as free school tours, without laying out the numbers. And May 1 has not arrived.
Sources: Memorial Art Gallery, "Memorial Art Gallery Announces May 1, 2027, as First Day of Permanent Free Admission," October 8, 2026; University of Rochester News Center, Memorial Art Gallery free admission initiative, updated October 8, 2026; Andrea Deckert, "Memorial Art Gallery director seeks $6M endowment to eliminate museum fees," Rochester Business Journal, February 24, 2025; University of Rochester News Center, Bennett and Sands Family Foundation gift, October 30, 2025; University of Rochester, Mary Ellen Burris gift, March 2026; Memorial Art Gallery release, May 13, 2026; Spectrum News, May 13, 2026; Memorial Art Gallery, visit page (admission prices)
Nashville Child Care Teachers Struggle to Afford Child Care. A Pilot Is Paying Down the Bill for 23 of Them.
Here is a number from one Nashville child care center. At the top of its sliding scale, St. Mary Villa Child Development Center charges $1,700 a month for an infant. Its leader, Alyssa Garnett-Arno, told a reporter at WSMV that the actual cost of that care is more than $3,400 a month. Staff get 50 percent off.
So the center already discounts care for its own teachers. Both Garnett-Arno and the director of a second center told WSMV they have to fundraise to make up the gap. The teachers still struggle with what is left. "Even with our discount, it's still thousands of dollars of tuition that the staff has to pay," said Rhonda Trumbo, executive director of King's Daughters Child Development Center.
On September 30, the Nashville Banner reported that the Nashville Early Education Coalition had announced a scholarship aimed at that bill. The coalition was founded in 2024. The Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee says it was formed from a coordinated effort by organizations including the foundation, United Way of Greater Nashville and the Nashville Area Chamber of Commerce. The program is a pilot with a first-year budget of $400,000, and it covers 23 early education workers at eight nonprofit centers. WSMV describes those eligible as full-time educators whose children are enrolled at the center where they work.
The money does not go to the teacher. The grants go to the child care provider, the Banner reported, on the condition that the provider charge its employees significantly less than the market rate. Weekly payments began in September and run through August 2027, according to WSMV.
On average, the coalition says, those workers will pay $6,300 less a year for their own child care.
The Banner names four funders: the Frist Foundation, the Joe C. Davis Foundation, The Women's Fund and the Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee.
Cia Whitlow teaches at St. Luke's Community House and has two children enrolled there. "It took a huge load off when I found that out," she told the Banner.
Why does the design matter?
A center that discounts tuition for its own staff is paying for a staff benefit out of a budget that struggles to carry it. The pilot adds a payer. Funders pay the center, and the coalition says the teacher's bill goes down.
Here is what makes this replicable. Pick one benefit you give below cost, such as a staff discount or a waived fee. Then work out two numbers. The first is what that benefit cost you last year. The second is what the people who get it still pay and struggle with. Take the second number to a funder as its own request. Say what you already put in, what the person still owes, and what it would cost to bring that bill down for a named number of people for one year. Ask the funder to pay you, and tell them the lower price you will charge in return. In Nashville that price condition is part of the grant. Promise to report how many of those people are still with you a year later. Ask your accountant first whether the benefit is taxable to the employee.
One honest limit on the evidence. The pilot is weeks old, and neither report says whether it keeps teachers in their jobs. Neither says what a teacher still pays, what the $6,300 is measured against, or whether the centers lose less on their own discounts than before. The average saving times 23 workers comes to about $145,000, well under the $400,000 budget. Neither report explains the difference, though the Banner says the coalition plans to take more applications. Garnett-Arno, whose center has teachers in the pilot, sits on the coalition's advisory council, as do the heads of three of the funders. And the idea is not new: Kentucky began making child care workers eligible for state child care subsidies in 2022, and at least a dozen states had at least a pilot by May, The 74 reported. Washington State ended its program.
Sources: Stephen Elliott, "Pilot Program Helps Nashville Childcare Workers Afford Childcare of Their Own," Nashville Banner, September 30, 2026, as republished by NewsChannel 5; Braden Ross, WSMV, October 5, 2026; Nashville Early Education Coalition, leadership and advisory council; Community Foundation of Middle Tennessee, on the coalition's launch; Emily Tate Sullivan, "Kentucky's Childcare Benefit for Early Educators Is Spreading Fast," The 74, May 4, 2026
A North Carolina Food Pantry Got Solar Panels and Batteries. Its Director Says the Pantry Has Paid Nothing.
Beacon of Hope runs a food pantry in Marshall, North Carolina. Canary Media reports that it provides food assistance to 1,700 families in Madison County each month. BPR News puts it at about 1,600 families a week.
When Hurricane Helene flooded downtown Marshall in September 2024, Beacon's pantry, on higher ground, was spared, Canary Media reports. Jessi Koontz, its executive director, told the outlet it kept water and power. "If we had all lost everything, no one would be here to help in the recovery," she said.
A pantry full of freezers has two problems with electricity. It pays a lot for it, and it loses food when the power goes out.
Beacon now has rooftop solar panels and three batteries. In June the state's environmental agency listed the project amount at $102,702. "It's a $100,000 project, and Beacon has paid nothing," Koontz told Canary Media.
Where did the money come from? The reports name three pieces.
The first was a state program. In August 2025, North Carolina announced $5 million for up to 24 permanent microgrids in six counties hit by Helene, plus two mobile ones. A microgrid here means solar panels and batteries that can keep a building running when the wider grid is down. The state's release says the money came from federal infrastructure funds. The state says sites were chosen through a request for proposals, and Beacon was among the first five it named.
The second was BuildUS, a philanthropic group that Canary Media says "chipped in." Canary Media gives no amount.
The third is the one worth studying. Nonprofits can earn a federal payment covering 30 percent of a solar installation, Canary Media reports, but it can take more than a year to arrive. Invest Appalachia, a regional investment fund, provided a bridge loan, meaning a short-term loan repaid when expected money arrives. "We're really just trying to make that timing gap for reimbursement work," said Lauren Sowers of Invest Appalachia.
So one of the costs in the way was time: the wait between paying an installer and getting federal money back. A lender named that gap and lent against it.
Canary Media reports the panels will cut at least a quarter off Beacon's electric bill, some $5,600 in an average year. An electrician with the installer told BPR News the batteries can back up "the whole store, essentially, with all the freezers and coolers."
Here is what makes this replicable. The reports do not say how much of this financing Beacon arranged itself, so I would not copy the whole package. I would copy one question. Issue #37 covered RE-volv, a nonprofit that finances solar for other nonprofits. This story adds a narrower lesson. When a project gets paid back later by a grant or a government payment, ask "who could lend against the wait?" Put that question to your community foundation or a nonprofit lender in your region before you decide a project is out of reach.
One caution. The 2025 federal tax law set deadlines for the solar credit behind that 30 percent payment. If solar is on your list, ask an installer and a tax adviser whether your project would still qualify before you count on it.
One honest limit on the evidence. None of the reports I read says how the $102,702 was divided among the state program, BuildUS and the federal payment, who the borrower on the bridge loan is, its size or terms, or whether the federal payment has been claimed. So I cannot tell you who owes that loan or what "paid nothing" will mean when it comes due. The savings figure is a projection, and Canary Media does not say how it was calculated. Two newsrooms, Canary Media and BPR News, reported on the installation, and they differ on details such as the number of panels. The loan, the BuildUS contribution and the savings figure appear only in Canary Media.
Sources: Elizabeth Ouzts, "North Carolina food bank gets microgrid backup for future storms," Canary Media, October 1, 2026; Katie Myers, "A food pantry goes off-grid as solar power for disaster resiliency spreads through WNC," BPR News and Grist, September 30, 2026; North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, August 12, 2025; North Carolina Department of Environmental Quality, June 12, 2026; Invest Appalachia, Catalytic Capital
Check Your Computers for Two Microsoft Products That Lost Support on October 13
Two Microsoft products reached the end of support on October 13, 2026: Office 2021, and version 24H2 of Windows 11 in its Home and Pro editions. Computers running them still start up. They no longer get security fixes from Microsoft.
Action: Three steps. First, on each Windows computer, open Settings, then System, then About, and read the "Version" line. If it says 25H2 or a version starting with 26, its Windows is current. Second, if it says 24H2, open Settings, then Windows Update, choose "Check for updates," and install the newer version offered. Microsoft says it sends that update automatically to Home and Pro computers that no IT department manages, so it may already be waiting. Third, open Word, choose File, then Account, and read the product name. If it is an Office 2021 product, or step one showed something older than 24H2, write that computer down and ask whoever sells or supports your software what to do about it.
ROI: A computer that holds donor or client records and gets no security fixes is a risk. You can close the Windows part of it this week.
Time: About 10 minutes per computer to check. The update itself takes longer.
Sources: Microsoft Learn, products reaching end of support in 2026; Microsoft Learn, Windows 11 version 24H2 status; Microsoft Support, end of support for Office 2021
Send Your Clients to Free Tax Preparation, or Host It
A tax preparer's fee is a cost some of your clients may struggle with. The IRS backs two free programs staffed by trained volunteers: Volunteer Income Tax Assistance (VITA) and Tax Counseling for the Elderly (TCE). The IRS said on October 1 that about 9,000 sites operated last year, hosted by schools, nonprofits and other groups.
The IRS is now asking for partners and volunteers. It encourages sign-ups from October through January, and it says a relationship manager will contact organizations that want to host or sponsor a site.
Action: Three steps. First, decide whether you could host a site or will send clients to one someone else runs. Second, if you might host, fill out the IRS sign-up form (linked below) and ask the relationship manager what hosting involves before you agree. Third, if you will send clients, go to IRS.gov in February, when the IRS says it updates its site locator, search for "free tax return preparation," and put the nearest site and its eligibility rules in your client materials.
ROI: Clients who qualify keep the fee they would have paid a preparer.
Time: About 10 minutes for the form, the IRS estimates. Hosting is a larger commitment.
Sources: IRS news release IR-2026-118, October 1, 2026; IRS VITA/TCE volunteer and partner sign-up form
Two prompts this week. The first helps you put a price on one barrier. The second builds a short survey about your barriers, for real people to answer. Paste each into the AI assistant you use and edit the output hard; it is a first draft.
Put a Price on One Barrier
You are a nonprofit finance and fundraising adviser. I want to remove one cost that keeps people from using our program or keeps staff from staying: a fee, a copay, a transportation cost, or an expense we already absorb. Ask me these questions one at a time and wait for each answer: what the barrier is and who it stops; how many people paid it last year and what we collected or spent; how many more people we think would come if it were gone, and what that guess is based on; and what serving each additional person costs us. Then give me three things. First, a one-page price sheet with the yearly cost of removing the barrier: the money we would give up or spend, plus the cost of serving more people, as a low and a high estimate. Second, three ways to pay for it, each with a dollar target: a yearly gift from one funder; a pooled fund from several; and an endowment, meaning a fund we invest and spend a small share of each year, sized so that spending a set share of it each year covers the cost (use 4 percent unless I give you another rate). Third, a 150-word request to a donor that names the barrier, the price and what the gift buys. Use only my numbers, and mark each estimate as an estimate.
What makes it worth trying: the museum in the first story named one barrier, its admission fee, and set out to raise an endowment aimed at it. If you bring your own numbers, this prompt turns them into a yearly price, three ways to pay it and a short request to a donor. The result depends on your guess about how many more people would come.
Build a Five-Question Survey About What Keeps People Away
You are a survey designer helping a small nonprofit learn what keeps people from using its services. Write a five-question survey that a client, or someone who stopped coming, can answer in under three minutes on a phone or on paper. Ask what nearly stopped them from coming, or did stop them; what it cost them to take part, in money, time and travel; which one of those costs they would remove first; what would be different for them if that cost were gone; and one open question in their own words. Use plain language, offer a "not sure" choice on every multiple-choice question, and do not ask for names. Then give me a short script for staff to read when they hand it out, a plan for reaching people who no longer come, and a blank table for tallying the answers. Do not answer the survey yourself or create sample responses. If I ask you to guess the results, refuse and remind me that a guess about what people think is not the same as asking them.
What makes it worth trying: it is tempting to ask an AI what your clients think and skip the survey. On September 30, the Pew Research Center reported what happened when it had AI models answer survey questions in the place of real members of its survey panel. Across nearly 300 questions, its main results, from the best-performing model it tested, differed from the real answers by an average of 12 percentage points. Those were national poll questions, not client surveys, but I think the caution carries over. Pew's biggest takeaway was that "AI polling is not a replacement for rigorously surveying real humans." This prompt has the AI write the survey and leaves the answering to your clients.
Sources: Pew Research Center, "Can AI Stand In for Human Survey-Takers? Not Really," September 30, 2026
Price the Barrier — A 30-Minute Board Exercise
What it is for. A budget does not show what stands between the organization and the people it is meant to serve. This exercise has the board name those barriers, put a rough price on one, and decide who should be asked to pay it.
What you need. A flip chart and sticky notes, or a shared document. Three numbers from the executive director, sent to the board before the meeting: what the organization collected last year from the people it serves (fees, copays, dues); what it spent last year on benefits it gives at a loss, such as staff discounts and waived fees; and a rough cost of serving one more person. Estimates are fine.
How to run it (30 minutes).
- List the barriers (8 minutes). Each board member names one thing that costs a client or member money before they can take part, that costs a staff person enough to make staying hard, or that the organization quietly covers so they do not have to pay. Write each one down without discussion.
- Sort them (5 minutes). Mark each barrier as "we charge it," "someone else charges it" (bus fare, child care, a tax preparer) or "we already absorb it."
- Pick one and price it (8 minutes). Choose by show of hands. Estimate the yearly cost of removing it. If you charge it, that is what you would stop collecting. If someone else charges it, that is what it would cost you to cover it. If you already absorb it, that is what you spent on it last year. Then add a rough cost of serving the people who would newly come. A range is fine.
- Name who could pay (6 minutes). Write down three names: one individual donor, one foundation or group of funders, and one business with a reason to care.
- Assign it (3 minutes). Ask for a board member to join the executive director in making the first request, to whichever of the three the group thinks likeliest, within thirty days. If nobody offers, the chair names someone. Record it in the minutes.
In-person: Put the three categories on separate flip-chart sheets and have members write their barriers on sticky notes.
Virtual: Use a shared document with three columns and a poll in place of the show of hands.
Watch out for: Promising the change before the money exists. Talk about the goal as widely as you like. Do not tell clients or staff that a cost is going away until a payer has committed.
You'll know it worked when: a board member who has never made a fundraising call offers to make this one, because the request is specific enough to say in a sentence.
The Costs You Absorb Quietly
One detail in this week's Nashville story has stayed with me. A child care center gives its teachers half off tuition for their own children, at a center that already charges families less than the care costs. Then it raises money to make up the gap.
I doubt anyone ever sat down and decided that policy the way a board decides a budget. More likely it grew. A teacher needed care, a director said yes, and the next teacher got the same deal.
I think many nonprofits carry something like it. The fee you waive for families who ask. The sliding scale whose bottom rung is zero. The schedule you bend so a staff member can keep a second job, because you cannot pay enough to make the second job unnecessary. Each one is a decision to absorb a cost so that someone is not shut out. Each one is generous. And I suspect that in many organizations nobody has added them up.
Here is the uncomfortable part. A cost you absorb quietly is a cost nobody else can help you with. Your funders may never see it, because it does not appear as a line in a proposal. Your board may not see it either, because it is spread across a hundred small yeses. You carry it out of a margin you may not have.
In each of this week's stories, someone made a cost visible. The Rochester Business Journal reported that the museum's director was working to secure a $6 million endowment to cover the admission fee. Funders in Nashville are paying child care centers so that teachers pay less for their own children's care. And the fund that made a bridge loan for the North Carolina pantry's solar project said plainly what it was filling: the wait for a federal reimbursement.
Once a cost has a name, someone else can decide to carry it.
There is a fair objection, and I want to state it. Some barriers are doing a job. A fee can ration a scarce service, and a copay can signal that something has value. I do not think the argument that people do not value what is free is always wrong. I think it should be made on purpose, by people looking at a number, and not left standing because nobody ran the numbers.
So here is the assignment. Write down every cost your organization absorbs so that someone can take part or stay on staff. Put last year's dollars next to each one. Then take the largest and ask whose problem it really is. It may be yours. It may belong to a funder you have never asked this specifically.
Forward this issue to one person — the board treasurer who would rather see the number than hear the story. Then hit reply and tell me the cost your organization absorbs that nobody has ever added up. I read every reply myself.
If someone forwarded this to you: sign up here. It is free, it arrives Wednesdays, and that is the whole arrangement.
Three stories, one move: a single cost got a name, and money was aimed at it. An endowment meant to replace a $20 ticket. Grants meant to lower a teacher's child care bill. A bridge loan against the wait for a federal payment.
This week, take the largest cost your organization absorbs so that someone is not shut out, and write its yearly price on a single line. Nobody can pay a price you have not worked out.
See you next week.
— Ted
P.S. Forward this to one peer. And give me a brief reply naming the cost nobody has added up.
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