Built on the 2027 budget draft and the 2027 personnel allocation. Every number is editable. The Summit Fund is OBUSA's unrestricted giving pool — the renamed Annual Fund — and a portion is deployed each year as open enrollment scholarship where the impact is strongest.
OBUSA has eight ways of bringing money in. They are not comparable on a revenue line alone, because each one keeps a different share of the dollar, takes a different amount of staff time, and produces a different kind of growth. This tool puts all eight on the same terms so the Leadership Team can decide where to add people, where to hold, and where to stop — and see the consequence immediately.
It never moves. Seven figures: total staff, personnel cost, total cost to run, gross revenue, what OBUSA keeps, net to OBUSA, and what passes through to Schools. Net to OBUSA is the headline — it is retained revenue plus fee or grant recovery, minus the full cost of running the engine.
Each row is one engine. Left to right: how many staff, what they cost, what else it costs to run, what it brings in, and how that dollar splits. Pick the row you know best and check whether it looks right. If it does not, change it — that is the point.
Click any blue cell, type a new figure, press Enter. The whole model recalculates. The percent pass-through column is the one to test first — it is the single most consequential assumption in the portfolio.
The six buttons at the top load a pre-built set of changes. They are conversation starters, not recommendations. Press Reset to return to the 2027 budget draft at any time.
Pick an engine, add or remove FTE, set what you think that person can bring in and how long they take to ramp. You get a three-year answer and the year it turns positive. Use negative FTE to test a cut.
| Engine overview | All the working assumptions, all editable. The main workspace. |
| Definitions | What each engine actually is, who owns it, and the Program Partnerships versus National Groups distinction. |
| Student impact | How many young people each engine reaches, and what that costs. |
| Segment reach | Public and charter versus independent schools. Where the volume is versus where the model currently works. |
| Summit Fund | The unrestricted giving pool, and the scholarship deployment decision each year. |
| Scale & capacity | Where current staff run out of road, and what each engine must earn to cover itself. |
| Sustainability | What survives if the grants go away. |
| Simulator | Test one hire, or one cut, over three years. |
| Reconciliation | How the model ties back to the 2027 budget, and where it does not. |
| sourced | Comes straight from the 2027 budget draft or the personnel allocation. Argue with it only if the file is wrong. |
| allocated | A real budget line split across engines. These are the judgment calls worth challenging. |
| needs input | Not in either file. Someone owns this number. |
| Room to grow | Under 85% of what current staff can carry. |
| At the ceiling | 85% or more. The next dollar needs a person, not a target. |
| Over capacity | Past the ceiling. Something is being dropped. |
Ask: whose people are on the course? If the payer is funding programming for someone else's young people, it is a Program Partnership — philanthropic intent, restricted contributed revenue. If the payer is buying programming for their own people, it is a National Group Program — commercial intent, earned fee-for-service.
The structural difference. An independent school pays for the program out of its own budget. A public or charter school generally cannot, so the same program has to be underwritten — by a national funder, a regional donor, a district line item, or a public funding stream such as Title IV-A or MTSS. The sale is the same. The money comes from somewhere completely different.
What that means for the engine model. Scaling public and charter does not scale Regional Group Programs on its own. It scales Institutional Giving and Program Partnerships at the same time, because every additional public-school program needs a funder attached to it. Growth in one engine creates an obligation in another.
The compounding cost. More public and charter volume means more dollars to raise, which means more grant-writing and reporting load on a Development team already carrying 16.9% of payroll on two grants. That is a real constraint, not a rounding error.
Why it is still worth doing. Public and charter is where the mission argument is strongest and where the audience is largest. It is also the segment where the Summit Fund matters most: for these families the follow-on open enrollment course is a scholarship conversation rather than a purchase. Depth is the weak spot — 1.51 program days per student against 2.46 for independent — so the opportunity is as much about going deeper with existing partners as adding new ones.
The honest sequencing. Independent schools first is defensible because it is self-funding and proves the go-to-market machine works. But the LT should decide explicitly whether public and charter is deferred or declined. Right now it is neither, which means it quietly does not happen.
If public and charter growth is a goal, name the funding vehicle that pays for it and the person who raises it — before setting a participation target. A target without a funder attached becomes a Development problem discovered in year two.
Where it sits in the model. The Summit Fund is the revenue of engine P3, not a separate line. Because it is unrestricted it can fund anything — operating costs, a capacity gap, a loss-making engine held on purpose, or scholarship. The scholarship slider below decides how much of the pool goes to access in a given year.
Why the distinction matters for this model. If the Summit Fund were only a scholarship fund, it would be a restricted pass-through and would belong beside P1. Because it is unrestricted, it is one of only three engines that returns a fully retained dollar, and it is the flexible money that absorbs everything the restricted dollars cannot.
The deployment argument. Scholarship competes with every other use of an unrestricted dollar. It earns its share when it protects tuition revenue, converts families who would not otherwise enroll, or stabilizes a program line under pressure. That is exactly what the calculator below is for.
How the scholarship deployment works. Administered nationally by the Customer Success team using a standardized, equity-centered framework. Eligibility is household income below $250,000, domestic courses only, with a $150 non-refundable application fee replacing the standard $500 deposit. Three tiers — Trailhead ($175–250K), Ascent ($100–175K), Summit (below $100K) — award a percentage of average tuition by program line. Awards typically cover 20–60% of tuition and can stack with regional School scholarships.
Why it matters strategically. Open enrollment is flat, shorter courses are eroding student program days, and families are deciding later with higher demonstrated need. Scholarship deployment is the one lever that addresses affordability at the point of decision without cutting list price across the board. It lets us compete on a family's first experience, where the price objection is sharpest.
And for the segment problem. Public and charter families are 59% of group-program reach and the follow-on OE course is a scholarship conversation for most of them. This is the bridge between the volume we already touch and the enrollment we do not convert.
| Scholarship awarded | $93,247 |
| Students supported | 36 |
| Average award | $2,590 |
| Enrollment rate after award | 77% |
| Decision speed | 1.5 days |
| Already-enrolled backstop | 12 students, 27% of funds |
1. Move award notification earlier — to January, before Customer Success is swamped. Identified as the biggest lever on enrollment speed.
2. Eliminate the backstop use case. Covering students who already enrolled absorbed 27% of the deployment and conflates two different stories: access versus bailouts. The donor promise is converting new families.
3. Build the baseline. Capture what cost-motivated leads did before the fund existed — abandonment, time to decide, conversion. Without it, 77% means nothing.
4. Report tuition revenue protected. The multiplier donors care about, and the calculator above exists to produce it.
5. Scope to tuition only. Travel and gear create a management tangle without the capacity to handle it.
6. Fix the scholarship application form and the confusion Student Services flagged.