Grants & Funding

Grants & Funding: Resources to help educators find the money they need for their schools | With budgets getting tighter and tighter each year, it can often be hard to find the money we need to complete the projects we envision in our schools. These resources are gathered here to help you find grants and other funding sources to support the projects you've dreamed up for your school.

Resources to help you find the $$ you need for your school

We all have big dreams for the things that we’d like to do in our schools.  Designing active learning spaces.  Creating makerspace environments.  Putting powerful technology into the hands of our students.  Building a collection of library books that our students love.

Unfortunately, our budgets aren’t always as big as our dreams.  The resources gathered on this page are aimed at helping with this dilemma.  These are presentations, articles, and websites I’ve curated that focus on finding grants and funding resources for schools.  Over the course of seven years at my previous school (2010-2017), I secured over $15,000 worth of grants and other funding to help build our library collection, refurnish our space and create our makerspace.  The money is out there if you put in a little time and elbow grease to get it.

(Please note that information about grants can change frequently.  I do my best to keep links on this page current, but sometimes various organizations move their resources.  Also, while I do my best to look over the various resources linked to here, I cannot vouch for everything linked to on each page.  Please use your discretion and do your research before applying to anything.  Page was last updated on August 2, 2020)

Page contains affiliate links.  If you make a purchase using them, I get a small commission that helps support running this blog.  All opinions are my own.

Resources I’ve created:

  • Money, Money, Money: How to get grants and other funding for your library

Presentation slides from a presentation I gave at the Florida Association for Media in Education conference in October 2014

 

Blog posts & more resources

Resources I’ve curated:

Grant search engines/lists

Crowdsourcing

  • DonorsChoose – Teachers can create projects with certain vendors which then get funded by parents, community members, etc.  Great for books, technology, supplies, etc (How to submit a project)
  • PledgeCents – Another education focused crowdsourcing platform.  This one allows you to keep all money you raise, even if you don’t meet your goal.  Can be used for school projects, classroom projects and even professional development (hello conference fees!)
  • GoFundMe – Not education focused.  Individuals can create pitches for projects they’re trying to raise money for and offer “rewards” for different levels of donations.
  • IndieGoGo – Another crowdfunding site where individuals can create projects and ask for donations.
  • Kickstarter – Generally for larger, innovative projects, like building an entire library after a disaster.  Must raise total goal to get funds.

Recommended Reading:

Write Grants, Get Money

Write Grants, Get Money

This is a great little grant writing book focused specifically on school librarians.  I read this early in the process of learning about grant writing, and it really helped me out.  There’s lots of ideas in here for both beginners and experienced grant writers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ALA Book of Library Grant Money

The ALA Book of Library Grant Money

Rather than being a book about grant writing, this book focuses on various sources for finding grant money.  This comes from ALA, so not every grant will apply to schools, but there’s still a lot of useful information here.  This is the 9th edition (2014) so hopefully an updated one will be coming soon.

 

 

 

 

 

Crowdfunding For K12 Education: A Guide For Teachers, Parents And Children: How To Raise Money For Your Project, Classroom, Field Trip, Sport Team Or A Club

Crowdfunding For K12 Education: A Guide For Teachers, Parents And Children: How To Raise Money For Your Project, Classroom, Field Trip, Sport Team Or A Club

I confess that I haven’t read this one yet, but it has some good reviews on Amazon.  This is a short and sweet eBook on the basics of using crowdfunding to support educational projects.

 

 

 

 

 

Grant & Funding Sources

Books/Reading

Technology/STEM

Professional Development

  • NEA Foundation – Grants for high-quality professional development experiences.
  • Fund for Teachers –  Funds teacher travel for experiences that they can bring back to the classroom
  • Pro tip – Look for awards offered by various professional organizations (ISTE awards, AASL awards, etc).  Many of these awards will cover the costs to attend major conferences.

More Grant Resources

 

6 thoughts on “Grants & Funding”

  1. Pingback: Scholastic Bookfairs and Makerspaces | Renovated Learning

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