Tag Archives: Don Peek

Multiple Grants Mean More Money for Your School

Posted on by

If you have a major project you need to implement at your school, you need to apply for multiple grants to make sure all your financial needs are covered.

Writing multiple grants gives you several advantages:

1) The more quality applications you submit, the more likely you are to get at least one or two funded.

2) Completing a second, third, or fourth grant application gets easier and easier because you will essentially use the same data again and again, just in slightly different forms.

3) If you have a large project with large expenses, you may have to get grant money from several sources just to cover everything.

4) Quality practice improves your application. Your second, third, and fourth applications will probably be much better than your first. You will be better able to describe your needs and be more convincing in your narrative. You have to be very careful and stay constantly on guard to get your highest quality application the first time through.

If you already have time problems, you may not have the luxury of submitting several different grant applications. However, there are many advantages to submitting multiple applications.

Below are two mistakes you might be tempted to make. Don’t do it. It is a virtual waste of time to submit the same letter to foundation after foundation. The grant reader will know exactly what you’re doing. Applications for grant funding should be individualized and personalized based on the giving patterns of the foundation and the needs of your school. A generic letter sent to multiple funding entities never works. You will always want to use the granting agency’s own application form if they have one. If not, follow their directions for applying by letter exactly and completely.

If you are seeking funds to buy particular commercial programs, never cut and paste their advertising material into your applications. They may tell their story well, but your job is to demonstrate how the commercial product fits into the overall program you are developing. Many grant readers view the use of advertising copy in a grant application as a lazy, impersonal way to get grant money. You may want to use their copy; just put it in your own words and describe how the product will be used to benefit your students.

I firmly believe that multiple grant applications are the way to go when you are seeking grant funding. The warning never to put all your eggs in one basket may be old and trite, but it applies today as well as it ever did. Multiple grant applications may mean multiple streams of money for your school.

Don Peek is an expert in school funding. He has run The School Funding Center since 2001. Its database contains over 100,000 grants available to all types of schools in the United States. Don worked in education for 20 years as a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent before becoming the VP then the president of the training division of Renaissance Learning, developer of the Accelerated Reader.
http://www.schoolfundingcenter.info

My School Needs Grant Money Now!

Posted on by

I don’t know a school in the United States that couldn’t use some grant money. Why? Because if you’ve done a needs assessment, you know your school has some needs, some problem areas. Good grant writing begins with good needs assessment.

A need is the gap between what you planned to happen at school and what actually happened. I’m really into school assessment. You need goals. You need to assess constantly to make sure you are moving toward those goals in a timely manner.

Continual assessment is critical to be certain your programs are getting the planned results.

Why? Because you may have a great reading program that could be working better if you had more books? You may have a math program that could be working better if you had more manipulatives. You might have an at-risk program that could be running much more efficiently if you had more aides. Your technology program may be antiquated and students can’t pass their computer literacy tests until you get new computers and software.

To get those additional materials or personnel units, you may have to write grants. Before you can write those grants, you have to define your needs. To define those needs and get grant money, you need data from the ongoing assessments you’re doing.

Those assessments can be formal or informal. They can be nationally-normed tests. They can be state skills test. They can be faculty and student surveys or interviews. The point is they should indicate to you whether proper progress is being made toward your goals.

Assessment can be made during any part of the school year. You should make preliminary assessments within weeks after the school year starts. You should certainly make assessments at the end of the first semester and the end of the school year. You should assess your summer program at the midpoint and at the end of the summer.

Assess the needs you have in your programs now. Begin searching for the grants you need now. Don’t procrastinate. Grants of different types are available throughout the year. Once you’ve done your assessment, you can begin searching for grants that match the needs of your school.

Match those needs by searching for grants on Google, subscribing to newsletters, or by using grant databases that are available on the Internet.

There are thousands and thousands of grants available to schools. You have to find those grants and match them with your problem areas. You find those problem areas by continually assessing your programs.

Yes, all schools in the United States could use some grant money to improve their programs. The key is making quality needs assessments to determine exactly what those needs are, then matching them with the proper grants.

Don Peek is an expert in school funding. He has run The School Funding Center since 2001. Its database contains over 100,000 grants available to all types of schools in the United States. Don worked in education for 20 years as a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent before becoming the VP then the president of the training division of Renaissance Learning, developer of the Accelerated Reader.
http://www.schoolfundingcenter.info

Focusing on Foundation Grants

Posted on by

Did you know that foundations in the United States give billions of dollars to schools every year? Millions of dollars are not even distributed simply because not enough schools apply.

That’s not usually the case with many well-known foundations, but it is true with foundations that are not in the public eye as much.

How does that impact you and your school? Instead of everyone trying to get Bill & Melinda Gates to give them money, they should be concentrating on the foundations that are not as popular and more closely match up with their schools’ needs. It is extremely important to find a foundation with a strong emphasis that just happens to be the same emphasis you have at your school. That may be improving attendance, lowering your failure rate, or improving math scores.

Even though more money is given to schools with high at-risk populations or more economically depressed populations, that is less true generally of foundation grants than federal or state grants.

Here’s the problem. How do you find all these foundations and find out what their main mission is? If you search the Internet, you will find some of them. Newsletters often list a few foundation grants.

If you want to get anywhere near finding all the foundation grants for which you are eligible, you will probably need to subscribe to a grant database. A database is a perfect place to find foundation grants because it usually allows you to search by state or region, and it also allows you to search by type of grant need.

However you happen to find the foundations, please consider applying to a few of them for grant funds. Find those that are less competitive. Phone them. Tell them what your school is trying to accomplish. Get them interested before you even apply.

Making this contact will also be easier if you use a grant database. The database will often give you a telephone number, an email, even a website link to each foundation. That makes it easier to make contact. This contact can often help you make your application better and help you secure the money you need.

Foundations give schools billions of dollars each year. Why shouldn’t you get grant money just like other schools?

The problem is that you can’t get any money unless you apply, and you can’t apply until you find the foundations that give grant money to schools. Use the Internet, use grant newsletters, and, above all, use a good grant database to find that grant money for your school.

Don Peek is a school funding expert. He worked in education as a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent for 20 years. He has run The School Funding Center since 2001. The School Funding Center Grant Database contains over 100,000 grants worth more than $6.5 billion.
http://www.schoolfundingcenter.info

Obtaining Big Grant Money for Your School

Posted on by

I shouldn’t say there are really secrets to getting large amounts of grant money for your school, but the guidelines listed below will help you get more grant money than 97% of the other schools in the United States. Follow them closely, and you’ll get more grant money than you believed possible.

As you read these, you may think they’re too simple to be all that important. You would be wrong! Follow the guidelines below, and you’ll get more grant money than 95% of the other schools that apply.

First, know specifically what your needs are and match those needs closely with the granting entity’s mission. Let’s say your students read two grade levels below normal. The U.S. Department of Education gives money to schools who have students with math levels two grade levels below normal.

That’s not a match.

You need lots of new library books. They give money for innovative technology programs.

That’s not a match.

You should always contact the granting agency BEFORE you start filling out their grant application. If you do not have a fairly close match between your needs and their purpose for giving, you are not going to get the grant money you need. Many times a phone call or an email can save you hours and hours of work.

First, match your needs with their purpose for giving.

Second, complete the application EXACTLY as you are instructed by the granting entity. If you don’t, either your application score will not be high enough to compete with other schools also applying for the grant, or your application won’t be read at all. If it says use 12-point type, use 12-point type, not 10, not 14. If it asks for a formal budget, submit a formal budget, not a loose bunch of numbers not specifically directed at the problem.

Follow directions. You expect students to follow directions exactly. Agencies that give grants expect you to follow directions, too.

Third, apply for many grants, not just one or two. For each problem you have, submit at least three grants. Try to solve four different problems. Do the multiplication—that’s 12 applications right there.

Follow the two simple steps above, and the grant money will start coming in quickly once you apply step three.

Once you’ve matched up your needs to their purpose for giving, once you’ve followed their grant application directions completely, then all you need to do is crank out enough applications. It’s a numbers game. Your odds just went up geometrically.

I’m not going to tell you that getting grant money is easy, but if you follow these three basic guidelines, you’ll get as much or more grant money than 95% of the other schools in the United States.

Don Peek worked for 20 years as a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent. He then became a VP then president of a division of Renaissance Learning, creator of Accelerated Reader.
Since 2001 Don has run The School Funding Center. It boasts a school grant database which contains over 100,000 grants for schools.
http://www.schoolfundingcenter.info