It was a blustery, chilly January morning in 2009. Washington, D.C., was teeming with visitors, who had gathered in throngs on the Mall the day before to celebrate the inauguration of Barack Obama as the 44th president of the United States. Dan Leeds, of the philanthropic Leeds family, had invited two dozen high-ranking officers from foundations…

Foundation funding focused on Ghana over the past decade has encompassed all aspects of the global development agenda and beyond. Among foundations whose grants are tracked by Foundation Center, their giving focused on Ghana totaled $499 million between 2002 and 2012. While few foundations intentionally aligned their grantmaking priorities with…

Studies have demonstrated the dramatic impact small discretionary funding can have on a school. Grant funding allows school leaders to think creatively by developing unique solutions to today's educational challenges. This article presents strategies that principals, faculty, parents, and advisory groups can follow to attract grant funding that…

Communications and person-to-person relationship skills are as important for fundraisers as they ever were. However, today's fundraisers must also have finely honed technology skills, the ability to conduct data analysis, an understanding of social media, and experience relating to people from a variety of cultures. Competing for and attracting…

Physical educators often find it difficult to secure funding for their programs in these tough economic times. However, there is funding out there, if one knows where to look and how to ask for it. This article describes how physical education teachers can make a funding action plan, who to contact, where to write to, and how to get equipment for…

A challenge gift helps fundraisers reach goals by stimulating multiple aspects of a fundraising program. First, the message of a challenge grabs the attention of prospects and generally generates excitement beyond the case for support. It also commands the attention of the prospect managers in an organization, particularly when the challenge…

The increased focus on private fundraising poses challenges for community colleges (Jackson & Glass, 2000). A challenge is a lack of fundraising experience within community colleges and their foundations. There now exists a donor-focused fundraising model for community colleges to use to enhance their fundraising initiatives and increase the…

As in past years, this report draws from a survey of Grantmakers for Education membership that provides a snapshot of giving patterns as well as grantmakers' qualitative impressions of lessons and insights from their work. For the first time, this report has sought out the perspectives of non-members who are active in the field, to help broaden…

The Southington Board of Education in Connecticut has committed itself to asking school administrators to look for funding alternatives so the board does not have to continuously say no. The Southington School District serves 6,900 students with an operating budget of $79.5 million, but that amount simply does not fund all its needs. The district…

This essay builds upon prior attempts to foster linkages between the disciplines of Composition Studies and professional writing. I take up Jennifer Bay's suggestion that service learning is a site for connection and "hospitality" (in a Derridean sense) between these disciplines, advocating for and at the same time complicating Bay's proposal.…

Although communication program faculty have traditionally not enjoyed large grants for research, administrators are pressuring them to garner external funding. This article examines the success rate of securing external funding that communication administrators reported for their units. Results show that while the pressure has increased on most…

Acting as the lead agency for the "National STEM Consortium" (NSC), Anne Arundel Community College (AACC) engaged Hezel Associates to provide an independent program and impact evaluation of the U.S. Department of Labor (USDOL)-funded STEM certificate initiative. This report is comprehensive and covers the findings from all 4 years of the…

The current discourse on community college leadership makes much ado about the "new normal," or the collective influence of the social, economic, and political conditions under which people advance their organizations. To succeed in a changed environment, community colleges--many confronted with drastic budget cuts--must find ways to raise money…

In the late 1960s, Kent E. Dove, a new fund raiser at Indiana University, spent so many evenings at the home of his colleague Curtis R. Simic. The two junior fund raisers would talk into the wee hours about how they'd do things differently, if only they were in charge of raising money for their alma mater. Now, more than 40 years later, that's…

As peer reviewers for the U.S. Department of Education begin to comb through the thousands of pages of applications for $4 billion in federal Race to the Top Fund grants, they'll be under pressure to determine which are most worthy of funding: those that promise the most, or those with the best chance of delivering. In a competition whose criteria…