Okay, So It's Been A Minute (But We Have Exciting News!)

You know that feeling of clicking on an article just because the headline caught your eye, but then the sneaky writer makes you read through paragraphs of nothingburger to get to the main newsworthy part? Yeah, let's not do that. Instead, let's cut right to the juicy news in sentence number three... DREAMCATCHER IS EXCITED TO ANNOUNCE TWO $1,000 SCHOLARSHIPS!!! See? That's news totally worth shouty capitals and three exclamation points. The application is live starting today, June 1st, with a deadline of July 31st. Our target applicants are FGLI, just like we were, and just like the thousands of students we've helped in TRIO. We want to help those who need help the very most. It means so much to us to be able to award scholarships in only our second year in business! A promise kept, a goal reached, and a plan to do more in year three.

But wait, our last blog post was nearly A YEAR AGO?! How could time have flown by so quickly that it's been almost a year since posting?! The short answer is that we've been busy running this company. With only two of us (plus a team of editors who help review our materials), this baby business takes a great deal of time and effort to keep chugging along. We are committed to keeping overhead low and pinching every penny (our FGLI beginnings are never far from mind) so that we can meet our founding goal of giving back. The better our company does, the more money we can translate into scholarships for students. This is only year two, and we have two scholarships to award, but we want to award much more in the future.  

Since our last post, we've been hard at work creating new curriculum topics for middle school, high school, and college level students. Our catalog of products is growing, now up to TWENTY topics of curriculum, and will continue to grow with 2 or 3 more topics by the end of the year. Also this year, for the first time we will offer two of our topics (financial aid for high school and financial aid for college level) translated into Spanish! Thanks to the University of Puerto Rico TRIO (and quite a few other programs) for requesting this option. We are thrilled to accommodate this request at long last! 

With the creation and release of new curriculum into the world, that means we must travel the world to spread the news. Traveling to conferences and events across the country takes time and a great deal of flexibility since we're essentially operating the business from the road. We've paid bills online while driving down the Interstate, answered the work phone while walking down the sidewalk in downtown Baltimore at 2:00 a.m. (now THAT'S a story), and created invoices on laptops perched literally on our laps from the exhibit hall booth. Our first year of business was so incredibly tight financially that we DROVE cross-country to attend events. But year two enabled us to fly from coast-to-coast (although we still drive frequently to save money... hello Pittsburgh this fall!). 

So, yeah. It's been a minute. But oh, what a minute it has been! Our second year goals for DreamCatcher were not just met, but crushed. So far, year three (year THREE!) is sailing along on target to surpass goals, as well. We've traveled to so many amazing places, met and visited with dedicated college access professionals across the country, and been able to still hold down the fort at home (and on the road!) to keep this business moving forward. We can't say THANK YOU enough to our customers for making this dream of a company a reality. Our hearts are grateful and we know each and every day how lucky we are to do this work. Thank you, thank you, thank you dear friends, colleagues, and well-wishers. With your support, we all do great things together.

And the next time we check in? Well, it might just be another minute.