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Help Khan Academy this giving season


3m read
·Nov 10, 2024

Hi everyone, Sal KH here from Khan Academy.

I'm here to ask if you're in a position to do so to seriously think about supporting Khan Academy and its mission of free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. As you can imagine, that is a very big mission statement, and we are serious about it. Many of y'all have already benefited from KH Academy or know folks who do. There's over 150 million registered users, we're in 50 languages all over the world and growing.

There's been 50 plus efficacy studies showing that students are even able to put in 30 to 60 minutes a week on KH Academy. Nearly every one of those studies points to 20, 30, 40, or 50% acceleration more than expected. So we're serious about covering all of the core academic subjects from pre-K through the core of college and making it as accessible to anyone, anywhere, as free as possible.

But you can imagine, even though we are giving this away, it is not free to produce. Khan Academy is much more than me; now we're over 250 folks just in the home office, and we have hundreds and thousands of people outside through the world who are also helping to forward our mission.

And our budget, and I get a little anxiety every time I say it, is around $70 million a year. Now I say that's a real number, and that's what creates anxiety because myself and our team, we have to go out there and raise that every year. But I remind people about the social return on investment there.

That's the budget of a large high school in a country like the United States, but we are reaching a reasonable percentage of humanity and have the potential over the decades to come to reach a large chunk of humanity. I'm hoping that over the next decades or generations, billions upon billions are able to leverage these tools and be able to access their potential, and truly get an education and become part of a vibrant life, and be a member of society.

But we would not be able to do this, especially would not be able to give it away for free, if not for support from folks like yourself. And there is some good news here: every dollar you donate will be matched.

It's really important to think about it at this time of year when people are thinking about giving. Because this is really the support that allows us to invest throughout the year to continue to support the tens and hundreds of millions of folks who are already using Khan Academy, to grow that, to add content, and to add features.

And as you all know, there's a whole new world going on with artificial intelligence, and we want to make sure that that type of powerful technology is being used for good and it's being used to empower people in the most accessible way possible.

We would not be able to do that without your support, so thank you for listening. I hope you seriously think about making a donation; I will be very grateful, our team will be very grateful. But even more important, you should think about the tens of millions of learners of all ages that will be empowered because of your very generous act.

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