Mount Si student raises $8,000 in music equipment to donate to music program

By Evan Pappas • January 4, 2017 7:31 am

After a nine-month project to earn his Eagle award in the Boy Scouts, Mount Si High School senior Christopher Ostrem will be donating $8,000 in instruments and musical equipment to the school’s music program.

As interest in classes centered around the arts and music grows, many students are unable to get the full experience and participate in creative endeavors, due to the lack of equipment available in classrooms.

Ostrem saw this himself in his experience with the school’s “Music Creativity and Collaboration” class.

“It was my favorite class, but it was starting to grow in the second semester and were already having problems with the amount of equipment that was available,” he said. “When it was time to do my Eagle project, I saw that as an opportunity to raise money and get equipment for the class.”

Last April, Ostrem began raising money by creating a crowdfunding campaign through the website gofundme.com and spread the word around the Valley.

“I started a gofundme to raise money from anyone, and my dad works at Microsoft and we put up a bunch of fliers around there,” he said.

Mainly he publicized the project in the Valley, earning donations of cash and equipment.

He also began to send letters to various musical instrument and equipment companies to request donations to his project.

“I think I sent 52 letters to different companies and got a pretty good response, a lot of them sent equipment our way to help the class,” Ostrem said.

It took a long time for Ostrem to find out where to send his requests. Through research, he was able to find contact information for the CEOs or boards of directors for each business.

“The first batch was slow and took a while to get responses, but after I got the first one, a couple more started to appear,” he said. “Usually I get emailed by a company within two or three weeks, and talk about what they wanted to send me and I would receive the product within a week or so.”

Ostrem received thousands of dollars worth of equipment in the form of guitars, amps, strings, basses, and drum sets. Some of the companies that donated included Takamine Guitars, Taylor Guitars, Ernie Ball Strings and Electro-Harmonix.

Ostrem’s goal was to raise $10,000. He said he was only able to raise about $2,000 in monetary donations, but the value of the equipment he received helped him get closer to the goal.

While equipment kept coming in, Ostrem began to run out of space in his house to store it all. He made part of his donation to the school in October, with the rest of the equipment and final cash donation to be made in mid-January.

While the donation drive did act as his final project to earn his award and become an Eagle Scout, Ostrem said he greatly valued the chance to give back to the music program and that he improved his own understanding and skills in money, business and patience.

“It was really me, determined to get this and me doing most of the work on my own,” he said. “I just (place) a greater value on time and money and everything, greater communication skills, too.”