How Much Does it Cost to Start a Hybrid School?

There are now a handful of organizations that will help the budding entrepreneur get started establishing a microschool and few, (besides me!) specialize in hybrid besides NAUMS. They range in price from a few to tens of thousands of dollars. These can be excellent resources, but for some of us, there just isn’t much money to work with…or we just aren’t sure how all this will play out …or we are a bit averse to investing too much…just in case it doesn’t!

When I started out in 2016, the hybrid school idea seemed very much a new one. There were no resources to help that I came across and I’m not sure I would have even considered pouring more than a few hundred into them if there had been. I wasn’t even sure where exactly this experiment was going to go, after all! How blissfully naive I was!

The first thing I did was pay about $60 for a one-hour call to a CPA. Then I paid $125 to PA State to file the Articles of Incorporation and filled those out myself. After that, it was pretty much sweat equity until it was time to purchase some books and some furnishings. I personally paid those first two fees out of pocket. That year, we were running a small cooperative model (one afternoon a week) to try out the books and schedule. We collected a few ($30 a term if I recall correctly) from the families (seven families, I believe it was) and purchased a few books and paid a small rent to the church host.

Once spring rolled around and we were having our informational meeting for the two-class, drop-off program we planned for fall, we pitched together a few hundred to purchase some curricula. Then we asked for donations from our handful of families and purchased used tables and chairs and a couple bookshelves over the summer (our husbands and some willing friends and new families pitched in with trucks and minivans to get those first rooms set up). We collected the first tuition payments in August, which allowed us to pay the church rent in September, set up the payroll system and purchase insurance, and finish purchasing some supplies and books. Once tuition was coming in monthly, we were able to reimburse ourselves the few hundred we had invested.. By the second year, we were able to fundraise just enough to cover the one-time expense of filing for 501c3 status (about $1600 total for CPA and IRS), and while there were certainly some nights I laid awake in a panic those first couple years, we always managed to have tuition cover all expenses.

The filing fee can’t be gotten around and many people may choose to pay someone to help actually fill out the paperwork as well. Getting some initial books and furnishing is also pretty important, (did I mention the rooms were empty 6 weeks before class opened?!). Depending on size, these expenses probably add to about $800-$1200 minimally, before tuition starts coming in. Certainly, more would be really nice, but it CAN be done for roughly a $1000 or less with lots of hard work!

If I had it to do over, I’d still do most of that the same way, but there was, truly, a tremendous amount of time put into figuring stuff out…researching, trial and error, researching…hoping I did it right…and I would DEFINITELY have paid a little more if I could have had someone tell me more about the business structure, organizational structure, budgeting, and Board/nonprofit training! I hope I would have, anyway… Looking back, those are the things that took the longest to learn and were hardest to ‘fix’ and ‘adjust’ when I realized I didn’t know what I didn’t know.

Advising someone new now, I would say, pay the filing fee, talk to either a professional CPA or someone who has done it before, and then learn what you can. Make sure you budget to pay yourself and enough staff so your organization isn’t riding on ‘heart’ for too long, and, assuming you’ve validated your market, your organization should be ready to launch for success!

Shameless plug: Make sure you check out my Strategic Planning Course if you are just thinking about getting started. In it, is pretty much all the stuff I wish I’d known in 2016!