SR1 C.O.O.L.™ Zone Cradle-to-Career Legacy Fund
Total Estimated Cost: $12,000,000
Protecting Today. Securing Tomorrow. Transforming Generations
The SR1 C.O.O.L.™ Zone Cradle-to-Career Legacy Fund is our integrated contingency, reserve, and endowment strategy—protecting 0–5 early childhood, K–12 college preparatory and STEM, and high-level workforce initiatives while building a permanent source of opportunity for future generations. This is not a side fund. This is the backbone that makes our entire cradle-to-career, place-based vision unshakable.
In rural Mississippi, children and families live with constant uncertainty: school closures, shifting policies, programs that arrive with fanfare and vanish in silence. SR1 chose a different path. We built a data-driven model that starts before kindergarten, walks with students and families from kindergarten to high school graduation, assists with college enrollment, and continues as students apply for internships, certifications, and high-demand careers. We have seen the results in test scores, graduation pathways, and life stories.
But impact alone does not guarantee stability—especially when you work boldly for equity and stand with vulnerable populations. We know this firsthand. We have experienced funding cuts and resistance not because of poor performance, but because we insist on serving those too often ignored. Unfortunately, some funders do not understand that vulnerable populations are among all of us—our neighbors, our coworkers, our family members, and sometimes ourselves.
At its heart, the Legacy Fund has three tightly connected components:
Contingency gives us the power to respond in real time. When a bus fails, a roof leaks, a key staff member needs to be retained, or a new opportunity opens for college visits or STEM labs, we do not stop to wonder if we can afford to do right by students. We act.
Operating reserves give us staying power. A strong reserve allows us to keep classrooms open, maintain bilingual family classes, sustain after-school and summer programs, and protect college access support even when public funding is delayed, reduced, or politicized. It keeps the focus where it belongs: on students, not survival.
Endowment is our promise to the future. As the endowment grows, its earnings will help permanently fund 0–5 learning, K–12 college preparatory and STEM, scholarships, and advanced workforce pathways—from agriculture and health to aerospace, data, and other high-level fields. It says to a child born ten years from now: SR1 will still be here for you.
This fund also allows us to recruit and retain the best community educators, planners, and designers—people who understand local culture, can co-create with families, and can design world-class learning spaces and experiences right in our rural communities. Excellence requires talent; talent requires stability.
Investing in the SR1 C.O.O.L.™ Zone Cradle-to-Career Legacy Fund means you are not just sponsoring a program year—you are anchoring an ecosystem. You are helping ensure that:
A toddler in a 0–5 program becomes a confident reader.
A middle schooler discovers robotics or coding and sees a new future.
A first-generation student not only gets to college, but through college.
A young adult enters the workforce in a high-demand field, prepared and proud.
This is what “legacy” looks like in real life: thousands of quiet, powerful moments where a child’s trajectory bends toward opportunity instead of limitation.
Your gift to this fund is more than generosity. It is a statement of belief: These children, in this place, deserve institutions with the same permanence and power as any in the nation.
That is what the SR1 C.O.O.L.™ Zone Cradle-to-Career Legacy Fund makes possible.