COVID-19 Relief For A Dance Studio
Donation protected
As every dance studio in the World right now, the Salsa With Silvia dance studio is now just an empty space...an empty space full of wonderful memories: packed classes, smiling faces, loud beats of high energy music, amazing parties, beautiful performances, giggling children, summer camps full of adventures, creativity, team work and a lot of hard work.
We started with a few students....we worked hard.
Then we opened a basement studio...we worked even harder.
Classes were filling up...we continued working.
We opened our first location in DC...we doubled our team!
We created a community of adult students and families who called us their dance home.
We have thousands of students who say we've changed their lives.
We opened a second location to grow our dance community.
AND THEN...WE HAD TO SHUT DOWN!
NOW...WE ARE JUST AN EMPTY SPACE...
We ARE afraid, we are so afraid of what will happen but WE HAVE TO FIGHT TO FILL THESE BEAUTIFUL SPACES WITH DANCERS AGAIN! WE OWE THIS TO OUR STUDENTS, OUR TEAM, OUR COMMUNITY!
Please help us open doors again.
Dancers, stay united!
The scary reality:
- We shut down both of our locations on March 13th, 2020 to do our part in preventing the spread of COVID-19
- We had to immediately cut nearly 30 people on our team: instructors and staff
- A week later, we reviewed numbers in parallel to watching the news and the prognosis
- We had to reduce full time employees to barely any hours per week so we can sustain and administer online classes
- We reached out to both of our landlords (DC and MD location) with a request to forgive our rent or let us pay it partially now and the rest later.
Only one of our landlords agreed to delay 50% of the monthly payment.
- That meant that we are looking at $15,000 rent per month in a time where we barely have any revenue from our online classes
- Between our full time employees and their partial hours we have an additional nearly $4,000 per month
- The next scary realization came when we came to the conclusion that one of our major revenues (the kids summer camp) may need to be refunded to parents because we are uncertain if we'll have a summer camp
- With these numbers in front of us, we started realizing that what the business has in its business account is money that we may have to refund and with the mentioned expenses, we would not be able to survive for longer than a couple of months
- We have applied to all government grants possible but these grants would come to about one month worth of rent in the best case scenario where we get the grant
- We have been generating a few hundred dollars a day from online classes but we also had to issue large refunds for gigs that we were hired for in the near future that were no longer happening. We also had to pay the remaining of our construction bill for our second location and wrote a $30,000 check for that.
- We have received some donations from our amazing community of students and while it's great support we are still looking at our account drying up very quickly considering our expenses
- All the major sources of income for us are related to people gathering in large groups: rentals, events, birthday parties, performing and teaching gigs, classes, camps, etc. That means that we are left with barely any revenue which is a scary reality to deal with
- Turning our business from a face-to-face peoples' business to an entirely virtual business required a quick reaction and hundreds of hours of hard work for very little revenue.
WHY WE HAVE TO KEEP FIGHTING:
- All the faces that we see in our online classes: from babies to older kids to adult
- All the daily supportive comments
- The donations
- The suggestions and helpful information that students are sending us
- Our amazing team of instructors who are dealing with a new kind of reality where they are teaching partner dances people on the other side of the screen who in most cases don't have a partner to dance with
- All the emails, FB, IG comments, shared stories, tags from parents whose kids took our online kids classes or our adult online classes. These emails tell us how they really need us in their lives, how we brighten their days, how they need more of these classes
- Our hard working staff who is the engine
WE LOVE WHAT WE'VE BUILD FOR MORE THAN 10 YEARS!
WE HAVE BUILT A COMMUNITY - THE SALSA WITH SILVIA COMMUNITY!
WE WANT TO FIGHT TO OPEN DOORS AGAIN FOR OUR DANCE COMMUNITY!
We could have curled up and just waited to see what happens but ROSE UP, WE WORKED HARD AGAIN TO ADJUST TO THIS NEW REALITY!
Please help us save our dance space so we can welcome back THE SALSA WITH SILVIA COMMUNITY INTO THEIR DANCE HOME!
Thank you!
We started with a few students....we worked hard.
Then we opened a basement studio...we worked even harder.
Classes were filling up...we continued working.
We opened our first location in DC...we doubled our team!
We created a community of adult students and families who called us their dance home.
We have thousands of students who say we've changed their lives.
We opened a second location to grow our dance community.
AND THEN...WE HAD TO SHUT DOWN!
NOW...WE ARE JUST AN EMPTY SPACE...
We ARE afraid, we are so afraid of what will happen but WE HAVE TO FIGHT TO FILL THESE BEAUTIFUL SPACES WITH DANCERS AGAIN! WE OWE THIS TO OUR STUDENTS, OUR TEAM, OUR COMMUNITY!
Please help us open doors again.
Dancers, stay united!
The scary reality:
- We shut down both of our locations on March 13th, 2020 to do our part in preventing the spread of COVID-19
- We had to immediately cut nearly 30 people on our team: instructors and staff
- A week later, we reviewed numbers in parallel to watching the news and the prognosis
- We had to reduce full time employees to barely any hours per week so we can sustain and administer online classes
- We reached out to both of our landlords (DC and MD location) with a request to forgive our rent or let us pay it partially now and the rest later.
Only one of our landlords agreed to delay 50% of the monthly payment.
- That meant that we are looking at $15,000 rent per month in a time where we barely have any revenue from our online classes
- Between our full time employees and their partial hours we have an additional nearly $4,000 per month
- The next scary realization came when we came to the conclusion that one of our major revenues (the kids summer camp) may need to be refunded to parents because we are uncertain if we'll have a summer camp
- With these numbers in front of us, we started realizing that what the business has in its business account is money that we may have to refund and with the mentioned expenses, we would not be able to survive for longer than a couple of months
- We have applied to all government grants possible but these grants would come to about one month worth of rent in the best case scenario where we get the grant
- We have been generating a few hundred dollars a day from online classes but we also had to issue large refunds for gigs that we were hired for in the near future that were no longer happening. We also had to pay the remaining of our construction bill for our second location and wrote a $30,000 check for that.
- We have received some donations from our amazing community of students and while it's great support we are still looking at our account drying up very quickly considering our expenses
- All the major sources of income for us are related to people gathering in large groups: rentals, events, birthday parties, performing and teaching gigs, classes, camps, etc. That means that we are left with barely any revenue which is a scary reality to deal with
- Turning our business from a face-to-face peoples' business to an entirely virtual business required a quick reaction and hundreds of hours of hard work for very little revenue.
WHY WE HAVE TO KEEP FIGHTING:
- All the faces that we see in our online classes: from babies to older kids to adult
- All the daily supportive comments
- The donations
- The suggestions and helpful information that students are sending us
- Our amazing team of instructors who are dealing with a new kind of reality where they are teaching partner dances people on the other side of the screen who in most cases don't have a partner to dance with
- All the emails, FB, IG comments, shared stories, tags from parents whose kids took our online kids classes or our adult online classes. These emails tell us how they really need us in their lives, how we brighten their days, how they need more of these classes
- Our hard working staff who is the engine
WE LOVE WHAT WE'VE BUILD FOR MORE THAN 10 YEARS!
WE HAVE BUILT A COMMUNITY - THE SALSA WITH SILVIA COMMUNITY!
WE WANT TO FIGHT TO OPEN DOORS AGAIN FOR OUR DANCE COMMUNITY!
We could have curled up and just waited to see what happens but ROSE UP, WE WORKED HARD AGAIN TO ADJUST TO THIS NEW REALITY!
Please help us save our dance space so we can welcome back THE SALSA WITH SILVIA COMMUNITY INTO THEIR DANCE HOME!
Thank you!
Organizer
Salsa Silvia
Organizer
Washington D.C., DC
