"There are over forty thousand unique private foundations in the United States, with total assets of approximately $300 billion." Sandra A. Glass, The Changing World of Foundation Fundraising, 1999The goal of this page is assist educators in obtaining grants that expand the school's missions and teacher's technology resources. Because of the ongoing explosive growth and change in the underlying hardware and software for computer and technology education, schools on fixed-budgets frequently need outside funding to renew and update their facilities. The situation is made more complex in that funding agencies seldom fund grants purely for equipment needs. Instructional technology for technology's sake is not rewarded, nor should it be within educational systems. It is important to know the current issues of the field, to be able to invent solutions to those issues and to find the grant sources to make those solutions come to life.
Following the process below will assist you in meeting these goals. The sequence is not rigid. That is, different situations will require changing the order of addressing these topics. The important point is to address all of them. Graduate students using this web page for course work need to demonstrate through a grant notebook and writings that they have excelled in addressing each of these eleven steps.
Acquire sufficient experience to articulate problems and develop alternative visions. The grant acquistion process begins with experience and observation. Keep running notes about your profession daily and in this diary of observation and reflection will emerge various problems and dreams of a better future. Visit and talk with other educators, including teachers and principals and ask about their needs and dreams for future plans. Record your observations of these visits and readings as well. Read current educational literature and stay current with educational news. Know the general educational issues and the more specific educational technology issues.
To start the grant process you must be able to analyze and infer. Find analysis of school testing results. What are the areas of greatest weakness and strength? Do surveys to collect data for further analysis. Can you see something that needs to be fixed or changed, a thinking skill which requires strong analytical ability? Are you able to see what is not, to make inferences, to have a dream about what could be? Your written thoughts in your diary will provide the seeds for your grant proposals.
This same online diary/notebook section should be used for your other notetaking on readings relevant to the grant process and issue areas appropriate to concept papers and grant proposals.
List of Goals
Based on your study, diary of notes and professional experience, create a separate web page, a list of goals. Brainstorm a list of changes you would like to see within your professional area of expertise and your field of study and practice. Put this list in order of importance. Then spend a few minutes writing an explanatory paragraph about each of the top three interests on your list. Find a colleague and share you top idea and get some feedback. Based on this feedback, rewrite your paragraph for your top choice item. Once you have some well-formed ideas and well-discussed ideas, move on to the next step.
Though research into readings and books is listed as step 9, that just provides a location for it in your online notebook, section 9. In reality, you should start this research and readings as soon as possible.
Return to this page's Table of Contents
Plan.
Develop and record a plan to address your top concern. This plan should
be based on your experience, your knowledge of the problem, district educational
needs and available resources. Check with other resources for planning
ideas. Look for other articles and resources that provide information like
these:
National Center for Technology Planning, an international clearinghouse for technology planning documents, planning aids, essays, etc. NCTP personnel also maintain an online repository of technology planning resources designed to aid educators.
Rand Report on Planning and Financing Educational Technology
McRel - Funding Resources for Technology (If this site does not display, choose a more current version of your web browser or switch browsers.)
* Once you have a focus and a plan for change, look for funding agencies
who interests in change match yours. Also be willing to consider changes
to your own plan to better match the interests of various change agencies.
Return to this page's Table of Contents
Know the Grant Process.
Review resources available to assist proposal preparation.
Return to this page's Table of Contents
You need to grow an awareness of what various agencies of government and foundations will fund. Read a large number of their RFPs. Ask around your region for grants that are being planned or implemented. Learn from their expertise. Contact your district's grant development person or contact nearby colleges and universities for experienced help. Where you can, collect and build a small set of grants that have been successfully funded.
This document lists virtually all programs and competitions under which
the Department of Education has invited or expects to invite applications
for new awards for FY 2002 and provides actual or estimated deadline dates
for the transmittal of applications under these programs. The lists are
in the form of charts -- organized according to the Department's
principal program offices -- and include programs and competitions the
Department has previously announced, as well as those it plans to
announce at a later date. Note: This document is advisory only and
is not an official application notice of the Department of Education.
These grants have fairly short life spans, sometimes done once and never again, so it is hard to keep current links to such information. Further, recognizing that corporate philanthropy is good business, companies are generally doing this to generate sales leads and advertisement capital. Fine. You can still benefit from their give-aways. Also, unlike other funding sources, they will distribute technology (hardware and/or software) without as many strings attached to their use as with many government and private foundation grants. Examples:
Return to this page's Table of Contents
A concept paper is merely a short essay that describes your basic idea. Learn to develop a concept paper for a grant. Initially, keep this concept paper short and to the point. Single space your work and keep it on one side of one piece of paper while you mull it over and share it with others. When your basic idea appears stable, expand it. Initially, the concept paper should cover:
At stage one, keep this to one page. Many grant officers will initially not want to see more than this. At stage two, when grant officers and others have provided some positive feedback, keep the concept paper close to two pages, four pages maximum. Keep your budget realistic. When you actually find a grant that is close to your needs, you will go back and create a new version of your concept paper for a tighter match the requirements of the grant. Give your concept paper a version number and a date at the bottom of each page of the document. You will generally expand or modify this concept paper when you have found a grant and studied the grant's requirements.
Return to this page's Table of Contents
After you have your concept paper in hand, develop a budget for your idea.
You will probably have cost headings for people, hardware and software. People
may include consultants, trainers, developers, technicians and others.
Set your spreadsheet up to keep a running total of your overall costs.
Your budget research is likely to have you going back to your concept paper
and making further changes.
The budget process will also raise issues related to product and cost.
There are many other sources of information to assist your research on products, costs, terminology and designs:
If you work with an institution, they may have special budget requirements. But if you do not, looking at their special requirements will still provide further ideas.
When you find a grant close to your needs, you will go back and create a new version of your spreadsheet budget to match the requirements of the grant, adding and deleting items as appropriate.
Return to this page's Table of Contents
Match Grants and Concepts.
In earlier steps, you briefly reviewed a wide range of grants to gain a general understanding of interests and expectations. Now return to the grants you studied earlier. Find the closest match between the interests of the grant agency and the grant concept you are developing. If no matches are close, either choose a new concept or do further grant research.
Find their requirements for submission and begin working on them. Their requirements may be listed on the Internet or you may need to contact them by phone and ask for submission requirements. If your educational institution does not have a grant specialist, find someone who was successfully completed one. For example, contact nearby colleges and universities and request the support of others who have been through the grant development process. When you find a match between your idea and your grant proposal, send your concept paper to the funding agency and arrange a time to talk with them on the phone about it. Revise your concept paper based on this interaction. Success at this stage is positive indication from the grant agency that you should proceed with an expanded or full proposal.
Return to this page's Table of Contents
At some point in the process you will need others to understand and support your grant concept. There are reasons for starting this search at different stages in the grant development process. You could start collecting collaborators from the very first step, but for reasons of time and efficiency or vision you may need to delay reaching out to others. But there will come a time when you must make contact. Use their ideas to further enhance what you started so that you build a collective vision. Ownership of the idea comes from helping to create and expand the concept. This ownership is part of the motivation to help obtain and complete the grant requirements. You must help build this ownership in others.
At whatever stage you reach out and touch someone, build a database of contact information, including email, phone and fax information. Keep track of when you contact people and what version number of the proposal the contact has seen. Keep this data in your grant notebook for ready reference.
For large grants with many sub-sections, create a subset of your contacts that are willing to tackle the writing for a particular section.
Return to this page's Table of Contents
Notes from your readings must be included in your online course notebook.
You are always encouraged to look for works that are more current that
those provided here.
Work out an apprenticeship. That is, ask other educators and administrators to help you make contact with others developing grants. Seek out involvement with their projects in order to better understand what is involved in doing your own.
Return to this page's Table of Contents
Your funding or grant agency will have specific guidelines and may provide a host of other grant development services. Become very informed about the requirements and resources of the granting agency in question. Study other successful proposals.
Sample successful grant proposals:
Your directions at this stage come from your grant guidelines. Time management is critical. Follow and complete the grant guidelines carefully and seek others to review your writing and preparation. It is common for the work of editing, disseminating for others to review, and revising to take a few weeks. Make sure your course instructor receives these various versions of the proposal as they are developed.
Many grants ask for letters of support, another process that can take many days to complete.
When your revisions are complete and letters of support are in, you will need the signatures of an authorizing administrator, an administrator that may need time for a lawyer and finance officer to review the final document. Notify administrators well ahead of time that a grant proposal is nearing the time that signatures will be needed. You do not want to find out that a key signature cannot be obtained close to a mailing deadline because someone is out of town during this crucial period.
Once your grant proposal is in the mail, start on the next grant. It
will take your mind off wondering what will happen to your last proposal.