GrantStation Insider - March 1, 2018

National | Regional | Federal | PathFinder | Announcements | Online Education

National Funding
Opportunities Throughout the U.S.

Support for Innovative Public Art in U.S. Cities
Bloomberg Philanthropies: Public Art Challenge
The Public Art Challenge, an initiative of Bloomberg Philanthropies, will grant at least three cities up to $1 million each over two years to support innovative temporary public art projects that celebrate creativity, enhance urban identity, encourage public-private collaborations, and strengthen local economies. The Challenge encourages mayors to partner with artists, elevating the value of including the creative sector when developing solutions to significant urban issues. Submissions are encouraged from all artistic disciplines, including visual and performing arts and multimedia projects. The lead applicant should be a city of at least 30,000 residents. The application deadline is April 19, 2018. Visit the Public Art Challenge website to learn more about the program and to submit an online application.

Start-up Funding for Music, Education, and Community Organizing Projects
Sparkplug Foundation
The Sparkplug Foundation primarily provides grants to start-up nonprofit organizations or new projects of established nonprofits that are addressing the fields of music, education, and community organizing. In the Music category, the Foundation supports emerging professional musicians or music-development programs. In Education and Teaching, the Foundation funds projects that deal with "the whole student" and with learning as a community activity. Through Community Organizing, the Foundation encourages activist strategies for addressing institutional injustices and for building a just society. The current focus is on ground-level community organizing at the intersection of utilities and energy infrastructure, housing and community resources, and racial justice. The Foundation also provides limited support for projects in Israel that involve Palestinian communities. The first step in the application process is to complete the online questionnaire by March 28, 2018. Visit the Foundation’s website to review its mission and funding guidelines, as well as the online application instructions and appropriate deadlines.

Fundraising Challenge for Local Nonprofits
A Community Thrives
A Community Thrives (ACT) is a social impact fundraising program, supported by the USA TODAY NETWORK and the Gannett Foundation, that is focused on empowering communities to take on local challenges and share the issues important to them around education, wellness, and culture, on a national platform. During the campaign, nonprofit organizations have the chance to raise funds for their charities through the CrowdRise platform. At the end of the crowdfunding period, the Gannett Foundation will award a total of $600,000 in grants ranging from $10,000 to $100,000 to selected organizations. Interested organizations must apply for a CrowdRise campaign by March 15, 2018. To learn more about how to participate in the program visit the ACT CrowdRise homepage.

Grants Promote Contemporary Concert Music
The Amphion Foundation
The purpose of the Amphion Foundation is to promote excellence in, and public appreciation of, contemporary concert music, particularly by American composers. Grants are provided to publicly-supported nonprofit performing ensembles, presenters, festivals, and music service organizations that have a history of substantial commitment to contemporary concert music at a high level of excellence. In general, grants range between $1,000 and $7,500, although larger grants may be awarded to major performing organizations with an extraordinary commitment to contemporary concert music or a particularly significant project. Applying organizations must have been in existence for at least two years, and have completed two full seasons of programming prior to the time of application. Applications from performing ensembles will be accepted through April 1, 2018. (The deadline for presenters, festivals, and music service organizations is September 15, 2018.) Visit the Foundation’s website for grant program guidelines.

Regional Funding
Opportunities for Specific Areas

Direct Services for Seniors Supported in Seven States
Retirement Research Foundation: Responsive Grants Program
The Retirement Research Foundation is committed to supporting programs that improve the quality of life for older Americans. Through the Responsive Grants Program, the Foundation awards Direct Service grants to nonprofit organizations located in Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Missouri, or Wisconsin. The focus is on community programs designed to maintain older persons in their homes, offer supportive services to older persons in residential settings, and improve the quality of care for older persons with chronic conditions. Grants are provided for developing, testing, and implementing direct service programs or expanding existing programs. (Advocacy, training, and research projects, all with national relevance, are considered from organizations located anywhere in the U.S.) The remaining proposal deadlines for 2018 are May 1 and August 1. (Applicants are invited to submit optional brief letters of inquiry in advance of proposals.) Visit the Foundation’s Responsive Grants webpage at www.rrf.org/grants/responsive-grants to learn more about the funding guidelines and application procedure.

Funds for Early Childhood Initiatives in Minnesota
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation: Early Childhood Care and Education: Health Equity in Action
The mission of the Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Minnesota Foundation is to make a healthy difference in communities throughout the state by advancing health equity and improving conditions where people live, learn, work, and play. The Early Childhood Care and Education: Health Equity in Action funding opportunity is intended to make a healthy difference in people’s lives by advancing health equity through projects in early childhood care and education. To achieve this goal, the Foundation plans to fund work that will increase access to and quality of early childhood care and education for children from birth to five years old. Successful applicants will focus on creating or contributing to systems change in early childhood care and education settings to decrease inequities. Organizations may apply for grants of up to $100,000 per year for one or two years. Applicants must be located in and serving Minnesota. The application deadline is April 10, 2018. Visit the Foundation’s website to download the funding guidelines.

Grants Increase School Breakfast Programs in Massachusetts Schools
Eos Foundation: After the Bell, Breakfast in the Classroom
The Eos Foundation provides start-up grant funds to Massachusetts schools and districts that seek to increase school breakfast participation to 80% or more via the free, After the Bell, Breakfast in the Classroom (ATB BIC) programming for low-income children in grades pre-K-12. The Foundation provides one-time grant awards up to $10,000 to Massachusetts pre-K-12 schools, school districts, and charter public schools eager to make breakfast part of their school day by launching or expanding ATB BIC programming. The application deadline is May 10, 2018, for programming taking place at the beginning of the 2018/2019 school year. Visit the Foundation’s website to learn more about the application process. 

Support for Child Centered Parent-Community Initiatives in Oregon
Northwest Health Foundation: Families Leading for Health and Education: Impact Partnership Fund
The Northwest Health Foundation and its partners are offering grants to nonprofit organizations in Oregon and Southwest Washington through the Families Leading for Health and Education: Impact Partnership Fund. The Fund will support community-based organizations working to support parent leadership, voice, and resilience to improve outcomes in education, healthcare and early learning. The Fund seeks to partner with organizations committed to working with parents, families, and community members on efforts that focus on children from prenatal to age eight. Organizations may apply for Capacity Building grants ranging from $20,000 to $30,000 for up to one year or Implementation grants ranging from $75,000 to $125,000 for up to two years. Letters of intent are due on April 4, 2018; invited full proposals must be submitted by June 14, 2018. Visit the Foundation’s website to download the Impact Partnership Fund request for proposals.

Federal Funding
Opportunities from the U.S. Government

Pool Safety Funded
Consumer Product Safety Commission
The Pool Safely Grant Program provides state and local governments with assistance to help implement enforcement and education programs, with the goal of preventing drownings and drain entrapments in pools and spas. The application deadline is April 2, 2018. 

Program Supports Native Youth Leadership
Administration for Children and Families
The Native Youth Initiative for Leadership, Empowerment, and Development (I-LEAD) program empowers Native youth to address priorities such as economic and social self-sufficiency for Native Americans, community well-being, tribal government capacity, strong families, and culturally-appropriate strategies to meet the social service needs of Native Americans. The application deadline is April 9, 2018.

PathFinder: Featured Resource
A library of quality resources designed to help you develop your career path as a grants professional.
 

Growfund
Are you looking for a unique way to encourage donations to your organization? Growfund is a new type of donor-advised fund for nonprofits to cultivate donors. This charitable giving tool operates like a 401(k) or a personal foundation, allowing donors to make tax deductible contributions in credit, cash, stock, or checks. Donors set up an account, choose how their funds will be invested, then set aside a little or a lot at a time and watch their funds grow for the organization's cause.

GrantStation Announcements
 

International Grant Professionals Day - March 9, 2018

GrantStation has partnered with the Grant Professionals Association (GPA) to announce the fourth annual International Grant Professionals Day on March 9, 2018. International Grant Professionals Day increases awareness internationally of the work grant professionals perform as well as celebrates the work of grant professionals, who serve as administrators, consultants, managers, grantmakers, and writers.

Every day, grant professionals work diligently, usually behind the scenes, to seek grant opportunities, administer projects, and implement important programs for the benefit of society’s disadvantaged and underserved people. These talented professionals are dedicated to providing the highest standard of ethics, quality program development, thoughtful project implementation, and wise financial stewardship. Often, those standards extend beyond the mere financial and include capacity support, long term solutions to challenges, fundraising assistance, expert project management, sustainable programming, and so much more.

Please Contribute Your Experience to the
Spring 2018 State of Grantseeking™ Survey
The resulting – free – State of Grantseeking Reports can tell you a reasonable level of funding to expect for an organization based on median awards by organizational budget, location, and mission (benchmarks you can really use). And, it can give you a leg up on the competition through awareness of trends, months or even years before other reports reflect the data. Please join thousands of others who find value in the reports by completing this survey and offering your insights for the upcoming report. The survey ends March 31, 2018.

Upcoming Online Education Trainings
Live Webinars

Unless otherwise noted, all Online Education Trainings are webinars,
are 90 minutes in duration, and are scheduled to begin at 2 PM Eastern Time.

Online Workshop: Simple Spreadsheets - Your Hairiest Nonprofit Spreadsheets Made Simple
Ever feel like you're swimming upstream in data? Need to make sense of spreadsheets, but not sure where to start? Have a gut feeling that you're not getting the most out of spreadsheet programs like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets? Then this webinar is for you! In this session, Ann K. Emery will focus on little-known spreadsheet secrets that can save you time. We'll cover beginner, intermediate, and advanced number-crunching skills from lookup to pivot tables. By the end of this hands-on-webinar, you'll be armed and ready to merge data from multiple sheets and files into a single master spreadsheet; organize your spreadsheets by adding filters and freezing panes; clean and recode messy data to get it ready for analysis; run basic descriptive statistics and frequencies; and explore your data more fully through pivot tables. We'll look at several different types of datasets together. This webinar will be held on Thursday, March 8, 2018. View a sample video at www.annkemery.com/excel to see Ann's teaching style in action.

Logic Models: More Than Just Extra Work!
Logic models are not a passing fad. If you need to create a logic model for your program, but don't know where to start, this webinar is for you! Using the Measuring Program Outcomes: A Practical Approach from the United Way of America, Alice Ruhnke will demonstrate why logic models are critical for program planning and evaluation. During this webinar, you will learn how to create and use a logic model to help you improve services and your impact on your community. Executive directors, program managers, and grantwriters from a broad range of nonprofit organizations will benefit from this 90-minute presentation. The webinar will be held on Thursday, March 15, 2018.

Online Workshop: Great Graphs - Tell Your Nonprofit's Story with Data Visualization
Visualizing data through charts, tables, and diagrams helps you deliver bite-sized information that viewers will understand at a glance and retain for the long run. In this workshop, Ann K. Emery will walk you through a step-by-step design process so you can apply critical thinking skills to your own projects. First, you'll learn how to customize your visualization for your audience. Second, you'll learn how to choose the right chart for your message. You'll see familiar friends like pie charts and bar charts as well as new options like waffle charts, Sankey diagrams, tree maps, social network maps, and visual timelines. Third, you'll declutter your visuals, reinforce your branding with custom color palettes and typography, and increase accessibility by ensuring that your visuals are legible for people with color vision deficiencies. Finally, you'll learn to tell a story through saturation and annotation. This webinar will be held on Thursday, March 29, 2018. View a sample graph makeover at www.annkemery.com/agree-disagree-scales/.

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Editor: Julie Kaufman
Contributing Writer: Kevin Peters
Contributing Writer: Ashlyn Simmons