About Broken Strings in Manson, Iowa
A grassroots Iowa nonprofit on a mission to make sure every school district in the state has at least one kid with a guitar in their hands.
Where It Started
Where It All Started
Broken Strings was born out of one stubborn belief: a kid who wants to play music should not be stopped by the fact that nobody around them owns a guitar. Founder Scott Kirkhart grew up loving music, and watched too many young people in Iowa get turned away from it for the wrong reasons.
Music budgets in rural Iowa have been getting thinner for years. Programs that used to put an instrument in every kid's hands have shrunk to the point where some students never even get the chance to try. That is the problem Broken Strings exists to fix.
Why guitars? Because a guitar is portable, it is approachable, and it does not need a band room or a lesson schedule to start making music. A guitar is something a kid can take home, sit on the porch with, and figure out one chord at a time. It belongs to them.
We are small. We are local. We do not pretend to solve every problem in music education. But one guitar, given to one kid, in one school district, is something real. And we are doing it again and again until every district in Iowa has one.
The Mission
The Mission Is Simple
Iowa has 367 school districts. We want a guitar in the hands of a deserving student in every single one of them. That is the goal. Not a thousand guitars in one city. Not a single big donation that solves it all overnight. Just steady, district by district, kid by kid.
Every district matters because every kid matters. The student in a town of three hundred deserves a shot at music just as much as the student in a town of thirty thousand. When a kid opens a case and sees a brand new guitar that is theirs, the whole world cracks open a little wider.
“367 Guitars. 367 School Districts. We Got This.”
Scott Kirkhart, Founder
The Work
Moments That Matter
The Founder
Meet Scott Kirkhart
Scott is the founder and driving force behind Broken Strings. Based in Manson, Iowa, he started this mission because he believes every kid deserves the chance to play music, and he was not willing to wait for someone else to make it happen. He works directly with schools, connects with families, and personally delivers guitars to students across Iowa.