Donors Choose!

Donorschoose.org connects teachers and donors so that children can learn, play safely, explore new interests, or just receive the equipment necessary to follow their dreams. And if you're an educator in LAUSD, your school will be receiving boxes of $15 gift cards to be issued to parents in the coming months. If you are an educator, SIGN UP at www.donorschoosela.org. Post a project and see what happens; 60% of the projects posted receive full funding.

Tell the parents are your school about these gift cards. Give them the opportunity to use them by providing open computer lab hours and by showing them the process of donating online.

This is a great opportunity for Los Angeles public schools and it's a great opportunity for you teachers to finally implement that new community garden/anti-bullying/extracurricular project you've been dreaming of.

Government Grants - Deciphering the Request for Application

Government grants can be a huge source of funding for schools and school districts, but reading a 75-page Request for Application (RFA), let alone writing those winning grants, can be daunting. This blog post will help you to navigate the RFA to get you on your way to writing that winning proposal fast and easy.

The most informative pages of this RFA will be the ones that discuss the overview of the grant. This will tell you who is eligible, the background of the program and the purpose of the funding. It should provide all the necessary information you need to know in order to know if your school/program will be a good fit for this grant. If you still have questions about your eligibility ( and even if you don't), I suggest calling the program officer/contact for the grant and telling him/her about your school and program.

After your computer downloads what is most likely a very extensive file, open that sucker up. There will usually be multiple pages of Table of Contents, but I'd like you to bypass that for now. The page that lives behind the Table of Contents, usually named "Critical Dates," which might make you feel like you're in critical condition, as it should. Take this page and paste it somewhere you will see it every single day. These dates are not suggestions. They are the difference between funding your pet project and seeing all your hard work go to waste.

Critical Dates
If there is a webinar, conference call or meeting scheduled in this list, attend it. This session is comparable to those review sessions college professors hold where they tell you what they're really planning for the final exam. If you missed this webinar/conference call/meeting, call up the program officer and ask if there were any materials handed out. He/she may even have a transcript of the questions asked and answered.

If there is a submission deadline for an Intent to Apply, go through the Table of Contents and find the Intent to Apply section and pull the information and the form. Determine what information you will need and who you will need to speak with to get that information. You have to work quickly with government grants to ensure you don't miss any deadlines.

Application Process
This section will provide the nuts and bolts information for your grant application. It will give you application instructions and submission instructions. Skim this section for now and go back to it a week before the application is due. Don't leave it until the last minute because something always comes up.

Core Application Narrative
This section is extremely important - it's like your MLA handbook for your grant application. It will tell you the format it should be in and should tell you what information you need to include. The first time you go through this section, make notes of information you will need to collect from outside sources. After reading through it a second time, create a timeline for the collection of that information and the writing of individual portions of the grant. This will keep you accountability to yourself and the grant application. Share that timeline with other members of your "team."


Rubric
The rubric is a big signifier of exactly what the grantmakers want from you - the close you adhere to the rubric, the closer you are to scoring very well on the grant. This same rubric will be used by the people who are scoring your grant during the Peer Review Process. In that blog post, I talk about the subjectivity of the grant scoring process. Therefore, the closer you adhere to the rubric, the less wiggle-room there is in the scoring.

Take, for example, the rubric for the 21st Century Community Learning Centers grant:
The rubric is split into four sections: Advanced, Adequate, Limited, and Minimal. In the advanced column of the "Community Needs Assessment" section, it reads:

"Thoroughly assesses and identifies the unmet need for the proposed program and convincingly describes how the program will address community needs. thoroughly documents in detail, school demographics, the number and percentage of schools eligible for Title I, the number and percentages of students eligible for FRPMs, a estimate of students performing below academic grade level, attendance and truancy rates, API, juvenile crime rates (if available), and the average hours of attendance per students."

If you planned ahead and Prepared Your School and have done the research to fully Understand Your School, then you will have already answered these questions before you even found this grant rubric. Piece of cake. Note how much of an "advanced" score is based on numbers. If you are thorough and technical in your assessment, you'll probably score higher.

The rubric has sectons for the Program Elements, Enrichment, Family Literacy and Educational services, Collaboration and Partnerships, Program Administration, Sustainability Plan, Capacity for Effective Evaluation, all identifying key traits that the grantmaker's are looking for in a winning grant. It's a long rubric (which can make matters more difficult for you, the grantwriter), but all rubrics vary in size and specificity.

Attachments, Letters of Agreement, and Morandums of Understanding
Although government grants generally impose a page limit, the number of attachments you have to send in can easily double or triple that. Attachments are a messy business - where you'll most likely find the mistakes in your grant, if you look hard enough (and trust me, the grant readers most certainly will). When you reference an attachment in your grant, the reader will go looking for it, so make sure it's actually there. 

Letters of Agreement are the physical proof of collaborations and partnerships that will make you event/program possible, but are usually reserved to voluntary commitments and in-kind contributions -- your manpower and community.

Morandums of Understanding (often referred to as MOUs) are for paid services. This should be viewed as a contract between a partnering organization that will provide staff, services, facilities, and equipment for a fee. These should be very explicit and outline the roles and responsibilities of all individuals and businesses involved. It should estimate the monetary value of such contributions.


Scoring Process
Government grants go through a Peer Review Scoring Process. Read this blog post to find out more.

Application Package Checklist
And finally, the holy grail of grants -- the checklist. Just like Santa, check that list twice -- or twelve -- times before finally sealing that envelope or hitting that "submit" button or freeing that messenger pigeon (not suggested).

Program Planning

Is your program rock-solid? If you can answer the following questions with ease, then you might be right. Maybe you're just starting out on the road to program development. If that's the case, these questions can help to guide you and help to identify areas where you need to clarify your project.

Program Description - Describe your program in 2-3 sentences

Your Team - Who makes this program possible? Who needs to be around the planning table?

Goals, Projected Impact - What are the key goals pf your program and how will it impact the community?

Rationale for the Program Method - What is the rationale behind how your program is designed and delivered? Why this method vs. another?

Track Record of Succes - Share your experience in doing this work on a similar project that would help funder feel confident that you will be successful.

Program Budget - What would it cost to do this work? What are the largest expenses? How much would you like to ask for from this funder? What would the funds be used for?

How Government Grants are Scored

Most government grants go through a peer review process - meaning all grant applications are read by a panel of people who are in the same or similar field that the grant will be funding. During this process, readers will score submitted proposals based on a points scale and funding is determined by who received the highest score when all the scores are totaled together or when they are averaged together.

When you were in school yourself, teachers may have used rubrics to score your papers on many different points of the essay (grammar, content, voice, etc). Well, grant readers do the same. Using a rubric, you will be given points for certain categories and have them taken away for inadequate or missing information. If a grant is asking for something that you haven't provided, you are going to lose points.

At an informational grant writing session I attended a couple weeks ago, we received a sample reviewer scoring rubric that was actually used to score a grant for a Fair Housing Initiatives Program. Applicants were scored based on five categories (only five, for what was surely a 30 page proposal):

• Capacity of Applicant and Relevant Organization Experience (worth 25 points), based on
• number and expertise of staff 
• organization experience
• performance on past projects
• Demonstrated Need (20 points)
• Soundness of Approach (35 points), based on
• support of policy priorities
• info requirements
• budget form and narrative budget work plan
• Leveraging Resources (5 points)
• 1 point if less than 5% total project costs from non-Federal Housing Initiatives Program resources
• 2 points if 5-10%
• 3 points if 11-20%
• 4 points if 21-30%
• 5 points if at least 31%
• Achieving Results and Program Evaluation (15 points)

With the exception of "Leveraging Resources," all of these categorical points were determined base don opinion alone. For example, "number and expertise of staff" could receive up to ten points, but there was no explanation, such as "x number of staff have professional or paraprofessional degrees." This could have been someone's reasoning for the points they gave, but doesn't exactly provide an objective (read: idiot-proof) scoring guide.

Just like when you were in school, you probably did better on a paper if you saw the rubric beforehand, so if such materials are available, make sure you write to that scoring guide. You need to fulfill the grantmaker's guidelines, so ensure that you are referring to relevant (and correctly cited) material.

Finally, if you submit a government grant, you should request your scoring rubric, regardless of the outcome, so that you can see where you lost points and why. This could help you further refine your program. If the grantmaking organization gives you any trouble when you request this information, write a letter under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) and they will be legally required to furnish the requested documents within seven days.

Writing the Mission Statement

Applying for grants as a school puts us in a different position that most nonprofits. The language for what we do isn't always well established, which leaves us to make it up for ourselves. But how do we create a mission statement that sounds professional and meaningful, like those of nonprofit organizations?

Compare these two mission statements. The first is from Camp Wildcat, a nonprofit I worked with in college. The second is from the high school I work with.

1. Camp Wildcat is a student-run, non-profit 501(c)(3) organization based out of the University of Arizona devoted to improving the lives of Tucson's youth. Over 100 dedicated volunteers provide cost-free activities for fun, friendship and to portray college as an attainable goal for everyone!

2. Our mission is to provide San Fernando Valley families with an innovative college-preparatory visual and performing arts high school that employs an interdisciplinary curriculum to develop all students' intellectual skills and creative talents in order to attain measurable artistic and academic excellence.

Obviously, these two organizations are serving two very different populations, but they both include a couple major components:

• Who they serve
• Their goals
• The services they provide

These are the mission statements put forth by each respective organization. However, when I write grants for them, I will often re-word the mission statement to be more applicable for the funding organization. Here, I will use examples from Camp Wildcat because I have written the most widely varied grants for them.

For an arts and culture grant aimed at "neglected urban neighborhoods" and desiring to "leverage and enhance resources and talent": Camp Wildcat is a student-run, non-profit organization based out of the University of Arizona. Each year, student volunteers organize and staff camps in which students from Title 1 elementary and middles schools in Tucson have the opportunity to camp with collegiate role models and to learn about subjects related to each camp's theme.

For a community foundation desiring to fund organizations that helped child development through creativity and exposure to nature: Camp Wildcat is a non-profit organization that aims to provide cost-free camps and specialized activities for Tucson's youth. University of Arizona student volunteers provide children with the opportunity to challenge their personal limits, build interpersonal skills through teamwork, explore creative outlets, enhance their own self image and view higher education and general success as attainable goals.

Make your mission work for both your organization and the potential funding organization. You wat to give them a piece of literature they can believe in and that fuses their values with your outcomes.

Writing the Grant Proposal

You can find the full components of a grant proposal pretty much anywhere on the web. Trust me, a quick Google search will yield approximately 20 million web pages.

Most every web page suggests that you include the following:

• Cover letter: This letter should be similar to your LOI, but should be limited to a singles page, without exception. It should be on your school's letterhead and should be styled as a business letter. Include the overview of your organization (mission statement) and the purpose and reason for your request (program mission statement, how this program has been/would have been funded in the past - why you need their help!)
• Cover sheet or executive summary: This is going to give organization's a quick look at your program. It should look like the cover page to a report and should include the following information:
• School name
• Program name and purpose: Keep it in a titular format, but make it descriptive. "Grant Application for Literacy Intervention" isn't a real crowd pleaser. For example, "Read to Succeed" is going to garner much more support. "Read to Succeed - a home and school crossover literacy program" is even better.
• Need or problem: Can be included in the program name, or can be subtitle below the program name and purpose. Working with the previously mentioned example, it could be included as "Read to Succeed - a home and school crossover literacy program for at-risk elementary school students."
• Objectives: Our objective is included in the title - clearly, we're trying to improve the literacy rates of at-risk kids. If you positively can't fit it into your title, put it in smaller font beneath it and try to be succinct.
• Methods: Again, I fit the methods into the title - go me! If you can't fit the methods into the title, I suggest not including them in the cover page because it will clutter it and make it look less professional.
• Total cost.
• Amount requested: Hopefully the amount you're requesting isn't the total cost. Look into ways to show different kinds of involvement. You've probably already got the teacher's salary covered, right? Well, that's a part of the program cost. You've probably already got the facility covered. Again, part of the program cost.
• Contact information: Include it in block format at the bottom of the page. This should be the grant writer/manager contact information, not necessarily the school's.
• Central document: This is the real meat of your proposal. These elements should be worked into any grant proposal, regardless of whether or not you are required to write a full proposal or asked to submit your request in an online application with guiding questions. These elements provide the necessary reasons behind your request and show the funding organization how responsible your school is and that you are a trustworthy organization to fund.
• Needs Assessment: LAUSD schools luck out here - your school experience survey or the school report card can more often than not provide the reasoning behind implementing one program or another. You need data-based reasoning in your grant proposal for your program to exist. It should include the following information:
• Situation
• Problem or need
• Target population
• Reason for need
• Opportunity
• Support or Evidence
  
• Goals and Objectives: What are the goals of your programs and how do they address the needs of your school?
• Include (at least) one goal per problem or need
• Plan to implement
• Process of implementation
• Expected results
• Methodology: You'll want to include how your program will be implemented, logistically speaking. You are also defending why it's best that your program be handled by your school, rather than a nonprofit organization. What supports are already in place in the school setting?
• Who, what, when, where
• Sequence of events
• Timeline
• Evaluation: This is, by far, the biggest deciding factor in whether or not a grant gets funded, in my experience. You want to assure your funder that your school is going to be transparent about the results of the program and that there are already intervention supports in place to ensure that results are achieved. Unfortunately, LAUSD has a bad reputation in most parts nowadays, so you need to convince the funder that your school is going to evaluate and concretely measure the impact of the program.
• Plan for meeting performance
• How to determine its success: This can be done through surveys, examinations, and quantifiable numbers (such as tardies or dropouts).
• How to modify
• Possible follow-ups
• Budget:
• Total budget for the school: If your school is in debt, you need to explain why and give the funder your plan for making up your deficit. Assure them that their funds will not be used to do this (as most overhead costs are not funded).
• Total budget for the program
• Amount requested from funder
• What requested amount will cover
• Other funding sources
• Qualifications:
• Establish credibility
• Organization history or expertise
• Faculty members and support
• Accreditation
• National memberships
• Number of faculty/staff/teachers and the qualifications of such staff: If 90% of your teachers have a masters degree, this is something you'll definitely want to mention!
• Recommendations or endorsements of support
• Previous successes
• Conclusion:
• Restate problem
• Restate solution
• Restate use of funds
• Appendices: 
• IRS letter
• Annual report (if you have one)

In many cases, I find this format to be rather repetitive. Never copy and paste information from one part of the proposal to another. Re-state, but never assume that the person reading your proposal has read all the other portions of the proposal.

In my experience, including all the components of a grant proposal that the Internet suggests is not so important as writing to the specific grant you are applying for. If the grant you're applying for doesn't require an executive summary, don't include an executive summary! Pertinent information you might include in this portion can easily be sneaked into other areas of the proposal and you will still be following the proposal guidelines. What's even more important, though, is that you write to the funding organization's mission and goals.

It's perfectly acceptable to have a document full generic paragraphs describing your organization, your program, etc. that you can draw upon when writing a grant proposal: this will save you lots of time. However, writing a grant proposal is very much akin to writing a paper for class. Unlike high school or college papers, you might not get in trouble for plagiarizing yourself, but your request will be ignored if it doesn't fit with the funding organization's goals or preferences. Therefore, it's important to try to draw connections between your program and the funding organization's mission. Every element of the program should be connected to the funding organization in some way.

So whether you are following the template above or not, be sure to include the information is suggests - this information establishes your ethos as an organization and the reason they should fund you!

Writing the Letter of Inquiry

The purpose of a letter of inquiry is to help you determine whether or not there is a grant available to apply for if your research online has been unyielding. For some grant makers, this is a requisite step in receiving their Request for Proposals. This step helps to weed out those organizations that may not be as serious about receiving the grant or whose programs may not fulfill the mission of the funding organization. Participating in the LOI process will save you time in that you don't need to write a full grant proposal to be rejected, so your LOI should be taken as seriously as a full grant proposal.

To see how the LOI process fits into the larger grant writing process, go here.

Your letter of inquiry should include the following elements:

• Your school's mission statement or statement of purpose. What do you do that other schools don't? Do you provide exemplary arts/science/engineering education? Do you serve a large number of English language learners or at-risk or impoverished students?
• Reason for and amount of request. This includes an overview of the program to be implemented. In what concrete ways does this program tie into your school's mission? What
• Needs that this program will address. Again, be concrete in your measurement of
• Who else will be helping to implement this program? Schools are lucky when it comes to this portion of the letter of inquiry because you have some resources that might be difficult for nonprofits to procure. Think of the natural partnerships you already possess: community organizations, connections that might already exist amongst your staff or parents, parent volunteers, etc. 
• Request an application.
• Budget. The budget you include should be the program budget, not your school's yearly budget. You will need this yearly budget later on in the grant writing process, but not for the LOI.

I highly suggest limiting this letter to one page, if possible, but 2-3 is the maximum. It should be formatted like a normal business letter, including the school's name, address, contact name, contact numbers and emails in the "sender's address." Use your school's letterhead and make sure the letter looks professional.

You letter of inquiry should fulfill the three following goals:

• You want to convince the funding organization to consider your request. What need is your program filling? How would it impact the lives of the students you serve if they have/don't have this program? Avoid the sob story, but speak in terms of quantifiable facts that people care about. Don't try to make the funder feel bad, but make them care about your students as much as you do.
• You want to provide a snapshot of your school. What kind of community does it reside in? Why is their support necessary? What are you doing for your students that no one else is doing? What kind of students do you serve? If Hollywood were to make your school into a movie, what are key attributes movie-makers would have to include to be true to your school culture? Think in terms of an "elevator speech." How would you sum up your school to someone if you only had the length of an elevator ride to do so?
• You want to create a favorable impression of your school. Put a positive spin on the negatives. Don't say "Last year, we had two school shootings and a bomb threat," but rather "Our students need x intervention program so they can feel safe in school."

If you've included the necessary information, achieved the aforementioned goals and fulfill the necessary funding requirements, you should be well on your way to receiving funding for your program. Once you receive approval from the funding organization, you're ready to begin writing your grant proposal.