Help keep STEM Pals alive

Overview:

We are STEM Pals, a grassroots outreach organization started by graduate students at the University of Washington to encourage, inspire & (st)empower students in the Pacific Northwest to pursue Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics activities and education post-graduation.

We bring hands-on STEM activities, demonstrations, and mentorship to students to supplement their K-12 education while providing insight into the lives of real scientists. By sharing our STEM experiences and making STEM accessible, fun, and interesting, we hope to empower students to consider a future in STEM. We know that we need people from diverse backgrounds working in STEM to tackle the complicated problems our society faces. But to do this, we need to bring STEM to students who are often overlooked for STEM opportunities or intimidated to be in STEM spaces.

Unfortunately, this is much more challenging than it sounds, and we need more support to keep doing this work! In the past, we have been supported by event-specific donations from our generous donors (listed here). While we are so appreciative of those who have supported us thus far, as our organization has grown and become more active, we have found this system to be unsustainable. We have even had to hold off on events or incur expenses ourselves when a donor cannot be identified quickly enough.

To help alleviate this burden, enable our growth, and support our continued service to our community, we are hoping to raise enough funds to last us at least until the summer of 2024. Having a monetary reserve to draw from for any event we plan will significantly improve our workflow and allow us to focus our efforts on the most impactful aspects of our outreach. Any donation will go a long way in helping us sustain STEM Pals and continue to bring STEM to students in our community!

More about STEM Pals:

Since our inception in 2019, we have worked hard to make a positive impact on the future leaders of our world. We have grown a team of graduate students, undergraduates, postdoctoral researchers, and faculty volunteers from several departments at the University of Washington. Currently, the STEM Pals team comprises 15 folks who actively work in content development and project management. We also have 125+ members in our Slack workspace who are ready to volunteer on an as-needed basis. We have collaborated with organizations such as the Pacific Science Center, UW Molecular Engineering Materials Center, UW Clean Energy Institute, UW Reality Lab, Women in Chemical Engineering and many more to bring exciting STEM opportunities to our community. You may learn more about us and our activities on our website: http://stempals.club

[Note that all underlined words in this text are links that you can click.]

Driven by our passion for outreach, we have reached a total of almost 2000 students, teachers, and community members across 25+ events to date.

Some of our past events include:

We have found our work with the community to be very rewarding. We have gotten to experience firsthand students’ excitement and joy in STEM topics and their appreciation for making STEM approachable to them in ways it wasn’t before. Students and teachers have shared with us how STEM Pals has helped them; verbally, through our surveys, and in the form of notes (such as the one pictured below).

Here are some quotes from a survey we administered to students at the end of the agar microbiology contest, when asked about what they liked about it:

Here are some thank you notes from students after STEM Pals members participated in a panel to answer their questions about college and pursuing STEM after graduation:

We share these quotes to give you a glimpse into how STEM outreach can positively impact our communities. Opportunities to interact with scientists from all sorts of backgrounds on a human-to-human level can truly be life-changing for these students. We believe that this is a cause worth supporting for the sake of a brighter future!

While we have a substantial and enthusiastic volunteer workforce, we currently lack the financial resources to make full use of it and maximize our impact on the community. This is why we are reaching out to the broader community for help.

So far, we have been supported by event-specific donations from our generous donors (listed here). However, this financial framework has become unsustainable for an active organization like ours, and it is frankly quite stressful to our leadership due to its inherent lack of certainty and security. Our funding situation has gotten to a point where we have had to hold off on activities that would have strengthened our role in the community. In fact, our leadership has even had to take on out-of-pocket expenses to keep the financial burden away from the general STEM Pals membership. Bear in mind that our leadership comprises graduate students, many of whom are already struggling financially to make it through their studies!

To help alleviate this burden and find a sense of security in our operations, we are hoping to raise enough funds to last us at least until the summer of 2024. We believe that, as opposed to scrambling around to find funds for each activity, having a monetary reserve to draw from will significantly improve our workflow and allow us to invest more effort in the impactful aspects of our outreach, such as developing STEM activities, recruiting volunteers, working with students and teachers, collaborating with other outreach organizations, etc.

Below is a non-exhaustive list of how raised funds will be used:

Materials for demos and workshops: We bring all of the materials for an event with us to take the burden off of schools, teachers, and students. The electronics needed for the soldering workshop, the agar for our microbiology activity, and more are some of our main expenses.

Needless to say, even a donation as small as $5 will go a long way in helping us sustain our operations and take the pressure off of our leadership and members. If you are unable to donate at this time, we would still appreciate your support in spreading word of this fundraiser to others who might be interested in this cause. Unless requested otherwise, all donors will be listed on this page of our website, and credited elsewhere as appropriate. We are also considering hosting a Meet and Greet event at UW for donors and other supporters to meet the STEM Pals team sometime in September or October 2023. More information on this to come!

Since all STEM Pals members are unpaid volunteers, funds raised will be used solely to further our mission of empowering underserved K-12 students. We are focused on working with students who are already vulnerable due to socioeconomic factors such as income, school district, ethnicity, gender, and more. All funds will be deposited in the STEM Pals checking account, which is co-owned by two of the three co-presidents (Al Snow, Ariana Frey and Nicole Gregorio). Since STEM Pals operates using a democratic decision-making approach, bank withdrawals will require both Nicole’s and Al’s signatures. For full transparency, we would be more than happy to provide donors with updates on expenditures.

Hopefully, we have demonstrated our capability in altruistically putting your funds to good use. If you would like more information, or want to reach out to us for any other reason, please do not hesitate to contact us by clicking the “Contact” button on this GoFundMe page, or through the Contact page on our website.

We sincerely thank you for your time and support!

The STEM Pals Team

http://stempals.club

The cover image at the top of this page is from our tables at the Introduce a Girl to Green Technology event hosted by Women in Chemical Engineering.