The Boston Globe

Tuesday, September 17, 2002

Cambridge nonprofit holds on in shaky time

By Marcella Bombardieri
GLOBE STAFF

As a financially independent senior in high school, Anara Frank supported herself teaching gymnastics. After paying rent, she had little left over for food, so she ate the same menu every day: a defrosted bagel for breakfast, farmers' market vegetables for lunch, and black beans and rice for dinner.

That was a decade ago. Since then, Frank's classes have blossomed into an acclaimed nonprofit, Jam'nastics, Inc. The Cambridge group has nearly doubled in size every year since 1997, teaching gymnastics and dance - primarily hip-hop and Latin - mostly to disadvantaged young people on scholarships.

Jam'nastics has won competitions, garnered contracts from cities and school systems, and performed at the Apollo Theater in New York. One of its graduates now dances with pop princess Britney Spears.

But this year, Frank is back to the kind of precarious existence in which buying a takeout sandwich is unthinkable. Amid the downturn in the economy and a severe cut in state funding for the arts, Jam'nastics is teetering on the edge of existence.

What makes Jam'nastics a little different from the usual recessionary tales of woe in the not-for-profit world is that Frank has a choice. A moral dilemma. She could move her company to a ritzier neighborhood, drop the scholarships - and the students who receive them - and make a profit as a regular dance studio/gym.

"It's not honest to say there are no options besides folding," said Frank, now 28. "We could move to an affluent suburb, do what we do well, and make money. We have a viable business, but it would be a question of compromising the vision. How many kids will we have to cut before we say it hurts too much?"

They've already cut quite a few. Gone is the after-school program for 50 students that combined dance with a homework center. Gone are the "development" and "club" levels of the hip-hop team. All that's left is the 16-member performance team. Classes aren't starting until next week, later than usual, and will probably end the term sooner.

Last year, 75 percent of Jam'nastics' students received financial aid, to the tune of $80,000. It's no coincidence that given the sudden dropoff in donations, grants, and tuition, the group found itself $80,000 in debt, in a budget of $400,000. It may not sound like a big difference, but it meant a lot of skipped paychecks for the staff, which has shrunk to about five full-time and five part-time teachers and office workers. Frank hasn't paid herself since May.

In recent years, about half of Jam'nastics' income was money earned from performances and tuition from the more privileged students who pay their way. A quarter came from grants and donations, and the rest from city or school contracts.

It's the grants and donations that have shrunk recently, as well as the number of students able to pay tuition. Some foundations have told Frank she's so resourceful, they think she can do without their money. But the ingenuity that has gotten Frank through the last dozen years suddenly seems fruitless.

Frank finds that Cambridge appears to have fewer middle-class students who could pay tuition than it used to. And times are apparently tight enough for the average family that even the few dollars people drop into a hat in Harvard Square have dwindled. When Jam'nastics dancers performed on the street or in a festival in years past, they could make $500. This summer, they'd make only $100.

It's a surprising turn for an organization that has already defied the odds many a time. Frank started gymnastics at age 5, because a doctor told her mother that the clumsy little girl was behind developmentally. Frank remembers often being sent into the corner to practice alone, because she couldn't keep up with the other kids. It took her 13 months to nail a cartwheel.

Yet Frank more than made up for her slow start. She eventually earned a place on a team at a top gym. But she kept getting injured - a stress fracture in her back, sprains, tendinitis, knee problems. When she finally gave up on training, the gym offered her a $5-per-hour job teaching other students. In the meantime, she started teaching moves to her neighborhood friends.

Then, as a 15-year-old sophomore at Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, Frank decided she could do better than the low wages at the gym. She and Kathryn West, a friend who was a dancer, decided to start their own program, teaching after-school classes in gyms and auditoriums. West eventually left Jam'nastics for a professional dancing career abroad.

Frank got a scholarship to the University of Massachusetts, but she kept deferring as her studio grew. Sure, she had to work 14-hour days, and some years her earnings ran between $4,000 and $10,000, but Jam'nastics was always a success.

"She's able to move between different cultures and be seen as authentic in all of them," said Jean Moreau, a staffer with the Cambridge Business Development Center, which is trying to help Frank out of her current jam. "She's been successful for so long where people who have degrees and lots of financing for their high-tech firms have tanked."

Not that it has been easy. The company has weathered crises triggered by late payments, burst pipes, and the theft of its radios.

But Frank has never felt the situation was quite this dire. "I'm having to decide whether I'm going to pay my staff this week, or tell kids they can't come back," Frank said.

Frank isn't willing to give up on her mission to work with disadvantaged young people. She believes dance and gymnastics help instill self-esteem in her students, inspire them to do better in school, and keep them out of trouble.

The plan, for now, is to boost Jam'nastics' income by marketing to corporations - offering lunchtime exercise classes, or performances during a company picnic or events, like African-American History Month.

She has to make it work, Frank said, or so many people would be let down. People liek Bethany Allen of Cambridge, whose 13- and 7-year-old daughters and 8-year-old son all take classes at Jam'nastics.

"A lot of our kids are from backgrounds where they're not perceived as being able to be dancers. More affluent kids have access to these resources already," said Allen, who also works part-time for Jam'nastics. "Ours are the kids who have the most to gain. They don't have other options."