Rookie Mistake

My inexplicable absence from the blogosphere is actually quite explicable. In a word: grants.

On Monday, the members of the Butler County School Supply Coalition met at Shared Harvest to write our mission statement, to set our goal for the year, and to identify fund-raising strategies. Initially, the Coalition set a goal to serve the 10,286 students K-6 on free lunch only. This is about half of the total 20,139 students K-12 identified on free or reduced lunch throughout the county, and seemed like a much more manageable goal. But when I sat down to knock out our budget, I discovered our projected revenue was greater than our projected expenses to serve solely the K-6 students on free lunch. Because we can't have a budget with more revenue than expenses (that's, like, anti-nonprofit), I decided to up our goal to serve all students K-12 (not just K-6) on free lunch. But then our expenses were greater than our projected revenue, so I had to find additional sources of potential revenue, and before I knew it, our goal was to raise $104,946 for the purchase of 17,491 school supply kits for every student on free lunch in the county. It's a big goal, but I really think we can do it.

For some reason, we never actually ironed out a mission statement as a group, so Meredith and I wrote one after everyone left. It reads as follows:

The mission of the Butler County School Supply Coalition is to provide low-income students with the school supplies they need to successfully start the school year through collaboration with school districts, agencies, and service organizations in Butler County.

Once I had a goal, a budget, and an official mission statement, I was ready to knock out my first round of grants. On behalf of the Coalition, I applied for a $5,000 grant from the Hamilton Community Foundation's Youth Philanthropy Committee, a $5,000 grant from the West Chester Community Foundation, and a $7,000 grant from the Middletown Community Foundation's Youth Council. The first two grants were due on Friday, March 12th, and the third is due on March 25th; fortunately, I finished all three by noon on Friday and I personally delivered them to their respective offices.

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? Almost. You see, I'm new to this whole grant-writing thing, and I'm learning as I go. First, you locate the grant application online, determine its deadline, and decide if the grant matches your project's mission. Check, check, check. I had some questions about the Hamilton grant, so I contacted them for clarification and was quickly back on track. The West Chester grant seemed clear enough; I didn't have any questions, so I neglected to contact them. That was a mistake. Like many granters, the West Chester Community Foundation highly encourages grant-seekers to contact them about the grant process before submitting an application. They even hold special workshops for grant-seekers to learn more about the process. Unfortunately, I didn't partake in any of this--not because I didn't want to, but because I just wasn't aware. I simply didn't research the grant thoroughly enough. I realized my mistake on Friday morning, which was, of course, too late. I submitted the grant anyway, and I'm hoping for the best, but I'm still disappointed by my oversight.

Not wanting to jeopardize any further grant opportunities, I called the other granters from whom we are seeking funding to introduce our project and see if our proposal would be warmly received. Of course, I also wanted to make sure there weren't any more details I'd overlooked.

So far, so good.

I've definitely learned from my rookie mistake(s), and I know that I am gaining valuable skills that I can take with me in my next position. Meantime, I am completely dedicated to providing thousands of kids with the school supplies they need for the 2010-2011 school year. In addition to grants from community foundations and local service clubs, I'll soon begin developing partnerships with Parent Teacher Organizations, businesses, and other community groups to take our fund-raising to a more sustainable level.

You can track our progress with the thermometer application I've added to the right hand side of my blog (and find instructions for how you can help, too!)