RE: [EDEQUITY DIALOGUE]

From: Jordan-Meldrum, Janalee (MELDRUMJ@aauw.org)
Date: Wed Oct 25 2000 - 09:44:32 EDT


Susan,

Yes, the AAUW Educational Foundation's fellowships and grants guidelines
are
available on-line. When you go to the following page,
http://www.aauw.org/3000/fdnfelgra.html, you will brief find descriptions
of
each program. You can click on the links to each program, read more
detailed information about the program, and then download an application
for
the program(s) you are most interested in.

As far as general suggestions go, I would offer the following:

-- Know your funder. Spend a little time getting to know what the funder
supports, the funder's giving philosophy, etc. To read more about the AAUW
Educational Foundation, visit http://www.aauw.org/7000/aboutef.html. To
read about some of our recent fellows and grantees, visit
http://www.aauw.org/3000/fellwdir.html.

-- Make sure the grant/fellowship the funder is offering is a good fit for
you. For example, our Community Action Grants provide seed funding for new
projects that advance education and equity for women and girls. I often
advise potential applicants to look elsewhere for funding if they are
seeking support to sustain an on-going project. To read more about our
Community Action Grants, visit http://www.aauw.org/3000/fdnfelgra/cag.html.
Also, make it a habit of regularly visiting the websites of funders you are
interested in applying to. Funding guidelines often change from year to
year (or more frequently in some cases). This year, for example,
non-profit
organizations may apply for Community Action Grant funds directly; we used
to require that organizations apply in collaboration with an AAUW branch.
We now encourage and reward collaboration, but we do not require it.

--Follow directions. Some funders estimate that 50 percent of proposals
are
disqualified on a technicality. Make sure to read proposal instructions
carefully and tailor your proposal to meet the funder's requirements. If
proposals do not follow our guidelines, for example, they are disqualified.

-- Give yourself adequate time to develop the proposal before submitting
it.
If possible, put together a planning team. We, like most funders these
days, have become increasingly interested in funding collaborative or
team-based projects. The benefit to funding these types of projects is
that
they have the potential to leverage more resources to support the project;
they can lead to wider systemic change; and, since they involve multiple
partners/stakeholders, they often have greater potential to become
self-sustaining (or at least not dependent on a single source of funding)
after the grant period ends. Both our Teacher Fellowships and our
Community
Action Grants programs offer support for team-based and collaborative
projects. To read more about our Teacher Fellowships program, visit:
http://www.aauw.org/3000/fdnfelgra/ertf.html. When you download the
application form, you will also find a section titled Guidance for
Preparing
Applications.

-- Finally, if you are writing a proposal for the first time or you need a
grant-writing refresher, you may want to visit the following websites: The
Foundation Center offers a vast online library of resources for
grant-seekers as well as reference collections in five major cities across
the United States. Visit the center's website at http://www.fdncenter.org.

For general fundraising information, visit the online Free Management
Library of the Management Assistance Program for Nonprofits,
http://www.mapnp.org, or the online Alliance Resource Center, sponsored by
the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, at
http://www.allianceonline.org/arc.html.

I hope these suggestions are helpful!

Best,

Janalee

Janalee Jordan-Meldrum
Senior Program Officer, K-12 and Community Programs
AAUW Educational Foundation
<MELDRUMJ@aauw.org>



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