The Future Foundation is real because of these days. Whenever the kids need us — weekends, school days, whenever we can.
Three frameworks, one class period. A classroom of students at IMG Academy worked through SWOT, Porter's Five Forces, and PESTEL — the tools analysts use to size up a company, and ones most people don't meet until a college business class. Taught by one of our mentors: a student, to students. Three ways to look at any business, before the bell.
The school paused all club activities, so the Arizona chapter's financial literacy program moved to co-founder Broderick Michalscheck's home. Five students came for an introduction to spreadsheets — laptop open, sheet up, notebooks out. Small, and honestly counted: not a room full of kids, just the handful who showed up and a mentor who kept the program going when the school couldn't.
Ten kids, notebooks open, working through pre-calculus — functions, graphs, and the algebra that trips everyone up the first time. Led by co-founder Broderick Michalscheck at his own high school, the Arizona chapter's tutoring session turned a Friday into exam prep with someone patient enough to re-explain it until it clicks. This is the mentoring program doing what it says: older students showing up for younger ones, one worked problem at a time.
Before a single bell rings, someone has to carry the desks in. On Wednesday, July 22, members of The Future Foundation's Arizona chapter helped teachers at Cactus Shadows High School set up their classrooms for the new year — hauling tables across campus, unstacking chairs, arranging desks, and organizing materials so every room was ready for students on day one. It's the same goal behind everything we do in the Cave Creek Unified School District: give kids a better learning experience, starting with the room they walk into.
Ticonderoga pencils by the dozen. Crayola colored pencils and markers. Composition books, college-ruled filler paper, glue sticks — laid out, counted, and delivered to the Boys & Girls Club of Key West at Bayview Park. Led by Baylin Rodger, this drop puts supplies directly into the hands of kids who'll start the school year ready because someone expected them to show up. It's our second supply drop — which makes it official: this isn't a plan anymore, it's a program.
Thirty kids. One court. The Bradenton chapter took over a court at IMG Academy — one of the country's most renowned athletic campuses — and turned a day into hands-on tennis coaching with teen mentors working alongside the kids. For kids who'd never held a racket, the question stopped being whether they could hit a ball. It became when they'd be back. The team photo at the end is what mentorship looks like when it's done right — every kid in the frame already knows the name of a teenager who'll come find them next time.
TFF volunteered at the 17th annual Rock the District — the Cave Creek Unified Education Foundation's benefit concert at Harold's Cave Creek Corral. Title-sponsored by Kiwanis Club of Carefree, the night featured CCUSD student bands, a silent auction, and vendors, with 100% of proceeds funding teacher classroom grants. In partnership with CCUEF, The Future Foundation helped impact 4,000+ students across the Cave Creek Unified School District. CCUEF has awarded over $400,000 in classroom grants since 2008 — funding technology, music, arts, and wellness for nearly every student district-wide.
Two visits in, and counting. Our Connecticut chapter has returned to Poquonock Elementary twice now — teen mentors working with elementary students on hands-on science, read-alouds, and tutoring in reading, writing, and math. The Skittles diffusion experiment turned a cafeteria into a lab. Every child leaned in. Every mentor left knowing a name they'll need to remember by the next visit. This is the work: a relationship measured in visits, not photographs.
The first one. Supplies collected, packed, and delivered to the Boys & Girls Club of the Suncoast at the historic Royal Theater — blocks from where The Future Foundation was founded. Every program starts as an idea somebody finally acts on; this was the day Supply Drop stopped being an idea. One month later we ran it again in Key West, and now it's a program.
A joint community service day with DECA — afternoon programs and tutoring for kids at the Palmetto Boys & Girls Club.