Neighborhood Nonprofit Spotlight: Lucas Steuber, Aim High Ignite

Patch talks with Lucas Steuber about his work with Aim High Ignite.

Patch: Tell Patch a little about you and your organization!

Lucas: Wow - not enough room! For substantially more information, I encourage you to see both Aim High Ignite and Luke Steuber.

Patch: How does your organization help to strengthen the local community?

Lucas: We serve youth with developmental disabilities (ASD, ADHD, low-incidence disorders like Rett Syndrome, nonverbal children, etc) through a mixed program of physical fitness, social thinking, and STEM education, all run by licensed staff (like me, a certified Speech-Language Pathologist).

Patch: When did you open?

Lucas: This is the 'cappa' version of this; we have been running these groups for about a year and a half but have only recently completely opened the program to the general public. Danny (the executive director of the nonprofit and main fitness/martial arts guy) connected with me originally around a trade magazine article I wrote that eventually got picked up by Buzzfeed.

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Patch: What is the biggest struggle your organization faces?

Lucas: Funding, I'd say. We have some very generous donors but we also have a "no child left behind" policy whereby we will not turn anyone away for financial reasons. There have been several radio interviews about this recently, the most recent of which ended up on seven local stations. The downside is that brought in many more families seeking scholarships. We are actively grant-writing and fundraising as we have literally 50+ families waiting for services just because of staffing reasons.

Patch: What do you hope for the future of your nonprofit?

Lucas: The plan through December is to acquire adequate funding to serve the current need. The one-year plan is to transform our (very large) facility into a "reverse inclusion" model extracurricular activity (meaning we also train neurotypical kids as peer models) and run 200-300students at a time. The five year plan is to become a nonprofit charter school. The Buzzfeed article linked above gives some context on that, as does the radio interview, although perhaps less so (but still interesting).

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