Grant for Composters

Composter as Advertised on BuyLifetime

A grant that I wrote up a month ago was just approved (Yay!). The local grant committee surprised us today with a balloon and novelty check for $500.

I will be working with two fourth grade science teachers integrating composting into the curriculum. The grant covered the cost of two tumbling composters (see compost tumbler video here) and child friendly composting books from Amazon for both classes.

We will be composting pumpkins after Halloween and poinsettias after the holidays. These are two items that always find their way into the trash after the holidays. I felt both of them can be easily composted thus eliminating landfill waste. The students are excited about it and are already wondering if decomposing pumpkins make orange compost!

I have never done this project before and I am hoping that we have useable compost in both bins by mid to late May. I want to write another grant that provides students with a pot and plant where they can use the compost to plant their own plant to take home at the end of the school year. Wish me luck!

Donor Choose - Grants

I was just recently awarded a grant through Donor Choose for science themed reading material for a classroom at our school. I was required to write a grant through a class I was taking as a final project (we didn't have to get it funded we just had to write and submit). Several of us in the class got our requests funded. Mine was flat out funded but a friend of mine got hers funded through a series of donations to the project (which is a great way to get parents involved by asking them to contribute a little bit to the materials you need).

For those educators who have not heard of Donor Choose it is a site where teachers can put up grant requests for their classroom. The entire process is very easy. The site walks you through everything step-by-step.

Some tips I would pass on are:

1. Put a picture up of you with your class (make sure photos are permissible of your students first). I think if donors can get a sense of who you are and your students you run a better chance of getting funded.

2. Work backwards. I wanted to get a grant for a science newsletter in the classroom but the site works with very specific vendors - none of whom carried the newsletter I wanted. I decided to look at the vendor sites first and then write my grant to match what I could get (in this case Time Magazine for Children for my writing/ELA class).

3. Write your responses in Word and copy into the blocks they give you. Save your Word document. I remember going to town the first time with my write up on the site and my computer froze and I lost everything and had to start from scratch (annoying!). I have used portions of my saved grant write ups with other non-Donor Choose grants this way.

4. Look at other grant requests for ideas. My problem isn't doing the write up...it is coming up with the ideas. Sometimes one project might trigger an idea for another project (I got "build your own telescopes" for an astronomy grant after seeing a grant request for something else related to astronomy).