2022 Year In Review

2022 has been incredible for Level, and we’d love to share some details of our growth. We couldn’t have accomplished this without our amazing community both inside and outside prison walls across the country. Thank you!

Level served 1,700 people in prison in 2022.

This year, we served 1,700 incarcerated learners across the country. That’s 75% more than we served last year. In total, Level has served 2,500 incarcerated people at 730 unique federal, state and county prisons across the country. And we’ve done that with efficiency – our all-in cost per person served this year was $50. Much of this is due to our community of volunteers as well as our low cost approach to providing educational resources to people in prison.

We released two new guides this year.

Level released two new guides in 2022 based on what incarcerated learners across the country told us they wanted to learn. How To Start Your Own Business: Prepare To Launch focuses on entrepreneurship training for people in prison and Natural Meditation For Everyone focuses on meditation training. These guides were created in collaboration with our content development team including formerly incarcerated educators. To see more details about these guides and learn how you can contribute, scroll to the bottom of the recap.

Level sent 2,800 educational guides directly to people in prison in 2022.

That’s 165% more than in 2021! Each guide we send includes a Completion Form that people in prison send back to us with answers to their quiz questions as well as qualitative and quantitative information about the effectiveness of our content. And we send back a Certificate Of Achievement that incarcerated learners can show to a parole board as well as their families and peers. Through this process, we also learn about the educational, job training and personal development topics that people in prison across the country want to learn about the most, and we use this information to inform our future guide development.

Our revenue was up 80% this year.

Support for Level’s work increased significantly this year. We raised more money from a wider group of sources. We’re finding more people and organizations interested in our work and approach.

• Level raised $28,950 in public donations from 85 unique donors.
• We raised $61,500 in foundation grants from the Sooch Foundation, the Tingari-Silverton Foundation, the Bob Barker Company Foundation and the Gardiner Howland Shaw Foundation.
• Level had $5,550 in corporate donations from Infotech, Inc and Vuka Studios.
• We started an earned income program helping people on the outside get educational content to their incarcerated loved ones and we’ll be growing this program significantly next year.

We couldn’t have done this without you!

Level is a community driven organization, and we could not have achieved these feats without our community of volunteers, donors, contributors and board members. Thank you all for supporting the educational needs of people in prison. We can’t wait to see you in 2023.

Please stay in touch with any feedback, ideas or questions, or people you think I should contact about furthering our mission. We’d love to hear from you! Please text us at (877) 285-3835 or email us at level@learnlevel.org with feedback, ideas, questions or people you think we should contact about furthering our mission.

Thank you!

Details about the guides we published this year:

How To Start Your Own Business: Prepare To Launch

This guide is the first of a three part series focused on entrepreneurship training for people in prison and breaks down the important decisions to make before starting a business. The guide includes an interactive worksheet that helps learners sketch out a clarified vision for their business concepts. The guide focuses on:

• Evaluate and increase one’s own readiness to start a business
• Understand the trade-offs between having a job and starting a business
• Learn about product-market fit and how to test a concept with prospective customers
• Understand the benefits of listening to customers and continuous improvement
• Discover the types of businesses that are most likely to succeed
• Estimate costs, revenue and break-even point

How To Start Your Own Business: Prepare To Launch was released on March 28, 2022 and 1,370 have been sent to people in prison across the country. The guide has a Net Promoter Score of 83 (in the “world class” range according to Qualtrics) and has a 4.6 out of 5 ranking for the question “How much – or how little – did you like this guide?”

Interested in supporting our work to bring entrepreneurship training to people in prison? We’re fundraising for the second guide in this series. People in prison across the country are passionate about continuing their entrepreneurship learning with Level.

Natural Meditation For Everyone

This guide introduces the basics of mindfulness and meditation in a format that anyone can practice, anywhere. This guide dispels the myth that meditation is for experts who have practiced for years. Quite the opposite – meditation is a simple, powerful life skill that anyone can use to reduce stress, increase connection, improve relationships and gain pathways to happiness.

• Learn that meditation can be practiced by anyone who follows any (or no) religion
• Understand practical ways to begin a meditation session
• Understand what happens during meditation and how to apply elements of meditation to daily life and personal interactions
• Learn how meditation may be used to reduce stress and improve relationship with yourself and others around you
• Know what to look out for if and when meditation processes trauma
• Learn best practices for establishing a regular, daily meditation practice

Natural Meditation For Everyone was released on December 14, 2022 with a long waiting list of people in prison asking to receive the guide. More than a hundred guides have already been sent to people on our waiting list! We want to thank the talented, compassionate and wise Dean Sluyter for both authoring the guide on a pro-bono basis and for rallying his community to help fundraise for the guide’s development and distribution.

Interested in supporting our work to bring meditation training to people in prison? While the development of this guide is complete, we are continuing to fundraise for the distribution of the guide to people in prison across the country.