Current Issue - September 2007

Digest Homepage

Grants and Funding (listed in order of deadline)

• The People Speak Climate Crews Grants Available
• Grants Available for the YSA Youth Venture Program NEW!
• Civic Education Consortium’s Small Grants Program
• Notices of Funding Opportunities Summer of Service for Middle-School Aged Youth NEW!
• State Farm Youth Advisory Board Grants NEW!
• State Farm Good Neighbor Service-Learning Grants NEW!
• Knight Foundation Announces its 2007 News Challenge
• Project Learning Tree Greenworks! Grants for Community-Based Environmental Projects
• 5th Annual P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability - Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet NEW!
• Do Something Offering Weekly Grants for Young Social Entrepreneurs

The People Speak Climate Crews Grants Available

For this project students will propose innovative campaigns around the global issues of climate preservation and clean energy and how, by documenting their experiences on film, they will be able to turn their campaigns into renewable resources that will guide similar efforts on other campuses.

The People Speak will select up to 10 winning ideas and provide a $500 mini-grant and training for the students to implement and document their campaigns. Each campus group will return to their school, conduct the campaign, and create a short film or video toolkit showing how others could replicate their campaign idea on another campus.

The 10 video toolkits will then be put up for a nationwide vote on The People Speak website. The students with the most innovative and successful campaign will win $500. Campus groups can then apply for a $200 TPS mini-grant to bring the winning campaign to their campus. Up to 30 mini-grants will be made available.

Deadline to submit the 500 word proposal is September 30, 2007. Visit www.thepeoplespeak.org for additional information.

Grants Available for the YSA Youth Venture Program NEW!

The YSA Youth Venture Program is a partnership between Youth Service America and Youth Venture that is helping build the movement of young social entrepreneurs by investing in and encouraging the ideas of young people. The YSA Youth Venture Program provides funding and support to young people (ages 12-20) who want to create new, sustainable, civic-minded organizations, clubs or businesses, called Ventures.

Ventures MUST be youth-led and designed to be a lasting asset to the community. YSA Youth Venture teams are required to plan a Global Youth Service Day project every year that their Venture is operational. The YSA Youth Venture Program provides a variety of resources including: a national network of like-minded young people, media opportunities, technical support, helpful toolkits and workshops as well as seed funding of up to $1,000 for start-up expenses. For application tools and more information about the YSA Youth Venture Partnership Program, please visit our web page at http://www.genv.net/en-us/region/ysa. To apply, download and complete the Action Plan and email ysayvprogram@youthventure.org to submit.

Application Submission Deadline: October 1, 2007.

Civic Education Consortium’s Small Grants Program

With support from the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation, the North Carolina Civic Education Consortium offers grants ranging from $1,000 to $10,000 for innovative and collaborative civic education programs that prepare North Carolina’s young people (ages 5 to 18) to be active, responsible citizens. Application Deadline: Postmarked by October 1, 2007. Visit this link for more information: http://www.civics.unc.edu/smallgrants/application.html

Notices of Funding Opportunities Summer of Service for Middle-School Aged Youth NEW!

The Corporation for National and Community Service (the Corporation) announces the availability of up to $900,000 for grants to support summer of service activities. Summer of service activities are defined as high quality, supervised, volunteer activities in multiple locations during the summer (out-of-school) months. The participants will be middle school youth (typically 10 to 14 years old) from disadvantaged circumstances in urban and rural areas. The purpose of this competition is to stimulate new or expanded service-learning opportunities in the summer programming of youth-serving organizations that already serve large numbers of youth from disadvantaged circumstances at multiple sites. Service learning opportunities are designed so that the youth meet unmet needs in their communities.

Applications due October 10, 2007. Visit this link to learn more http://www.nationalservice.org/about/initiatives/summer.asp  or contact:

Special Initiatives Hotline, summerofservice@cns.gov or 202-606-7507

 State Farm Youth Advisory Board Grants NEW!

Grants ranging from $25,000 to $100,000 are being offered by the State Farm Youth Advisory Board. Applicants may request any amount within this range based on a required budget which outlines project expenses. The Youth Advisory Board will grant funds for student-led service-learning projects in the United States and in the Alberta, New Brunswick, and Ontario provinces of Canada. Grant requests must focus on disaster preparedness, driver safety, accessing higher education/closing the achievement gap, or financial education. Request for Proposals must be submitted online by October 12, 2007. To learn more, visit http://www.statefarmyab.com

State Farm Good Neighbor Service-Learning Grants NEW!

With the generous support of the State Farm Companies Foundation, Youth Service America is offering the annual State Farm Good Neighbor Service-Learning Grant for youth across the United States and Canada (select provinces). These grants of up to $1,000 support youth (ages 5-25), teachers, or school-based service-learning coordinators in implementing service-learning projects for Global Youth Service Day 2008.  To learn more, download an application and grant guidelines at http://www.YSA.org/awards or email Goodneighbor@ysa.org. The deadline to apply is October 16, 2007.

Knight Foundation Announces its 2007 News Challenge

Knight Foundation has launched year two of the Knight News Challenge and plans to award as much as $5 million for innovative ideas using digital experiments to transform community news.

Do you have a big idea for building community using bits and bytes? Cell phone documentaries? New operating software for news collectors? Journalism games? Nothing is too far out to qualify. With the slogan "You Invent It. We Fund It!" the contest is open to community-minded innovators worldwide, from software designers to journalists to citizens and students of any age.

In the 20th century, newspapers helped foster community in cities and towns across the country by providing news, information and commentary that helped citizens understand their common interests and opportunities. In that same spirit, the Knight News Challenge contest aims to use digital communities to enhance physical communities and improve the lives of people where they live, work and vote. Deadline:October 15, 2007 Additional information can be found on the News Challenge website.http://www.newschallenge.org/kebbel.php

Project Learning Tree Greenworks! Grants for Community-Based Environmental Projects

Project Learning Tree (PLT) is the environmental education program of the American Forest Foundation. The GreenWorks! grant program is PLT's service-learning program that engages PLT educators and their students with their local community in "learning-by-doing" neighborhood improvement projects. Elementary through college-age students in 20 different states design native plant gardens, restore streams and riparian habitat, construct hiking trails, start composting projects, and investigate alternative sources of energy. Proposals are due on October 31, 2007.  Grants up to $5,000 are available. To learn more, visit http://www.plt.org/cms/pages/47_191_0.html.

5th Annual P3 Awards: A National Student Design Competition for Sustainability - Focusing on People, Prosperity and the Planet NEW!

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as part of the P3 Award Program, is seeking applications proposing to research, develop, and design solutions to real world challenges involving sustainability. The P3 competition highlights people, prosperity, and the planet - the three pillars of sustainability. The P3 Awards program is a partnership between the public and private sectors to foster progress toward sustainability by achieving the mutual goals of economic prosperity, protection of the planet, and improved quality of life for its people. The EPA offers the P3 competition in order to respond to the technical needs of the developed and developing world while moving towards the goal of sustainability. Please see the P3 website at URL: http://es.epa.gov/ncer/rfa/2008/2008_p3.html for more details about this program.

Deadline is December 20, 2007.

Do Something Offering Weekly Grants for Young Social Entrepreneurs
Deadline: Rolling

Do Something is a not-for-profit organization that works to inspire, support, and celebrate young social entrepreneurs and community activists. The organization is accepting applications for the following grant programs:

• Do Something and GameStop are offering grants of $500 each to young people, age 25 and younger, in the United States or Canada who have a great idea for a community-action project and need support to turn their idea into reality. GameStop grants are given out weekly.
• Do Something and Plum TV are offering grants of $500 each to social entrepreneurs, age 25 and younger, in the U.S. who have recently created a sustainable project, program, or organization and need funding to further the growth  and success of their program. Plum TV grants are given out weekly.