The reality is, no one cares outside of a few students at the school whether or not a MA school survives or not. A MA school is a business. People aren't going to kick in and donate $$ just because the school needs it.
This is an unfortunate situation that does not look good. Fund raising is not the answer; it is looking at a balance sheet and making sure that your assets exceed your liabilities. In other words, $$ in exceeds $$ out. Otherwise, you are not profiting, and you will never survive. And, once you are in the hole, it is very difficult to get out.
I would suggest that the school owner considers partnering up with another school owner who is having some trouble also, but who has a good amount of students. Pick the larger of the 2 schools as the location (hopefully in close proximity w/ one another), and merge together. This will double the amount of students and income, but will cut your overhead and expenses in half almost. Both instructors can teach at different days and times. This will free up the instructors time do other stuff to make $$. They can go to local gyms, like lifetime fitness, or businesses and see if they'll let the instructor do seminars for something that might be of use to them, such as womens self defense, cardio boxing, or whatever.
A big $$ maker can be after school programs, through the school district. You go through community ed. and set up classes at as many elementary schools as you can, preferably in districts where there is a good amount of discretionary income. Your instructor can also employ junior instructors to be the regular teacher at some of these elementary school locations. You find young men/women between the ages of 16 and 19 who are at least in the upper ranks (they don't have to be black belt, nessicarily) to teach and pay them $15-20 per class, depending on the turn out. The junior instructor now gets the opportunity to teach, and make a little extra pocket cash; this can be a very rewarding experience for them. The kids are paying $60 for an 8 week session (2 classes per week), which is great for the parents for cost reasons, and convienence (they don't have to drive there kids to a studio). You get 20 kids that's 1200 for 2 months, the junior instructor pockets 320 at 20 bucks a class, and 880 goes to the school. This doesn't include $$ for uniform fees, and testing fees (you can run a belt testing at the end of each session for those that qualify). $880 doesn't sound like a lot, but in actuallity the junior instructors are doing most of the work at the individual school. So if your school can employ a bunch of junior instructors, it could be some nice steady profit. If you have 5 junior instructors, that's 5 schools, 4,400 for 8 weeks. 10 instructors; that's 8,800 for 8 weeks. 5 instructors at 4 sessions per year, that's 17,600 per year; 10 instructrors - 35,200 per year. That's all not including uniform fees and testing. 35,200 per year may not be a huge dollar amount, but it is an extra 35 K that wasn't there before. Every little bit adds up.
I could go on and on all day about different ideas and ways to make $$. I covered fee structuring in another posts. However, this would be a waste of my time, because most people will not take my advise (as if I am the F***ing idiot, yet they are the ones who are having trouble running their business). I don't know what to tell you, but they just don't.
So, the best advise I can give to any instructor/owner is this: make sure your assets exceed your liabilities so you are making profit, and diversify yourself as much as you can so you will have a lot of $$ coming in from different directions.
Good luck to your instructor and school, Adam.
PAUL
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