Raising Quick Money

Anyone who needs and wants grant money for a good academic cause can find it.  How badly do you want the grant money and are you willing to put forth the effort to get it?

A special challenge arises if you need grant money quickly.  What if you came back to school and found that budget cuts have made it impossible for you to be as successful as you have been in the past? Or you know you need curriculum support materials that simply weren’t budgeted for.  What if you have a class full of students many of whom simply will not be able to move on to the next grade or pass exams unless you have extra help?

This is not the time to look for big grants that may take thirty days or more to write, even longer to be read and evaluated by a foundation. Next thing you know it’s next semester before you have any hope of receiving funds.  Large grant initiatives are the answer to long-term funding problems, but it’s not going to help you if you need it now! Don’t berate yourself, all the planning in the world cannot possibly help you predict all emerging needs in your school.

Start with the Discount School Supply® free grant database.  Start looking for foundation or corporate grants that have a deadline coming up soon or even better, no deadline at all.  These grants generally have short applications, many of which can be completed online. The foundation board often meets and decides who gets the money shortly after the deadline is reached.  If your timing is right, you might have grant money in your school account within 45-60 days.  This means you can begin impacting your problem areas before the end of the fall semester. This is especially true if you have an existing relationship with a foundation. Never assume a private foundation will only give you money once. The key is to establish a real working relationship with the people in the foundation who are responsible for making decisions. They’ll come back time and again if you’re crafty. Invite them in for a tour if you have received funds from them, they love to see how their support is impacting student learning.

When you are looking for a grant, you need to make sure you have a very clearly defined problem.  Next, you need to search the DSS grant database until you find a grant provider that matches your problem.  In fact, you should make absolutely sure that:

1) your problem matches the grant criteria;

2) you fully qualify for the grant (eligibility for public schools for instance);

3) the grant has a deadline within the next 45 days, or no deadline at all.

If you have a problem that can only be addressed by additional help as well as money, you might seek a partnership with a local business. Let them know that their money is important, but you also need volunteers to come during or after school to work with students who are behind.  Sometimes these volunteers are more essential than the money, so if you are going to go after a business partner to help you, make sure they employ the type of person who can most easily make a transition into the role of tutor or classroom helper. It’s all about relationships.

Hopefully, you are the kind of person who goes into solution mode when you see a problem that arises for which there is no plan. No time for panic. Other habits to get into are things like book fairs, product box top programs (General Mills) where students save and bring in the box tops that are then mailed in to a processing center for quick cash turnaround. With the right rah-rah attitude and a big glass jar in the school lobby, you’d be surprised how much you can raise. A school store that builds in a little profit for the sale of books, candy, etc. is a great way to teach kids about economics and can raise quite a bit of cash. Candy sales at holiday time, and other fund raising events can provide your school with “mad money” so you’ll have it when you need it.

Don’t sit back and wait for someone else to take the lead.  Start looking for those grants and partnerships today.

Am I Spinning My Wheels?

After you have a few grant applications under your belt, and you still don’t have a grant in hand, it’s easy to become discouraged. Be brave, there are hundreds (probably thousands) of grant opportunities out there just waiting for the right program idea to attract and woo grant makers. I hear teachers ask, “What am I doing wrong?” My response is always, “You’re not doing anything wrong, just excercise patience and persistence.” There are some key tips to improving your chances of success, but mostly it’s believing in your school, your programs and your idea that will bring home the bacon. Grant writing is also about building relationships. When you identify a potential grantor, don’t be shy, get to know the people in the organization.

The two main types of competitive grants that we are interested in:

1)    Foundation grants

2)    Corporate grants

These are the grant opportunities you will find in the Grants Database on the Discount School Supply^® website.

“Competitive” means that you have an equal opportunity to secure the funds available from the grantor, assuming you meet eligibility requirements, and you have a program that meets the grantor’s agenda. Corporations and foundations set up their funding arms to solve problems they feel are important in their communities. Get to know what these issues are, the Grants Database provides links to the organization’s website, you will find plenty of information there for learning what they have set out to accomplish with their charity.

Most of the thousands of foundations that give grant money to schools will continue to do so year after year. They are required to give a certain amount of grant money each year in order to keep their tax-exempt status. While it is true that some foundations may give less money than they have in the past, due to economic downturns, they will still be sponsoring grants. Good news is, as we approach fall of 2013, corporate profits are up, a piece of those profits must go out to the community. Unfortunately, foundations do not typically advertise their grant programs. You have to search for opportunities in a grant database or find them on the Internet. That’s where the Grants Database comes in—it will become a valuable tool as you move forward to snag those dollars.

Schools that write good, strong, competitive grant proposals well before the deadline will get their share. And schools that consistently and persistently apply for grants year after year, will reap benefits. Don’t get discouraged, you can make sure your school gets its share of available grants.

• Keep your program ideas aligned to the Common Core State Standards.
• Be data driven
• Use your test scores to illustrate your needs.

For instance, if you need a new reading program, include graphs and charts about reading scores. Much of this data can be found right in your own district office, or your state education department will no doubt supply the information you need on their websites.  Funding for supplies can often be found as an “in-kind” donation. If you have a technology company in your town, they might step up and give your school some new computers. Or if you already have a grant for an after school program, approach another foundation for a “matching grant”. This foundation’s job will be to provide that last piece of support you need to make your program a success. Make sure their contribution is not treated like an “extra”; the funder needs the acclaim and advertising that comes with any community gift.

With persistence and patience, the brass ring will get closer all the time!

Step 7: Beating the Grants Deadline

Over the last few months, we have discussed the seven steps needed to find, research, and write successful grant applications.  As a reminder, the steps include:

1. Finding a problem in your school that needs correcting,
2. Developing a solution to the problem,
3. Finding a grant that fits your situation,
4. Confirming that you are eligible for that grant,
5. Gathering the application and all the data you will need to complete your grant application,
6. Actually completing the application, and
7. Getting your application to the grantor by the grant’s deadline

The last one, getting your application to the grantor on deadline, is critical. I have seen beautiful grant application packages thrown out because they didn’t arrive on time. Months of hard work go out the window. With many foundations and federal grants, there is only one opportunity in a year to apply. Those applicants now must wait a year to try again. If it’s due by 5:00 Eastern Standard Time on Friday, they mean it. No exceptions, no excuses. Be sure you review how the application must be submitted—electronically or in the mail? Federal grants have always had a secure portal for applications. It has always been (in my experience) a tortuous experience; give yourself plenty of time to learn how to use the digital application process. You will get frustrated; take a deep breath, you’ll get there.

But it’s like many things with grants, the devil is in the details. By now, if you’ve followed through the first 6 steps, this one will be so ingrained in your thinking that it will be no problem. Right?

With the potential for emergencies in mind, you should always set a deadline for completing your grant application a minimum of one week before it is due. Even a week will not guarantee that a mailed application will arrive on time. You also need to be absolutely certain whether the deadline the grantor established refers to the postmark on the application or the date when the application must reach the grantor’s office. If you do not know that information, call or email the grant’s contact person to make certain. If the U.S. Postal Service is the conduit, be sure to send things certified mail, return receipt. The extra cost will be well worth the peace of mind.

For tracking your grant writing projects, you might want to buy a big wall easel to capture all your brainstorming, thinking webs, dates etc., They have them at Discount School Supply®.  Check out the Colorations® Wall Easel.

The first grant application you write is always the most difficult. Eventually you will be so good at it that the steps are automatic. But when you become good at this, you will be a hero, and that’s obviously a good thing!

The Third Step: Finding Possible Grants

If you want to secure grant money for your school, the first step is to understand in detail the main problems/needs your school faces. The second step — the subject of the last blog — is to develop a solution that has the greatest chance to solve that problem. And the third step is to locate all possible grants that might help fund your solution.

Grants available to schools fall into three basic categories: federal grants, state grants, and foundation or corporate grants. Federal and state grants are generally larger, and their applications are longer and more difficult to complete. Foundation and corporate grants typically yield schools less money, but their applications are less complex. That means you can usually fill out several foundation applications in the time it takes to complete one federal or state application.

Many educators attempt to locate grants on the Internet by using search engines or by subscribing to grant newsletters. Those methods tend to be inefficient and end up costing both time and money. The best way to locate potential grants is to use a grant database. The more comprehensive and up-to-date the database, the better it will serve your needs.

Your very best choice for using a grant database is the free one offered by Discount School Supply®.  It is large, free, and fairly comprehensive.  By far the most comprehensive grant database available to educators is the School Funding Center Grant Database. It contains virtually all federal, state, foundation, and corporate grants available to schools in the United States. Old grants are removed and new grants are posted on a daily basis. The one drawback to using this database is the cost — $397.00 per year. While relatively expensive, it still saves educators both time and money because of its comprehensive nature. First, use the free database provided by Discount School Supply®.  If you need even more grant information, go the database provided by The School Funding Center.

If you are looking specifically for federal grants, another good database to use is ED.gov Grants. This resource comes directly from the federal government, and it is free. It lists every federal education grant available to schools in the United States. It does not list state, foundation, or corporate grants. If you use this grant resource, you will still want to track down discretionary grants for schools.

If you are specifically looking for state grants, your best bet is to go to your state education agency’s website. Some of those sites include good grant databases that will help you locate current state grants. Others are not so good — or worse than that — and will take a little more work on your part. Go to ED.gov’s Education Resource Organizations Directory page to find your state education agency’s website. If your state’s site does not have “grants” or “funding” listed in its menu bar, type “grants” into the search box on the site to see if you can find listings that way.

If you are specifically looking for foundation grants, your best bet is to go to the Foundation Center. This organization lists thousands and thousands of foundations in its database. Many of those foundations offer grants to schools. The database is good for finding foundation grants, but the subscription cost ranges from $595.00 – $995.00 per year depending on the number of foundations you want listed in your searches. The more comprehensive the database you wish to search, the more your subscription will cost.

While you can find grant listings in many places, if you want to find all of the grants available to you quickly and easily, you will want to use one or more of the grant databases listed above. Remember, grant writers should use their time to write grants, not look for them. Save both time and money by using a good, established school grant database to locate the funding solutions you need in order to improve student achievement.

Get All the Grant Money You Need

I wish there were secrets for getting grant money for your school.  If there were, I’d be more than happy to share them with you in this blog.  But there are no secrets to getting grant money. You can get your share of grants provided you follow the proper steps consistently. Most of the schools that don’t win grant money either don’t apply for grants or do so in a haphazard way. Below are seven critical steps that I believe you need to follow and apply in order to secure grant money for your school. I will break down each of these steps in more detail in future blogs, but please don’t wait for those blogs to start using this information.  You should be applying for grants right now for summer school and the fall semester.

1. Understand in detail the problems your school faces. If you want to secure grant money for your school, the first step is to understand in detail the problems your school faces. To understand the problems and their severity, you must consistently perform needs assessments. A good needs assessment will measure the difference between what you expect to happen in your classroom, school, or district and what actually happens. The wider the gap between expectations and actual outcomes, the larger the problem you have.

2. Develop a solution that has the greatest chance of solving the problem. Once you have identified your greatest problem, the second step toward obtaining grant money is to develop the solution that has the greatest chance of solving your problem. That solution will entail details about personnel, programs, time, and materials that will be needed to accomplish your goal. For example: What will it take to get your students reading on grade level rather than 1.5 years behind the national average? You must develop a plan and have every expectation that it will work. As a part of the plan development process, you must develop a reasonable budget that details what it will cost to implement your plan.

3. Begin looking for grant money to pay for your program. Assuming that you do not have the money in your regular budget to finance your plan, step three is to begin looking for grant money to pay for your program. Since your time writing grants is more valuable than your time looking for them, I strongly recommend that you use a comprehensive school-grant database to match your needs with a grant from the federal government, your state government, a corporation, or a foundation. It is vitally important that you match your needs as closely as possible with a granting entity that uses its grant money to help schools solve the type of problem you are experiencing.  Obviously, you should use the free Discount School Supply® school grant database first.

4. Verify that your school is eligible for the grants you will seek. The match between your needs and the granting agency’s requirements is so important that it leads directly to step number four: always call the person listed as the contact for the grant(s) you seek and verify that your school is eligible for that grant (those grants). If you are not eligible, or you sense a negative response from the contact person, you should immediately go back to step three and start the matching process again. If you are going to be successful in getting grant money, you must have good, verified matches.

5. Obtain the grant application and read it carefully. Step five involves gathering information. Once you know you have a match between your needs and a grantor, you should obtain a copy of the grant application, read it carefully, and gather all the statistics and other information you will need about your school and your needs in order to complete the grant application.

6. Complete the application. Write clearly and concisely. Follow all directions to the letter, including the font style and type size that you use to prepare the application. Complete every section of the application. To be sure you do a quality job, complete each section as if it were the only section on the application. You will be competing for this money with other schools. A quality application is essential.

7. Get your application in the mail a week before the deadline. The final step is to complete your application and get it in the mail at least one week before the deadline. Overnight delivery does not always mean your package will be delivered the next day. If your package is late, you may be able to reclaim the postage you paid; but if you’ve missed the grant deadline, the granting entity will not consider your application.

That’s it. Follow those seven steps, and you will get more than your share of grant money. For more detail on these steps, watch the next seven blogs to make this seven-step process work even better for you.

3 Good Reasons to Apply for Grants Now

January is the perfect time to apply for grants. You should be back into your regular routine after the holidays. That should give you the opportunity to set aside some time for grant writing. I know it’s never easy to find the time to apply for grants, but you should make every effort to do so now because in January and early February the stars align to give you a very good opportunity to win some grant money.

For one thing, many new grants are announced at the beginning of the year. You should use the Discount School Supply® grant database and look for any new grants that have been posted recently. Some of these will be entirely new grants that have never been offered before. Others are grants that are offered annually but are not announced until January each year. Either way, you should find new grants in the database that were not there during the last few months. Take advantage of these new opportunities by applying for one or two of the grants that have just been posted.

A second good reason to apply for grants now is that you have the freshest assessment data to work with that you’ll have all year. As I’ve stated many time before, each of the programs at your school should be assessed at mid-term and at the end of the school year. You should have done your assessments at the end of December or the beginning of January. That means you have access to the best assessment data that you’re ever going to have. You’ve just finished a semester. You know exactly how much progress each student has made within each program.  Now you’re ready to sit down and write grants using that invaluable assessment data.  You may want to fix a program that’s lagging or expand a successful program. It really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that you have the assessment data that you need to apply for whatever type of grant you need.

The third reason to apply for grants right now is that you can apply for three different time periods.  You can apply for some quick grant money (probably in the form of foundation or corporate grants) for the spring semester. You can also apply for grant money for summer school which is now just around the corner. Finally, you can begin to apply for larger (probably state or federal) grants for the fall semester. Because many of these grants have much longer, more involved applications, you may want to begin writing them now. It’s never too early to start piecing together the parts of a large grant which may impact your entire school district.

Grant money is becoming vital to many campuses and districts. Hopefully your school has a plan for writing grants. The two very best times to apply for grants is during January and February and at the beginning of the school year in September and October. Since we’re already well into January, you should start applying for grants immediately.

You should never miss these opportunities to apply for the grants you need. Why? Three reasons:  many new grants are announced at this time of year, you have fresh assessment data, and you can apply for grant money for the spring semester, summer school, and the fall semester.

Don’t delay. Start using that free Discount School Supply® grant database to find the grants you need today. Start filling out those grant applications tomorrow.

Can You Spare a Few Hours?

I could tell you that you should write a short grant during the holiday break. You’ll probably have a little extra time during the ten days to two weeks that you’re on vacation from school. A lot of grant deadlines are listed for December 31st, so that makes it a good time to write a grant and get it in just under the wire. Also, the competition will be limited, because, let’s face it, how many people will actually get around to applying for a grant during the holiday break?  

Having said all that, I’m not going to recommend that you apply for a grant during your break because you probably wouldn’t do it anyway. I am going to suggest that you take a few hours during your vacation time and do some grant research.

The first research I would do is to examine the mid-term assessments you will likely be administering before the holidays. These assessments could be for the district, a single campus, or even a classroom, but they likely contain information that will help you get grant money for the spring semester or summer school.

Basically, you want to identify two types of programs from your assessments. You want to know the programs you have in place that are not as productive as they should be. You set goals for each program at the beginning of the year. The first thing you are looking for are programs where the students simply are not progressing as they should. They won’t reach their goals by the end of the year. You will need to make changes to those programs early in the spring semester, and you may not have the money to make those changes. If you don’t make changes, you are unlikely to reach your goals. If you make the right changes and get grant money to help you, you just might be able to turn the program around and still meet your goals.

You should also be studying your assessments for another type of program: one that is working remarkably well. If you just keep doing what you’re doing, your students will far surpass the goals you set. But what would happen if you were able to expand that program to other students, other grade levels, or other buildings? Chances are, they would get the same extraordinary results. You can use your assessment data to write a grant to expand your services to those larger groups. This type of assessment data can be very persuasive to grantors if you use it properly and make a thorough analysis of why you are being so successful.

The other research I would do during the holiday break revolves around school grant databases. As you probably know, I am a strong proponent of using grant databases. They save an unbelievable amount of time and effort. Discount School Supply® provides you with an excellent free grant database where you can find grants listed under a wide variety of topics. You need to take a few hours and do a comprehensive search using that database just to see what all is available to you.

You would probably be amazed at the number of grants available, the amount of money available, and how simple some grant applications are to complete. If you are going after grant money for a district, campus, or classroom, knowing the content of the Discount School Supply® database can be invaluable to you. It’s certainly worth a few hours of your time on the Internet to explore everything that’s available.

No, I’m not asking you to spend all your holiday vacation working on one grant application after another. Just do some research so you’re ready to start filling out grant applications when you go back to school. Study those mid-year assessments to find those programs which are failing miserably. Then find the programs that are working remarkably well. Repair the failing programs and expand the ones that are working. And finally, do some research using the Discount School Supply® grant database. It’s free and it’s a perfect resource for finding the grants you need.

What If You Need Big Money for a Grant Project?

Last time I discussed what to do if you needed grant money quickly. Basically, when you need grant money quickly you look for foundation grants with short deadline dates or into your community to find a business partner to fund your needs.

But what if you need big money for a project? You might need $50,000, $100,000, $500,000 or even more. While there are a few foundations out there that give money if those ranges, most of the big grant money comes in the form of federal or state grants. It is true that quite a bit of money has been pulled from these grant programs because of the bad economy, especially in certain parts of the country, but these are still your best sources if you’re looking for big grant money.

You probably already know that any time you deal with the federal government or a state government, things tend to be complicated. The same is true when you apply for a federal or state grant. For one thing, the application is generally longer and more complex than those applications used by foundations or corporations who give grants. I’ve seen federal applications that go into the hundreds of pages.

Don’t let me scare you away, though. Many of the pages are informational, and you don’t have to do anything but read and understand them so that you can fill out the rest of the application properly. On the other hand, you will need a very detailed budget, a detailed assessment program, and, of course, a detailed plan to remedy the problem that resulted in you applying for a state or federal grant in the first place.

Your first two steps for applying for a state or federal grant should be:

1) Define the problem that you have that requires you to seek a large amount of state or federal grant money.
2) Use free grant databases to find the state or federal grants you need.

I’d start with the free Discount School Supply® grant database.
If you can’t find what you need there, you might look at the following federal sites:
www.grants.gov
www.ed.gov
If you are looking for a state grant, you can go to your state education agency website using the following link:

www.k12schoolnetwork.com/State_Education_Websites.html

Seeking big money requires you to do more work. However, if you will read instructions carefully and follow them exactly, you should be able to apply for a state or federal grant with limited headaches. Just remember, you’re going to have to work more to get the bigger grants.

A Grant Database is Good, But…

A free school grant database like the one Discount School Supply® provides is a tremendous asset, but you have to have a good program that you are looking to fund to make it useful. Many educators want to go out and find money when they don’t have a clear purpose in mind for using that money.  That’s not practical, and they rarely find grant money that way.

You need a program in mind that will either improve something you’re already doing at school or that will address a problem that has arisen at your school. If you have a reading problem at your school, and you have a good reading program which is simply underfunded, you might find a grant that will provide you with the additional funding. Maybe you have an after-school tutoring program that is working well, but you don’t have the money to fund enough tutors for all the students that need tutors. A grant could make a good program much better by allowing you to hire all the tutors you need.

On the other hand, you may have a reading problem and no program in place that is likely to fix that problem. Maybe you need an after-school reading tutorial program that will allow tutors to work with individual students or small groups. Such a program might be an excellent candidate for grant funding if established and run in the proper way.

You need to have everything you’re going to do and all the people and supplies you will need down on paper in a working model before you apply for grant money. The grantors are going to want to be able to visualize your program and how it will work before they fund it. If you can’t visualize the program yourself well enough to put it down on paper, don’t expect grantors to lay out the money you need to start or improve your program.

A good way to get a grasp on your overall program is to do a five-part planning document:

1)      Define the problem you have using as many statistics as possible to make the problem clear and concrete.

2)      Describe the comprehensive program you want to establish that has an excellent chance of positively impacting your problem.

3)      Give details of the growth that is likely to occur as a result of your program.

4)      Give details of how you will measure that growth (pre-, post-tests, state tests, nationally-normed tests, etc.)

5)      Make a detailed list of exactly what you will need in terms of people, equipment, and supplies in order to make the program successful.  Be sure to list what your district or campus is supplying and any other grant money that you may be using.

When a grantor sees that you’ve done this level of planning, you will have an excellent chance of receiving grant money if you use the grant database to make good matches for your program.  Find all the grants that you might qualify for and then narrow your list down to the two or three that most closely match your needs.

If you’ve done your part in the planning stages of your program, and you get good matches from the grant database, you are very likely to win the grant money you are seeking. It’s not magic. It’s just good planning and hard work.

Free Grant Information

In some of my first blog posts way back in 2008, I discussed using the Discount School Supply® free grant database.  I want to take a little time to review the nature of that grant database and just how useful it can be to you when searching for grants.  If you’re not using the DSS database to look for grants at least once a month, you’re probably missing out on a lot of grant money that you could get for your classroom, campus, or district.

First, I’d like to tell you my philosophy of time management as it relates to grants. I believe you should always spend your valuable time writing grant proposals rather than searching for good grants to write. I’ve known people who try to use Google to find grants and literally spend weeks looking for a grant that matches their needs. That is simply not necessary when you have a tool such as the free grant database that Discount SchoolSupply® provides you.

Basically what it does is bring all school grant information into one place on the Internet. The information in the database is collected from thousands of different sources, but it is then placed into one database that makes it quick and easy for you to find grants that match your needs. In fact, the database is so comprehensive and so up-to-date that if you can’t find a grant in a particular category when you search the database, it is unlikely that such a grant exists.

On the other hand, if you don’t find the grant you need this week, you should check back every couple of weeks. One major strength of the Discount SchoolSupply® grant database is that it is updated on a daily basis. Old grants are removed when their deadlines pass, and new grants are entered into the database every day. If you search for a grant today and give up, you may very well miss an excellent grant that is posted next week or next month.

The Discount School Supply® free grant database lists grants available in all fifty states. It lists grants available to public schools, private schools, higher education, and non-profits that have an educational component. Grants are listed in the following categories:  after-school, arts, early childhood, migrant, professional development, reading, science/environment, and special education.  For those particular categories you will not find a more comprehensive, fresher database anywhere, even if you have to pay hundreds of dollars to subscribe to it.

My greatest concern as I write this blog is that you may not be using this excellent tool, or you may not be using it nearly as often as you should. Billions of dollars of grant money are out there and available to almost every school IF you do your homework and search for the right grants that match the problems you happen to be experiencing at the time.

If you do nothing else with the grant database, at least set aside thirty minutes to an hour in the next few days and just look through this valuable resource. Familiarize yourself with what grants are out there and what isn’t funded by grants. Then if you find that you want to introduce a new program at your school, or if you have an old program that just isn’t working like it should, consider coming back to this free database to find the grant money you need.

Here’s what you really need to know about the Discount School Supply® free grant database. You can’t beat the price, and you won’t find a better, more comprehensive, school grant database for the categories listed anywhere — and that’s from an old grants blogger who has been around for years.