Grant Resources - VClay

I have limited experience in grant writing & research. In the past, I have had the opportunity to participate in grant writing, always with a partner or group. I co-wrote a big grant to develop after school media workshops several years ago, but it was a solicited grant, so our chances of being funded were high to begin with. In terms of grant research my experience has been limited at best, and I think I know why now. Grant research is exhausting.

It took me a long time to find a grant that I felt would be useful in my Technology Initiative. I would like to develop an online professional learning community for groups of instructors who teach smaller SPOKES and ABE classes in remote counties of West Virginia. The best resource I found was a small Learning and Leadership grant from the NEA Foundation.  The Learning and Leadership grant awards money to individuals or small groups for professional development experiences. The group grants fund "action research, lesson study, or mentoring experiences for faculty or staff new to an assignment" among other group activities, including study groups. It is my intention to identify a group of instructors along with myself who are isolated from their peers to apply for this grant.

While researching grant opportunities, I found a number of resources I would like to share. http://www.grantspace.org/Classroom is a list of classes to educate people about grant seeking. Self-paced classes and webinars include Finding Foundation Support for your Education, Proposal Writing basics, Understanding Collaboration, and Introduction to Finding Funders. This seemed like a good resource for novice grant seekers, and was part of the Foundation Center, an online, searchable, comprehensive grant list. Although the Foundation Center is subscription based, my local library keeps a subscription, and I would recommend checking with your local library as well.  Fund for Teachers grants initially seemed like a great resource for my Technology Initiative. It is a grant to fund teachers, and groups of teachers, in designing a professional development experience. However, I was disappointed to discover that West Virginia was one of the few states it did not fund. I wanted to share this resource, however, for future use - one day, maybe, it will fund projects in West Virginia.