Our Vision

Families can check a box on the signup sheet of any sport in Shaker to ask the Level the Playing Field Fund to cover all fees and equipment. The signup fee for that sport would then be $25 for the family.  

The Recreation Department or the Youth Sports Organization would submit the sign up sheet to the Level the Playing Field Fund. At that point, the Level the Playing Field Fund will write the check for the fees and issue the participant/ family a Coupon for the equipment via email.

Then, Level the Playing Field Fund will reach out to the family via email to lay out some general expectations and fee guidelines while asking for some very simple, non detailed information to properly place the family into the proper financial aid percentage bucket. The Level the Playing Field Fund will ask for a suggested and appropriate tax deductible donation should the family’s resources surpass certain thresholds. No matter what the family may or may not donate, the Level the Playing Field Fund will still write the check for the fees and issue the participant a Coupon for the equipment via email. Again, it is a suggested donation.

This process is mostly intended to have families understand the intentions of the fund and self classify themselves. For example, we might ask a simple question like, “last year, did your household earn less than $75,000, from $75,000-$125,000, $125,000-$175,000, or $175,000+?”. If they self classify in the lowest bucket, then the fund would pay for 100% of the fee and equipment costs. If they self classify in the middle bucket, then we might ask them for a donation to the Level the Playing Field Fund which represents some level of the value of the fees and equipment needed to play that sport that year. If they self classify at the highest level, maybe we ask the family for a larger donation.