I have a tendency to get down into the weeds of grant writing before I’ve covered all the basics. This blog began with a purpose; it is here to guide you to sources of grant funding for your school. The how of it is explored thoroughly in my blogs, but sometimes I neglect to reveal the where.

Many writers attempt to locate grants on the Internet by using search engines or by subscribing to grant newsletters. Those methods are alright but they tend to be inefficient and take too much time. The best way to locate potential grants is to use a comprehensive grant database. The more comprehensive and up-to-date the database, the better it will serve your needs.

The most comprehensive grant database available to educators is the School Funding Center Grant Database. It contains federal, state, foundation, and corporate grants available to schools in the United States. Old grants are removed and new grants are posted on a daily basis. The database comes in four levels, the free source and several subscription levels that open up many more details about the grants you may want to pursue. The database, as a subscription, pays for itself in no time at all.

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Last time I talked about the possibilities that appear when you form a committee to pursue a grant. Such an arrangement can be useful. However, designing a good committee can be difficult. There is the good, the bad, and the downright ugly.

Committee members can help:

• provide data analysis,
• focus on major problems,
• perform in-depth searches to find appropriate grants, and
• find grant writers who will work hard to produce quality grant applications.

Here is a website devoted to forming successful committees.

Bad eggs can infiltrate your happy little group.

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