Thanks to You, Curiosity Never Closes

Your financial support ensured our mission to ignite curiosity continued – and expanded.

Thanks to You, Curiosity Never Closes

Your financial support ensured our mission to ignite curiosity continued – and expanded.

Your Impact by the Numbers

Curiosity at Home

We were determined to use the crisis as a catalyst for innovation. We developed digital service platforms that provided new opportunities to serve the community. In the last year:

virtual visits to Curiosity at Home, each one completely free

youth, families, and teachers explored their curiosity

Virtual Field Trips

Our Virtual Field Trips are led by science educators, bringing PacSci’s world-class STEM programming into a child’s classroom or home.

Since October 2020, Virtual Field Trips helped address the challenges of remote schooling, supplementing STEM curriculum with content that was easy to schedule, had no geographic barriers, and was loved by students.

Students in Title I Schools

Programs across Washington and the US

Students Served

Summer 2021 Camps

When the world closed, Camps for Curious Minds helped to fill gaps in childcare through in-person camps and provided highly interactive virtual camps for those families who preferred to keep their kiddos home.

More than 100 unique camp experiences featured a variety of STEAM topics, including engineering, robotics, astronomy, chemistry, anatomy, epidemiology, environmental education, computer science, and more.

Scholarships 178

Sensory-friendly Camps 24

Girls-focused Camps 13

Total Attendance 3,300

Meeting Students Where They Are

Holly was AMAZING! The program was so well planned. The flow was great. Having the macroinvertebrates at the end was a way to re-engage our younger kids. There were times to move and share. She made kids feel seen and heard. She used the chat and was ok with us unmuting and helping our kids be their best self. She didn’t skip a beat when we would jump in. Holly knocked it out of the park! Thank you so much!

Meeting Students Where They Are

Loved Fatima, our instructor. She was engaging, accepting, knowledgeable, knew how to keep the pace of the program going, skilled using the technology. The program itself was educational, fun, and held a wide variety of activities by using models, taking us to the pond, investigating the pond water, and fielding questions and comments. I LOVED it and so did our students.

Summer camp

“As a single mom who is working two jobs to make ends meet, this scholarship has made it possible for my two kiddos to attend PacSci camp. I never would have thought it would be possible, but this summer my kids are so excited to attend!”

Summer camp

“Receiving a scholarship from the Pacific Science Center has gifted my kids a little bit of “normal” this year. They will be able to attend a summer camp in person which they missed so much last summer. Because of the pandemic, our household salary has been reduced and anything extra like a fun summer camp is not currently financially possible. Thanks to the generous gift from PacSci my kids will be anxiously counting down the days until they can head to camp and grow their strong minds!”

Summer camp

“Instructional techniques, content knowledge, and student engagement were spot on. It was very easy to view the specimens -which is tricky to do in a virtual environment. The kids all had a chance to respond and ask questions. You have really perfected presenting over Zoom! Kudos! The kids loved it and learned a lot.”

Thank You

from Will Daugherty and Jason Barnwell

Dear friends,

We are so grateful for your generosity this past year–a year that highlighted, more than ever, the importance and the impact of PacSci’s work.

In the midst of a global pandemic, you continued to support our mission to serve our community. Thank you.

Through all these challenges, PacSci remained committed to igniting curiosity. When COVID-19 forced us to close our facility for normal guest operations, we ramped up our online and digital offerings to continue supporting educators and families. By year end, we served tens of thousands of fans of all ages with new, free digital education programming on Curiosity at Home.

The innovative new digital programming reflects our commitment to inclusion, diversity, equity, and access. We helped address the challenges of remote schooling by delivering 759 virtual field trip programs to more than 32,000 students since October 2020. More than half of these students were in low-income Title I schools where we make the programming available at no cost to the schools, students or their families. Feedback on these programs was resoundingly positive. More than two-thirds of the teachers who participated told us they want this programming to continue even after students return to the classroom.

PacSci served our community even as our largest sources of earned revenue fell to near zero. We became almost entirely dependent on philanthropic support to ensure our programs continued to reach the audiences who most need them. Long time and new donors, individuals and institutions all supported our mission throughout the year and allowed us to reach a point when we could focus on our renewal.

We emphasize “renewal” instead of “reopening” because we are committed to evolving as an organization, not to returning to the prior normal. Our renewal includes identifying the best ways to use our facility, creating a high-quality guest experience and ensuring that PacSci is economically sustainable. Throughout this process, we will continue to ask how we can best serve the community.

We look forward to partnering with you to strengthen PacSci’s critical role as a driver of exploration, curiosity and creativity for everyone in our community. Just as science continually evolves, so will we. Thank you for supporting our journey.