From Middle-Schooler To Non-Profit Founder: Puddletown Chess

Hi, my name is Ishaan, and I am one of the founders of a non-profit organization, Puddletown Chess. We named it “Puddletown” because we are based in Portland, Oregon and Portland is a very rainy city. 

When we started, we had 20 players in our first quad at a local pizza parlor. Since then, just within a year, over 400 young players have participated in dozens of different events at Puddletown. Our main goal is to help 500 scholastic local players reach a US Chess Federation rating of 1000 within 4-5 years.

There are many reasons why I created Puddletown with my best chess friends Zoey and Austin. I’ve been playing chess in Oregon for 9 years. I have played hundreds of games with many Oregon players. The community gave me a lot and helped me grow each year. Organizations like OSCF, OCF, and PCC were a key part of my growth.

Last year (2022), we decided to start giving back to this generous community that gave us so much for nearly a decade! I also want to grow as a leader, and a non-profit like Puddletown Chess is a perfect opportunity for me to enhance my leadership and communication skills. I am hoping that when I enter college and the workforce, this experience will help me be a better leader, friend, and colleague. 

Finally, I also took my chess coaching from many local, national, and international organizations/individuals. They all had their strengths and weaknesses. Our founders used our collective experience to create a fantastic curriculum and process to teach chess to young players. For example, we compile the homework each class, after making sure each kid understands the concepts, correct the homework and reinforce it in the next class. No other training program we know puts this much passion and reinforced learning for the growth of students!

At Puddletown I wear several hats:

1. First and foremost, I am one of the founders so I am involved in most decisions & activities of this non-profit.
2. I am the Level 3 coach for our training program—which is the most popular level that gets sold out each school term within 1-2 weeks.
3. I also write a lot of blogs and tournament reports for the website.
4. I join my co-founders and my brother Neev to offer game analysis during all of our tournaments and during special online events like Summer Chess Nights.
5. I host an educational webinar on specialized topics every couple of months.

Over the last year, many volunteers joined us to help scale the organization to the next level. We now have volunteers for training, web design, web development, homework review, game analysis, and more!

As mentioned before, we recently surpassed over 400 young players participating in dozens of different events at Puddletown:

1. Rated Quads & Tournaments - always sold out weeks in advance.
2. Training programs - Summer 2023 is our biggest training program by far (FUN FACT: We didn’t want to do the summer training because all of the founders of Puddletown are active tournament players and we had a very tight summer travel schedule. But we squeezed in a condensed program and I am so glad we did that!).
3. Monthly webinars - Each month one of our co-founders hosts these in-depth webinars and they are crowd favorites
4. Summer Nights - Based on the success of a previous online game analysis program, we launched the 2023 Summer Nights this term to roaring success. We already have 60+ participants in this weekly FREE program with barely any outreach! 

I am really proud and amazed at the growth of Puddletown and I am truly grateful for this growth in just 12 months with support from my co-founders, family, friends, and volunteers.

As mentioned, Puddletown’s dream and target is to raise and distribute $500,000 in free/discounted services or direct cash donations to individuals or other worthy organizations. We believe this will be sufficient to help 500 scholastic players reach a rating of USCF 1000 in Oregon within 4-5 years.

Within those 500 scholastic players, we want to focus on helping underrepresented, underprivileged, and underserved communities.

How can the awesome Chess.com community help Puddletown?

1. If you have school-age kids: join our mailing list and we will send information about all upcoming events at www.puddletownchess.org
2. You can also donate! PayPal, Zelle, or Venmo to: puddletownchess@gmail.com
   As a registered 501c3 non-profit, your donation may be tax-deductible. Please consult a tax professional first.
3. If you have a newsletter or blog, please showcase Puddletown there. We can provide all of the details, just reach out to us via our website at www.puddletownchess.org