Feed the Bear - Blue Bear School of Music

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$5,000	SuperBenefactor
$2,500	Benefactor
$1,000	SuperSponsor
$500	Sponsor
$250	Donor
$100	Supporter
$60	Associate
$25	Friend
$	Other

Acoustic Guitar Electric Guitar Voice Piano/Keys Bass Drums Sax/Clarinet Ukulele

Feed the Bear Fundraising Campaign

Thank you for making our 2012 campaign a success!

Your generous support keeps music education alive and rocking in the Bay Area.

It's not too late to donate!

Dear Friend of Blue Bear,

You might know Blue Bear School of Music as the place your child blossoms in front of your eyes glowing with pride emerging from a piano or guitar lesson.

Or you might know it as the hub filled with "big group" guitar students tuning and catching up in the lobby before class, or adult band workshops honing harmonies as the quarterly showcases at Cafe Du Nord approach.

You might know it as the home of the Little Bears infant and toddler music education programs - starting our youngest students off on the right foot, making and loving music.

Blue Bear at Fort Mason Center is truly a center for music for all ages. And merit scholarships or sliding scale tuition are part of every Blue Bear program.

But there's much, much more. We are especially proud of lesser-known Blue Bear outreach programs at off-site locations. These are the music residencies and after-school programs we provide in partnership with San Francisco Unified School District schools and community centers such as Glide and the YMCA.

We have to raise a minimum of $85,000 in Feed the Bear donations if we are to keep our current youth off-site and sliding scale programs afloat.

These Blue Bear programs address the need for quality music education for all children, utilizing our signature popular music curricula as the medium of instruction. The youth outreach programs also help us identify talented students for scholarships and sliding scale tuition support for those who want to continue life-enhancing music studies at Blue Bear.

Let me be specific about one talented, need-based scholarship student who emerged from a longstanding rock band program we've been operating at a culturally and economically diverse San Francisco middle school. Gifted with a fine voice, this young woman's dream was to gain entrance into the San Francisco Unified School District's Ruth Asawa High School of the Arts (SOTA). Unsuccessful on her first audition attempt, her private lessons on scholarship at Blue Bear helped her succeed the second time and she is now a thriving freshman there. And there are more stories of personal breakthroughs that thrill us every day.

Last year, the Blue Bear family really came through for us. An extraordinary response to our year-end appeal enabled us to maintain tuition support programs and also to launch new youth outreach programs that are gaining momentum.

For this year, thank you, in advance. We at Blue Bear, managing this wonderful music school, are very grateful for your generosity. Know that your help in providing music education rooted in rock, blues, pop, folk, jazz, and world traditions is a lifeline to those for whom music soon becomes a life-affirming necessity.

If music has that meaning for you, won't you help us provide that experience for others?

Sincerely,

Marcus Yelton
Development Director

photos by: Julie Bernstein

P.S. Meeting our Feed the Bear campaign goal will underwrite programming at San Francisco public schools and enable young musicians to learn with highly-qualified teachers. Please remember that funding for Blue Bear's youth outreach program is very fragile. Each donor, given the size of our nonprofit organization, is extremely important. A donation of any amount matters to us and is completely tax-deductible, as allowed by law.

P.P.S. Please donate that no longer needed vehicle, boat or motorhome and help Blue Bear. Certain high-value donations might even qualify for a partial cash payment to you, so you can have the maximum legal tax deduction and some cash as well! Click here for more info.