Kudos to the Culver City Council of PTAs (CCCPTA) for the success of their recent Beginning Grant Writing Workshop. Thirty parents, representing our high school, middle school and all of our elementary schools, participated.
The purpose of the training was to create “a grant-writing army” for CCUSD schools. Writing grants gives parent volunteers new sources of funding for the programs they want to bring to our schools, and to continue programs that are already in place.
Presenter Jane Steinberg demystified the grant writing process by explaining that most grants follow a basic structure (overview, objectives, outcomes, budget, timeline). She also noted the benefits of grant writing teams whose members have complementary skills, (i.e., one person is a fine writer while another is good at developing timelines and budgets).
Participants were taught how to find available grants, and how to work with principals, teachers and parent groups at their school sites to implement each grant.
“The parents who attended were amazing,” said presenter Nancy Chand. “When they split into groups by school, they were really engaged. It was so heartening to see so many parents working on a Saturday for their children’s school. There were a lot of ideas exchanged and shared about how a particular parent group gets things done.”
“I found it very informative,” said El Marino and Culver City High School parent Maren Neufeld. “Learning about the PTA grants that are available and so easy to get made me feel like we could actually get some much needed money for our schools. I hope another workshop is scheduled. I know there were a lot of parents who would have liked to be there.”
Parent Brenna Guthrie, who will be President of the CCMS PTSA next year, gathered the 10 parents from Culver City Middle School and created an email group to coordinate their work- identifying needs, finding grants and writing grant applications.
Presenter Heather Moses offered to write a field trip grant for every fifth-grade in the district! A Yahoo group is also being created to share grant information, proposals and ideas, as well as to report successes. Anyone interested in joining this Yahoo group should contact Heather Moses at [email protected].
The workshop was the brainchild of CCCPTA Executive Vice President, CCUSD School Board Member and parent, Laura Chardiet. School Board Vice President and parent Kathy Paspalis was also in attendance and very supportive.
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