Annual Campaign

Because we value your time: We are shifting to an Annual Campaign to consolidate and simplify things for our dedicated supporters. Currently HBHA friends and families are asked to give in a variety of ways, often more than once! We hope that by creating one seamless Annual Campaign, we are able to ask for your support one time each year. Our belief is this new development model will create a unified fundraising effort that will ultimately create a broader pool of donors, including alumni and alumni families. Our Annual Campaign should help us reach that goal.

In 2008, HBHA made a bold move to reduce tuition by 50% to bring in more students and enable those families struggling with the 2008 recession to continue their students’ private school education. As part of this change, the volunteers who created the Academy Access Program reached out to families to contribute all or part of the remaining 50% of tuition as a charitable donation. In the years that followed, some families have continued to give the full AAP contributions, and many families have given partial donations to HBHA. We are grateful for this ongoing support. However, the reality is that the cost of education has increased while AAP donations have decreased. For this reason, we are applying AAP gifts toward the Annual Campaign.

Additional Information: 

• With HBHA tuition at $11,000 per student, and the cost of an HBHA education at $22,000 per student per year, under the auspices of AAP, the ask would be $11,000 per student. Within the Annual Campaign structure, HBHA will simply ask families to give to the Annual Campaign to the best of their ability. Of course, we will do this with the understanding that the school cannot hope to operate without meaningful donations. 
• Moving forward, all donor recognition will be categorized under the Annual Campaign giving levels, allowing us to show appreciation and more accurately recognize our donors.

In previous years, our Matmidim Jewish Studies Track was asked to raise money to support its own program. We believe this is the wrong message. Matmidim is 100% part of HBHA, and none of our other educational programs are asked to raise money. While Matimidim is an expensive program, we are all in this together – general and Jewish studies alike. As such, we ask all Matmidim families to generously support the Annual Campaign to the same extent they did in previous years. 

Ma’ayan was our giving circle of those gifting $5,000 or more to HBHA. From now on, Ma’ayan will simply be one of the giving levels of the Annual Campaign, now set at $6,000. We encourage all Ma’ayan donors to continue supporting HBHA at a level that feels comfortable and meaningful.

HBHA will continue to host our annual Civic Service Award Celebration to honor members of our community, celebrate HBHA’s many accomplishments, and continue to raise the profile of our school in Kansas City. 

If you are more comfortable supporting HBHA through a gift to the Civic Service Award Celebration, we encourage you to continue to give directly to that. Your financial support is incredibly important to us, regardless of how you choose to give! At the same time, the Annual Campaign provides more flexibility in how you choose to show your support.