Chapter 2

Coordinating the District's Grantseeking Efforts

THIS BOOK IS ONE in a series of three. Its two companion books are The Teacher's Guide to Winning Grants and The Principal's Guide to Winning Grants. The first promotes teacher involvement in grantseeking and stresses the importance of coordination with the school principal and the district grants office. The second emphasizes the importance of proposal development and the potential of grant funding to help move schools toward their goals, objectives, and mission.

Both claim that proposal ideas must relate to a school's goals and objectives and that principals must coordinate their school's grants activities with the district grants office.

And this book tells you, the central office administrator, the same thing. This chapter deals with meeting the educational mission of your district by involving district staff in creating and maintaining a cooperative atmosphere that promotes creative problem solving and idea generation that will result in funded proposals.

Creating such an atmosphere may be more difficult than it sounds because of the proliferation of site-based management and the increasing involvement of teachers, principals, and the school/community in the pursuit of grant funding. Grantseeking as a means of gaining access to resources for your schools is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the motivation, involvement, and interest of teachers, principals, and the school/community are welcomed and encouraged. On the other hand, their grantseeking must be coordinated with the school district's philosophy and priorities. The district grants office's role is much greater than seeing that grant funds are administrated properly. The central administration must take responsibility for looking at the big picture and the entire district's mission. Even though each school unit may be seeking funds for its particular priority project, each unit must cooperate with district administration so that a cut-throat, overly competitive atmosphere is not created between schools. Some competition is positive, but collaboration and coordination are key to consistent funding.

As a central administrator, you must also be particularly cautious of uncontrolled entrepreneurial grantseeking because it can result in confusing educational outcomes such as:

• Incompatible textbooks, computers, software, and equipment
• Nonendorsed curriculum projects

Site-based management and increased decision making at the school/community level do not eliminate the need for a strong central grants administration. Charter schools, magnet schools, and schools within schools must be looked at from the grantor's perspective. Does the grantor understand who it is funding? Is the grantor confused? However, from your schools' perspective, the real issue is how to provide the necessary administration without discouraging grass roots involvement and an entrepreneurial spirit at the school/community level. One answer is to develop a district grants support system based on a proactive grantseeking process that matches your schools' priority projects with grantors' needs, uses preproposal contact, and avoids last-minute, chaotic scrambling to meet deadlines and obtain signatures. The mission of the district grants support system should be to serve each of its school units by doing the following:

• Increasing grantseeking knowledge
• Providing a framework for grantseekers to develop grants advisory committees and interest groups
• Assisting grantseekers with research on potential funding sources
• Providing a system to match school priorities to the district's goals and objectives
• Helping each school unit develop and operate its own total quality management (TQM) program or quality circle to improve proposals before they are submitted

In addition, the district grants office should operate a preproposal evaluation and endorsement system that prioritizes each school unit's projects and ensures that they relate to the district's mission.

Many offices have not yet exhibited the fortitude required to limit access to their services and resources on a prioritized basis. Most operate according to the myth that they exist to assist every grantseeker, when in reality those proposals that fall under federal entitlement programs or are the favorite projects of superintendents and their assistants utilize almost all of the office's resources.

Now, however, the involvement of school units in independent resource development and grantseeking has forced central administrations to consider prioritizing proposed projects. Doing this provides grants administrators with a means of allocating their time and effort.

The process should include the development of a system that directs proposed projects to the grants administrator and ensures that the district endorses a mix of projects, some of which are school unit priorities and some central administration priorities. Under no circumstance should the district grants administrator be allowed to endorse projects based on his or her own personal interests or desire to help particular grantseekers.

One criterion for the performance evaluation of the grants administrator should be his or her effectiveness in attracting funds to prioritized projects. Unfortunately, many grants administrators are evaluated primarily by the total amount of grant funds they help bring into their district. This encourages them to apply their time and skills only to those proposals that will attract significant dollars, which means that mission-related proposals that may result in fewer total dollars or may be harder and more time-consuming to find support for are put aside.

As a central office administrator, encourage the evaluation of your district's grants system based on how well it helps the district move toward accomplishing its predetermined goals and objectives. The grants system must relate the expenditure of its resources to those predetermined ends.

You can use many strategies to identify and prioritize projects. But because of the many interests, personalities, and strong feelings embodied in your district, attempts to reach consensus may be futile. However, by instituting a system that focuses on the areas of greatest concern to the whole district and in which the outcome is determined by vote, you can develop a weighted list that will reduce bickering and provide direction for the entire grants effort.

Your first step should be to ask each school/community unit to develop a prioritized grants wish list. This should be based on the input of teachers, principals, professional staff members, and community advisory groups. Some schools may employ a formal committee structure to generate their list of priority projects. No matter how the list is generated, it must be reconciled with any previously established site-based plans that outline school/community objectives.

Developing District Grants Booklets

To be effective, your districtwide grants system should include a process for explaining to teachers, principals, and community advisory groups how grantseeking is supported in your district. I recommend the development and dissemination of individual booklets describing the major steps involved in grantseeking and the district's role in each. For example:

• Developing Your Proposal Ideas and Securing District Approval
• Researching Grants and Making Contact with Funding Sources
• Writing Your Proposal: Using District Resources to Assist in Preparing the Budget, Writing the Proposal, and Meeting Submittal Requirements
• The Administration of Your Grant

Complete the assessment tool that follows each chapter before you determine what topics will be covered in the booklets and how many booklets will need to be developed. In general, several booklets will be needed; these will usually be better received by grantseekers than one lengthy district grants manual. Remember to look at your grants system from the perspective of your teachers, principals, and community advisory committee members. If you hand them a three-hundred-page document that details each stage of proposal preparation and grants administration, they may become overwhelmed and quit before they even start!

The role grantseeking plays in your school district should be the first topic addressed. Your district administration's endorsement of grantseeking as a district priority and your strong statement of support for the grants procurement system should be a matter of record.

Recent research on the factors contributing to increases in grant acquisition at universities and colleges suggests that the expectations of the chief academic officers have the greatest impact. As in higher education, your system's level of success will depend on your district administration's degree of support and the importance placed on the grants procurement system.

Your grants system should address the need for a coordinated effort and define the process for allocating your grants office's resources. If your district has grants support personnel at the school or subject-area level, this should be understood by all personnel, including new district employees.

The district grants office should be a vehicle for change and provide instructions that outline how the school/community can take part in shaping the district's grants effort.

For example, you may provide your school units with guidelines on how to participate in the development of districtwide grant priorities. Such guidelines could become the basis for a grants booklet. Figure 2.1 provides a sample that you can tailor to your district.

A district grants priorities committee could use the prioritized grants list from each school to combine priorities and grant ideas and develop a prioritized district list.

Prioritization should focus on problems or needs that the school wants to address through model projects and other solutions. If, for example, a school says it needs an after-school program it must also explain why, because that is usually the variable that the district committee uses to determine a final priority list. Identification of the problem or need is also necessary to avoid receiving the following:

• The technology committee's list of what it wants but no suggestions of why or by whom the technology will be used
• A playground equipment list without any mention of who will use it for how long and why it is necessary
• A proposal to copy another school's program with no analysis of why it should be done
• Easily developed proposals from sales representatives and corporate marketing groups—replication grants that are not applicable to the school's particular needs