Thank you to everyone who joined us for our Gala and Art Auction! We are deeply grateful for your presence and generosity, which made the evening so special!

So far, we have raised $32,000, which means we still need your help to meet our goal of $40,000.

As we look ahead to 2026, we project that individual donations will make up 75% of our gallery budget, in addition to funding KoKo Scholarships and free programming in underserved communities.

There are still a few artworks remaining that you can purchase, and our board has also generously offered to match the first $1,000 donated. There are many ways to support our mission:

• Make a one-time gift
• Become a Monthly Patron
• Explore whether your employer offers a matching-gift program.
• Buy one of the remaining artworks.

As we look ahead to 2026 and our year-end fundraising efforts, we hope you will consider making an additional contribution to help us sustain and expand our work!

There are lots of ways to support Open Source and KoKo:

• Buy one of the remaining artworks.
• Make a one-time gift
• Ask if your employer has a matching gift program and donating through them
  • If you make a matched donation of at least $200, we will give you a free Gala Ticket!
• Become a Monthly Patron, starting at just $5 a month

In 2025, Open Source received 91% less government funding than in 2024, including a substantial grant from the NEA that was recommended and then withdrawn under the current administration. We also received more individual donations and direct support from our community than ever before, though not nearly enough to make up the difference.

We make it work; we will always make it work. This year, we still hosted our usual 5 exhibitions by incredible social practice and conceptual artists, and we still paid them fairly. We also hosted our first ever Performance Festival, which was a phenomenal and inspiring process, and has resulted in beautiful new relationships and additions to our ever-expanding community. Through KoKo NYC, we served more youth throughout NYC in 2025 than we have ever served before, and our team of brilliant Teaching Artists continues to grow.

We have so many ideas, ideas that are born and developed through direct collaboration with artists and parents and kids and neighbors. In 2026, in addition to our regular exhibitions, storytelling series, educational programming, workshops, and community events, we also want to:

• Paint a new mural on 17th Street with Sáandlaanaay Kimberly Fulton Orozco and the 5th Avenue BID.
• Develop our Counselor-In-Training program to help teenagers gain more leadership, employment, and building skills.
• Expand our tiered tuition and scholarship programs for kids who can’t afford the full tuition for our workshops.
• Host more events with our exhibiting artists, pay them more, and give them more production support.
• Develop partnerships with schools that allow us to give our Teaching Artists more robust work schedules while still maintaining flexibility for them to continue their own art practices.

These are just a few of the needs that we have worked with our community to identify. These things take time, work, and importantly, money. Though our fundraiser this year, we have raised $32,000. That’s good, but if we want to continue to thrive and meet the needs of our community in the current political economy, we need to do better. There are lots of ways to contribute, and help us reach our goal of $40,000:

• You can buy one of the remaining artworks.
• You can make a one-time donation or become a Monthly Patron, and you can ask your employer if they have a matching gift program.
• Even spreading the word helps, attending our events helps, leaving reviews and sending testimonials helps.

We need you.

Curious about where the funding goes?

For KoKo NYC these funds help us maintain high-quality programming and specifically support:

• Our summer workshops’ tiered tuition program. We believe that KoKo NYC programs should be accessible to all kids regardless of family financial circumstances. To broaden access to our summer workshops at the KoKo Lot, we offer income-based tiered tuition. In 2025, we were able to offer full and partial scholarships to 40 kids (total value of just over $15,000).  With your financial support, we can expand our tiered tuition program to more families in summer 2026. We aim to eventually be able to offer tiered tuition options year-round.
• KoKo NYC’s participation in school and community STEM fairs. Throughout the year, KoKo NYC participates in several community events and STEM fairs around NYC that are free to families. Kids can experience a drop-in version of a KoKo NYC workshop at no cost to the families or the organizing community group. Your donations help ensure we are able to continue participating in these events! We expect a need of about $4,200 annually to pay our Teaching Artists for their time, energy, and creativity at these 
• community events.
• KoKo NYC’s summer Counselor-in-Training program has been, and continues to be a very popular program among teens! Counselors-in-Training learn valuable building skills, gain experience working with younger kids, and learn about being part of a team delivering high-quality summer workshops at the KoKo Lot.  CITs also earn stipends for their weeks at the Lot! In Summer 2025, CIT stipends totaled just over $11,000 (among 19 CITs). Earning a stipend for their participation in the CIT program allows these young people the ability to spend time with KoKo NYC with less worry about the financial concerns of foregoing wages for those otherwise eligible for paid employment.
• We are also hoping to launch a new Counselor-in-Training / youth employment training program that would start during after school hours in the spring and lead into summer CIT weeks. There is a gap in programming that serves young teens, and each year, we receive way more applications to our Teens Building the Future Together program than we are able to enroll in the program. Knowing this gap exists, we’d love to expand our teen, employment-training programs! Our goal is to offer this opportunity without requiring registration fees paid by families. Such a program would take about $10,000 worth of fundraising. 

For Open Source, these funds help to support:

• Paying fair wages to artists that exhibit with us, lead workshops and artist talks, and more. In 2026, we will pay over $30,000 in artist fees.
• Production budgets (totaling around $25,000) to help realize the 5 exhibitions that take place annually at Open Source. These budgets go towards supplies, installation assistance, travel and transportation of artworks, and more.
• Free and donation-based community events, including How to Build a Fire and Open Sound.
• and so much more!