Where to Find Grants: Part 3—HHCS Listserv
The Center for Health and Health Care in Schools (www.healthinschools.org) provides a significant amount of resources related to schools and health including but not limited to research publications, news, and a grants database.
The best feature of the grants database is probably that it is separated into two major categories: Active and Expired Grants. Active grants are grants that are currently open. Expired grants are opportunities for which the deadline has past. Aside from that, the database is useful but not outstanding. It is relatively small, but the database managers make a sincere effort to stay “on topic,” which is very useful and saves time if indeed the opportunity you need falls within the “schools and health” topical area. The summaries are brief, which allows for quick review. The deadlines and links to funder sites are also provided.
The most valuable grants information service CHHCS offers, however, is its FREE twice-weekly grant alert emails. I highly recommend readers of this blog sign up for this service. While the days occasionally change, presently the alerts are coming out on Mondays and Fridays. They typically include one to four names of grant opportunities with a concise summary (one to two sentences) of the grant opportunity’s purpose. Each title in the alert is hyperlinked to the associated CHHCS database entry, so recipients can easily click for a slightly more detailed summary. If at that point interest or need warrants further research, the reader can click on a link within the database entry to the grant program’s official website.
The service is not always inclusive of all opportunities out there, but it does include quite a few. Also, folks may aid in making it more complete by visiting the database site (http://healthinschools.org/News%20Room/Grant%20Alerts.aspx) and using the form on the right-hand side to submit information on grant opportunities.
While the other free services we’ve looked at to this point provide great places to actively research grants in a more proactive, planning-aimed manner, this service allows for passive and/or ongoing grant research. Subscribing to CHHCS’s Grant Alerts (also known as the HHCS Listserv) will provide you with a means for keeping abreast of grants that are active WHILE they are active so that you can quickly jump on them and apply. The Grant Wrangler bi-weekly newsletter provides some amount of this, as well, but its less frequent nature and broader topical scope mean the CHHCS Grant Alerts are a bit more timely and pertinent for folks looking for physical activity, PE, and health grant opportunities
Visit http://healthinschools.org/About-Us/Subscribe.aspx to sign up for this terrific resource. Let us know your thoughts on the alerts, database, or other resources offered by CHHCS, too!
Where to Find Grants: Part 2—Grant Wrangler
Grant Wrangler (www.grantwrangler.com) is a great site to frequent if you are looking for funding to be used for a school-based program, because the site is aimed at providing information on grants for K-12 schools in a user-friendly format.
This database is relatively new—initiated in 2006 or 2007. It’s come a long way in a short time, though, and provides a very nice listing of grants for many topics of interest to schools, including a more recently added categorical search for “Health and Physical Education (PE).” The categories by which you can search are fairly unique and do not adhere to the standard federal topic areas used by most databases. The upside to this is significantly greater flexibility for searches. The categories include academic topic areas, expiration month (deadline month), school level (such as Middle School), and many other topics, as well, like “Professional Development” and even “Home School.” You can also do a key word search or a calendar-based search. The entries found in response to your search will be summarized in two to four lines with links to more information. The links take you to summaries that include the grant program name, deadline, funding source/funder, program website link, and brief program overview.
The grant summaries on this site provide less information than is provided by some other databases, but the information is of fairly good quality, and the succinct format allows for faster “skimming” for the grants that seem best suited to the applicant’s needs. For an experienced grant researcher familiar with most programs out there, this is a handy time-saver because the researcher is typically just looking for a “reminder” of what’s out there and can easily dig deeper for information on the grants that are most ideal. For an individual new to grants research, the short format used on this site is less overwhelming than more extensive summaries may be. Since the program website link is also provided, the researcher can easily click for more details on any grant of interest.
Grant Wrangler has a few other handy tools, as well. For example, the grant summaries also include “Discuss this Grant” links that allow you to participate in an online discussion on the grant topic area. The discussion links will take you to an area where you have an additional top tool bar that allows access to a wealth of other resources, including blogs, a member community, and links to videos and other sites. Grant Wrangler also sends out a bi-weekly email bulletin highlighting a handful of key time-relevant opportunities. You can sign up for this right on the site by clicking on the “Subscribe bulletin” link on the left side tool bar on the Grant Wrangler homepage or any of the summary pages.
As with the RAC database, Grant Wrangler is entirely FREE. If you haven’t already guessed, our focus for this series on where to find grants information is free resources! 
) There are several more resources on our list, but we welcome your comments and notes about your favorite places to find grant information at no cost.
Where to Find Grants: Part 1—RAC Database
Folks often ask where to look for grants and wonder if they should pay for subscriptions to database services. My typical answer is that it is neither necessary nor cost effective for most organizations to pay for grants database subscriptions because so much of the information is available online for free. Insight has elected not to create its own grants database for the same reason. Doing so would really only mean increasing our immediate and ongoing overhead costs essentially for a reinvented wheel.
Here is a link to one of my favorite databases—the Rural Assistance Center’s grant database: http://www.raconline.org/funding/. Theoretically, this is a database aimed at providing grants information for rural organizations, but the reality is rural organizations are eligible for many, many grants beyond just those specifically aimed at rural organizations, so this database contains quite a wealth of information on a wide range of grants. It is entirely free and the information is as good as, and in many cases better than, most of the subscription-based grants databases I have seen. I’ve yet to see a grants database that is completely comprehensive and 100% accurate at all times, but this one is more reliable than most and does include both government and private grants information. Additionally, it is more easily and accurately searchable than most subscription-based databases.
Enjoy!
The Impact of the Economy on Grants: Part 1—Cancellations
In previous years, cancellation of an announced grant competition was rare. Not so anymore. As the economy has continued to sink in the last year, cancellations have begun to surface. While they still certainly aren’t common, they’ve strayed far from unheard of.
Here are a few examples we’ve come across in our work in the last year. South Carolina Department of Health’s Prevention Partnerships Grant, designed to leverage community partnerships for health prevention efforts (including obesity and obesity-related chronic disease prevention and reduction) was cancelled just a few days prior to the deadline. The reason cited was that the money simply wasn’t there to make awards as expected due to the economic challenges facing the state. Goody’s Good Deeds for Schools, a grant created through a partnership between Goody’s Family Clothing stores and Ashley Judd, was cancelled at some point after the grant deadline had past, again due to an unexpected lack of funds. It seems now, unfortunately, this grant aimed at funding a wide range of needed school projects, has been ended permanently since the website (www.goodysgooddeeds.com) is no longer active.
We’ve heard stories of other programs—both state and private—that have been unexpectedly cancelled after a competition announcement was made, as well. Since funding available for foundations is often linked directly to the profit margin of a corporation, many more foundations have continued to make awards but have been forced to make fewer than they’d like or than they’ve made in the past. These trends are almost certain to continue until the economy becomes stronger. That said, even though the risk of program cancellation and competition for grants that do move forward have increased, I do not advise shying away from applying for anything (and nearly everything) that feels like a strong fit for your organization’s needs, goals, and resources. You’ll never see a check if you don’t apply! ) Plus, while cancellations have become more of an issue in the past year, they are still relatively rare. Most organizations know prior to RFP release that at least some funds will be available for grant awards, so your risk of investing time and effort into a grant competition that is ultimately cancelled is still reasonably low.
What has your experience been this year with this issue? Please share!!
VT Heart Rate Monitors Grant
It’s exciting to see states stepping up to the plate to encourage schools to improve physical education (PE) programs to increase student activity and decrease obesity! Especially considering the tough economy. Yesterday we discussed PA’s new program for middle schools. Today we look at the Vermont Department of Education’s 2009-2010 School Wellness Grant Application for Implementation of Heart Rate Monitors in High School Physical Education—fondly referred to (at least by me ) ) as the VT HRMs grant. http://education.vermont.gov/new/html/pgm_curriculum/physical_ed.html#monitor_app
This grant surfaced in 2007. Lindsay Simpson (802-828-1461 or lindsay.simpson@state.vt.us) at VT Department of Education is the program contact, and I can’t say enough good things about her. She is extremely committed to improving PE across the state and to this program in particular. My professional communications with her have revealed her to be a very helpful, responsive contact who is ready and willing to support PE programs in her state in any way that she can. This year’s late May application release is just one more example of her ongoing efforts to make VT schools successful. While the program has historically had a pretty short application period (just a few weeks to a month), this year schools have been given several months to prepare their applications: the deadline is September 18, 2009.
Any Vermont public school serving grades 9-12 may apply for this grant, provided the school has not already won this grant and/or has not already won a Carol M. White Physical Education Program (PEP) grant. Three applicants will be selected to receive awards of up to $9,000 for the purchase and implementation of Polar heart rate monitors (www.polarusa.com/education) to ensure objective assessment of time spent physical active in PE. Awardees will be notified by October 9, 2009. (I love the quick turn-around this program provides! It’s a rare treat to know the results of your grant efforts so soon after submission.) All project activities, expenditures, and required reporting must be completed by June 30, 2010.
As found on page 2 of the RFP, the goals of this program are to:
- Document and increase the amount of time high school students spend engaged in moderate to vigorous physical activity during physical education.
- Develop student self-knowledge, personal goal setting and fitness planning skills for lifetime physical activity.
- Develop students’ 21st century skills of tracking, interpreting and evaluating personal physical activity effort with objective, technological measures.
The RFP is clearly written and easy to respond to, but you will need time to gather information and form the required project committee (see page 4 of the RFP), if you do not already have one in place. The committee verification DOES require signatures from ALL members—in addition to your administrator—to evidence commitment and support for the project. Hence, I recommend taking full advantage of the additional time the Department of Education has allowed for this year.
What additional thoughts or questions do you have? Good luck to all applicants! Be sure to let us know via comments on this blog or info@insightgrants.com if you win an award!
