On October 19 of this year (2019) we signed bylaws and elected officers to start a figure skating club, with Fort Dupont Ice Arena, the only indoor ice rink in Washington, DC, as our home rink. Fort Dupont Ice Arena (FDIA) is in Ward 7 and runs a Kids On Ice (KOI) program with subsidized programming to teach learn to skate classes to any child in DC who wants to learn, regardless of income. If skaters want to continue with figure skating once they complete the KOI program at FDIA their only option is to go to other rinks in the DC suburbs where skating lessons can be very expensive. Our mission is to continue to provide affordable skating opportunities for advanced figure skaters, with scholarships available for lessons, synchronized skating, private coaching, and US Figure Skating tests.
District Impact Skating Club(DISC) was born on October 19 when a group of parents of FDIA figure skaters, on the verge of graduating from the FDIA programs, got together to try to keep their young skaters figure skating dreams alive . We still have a long way to go to achieve our mission. FDIA currently runs four synchronized skating teams. Since their mission is to teach the foundations of skating they would like to pass off the most advanced team for DISC to operate next season. Since the program is heavily subsidized, in order to keep the individual costs the same and provide the same level of scholarships we need to raise about $14,000. This is just one of the programs that we will run and need funds to subsidize.
In order to be eligible for many grants and donations we need to attain federal 501(c)(3) status and get a DC business license. We are working through the paperwork for this, and thinking about our next steps.