Grant Writing
Hello, everyone! Today is the deadline for the Laura Bush Foundation grant. If you know your collection and needs well, you could actually submit the grant application today if you can secure your principal's approval on the online form. Visit my Pop Up PD webpage if you need a quick overview of grant writing tips.
As I discussed in the video, once you've identified your needs based on your collection analysis and school data, you can recycle your basic grant info over and over again.
Where can you find other grants to apply to? You can dig and dig through things like the US Department of Education's grant site. Mackin has a grant website where they highlight a few key grants. And then there are paid services where you can search an entire database of grants and find ones that tie in to your specific needs.
I used to pay for a service like that for my region until I found that Perma Bound offered the same search tool for free. The only difference on Perma Bound's site is that you cannot create an account and save your searches. And, free is good!
What I like about Perma Bound's grant search tool is that you can drill down into the categories and broaden the scope of your search. In one of my previous posts I mentioned I used Rookie Reader to describe a variety of readers I had. In a typical grant search I may have only searched education or reading related grants.
But, if I break down to my specific needs, I could include ESL/Bilingual in my search for my Rookies who were rookies due to their language.
I could include Science/STEM for my rookies who needed high interest/low reading level books in specific content areas.
I could include Early Childhood for my Rookies who are rookies due to their age.
So, take some time to analyze the subgroups in your school's data. Match them up to your collection and see where the gaps are. Remember, I previously mentioned that all librarians want books to update their collection. You have to be more specific than that.
Then, check out resources like Perma Bound's grant search tool where you zero in on the specific data groups you identified. This should broaden the scope of the grants that pop up as a match for your needs.
Have a great Friday!
Dr. Laura
Did you meet Heather Moorefield-Lang this week? She shared some great info for people considering getting their doctorates. She also shared info about working on accessibility. Find some time to listen to her podcast this weekend.
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