Surpassing their goal of ‘10k in 10 Days,’ ATLAS, Dominion High School’s parent group, raised $11,219 to fund various clubs and programs for the 2023-2024 school year. From August 22nd to August 31st, the catchy slogan successfully revived back to school funding which had been on the decline in recent years.
“What I like about ATLAS is it’s one nonprofit organization that supports every Dominion High School student, and every Dominion High School endeavor. Everybody works together to make sure we have the resources that Loudoun County Public Schools can’t provide for every student in every endeavor,” Dr. Brewer said.
ATLAS, Association of Titan Leaders Assisting Students, conducts multiple fundraisers throughout each school year- the biggest one being the Annual Golf Classic in the spring. According to Dr. Brewer, the shift towards technology in recent years to accomplish back to school paperwork has resulted in fewer donations from families at the start of the school year. “10 years ago, it was easy for people [to] just write a check, but people don’t do that anymore. In the last five years or so, that 10 or $15,000 ATLAS would start with has been $5000 instead,” Brewer said.
According to ATLAS President Ted Childs, the newly raised money will go to a variety of school clubs and organizations such as theater arts, knitting club, global ambassadors, National Honor Society, debate team, band, Link Crew and more. “We’ve already provided an overall bucket of money, most of that was raised from the golf tournament. This just provides us more liquid capabilities to support upcoming requests,” Childs said.
Fundraising also goes toward the ATLAS Scholarship which is a $1000 scholarship awarded each year to five seniors who display “outstanding character” during their time at Dominion according to last school year’s essay prompt. Last year, six 2023 seniors, Sarah Tandon, Mariam Shaikh, Avery Deaton, Sumayya Khan, Romi Radi, and Brigit Vinnacombe, were awarded the scholarship for their essays.
Other scholarships funded by donations to ATLAS include need based aid for school organized trips such as the annual Disney Trip for arts students and exchange trips. “That’s probably our biggest need,” Brewer said. “A lot of kids can’t even think about affording a $700 trip, so if we can pay for a few of those students to be able to go, that’s really helpful.”
Due to county supplied funds and team organized fundraisers, “almost none of [ATLAS fundraising] goes to sports,” Childs said. According to Childs, between county funds and direct donations to the teams by parents, sports fundraising is accounted for without ATLAS funds.
Through the 10k in 10 Days fundraiser, donors could also directly give to a program at Dominion. “If you want to do something for theater [or] e-sports, you can actually put [that] in the tagline,” Childs said.
“We’re really grateful to people for investing in our school. It’s really nice that people give generously to make sure we can do really cool things like travel overseas and host a leadership conference again for the first time in a while this spring,” Brewer said.
