The Mockingbird Foundation is thrilled to announce our latest Grant Recipient from the COVID-19 Relief Effort: A Place Called Home! Since the pandemic began, this organization has shifted to virtual classes, recorded lessons and tutorials, and online support for young people in South Central Los Angeles. They’ve been offering a total of 45 online classes a week, via a membership model that provides enrolled youth and families with services at no cost to them.

Our grant, made possible by our generous donors, will allow A Place Called Home to continue to provide virtual music instruction by ensuring the students have the technology and materials to access the classes. Learn more about this amazing program: www.apch.org

Phooty Kits, producer of high quality and affordable Phish-centric soccer jerseys, has teamed with The Mockingbird Foundation to create a limited edition run to celebrate the non-profit's mission to support music education.

Jerseys are $39 dollars apiece, with one third of each jersey's sale price going directly to the Mockingbird Foundation.

Pre-orders will be taken until July 15th, after which the jerseys will go to press and ship.

Each jersey is customizable, meaning you can put special names, numbers, and hem notes on your order!

Please pay attention to sizing chart to get appropriate fit.

Place your order at www.phootykits.com.

The Mockingbird Foundation is pleased to announce our latest grant recipient from the COVID-19 Relief Effort: The Heartbeat Music Project! @heartbeatmusicproject provides music education to Navajo (Diné) children K - 12 living on the Navajo reservation. The organization strives to create an atmosphere of cultural exchange in which they acknowledge the impact of past and present colonialism on indigenous people while respectfully engaging with Diné music, cultures and customs. With the support of our donors, we are glad to help bring some joy to the reservation in this difficult time, during which the Navajo Nation has been hit disproportionately hard by the pandemic. Please join us in celebrating The Heartbeat Music Project!

The Mockingbird Foundation is thrilled to announce the first grant from our COVID-19 Emergency Relief program: Girls Rock Detroit! @girlsrockdetroit is a community organization helping to provide music education for girls, women, gender expansive and transgender people. The $5000 grant will allow their Summer camp to continue virtually after they lost the ability to host fundraising events. Thank you everyone for your support! You are truly making a difference in people’s lives. Please consider making a direct impact on music education by donating today at mbird.org/covidrelief. #ProtectMusicEd

In response to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the Mockingbird Foundation will use Emergency Grant funds to rapidly help protect music education in these unprecedented times, beginning with $25,000. Between now and July 31st, the Foundation will also match the first $25,000 in donations made by our community, to give at least $75,000 total to #ProtectMusicEd!

Please click here to donate!

Due to the slowed economy, programs across the country may be cut significantly because of budget constraints, while they are also losing the fundraising revenue generated by live performances. Some programs will struggle to survive on their own; meanwhile, all are adjusting to new circumstances that few were completely prepared to face. We asked several of our past grant recipients to share details about their current and expected future financial needs as they adapt in response to the pandemic. Here are a few of their responses:

"A grant from The Mockingbird Foundation would help put instruments in children's hands to facilitate virtual learning from home."

"It would allow me to buy an online, interactive music curriculum for my students to use."

"To help cover the cost of our program instructors because we have seen a huge loss in future funding and current donors." "Funding will help us to provide financial aid to students whose families can no longer afford our program fees." "Truthfully, my department is so underfunded and lacking in resources that any amount of money would be greatly beneficial for my students."

Thanks so much for supporting music education for children! Please help us spread the word by sharing this page and using #ProtectMusicEd on social media.

If you find yourself at home a lot these days, maybe you have a vehicle that you don't expect to use much in the foreseeable future? Maybe you could use an extra tax deduction? We can help you on both counts, and benefit music education in the process.

You can now donate a car, truck, motorcycle, RV, or boat to benefit the all-volunteer, fan-run Mockingbird Foundation. Fill out an easy form, and we'll get it picked up and processed, at no cost to you. You'll get an initial donation receipt from CARS, acknowledgement from the Mockingbird Foundation, and then a tax receipt when it sells.

We've announced the second in our series of 10(+?) weekend tasks designed to give you a bit of Phishy fun and frivolity in the absence of places to go and other things to do. (Tasks 3, 5, and 8 are particularly designed to engage the kiddos, if you're looking for family bonding, but we hope that each is somewhat entertaining.) The announcements come each Friday at noon Pacific, with a deadline of Monday noon pacific to post your video (of no more than 20 seconds) in the given .net forum thread. We'll mail some prizes each week, with a grand prize at the end - and plenty of time left to get on the leaderboard.

Task #2 has been announced, and submissions have started. Be safe, and make good choices!

British comedians Alex Horne and Greg Davies host a panel show on BBC called Taskmaster, of five comedians challenged to creatively accomplish a series of tasks, such as camouflaging themselves, long-distance painting, and destroying a cake. Alex creates the tasks, the panel members compete doing them, and Greg (the Taskmaster) ranks them, esp. when time or distance isn’t the criterion. (The U.S. version kinda sucks, btw.)

They’re now doing a #hometasking series, giving viewers 30 hours to submit a 20-second video completing a task, such as create an epic sporting moment in your kitchen, do something extraordinary with a pair of trousers, and make the best dancing elephant. Worldwide, they’re giving kids something to do, families a way to come together, and even young (and not so young) adults a goofy way to get off Zoom and entertain each other from afar. (We're big fans at Chateau Lemuria: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9.)

So… obviously (duh)… We’re doing a phish.net edition of #hometasking! (We’re not the first to piggyback, btw - and Alex did an earlier Advent series.) We’ll announce a Phish-related #hometasking challenge in a new forum thread each Friday afternoon. You’ll have 72 hours to submit it to the thread, and we’ll announce the “best” by Tuesday evening, prior to Dinner & a Movie. Task #1 is already up:

We’ll identify a top tier of submissions by likes on posts, so please weigh in on your faves. (Like Alex, I don’t like to judge). Those will get ranked by a .net luminary serving as the Taskmaster for that task - this week, David “ZZYZX”/”The Timer” Steinberg, the man behind PhishStats. Top winner each week will be mailed a copy of Sharin' in the Groove and two Mockingbird stickers; top overall winner at the end of the run wins a limited-edition TPC3 Jersey featuring art by AJ Masthay. We’ll track the progress over coming weeks on a leaderboard - and, oi, do we have a list of tasks! No tour? No problem! We’ve got couches, we’ve got kids, and we’ve got Phish.net!