School Library Journal (11/29/11) reports:
Calling all school librarians: there’s still time to apply for a Laura Bush Foundation grant—but you better hurry, the deadline is December 31.
If you work in a school where 50 percent or more of the student body qualifies for free or reduced lunch, then get moving. To promote a love of reading, the foundation awards media centers with grants of up to $6,000 to purchase books, magazines, and other reading materials. The goal? To update, extend, and diversify book collections in the nation’s neediest school libraries.
All grants, which are supported by private donations, are given to individual schools rather than to school districts, county systems, private organizations, foundations, or other entities. Only one application per school is allowed per year, and the money cannot be used for staffing, shelving, furniture, equipment, software, videos, classroom book sets, or any kind of book guides, tests or exams.
Since research shows a clear relationship between family income and students’ access to books, the Laura Bush Foundation gives selection preference to schools in which 90 percent or more of the students receive free or reduced lunches and are likely to have the fewest books and reading materials at home.
All applications must be made online, and incomplete forms will be eliminated from consideration, as will applications that are faxed, emailed, or mailed. Applicants will be notified by email once their applications have been received. Grant winners will be identified and awards will be bestowed before the middle of May 2012.
Be sure to read the Frequently Asked Questions and the Scoring Rubric sections of the website, and use Internet Explorer to complete the form.
For general questions about the application process, contact Alicia Reid at laurabushfoundation@cfncr.org or call (202)-263-4774.
Register for a new account and submit the application step by step (if you don’t register and log in, your partial submission will be associated with an “anonymous” account and you might experience “validation error” during the submission process).
This article originally appeared in the School Library Journal newsletter Extra Helping. Go here to subscribe.