Don’t let anything happening with the economy or the world right now keep you from making some positive New Year’s resolutions. At least one of those resolutions needs to center on grants for your school in 2010.

In my view, there are three ways you could center a resolution on grants. The first would be to make a resolution just to write a grant for your classroom, school, or district in 2010. This would be a most appropriate resolution if you have just started writing grants. If you can just get that first grant written, even if you need help from others to get it done, that is a landmark that could be the beginning of many future grants and a lot of grant money for your school.

If you have already written at least one or two grants, you might want to focus your resolution on the number of grants you want to write in 2010. Remember, grants need to be written when you are trying to solve specific problems. List the problems you’re having in your district, school, or classroom, and then center your New Year’s resolution on the number of grants you’re determined to write to help correct those problems.

Finally, your New Year’s resolution could center on an amount of money. The amount doesn’t really matter. It could be $500, $5,000, or $5,000,000. The amount, however, should have some significance to you or your grant program. I used to like to win as much grant money for my school as I was paid for being principal of the school. It just made me feel good to bring as much money into the district as they paid me for my salary. It meant nothing to anyone else, but it was important to me.

Along the same line, you might determine that you have a specific problem that will require $75,000 in grant money to fix. There might not be a single grant for $75,000 available, but you can find 2 or 3 grants that would total $75,000 if you got them. Your New Year’s resolution would be to get $75,000 in grant money for your school regardless if it entails writing 3, 4 or even 5 grants to get that $75,000.

New Year’s resolutions are often made and seldom kept. Let me encourage you to make at least one of your New Year’s resolutions pertain to the grants that need to be written for your school. To make sure you follow through on this New Year’s grant resolution, write it down in a place where you will see it every day or two. Also, share this particular New Year’s resolution with as many people as possible. That way you can enjoy the support and encouragement of others (as well as the pressure) to make good on one of the most important New Year’s resolutions you’ll ever make.

Don Peek is an expert in school funding. He has run The School Funding Center since 2001. Its database contains over 100,000 grants available to all types of schools in the United States. Don worked in education for 20 years as a teacher, principal, and assistant superintendent before becoming the VP then the president of the training division of Renaissance Learning, developer of the Accelerated Reader.
http://www.schoolfundingcenter.info