Staff Grant Programs

Who is your Grant Committee?

• Your PTO/PSO Board (entire board / specific board members)
• Staff Members
• Open committee to any volunteers who would like to participate
• Will you have the building principal review applications for appropriateness of grant---does it support approved learning in the school?
• Are there other means for funding that the school or district has available?

How Much and How Often?

• Where is the money coming from to support the Grant Program?
  • Is it part of your budget?
  • Does it come from a surplus?

• How many times will you offer a grant cycle and when will the cycles be offered?

Announcement to Staff

• How will you announce the grants to the staff?
• Who is eligible?
• When are grant applications due? When will you meet to review grants? When will approval notice be given?
• Are Grant applications available online, hard copy, or both?

Grant Program Application

• What does your grant application look like?
  • Purpose of the grant/description
  • How many students will benefit?
  • How will the proposal enrich the educational experiences and/or well-being of students?
  • Timeline for proposal, including when funds will be spent and when students will begin to benefit
  • Detailed budget
  • Grant criteria, terms and conditions

Rubric for Scoring Grant Applications

• What rubric will you use to score each application?
• How will you determine what grants to approve if you have too many requests for the funds available?
• Do you always use the rubric?
• Will you grant partial requests?

Grant Review Meeting

• When will the grant review committee meet after the grant submission deadline?
• If there are further questions to ask of an applicant, who will handle asking the questions and sharing responses?
• During the review process, the committee may find suggestions for grant applicants to help save funds - who will share these suggestions?
• Consideration for ongoing maintenance for a purchase? Examples would be: a Polaroid camera that requires continual purchase of film, bean bags that need to be refilled, colored markers for writing program that will run out.

Grant Approvals

• How will you announce the grants you have decided to approve?
  • Official letter (dropped in mailboxes, hand delivered?)
  • Email notification
  • Prize patrol style announcement

• What to include in an approval?
  • Approval letter including the dollar amount approved with any
  • PTO/PSO reimbursement request form
  • Reminder of PTO/PSO tax-exempt status and where staff can find a PTO/PSO tax-exempt letter.

Announcing Grants Awarded

• Who should know the types and amounts of grants that have been awarded? EVERYONE!
  • Your PTO/PSO board, especially the treasurer
  • Your school's administration team
  • Finance Secretary for the school because they may be doing some of the purchasing
  • Letting the staff know what kinds of grants have been awarded may spark some ideas in staff who do not typically apply
  • Families - share the information in your regular email notifications to families and share the information at your PTO/PSO meetings. Let families know what their donations are helping to provide for the school!

Keeping Track of Grant Payments

• Develop a system with the treasurer for how grant payments will be tracked. A shared Google Doc?
• How will the grant committee know who has submitted for reimbursement for their grant and who has not?
• Do you have an announced deadline of when reimbursement requests must be received?
• Will you reach out to staff who have not submitted for reimbursement to check in on them?
• What happens to funds not used if grants program is part of your PTO budget? Do these then go towards school wish list/gifts to school items?

In Between Grant Cycle Requests

• How will you handle time-sensitive grant requests made between cycles? An opportunity has popped up but waiting for the next grant cycle will mean a missed
  • Will you consider them?
  • If so, will you have a formal Grant Committee meeting or will you discuss/approve via email?

Check out the Grant Program sample documents on the PTO Today website.