Click here to read tips designed for smaller, community-based organizations on using data more effectively in their grant proposals.
Before election day and Veterans Day rolls around on the same week each year, I always think about my parents. And while I do think that if I don’t pull out that sample ballot, study it, and vote, they will haunt me (but not in a good way), thinking about them makes me motivated to do just that.
For as long as I could remember, my mother volunteered as a precinct worker, getting to my elementary school at the crack of dawn and working until after the doors had closed and they accounted for all the ballots. My father was a veteran of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team. He would pick up my mom and a box of Kentucky Fried Chicken so they could watch election returns together.
My parents were both U.S. citizens when they were taken away from their homes and incarcerated in remote camps while in their teens. Like many Japanese Americans, they didn’t talk that much about this experience, but I know it shaped their views on the importance of voting. Well, at least my mother’s until she finally convinced my father that he was not allowed to argue with her about politics if he didn’t vote.
In his later years, my father took to carrying around a pocket-sized copy of the Constitution and sometimes gave talks to students about the rights and responsibilities of being a U.S. citizen and how many of his friends sacrificed their lives in war fighting for our freedoms.
So, to my fellow citizens, please vote. It matters.
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Some nonpartisan resources to help you vote:
U.S.: Register to vote in U.S. elections | Vote.gov
California: My Voter Status - California Secretary of State
Relationships between nonprofits and schools can be a beautiful thing – mutually beneficial and of tremendous value for their shared beneficiaries. But, since nonprofits and schools rarely have sufficient funding or capacity, there are often challenges and obstacles that make it difficult to get projects off the ground or sustain them after they are successfully launched.
Based on my experience with public schools and nonprofits, here are four tips:
Understand the needs and context of who you are trying to serve: do your homework before contacting a potential partner. If you are seeking to serve a particular school or district, there are websites with reports providing data and statistics on the demographics of students and schools. In California, every district’s Local Control and Accountability Plan (LCAP) is available on their website and can often provide a useful summary of needs, challenges, annual goals, measures, and expected outcomes. For schools and districts seeking nonprofit partners, you may want to explore who the people already working in your schools and community are or organizations that are dealing with issues similar to those you are facing.
Involve or ensure that the viewpoints of practitioners and stakeholders are included in your planning process: for example, if you are nonprofit planning a teacher training project, will the timing of the professional development being offered fit with their schedules and labor agreements? Or, in planning after school activities, how will student and parent interests and needs be considered?
Be conscious of the competing priorities and timelines of your partner: if it’s the first week of school or graduation time or the day of a big fundraiser, it may not be the greatest time to try to schedule an initial meeting. Understanding each other’s timelines for developing budgets, submitting grant applications, and allocating resources, however, will always help.
Develop shared goals, affirm expected outcomes, and clarify roles and responsibilities: developing a collaborative grant application can be a little like creating a family schedule for household chores – determining from the start what you jointly want to achieve, when, how and by whom will make it make projects more likely to get off the ground and be successful. Some grant applications even require a formal memorandum of agreement (MOU) between partners which spells these things out.
While the federal funding landscape is ever-changing, there have been a number of grant opportunities for which the partnership of community-based organizations and schools has been foundational, including Community Schools, Magnet Schools, 21st Century Learning Centers, and more. Getting to know more about each other will help nonprofits and schools be better prepared to jointly go after these funding opportunities.