Millions of dollars are available for education through charitable foundations, private corporations, and government grants.
With all the media coverage devoted to financier Warren Buffett's recent multibillion-dollar endowment to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, one might assume there are fistfuls of low-hanging dollars ripe for the picking to any school superintendent or principal who learns how to write a decent grant proposal. In truth, educators who want to tap grant money to improve teaching and learning need to do their research.
The business of philanthropy has become globally sophisticated, technologically advanced, and financially complex. The people who staff the world's largest foundations and charitable trusts are driven professionals who expect—and are expected to deliver—accountability.
The catchphrase in today's philanthropic world is "measurable results." Grant makers—the men and women who direct the funds—are savvy and smart. They have high expectations, and they don't suffer weak proposals lightly. The surest words for articulating a successful proposal arepassion, partnerships, and perseverance.
Every Penny Is Measurable
The Internal Revenue Service reports that charitable remainder trusts claimed $64 billion in total accumulations and $6.9 billion in distributions in the 2004 tax filing year (U.S. Department of the Treasury, 2006). By IRS standards, $64 billion is a lot of money, but it's substantially less than the estimated $260 billion charitable organizations are reported to have received in 2005 contributions (Giving USA Foundation, 2006).
The discrepancy in total giving illustrates well the sometimes blurred distinctions between media coverage and reality. Of the billions of dollars donated to charities each year, most is recirculated into annual operating expenses and weekly fund-raising campaigns. Only a portion is committed to projects and programs. Ultimately, philanthropic foundations and charities that offer educational funds are very selective about how they disperse their money in a given year.
Passion Is Everything
Whether it's $100 million or $10 billion, a lot of money isavailable for education programs. Public school leaders can access grants if they are dedicated to a specific program and focused on sustaining their projects.
"I think there are a lot of people just trying to chase the money rather than trying to make a difference in the lives of children," said Raymond McNulty, executive director of the Successful Practices Network under the International Center for Leadership in Education in Rexford, N.Y.
A former teacher, principal, and superintendent, and a senior research fellow with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, McNulty is generous with his advice to school leaders seeking private funding for education projects. Foremost, he recommends that grant seekers avoid the pitfall of putting the money before their passion for a project.
"The approach needs to shift from finding money to help education to finding ideas, and then seeking the money," said McNulty, a past president of ASCD, who's coordinating a Gates Foundation high school project encompassing 10 states and 75 high schools.
McNulty encourages school leaders to find ways to jumpstart their programs, even if it means spending district funds up front to pilot their projects. That helps gain support for grants based on actual successes, rather than expectations. "You really have to try to fix the problem with your own resources to begin with. [Grant makers] are looking for people who are committed to their own causes. The schools really have to have some skin in it first before they go looking for money."
"You also have to be really focused," McNulty continued. "Foundations are geared toward very specific tasks. You have to understand what they're looking for and what they're trying to accomplish."
Research Is Golden
It's critical to research a foundation or other charity organization before asking for money. Not only should you study the grant maker's mission statement, success stories, and submission requirements, but you should also verify the organization's legitimacy and ability to follow through on funding.
In his article "Grant-Writing Pitfalls," Stephen Wilensky hits the mark. "It's crucial to follow the guidelines and the protocols of the funder before you submit a proposal," he writes, "and don't distort an agency's objectives just to attract funding" (Wilensky, 2005).
Wilensky, the music department chair at Central High School in Philadelphia, offers blunt advice to ambitious school leaders who seek funding to improve public education: "It is imperative that you understand the relationship you are proposing between yourself and the funding source. You are requesting money from someone, and the organization or individual is going to ask why!"
McNulty echoed this advice: "If you're going to chase grant money, you need to have good baseline data up front, and your data have to be clear and transparent. Sometimes, it's best to expose all your weaknesses to the foundation—and you've got to be able to do that publicly."
With the benefit of electronic commerce including Web sites and e-mail access, grant seekers enjoy an advantage today that makes it much easier to perform research and due diligence.
To ensure grant makers are legitimate and can sustain the commitment to public education, review their past projects through online summaries and case studies, or obtain public records from the state's attorney general or state agencies that regulate charities. Don't be bashful about contacting other grant seekers that are listed as recipients on an organization's Web site or in its annual report. Prepare a list of succinct questions: Did the organization deliver what it promised? Were the people at the foundation honest, or disingenuous?
Partner Up
Because school leaders generally have little or no experience writing grant proposals, it's prudent to consider collaborating with an organization that has experience seeking and managing grants. In fact, it's ill-advised for a school district to attempt to manage grants without expert assistance and legal guidance. Consider that public school administrators encounter countless rules, regulations, and restrictions when it comes to how money gets allocated and who may or may not benefit from it—be it tax dollars or private funds.
"If you're looking for grants, you ought to think about partnering up with a third party," said McNulty. "The work is very complex, and partnering with a local university or the chamber of commerce, for example, makes a lot of sense. In my opinion, we're going to see a lot more [schools] collaborating with third parties."
At least one Utah school district is ahead of the curve. The community of Park City established an "education foundation willing to provide financial support for projects that would improve student achievement that could not be funded by the regular operating budget," as reported in a January 2007 ASCD Express article coauthored by Michele Wallace, principal of Park City's Jeremy Ranch Elementary School. The article details how several Park City elementary school principals collaborated on a three-year, privately funded project to improve the 5th grade science curriculum, including the hiring of a full-time science expert (Wallace, DeFord, & Haugen, 2007).
"Tight education budgets in Utah prevented our district from funding the science specialist from within our programs," Wallace told Education Update. "After establishing a need and determining that the position fit within the district's educational mission, we were fortunate to be granted the funds through the Park City Education Foundation. Because this organization is focused on the needs of our local schools, we could mold the program and the position for our schools—something that might not have been possible if the funds were sought elsewhere."
Play Outside the Box
In Oklahoma, Moore Public Schools was awarded nearly $1 million to implement the Teaching American History Grant Project, "which will establish collaboration between the Oklahoma State University (OSU) College of Education and Moore Public Schools," Congressman Tom Cole (R-Okla.) announced. "The collaboration between OSU and Moore Public Schools will provide important staff development training. This new program will work outside of the box to enhance learning in core subject areas."
Such outside-the-box collaboration is in keeping with fund-raising consultant Stan Levenson's belief that many public education leaders have been slow to react to the growing trend toward hybrid public/private funding for projects that enhance curriculum, stimulate learning, and increase graduation rates.
"If public schools are to compete for needed dollars with private schools, colleges, universities, and nonprofit organizations, superintendents and their staffs must aggressively apply the fund-raising strategies used so effectively by these other organizations," Levenson wrote in an article for The School Administrator(Levenson, 2001).
"Forget about bake sales," urges Levenson, author ofHow to Get Grants and Gifts for Public Schools. "Form a local education foundation on a districtwide or individual school basis. The foundation should be a nonprofit 501 (c)(3) organization that is tax exempt. Local education foundations ... facilitate the acquisition of grants and gifts."
Although McNulty stops short of recommending that school districts start their own nonprofits on the side, he reflected Levenson's advice.
"Many of the models we're seeing now use a third-party with 501 (c)(3) status," McNulty said. "The reason is that the third party can spend the money without channeling it through all the processes that a public school system must follow."
McNulty emphasized that collaborating with a third party does not enable schools to circumvent necessary polices, but merely that the partnership assumes shared responsibility for the accounting of funds and the implementation of systems. Although partnerships are beneficial in expediting education programs, McNulty said school administrators still need to maintain watchful eyes on how outside grants mesh with state and federal rules; they must still ensure that no regulations are being violated.
Read Before You Write
A lot of experts advise grant seekers to learn how to write grants, as if it's an easily acquired skill. In actuality, grant proposals can be daunting to write. They are usually nuanced, cumbersome documents that must address very specific criteria in nongeneralized terms with all kinds of stipulations for milestones, dates, dollars, and staff credentials.
"Foundations, philanthropists, and corporations refuse hundreds of grants each year simply because the applicant has no knowledge of the organization's guidelines," Wilensky states.
Prior to taking the plunge and learning how to write a grant proposal, first read an actual proposal, along with the accompanying Request for Proposal (RFP) if applicable. The experience may lead to budgeting for a professional proposal writer.
That's not to imply that it's a waste of time for education leaders to read books about grant writing; in fact, how-to books and distance learning are helpful in understanding the grant application process. It may be a more efficient use of an administrator's time, however, to hire a consultant to write and edit the proposal, which entails sifting through the RFP caveats and then writing a concise document that serves its primary purpose—to include everything that's required. Errors of omission can lead to immediate rejection of a proposal.
Grant seekers who lack funding to hire a consultant and are compelled to write their own proposals should work in teams, when possible. A lead should be assigned to coordinate the writing, particularly if chapters are assigned to different writers. It's advisable to read behind one another's work—not only for typos but to cross-reference the proposal against the RFP or foundation's guidelines, which should be highlighted for quick access to key requirements, phrases, titles, numbering sequence, nomenclature, and so forth. Checklists are also helpful to ensure that no critical information is omitted or accidentally edited out before the final draft is submitted to the project manager.
Is It Sustainable?
One of the most critical questions grant seekers can be expected to answer is, "How long do you expect your program to last?"
McNulty said that in addition to having a pilot program in place to demonstrate the school's or district's dedication to a project, it's critical to convince grant makers that the project can and will be sustained after funding runs out.
"The grant money should help you take it to scale, but the money will eventually go away," he said, "and it's all about sustainability in the end. I think there's probably been a history in philanthropy where districts spent the foundation's money, and then the program disappeared after three or four years."
McNulty advises education leaders seeking grant money for a given program—whether it's a math test preparation workshop or an English as a second language class—to demonstrate a cost/benefit ratio that will help ensure the long-term existence of the program. Perhaps, for example, the funded workshop or class will result in decreased truancy and increased graduation rates. If meeting attendance numbers and graduation rates results in additional money for their budgets, then schools might ultimately be able to fund the program successfully for 5–10 years.
Think Big
Today's charities aren't that different from those that emerged at the turn of the 20th century. From old-school moguls like Andrew Carnegie, Henry Ford, and John Rockefeller to new-money billionaires like Microsoft's Bill Gates and Oracle's Lawrence Ellison, nearly all prosperous foundations are established by high achievers with grand ideas and pragmatic management styles.
As McNulty points out, organizations such as the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation have big expectations. "They want long-term results."
