Week 3 assignments - Finding Relevant Real Grants

The grant process seeks to match identified needs with the appropriate grant agency. The first two weeks have stimulated some thinking about different levels of needs including national, state and local. Once a grant is received, it runs for a particular duration of time. During and at the end of that grant period, reports must be made to grant officers or to someone about progress towards the grant goals. Many grants continue to fund a particular grant concept for several years, for what is known as its funding cycle.

1. It is now time for some research into grant developments in your own school and district. What technology grants does your school and school district have running at this time and how much funding do they provide? How many other grants that are not technology related are also running at this time? As you do this research, keep careful track of the names and contact information of everyone who plays a role with these school building or districtwide grants, both those within your district and school and those outside. Ask each about their role in the grant process. Developing a database of contacts is as important as studying the grants themselves.

2. Get copies of grant documents and begin a folder of grants. This folder will get bulky.

• One important item is the RFP or Request For Proposal in which someone with the power to distribute money said that they would distribute funding based on meeting certain conditions, conditions which are often competitive.
• Another important item is the completed successful proposal that was submitted. There may other documents as well. Having models of successful grants is very important in writing grants of your own. Once you have 3 or 4 successful grant document sets, pick one of them for now and read it carefully. These documents are the tip of the iceberg of a successful process of written and oral communication.

At least 2 of the 3 or 4 need to be technology grants, but one technology grant will do initially. Read the grant as if you were a grant reviewer, comparing the requirements in the RFP with the actual submitted grant proposal. Think about the education needs you uncovered in week 1's assignments and the technology needs you isolated in week 2's assignments. Could any of them have been met by the money that funding the grant proposal you are reading?

If you cannot find such grant documents in your school system, please let me know. We may have some challenges here getting examples in your hands.

One grant you should definitely have in your personal grant collection is your district's EETT grant, though it is possible that they did not submit last year.
     The No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (P.L. 107-110)
     Title II, Part D 2003-2004
     Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) Planning Grant

Here is the list of those funded in North Carolina by this grant in its first year of its funding cycle. There may also be lists for other states as well located in their Department of Public Instruction web pages.

See this DPI page for more details. Is your school or district on there? http://tps.dpi.state.nc.us/eett03/EETTMENU.html

Due date for the next year of funding is June 30, that is this one is coming due very soon. Ask to see if you can help whoever is submitting this for this year and let me know if there is any role for you to play.

Searching for RFPs is a specialized kind of research, but not unlike searching for information to write a paper. Keeping the information pyramid model in mind, find other people, books and articles, and web pages which track and can inform you about relevant requests for grant proposals.

You will find that certain grants in a funding cycle come due at the same time every year. If you don't get the grant proposal accepted, you rewrite it based on feedback from the last one and resubmit it. If the grant cycle has ended, the proposal should be saved for editing to fit new RFPs as they come along. Because many grants will suddenly appear with a very short timeline for response and submission, the more completed grant proposals you have written, the more you will be able edit one of them to fit a new proposal. Grants generally only appear to pop up suddenly. Generally information about the grant was just slow in getting to you. But do not under-estimate how long it takes to compete for larger grants that involve multiple schools in multiple school districts. It is not unusual to take a year for large groups to meet, understand, and incorporate everyone's needs.

4. The following week it will be time to start writing several concept stage grant proposals.