Financial Aid

Let's figure this out together...

We understand that there's a lot to consider when choosing outdoor experiences for your children. Please know that we think hard about our pricing and are sensitive to the needs of our many families. As we consider our program delivery costs, we also compare our rates to the comparable cost per hour of other outdoor education programs in our community. We invite you to do the same.

It's a fact that program fees do not cover the full cost of operations.

Our education programs, as a nature school, occur all year in all seasons. Our adult lead staff have college degrees and considerable experience in the field with children. Support staff, adult and older teens are also highly qualified for their roles. Many of our teen staff have spent more than three years as participants followed by a two-year apprenticeship. All undergo considerable staff training in youth development, risk management and assessment, and more. All staff are held to high professional standards and paid fair wages for their considerable work to provide for the highest quality programs that we can provide.

It's a fact that we charge between $12 and $15 per program hour, which we believe is an incredible value, especially when you consider that many of our summer programs take place on boats... and as you can trust, U.S. Coast Guard inspected passenger-carrying vessels are expensive platforms on which to run programs. Nearly one-third of our annual operating budget is spent on boats, and program fees do not fully cover our cost of operations.

While no other youth education program in our region incurs a commensurate operating expense, we work to keep our rates as close in line with others as we can.

Since 2014, charitable contributions and philanthropic support have made it possible for Merrohawke to award $175K in financial aid for youth to attend Merrohawke programs, both summer and school year. We are actively working to secure additional philanthropic support in order to be able to reach even more children and families, as well as to offset our reliance on program fees alone to support the organization.