Fundraising for Philadelphia pools overflows

After generating enough corporate sponsorship for this summer, the city gets a jump on fundraising for next year.

More money has been donated to help Philadelphia’s public pools stay open. The city is already working on securing donations to keep the pools open next year.

A local health care provider has given $60,000 this year and pledged another $60,000 for next year to help keep the public pools open. Susan Slawson is the city’s Recreation Commissioner. She says the effort will go on for another year because her department just doesn’t have the $3 million necessary to keep the pools open without assistance.

“The goal was to do this because we understood what was going on with the budget. We knew for three years we needed to ensure there was additional funding needed to support our pools and serve our community members. We went into this knowing that we had three years to raise funding. Next year is going to be our last year to raise funding.”

Slawson says the city is hoping to be on more stable financial footing in 2012 and then be able to keep the pools going without outside assistance.