2022 Annual Report
The BIG Year.
It is exciting to look back over the year and figure who was coming to see us! We’ve set new records!
8,287 guests as of November 1 2022!
22 Field trips of school groups or local organizations, compared to 7 the year before
Notable Happenings:
We opened 3 new unique indoor exhibits: Discover Tree, Heritage Orchard, and Crystal City.
We made our Day Camps more accessible:
from Mon-Fri for 5 weeks in 2021, to Mon-Wed 10 weeks 2022 at a reduced cost
From 50 campers in 2021 to 127 camp experiences in 2022
Thank you to Five Shores for the use of their event tent, and to the Waring Family for use of the outdoor space!
3 Outdoor stations were set up: The Sound Garden, Woodworking with Mr. Stewie, and a Water table
Five Shores hosted our First Annual BREWMASTERS, Brew-off and Magic Show.
Our successful new fun-d raiser brewed up about $15,000 towards our annual operations and a new volunteer!
Guest Breakdown
We have welcomed several new animals to the “Live! Nature” part of Cognition: Static the tarantula; Lightning a Sudanese plated lizard; Cogsworth the ring-necked dove; Candy Corn the corn snake; rats Yume, Midnight, Dusk; Twilight the hedgehog, and Scooby the Chinchilla.
Dan Trigg, Google Review
“Fantastic place to take your child to explore and embrace science, technology, engineering and math. Friendly and knowledgeable staff. I'm thrilled that a place like this exists in our community!.”
Financial Review
Cognition is funded by daily admission and membership fees, program services, a small gift shop, and community support. Here is the breakdown of the past year:
Income Makeup
Expense Breakdown
Grants
In 2021 Cognition was awarded 5 of 6 grants that we applied for! This year, many of those projects were wrapped up or made huge progress. Here is an update on the active grants of 2022:
The Grand Traverse Band of Ottawa and Chippewa Indians--$20,000 + $5,000 from Art and Mary Schmuckal Foundation to replace the front windows and doors of the building and create a garden in the north corner of our parking lot! This project is complete except for a small portion of the fence that will be installed after the airplane is in it’s permanent position (above the roof secured on a large metal pole).
An additional gift was given in by a beloved neighbor in memory of Anne Damm to fill the garden with interactive music and art!
Rotary Charities--Assets for Thriving Communities Grant of $50,000 to add infrastructure and exhibit stations to our outdoor areas, as well as create several unique exhibits indoors. (~90% completed)
Seabury Foundation--$7,500 to initiate a Student Involvement job experience program. This grant helped three students work on specific goals while enriching our staff team for a year!
The Oleson Foundation-- $15,000 for our summer day camp program costs that served around 177 5-13 year olds the past two summers, and materials that will go on to benefit the center year round.
The Optimist Club of TC-- $250 towards the building of our first custom Virtual Reality driving simulator.
Impact 100 TC--$110,000 for an Earth and Space Lab, consisting of 4 Virtual Reality stations, an inflatable planetarium, and a Mobile Lab to take both experiences off site! The Earth and Space Lab is fully launching December 2022.
New in 2022
Benzie County Tool Box— $3,000 for our Member Scholarship program. This offers families in need an annual membership at half price.
Benzie Sunrise Rotary— $4,000 for our new Special Program Scholarships for workshops and fieldtrips, to make special programs more accessible for all!
