Identification

• Every middle school teacher can be on the lookout for funding for new ideas and enhancements to existing school programs. Even if the school has no standing grant committee (and it should), any teacher can form the nucleus of a grant team and bring home grants both large and small to pay for their dream programs and ideas. The team organizer then enlists other stakeholder teachers to help with the research, planning and writing of the grant application.
  
  

Purpose

• Grants available to schools fund new equipment, special programs, adaptive equipment, special training, new facilities and community outreach programs to name a few potential proposals. The grant committee, whether it's a standing or impromptu committee makes large scale proposals possible by allowing a large group of teachers to share grant research, development, communication and application production duties. The committee is not only charged with producing the grant itself, but also with insuring the proposal and application stay within the scope of the school's mission, however much, it may change elements of that mission.
  
  

Time Frame

• Grant committees meet anytime there is a need and address specific budgetary, programmatic, facility or resource issues. They, in essence, see what needs to be done and they find a way to do it. A grant committee may meet to write a proposal at any time a grant opportunity is identified and matched with a program and teachers to carry out the proposed program.
  
  

Where

• Obviously, middle school administrators expect that programs and funds will be largely spent on-campus, but grants committees, in researching possible grants, must not overlook funds for programs that extend the activities of the school out into the community, not only to allow the community to enrich the school children, but also to help fund opportunities for the children to enrich the community themselves.
  
  

Considerations

• The activities of grants committees in funding new and innovative projects give teachers and staff the opportunity to contribute not only philosophically, but also materially to the curriculum of the school. It is hard for school boards to turn down ideas from teachers if the teachers find and acquire the funding to support those programs. Should those programs prove successful, school boards and administrators are more likely to pick up the budget for those programs when the initial grant funding runs out. The grant team's job is to demonstrate why new programs are important to the teachers, students, the school, the school board and community as well as to the grant funding agency. Successful grants committees make it possible for teachers and staff to try out innovative programs without having to take funds and resources from existing programs.