Everyone who visits our sessions sees the many ways you could help us accomplish our mission of instilling academic interest and excellence in our students. If any of the following appeals for TIME, MATERIAL, and (of course) MONEY seem right for you, or you have any questions, please contact us.

(1) As a Coach.

If you live in the Detroit area, you can provide us a fresh set of "hands on deck." If you have formal training in math, science, or the language arts, you can help us to direct our students through our rigorous, formal, academic drilling over the core scholarly disciplines. Experience with the SAT (or GRE, since it's identical) helps, since we focus on that, but is not necessary. In fact, most of our best Coaches had no such experience when they joined. If we had more Coaches, we could more reliably and vigorously offer Home Work sessions after our regular Saturday morning SAT-prep sessions, and during the week, after school. We only ask for one day a month of contribution.

(2) As an Administrator.

You can help administer the program. This can mean attending our sessions, and helping take and record attendance and test results, and just generally supporting our beleaguered Coaches. You can also do things during the week, away from class, such as making photocopies, updating the website (under the direction of our WebMaster), ordering books, inputting information into our database, etc. All you have to do is ask. We have contributors who our students and Coaches never see, but whose hours of effort make an indispensable difference. And you would never imagine the enormous benefit we derive from parents simply picking a classroom, and taking a seat in the back, reading a newspaper, balancing their check book, or doing other personal work on a laptop. Such parents can jump in and and bring disruptive or inattentive students into focus, or run a message for the inevitably beleaguered Coach.

You might have accesses to resources that would help our us reach more students more effectively.

(1) A facility.

We need a permanent location, with climate-controlled classrooms and auditorium space reserved for us, and where we have storage space and access to office equipment. Ultimately we would like a facility devoted exclusively to us, with the potential for us to develop a full-time K-12 school. But in the meantime, we could make great use simply borrowing a facility all day Saturdays and (when we get enough hands-on-deck for weekday Homework Sessions) weekdays after-school. The facilities made available to us so far, at Lawrence Tech and Wayne State, have been adequate, and have enabled us to function and grow. But neither location has been able to provide us with storage space or office access, and both involve quite imperfect compromises, such as hot, cramped rooms such as we have at LTU's Engineering Building, or rooms that are not guaranteed to us, as was the case at LTU's Buell Building.

(2) Books.

The bookstores brim with volumes that we would like to distribute to our students. Some of these books directly address skill-building for the SAT, math, and writing. Other books simply constitute the exciting literature, history analyses, and topical polemics that we want our students to devour. We sell them on the idea of treating a book they've read like a trophy, and their bookshelves like trophy cases. We argue that the most effective intellectual progress derives straight from each person's stock of read books. One of the activities we hope to offer our students each semester is a Book Store Hang-Out, where—following a hard Saturday morning of study—we take them to a large area bookstore and distribute gift certificates. Some of our students have not yet discovered that reading is one activity that provides not just fundamental and powerful brain development, but outright, addictive pleasure and satisfaction as well. We endeavor to change that.

(3) Office supplies & equipment, etc.

Naturally we have great need for photocopying services (for large jobs), a copy machine (for small jobs), a fax machine, laptop computers (for staff), printers, etc.

If we could make nourishing snacks available to our students, we could shutdown the cursed vending machines inevitably located in any donated facility (such as those made available to us at Lawrence Tech and Wayne State), which dispense brain-numbing products stuffed with artificial molecules that clog all manner of healthy biological activities. Our Special Events, such as semester Kick-Offs, Closing Ceremonies, and Parties require a few hundred dollars worth of food. Plus we would like to reward our scholars with activities like day trips to ski slopes and amusement parks, sporting events, movies, etc., to demonstrate the concept of Working & Playing among the same teams of people.

OK, so you knew this was coming. Money would, of course, resolve all our Time and Material challenges. We could hire enough college students as Assistant Coaches and Admins so that our volunteer staff members would enjoy full, reliable support. This would mean thriving, bustling, effective Saturday morning SAT-prep sessions, and Saturday afternoon and weekday evening Homework sessions (and during the summer, or SAT Boot Camp and Math Basic Training sessions during the week). Money would also enable us to purchase or lease a facility that addressed our specific needs, and to obtain all the material necessary to carry out primary academic activities, and our supporting social festivities. You can contact us for more information if your company or foundation has financial resources that might apply to us (we are a registered nonprofit, and all donations are tax-deductible). You can also send checks and money orders (payable to: Ben Carson Scholars, or BCLS) to the address on our home page, or make a credit card donation.