The Funding Puzzle

Looking for funding? Look at an education foundation

By Anne Ward

Anne Ward is publications manager of NSBA's Technology Program.

Attracting funds for school technology depends in part on how well a school or district organizes the effort. As state and federal funding dwindles, communities nationwide are discovering how to create their own money magnets in the form of foundations. These tax-exempt, 501(c)(3) corporations smooth the way of giving by raising public awareness, standardizing systems for donating, listing programs to be funded, and demonstrating that grants will be managed in a businesslike manner. Foundations also yield side benefits specific to the schools they fund.

Electronic School looked at the education foundations that support technology use in the schools of four communities: the Pendleton County Schools around rural Falmouth, Ky. (enrollment 2,650); the Cape Educational Technology Alliance, a consortium of 17 small school districts with a total of 35,000 students in rural Cape May County along New Jersey's Atlantic coastline; Saratoga Union School District (enrollment 2,060) in California's high-tech Silicon Valley; and Niwot High School (1,050 students) in the St. Vrain Valley School District near Boulder, Colo.

Alike yet different

Common to all four foundations are concerned parents, community support for technology implementation, and lots of volunteer effort--from boards of directors to people who sell raffle tickets. The differences reflect the individual communities and the foundation's goals.

For the 17 school districts in New Jersey's Cape Educational Technology Alliance (CETA), the impetus to join forces in 1995 was to find strength in numbers. Most of the districts serve fewer than 1,000 students; the largest enrolls 2,500. "Individually, few of the districts were able to attract funds," says Greg Rohrman, business administrator for the Wildwood Crest Board of Education and a member of the alliance board. "Folks giving grants want to make sure their dollars have the broadest possible impact," he says.

Without the countywide foundation, Rohrman adds, "there's no way we could have participated in the Challenge Grant" recently awarded by the U.S. Department of Education to 10 CETA districts in conjunction with others in Pennsylvania and New York. The five-year, $2,894,224 grant will support distance learning, bringing $25,000 into each of the 10 districts in Year One.

CETA also aims to facilitate technology planning, staff development, purchasing, and maintenance for county schools. Just getting representatives of all county districts to the table together--"something no one's going to do unless money's at stake," Rohrman says--has helped to generate new ideas, draw on a wider range of personnel, and better integrate curriculum countywide.

In Colorado, on the other hand, two high schools in the St. Vrain Valley School District have created their own foundations to meet individual needs. An existing community foundation--the St. Vrain Valley Education Foundation--funds minigrants for teachers in all the district's schools as well as other education efforts in the community, to the tune of from $10,000 to $30,000 each year. "But we were competing with 32 other schools for that fund," explains Niwot High School Principal Mary White. "Our needs are specific to our community, and we thought this way we'd have a better chance of getting something accomplished for our kids."

In Kentucky's Pendleton County Schools, the initial plan for the foundation was to fund student scholarships. But a growing emphasis on technology in the district and the state has led to earmarking most of the $8,000 distributed thus far for such equipment as videodisc players and video production equipment. The foundation has raised $13,000 toward its goal of awarding $50,000 in 1997 to the county's four schools. The grants will fund technology purchases that will complement state-supported school and district computer networks.

The bottom line behind all of these districts' interest in establishing foundations is community concern for students' success, as epitomized by California's Saratoga Education Foundation. Created in 1982, the foundation "was founded by parents and staff who could see that state funding couldn't do things for our kids at the level we wanted," says foundation president Cyndy Riordan, a parent herself. These parents, many of them employed in high-tech industries, are intent on high-quality math, science, and technology education, and recently funded the purchase of updated equipment for technology labs and salaries for a K-5 science teacher, a kindergarten science aide, and a technology media specialist who will assist teachers at all grade levels.

Set-up hurdles

The boards of these foundations reflect the groups' founding principles. In many, the board is a mix of school and community business leaders, sometimes including a student representative as well. Saratoga's all-parent, 30-member board meets with a school board representative, the superintendent, and principals for advice. The mission of CETA's board, on the other hand, extends beyond fundraising, and the board includes a representative from a social service organization. At each meeting of the communitywide board of the St. Vrain Valley Education Foundation in Colorado, an invited minigrant recipient describes a funded project.

Setting up accounts and nonprofit status can be a hurdle. "Get yourself a crackerjack attorney and a crackerjack accountant," advises CETA's Rohrman. Interested community members and parents often provide those services gratis. Pendleton County's early legal work was done by an attorney who was on the verge of retirement and looking for volunteer work; parent-attorneys helped Niwot High School; and an attorney and an accountant on the foundation board managed CETA's set-up.

Volunteerism permeates these groups, particularly in the hands-on work of fundraising. "Our chief beggars are our board members," says Pendleton County Assistant Superintendent Larry Sutton. Both holding fundraising events and balancing the books depend in large part on the generosity of interested supporters, including school staff members. Similarly, school foundations might forgo such amenities as stationery and descriptive brochures so as to funnel funds directly into schools.

To make the most of their funds, some foundations create an endowment. At St. Vrain's Niwot High School, for example, one-half of all contributions is invested to enable the foundation to be self-perpetuating.

Where the money comes from

Local style and tradition have much to do with how school foundations raise their funds. Memorial giving is at the core of fundraising in Kentucky's Pendleton County, where the largest town--Falmouth--has a population of just 3,000. Early in the foundation's history, one family started the trend by donating a $500,000 amphitheater to the school system as a memorial to a loved one. Now, memorial donors to the foundation--most of whom are school staff members--are recognized on a list posted on a district wall. Visitors to funeral parlors find donation envelopes printed with the foundation's name. The personalized style carries over to other fundraisers: golf outings, shopping spree raffles, a dinner buffet featuring graduate Phillip Sharp, a 1993 Nobel Prize cowinner for his discovery of split genes. Meanwhile, area banks make their own direct contributions to student scholarships--the foundation's original goal.

Direct solicitation is the key to Saratoga's success. The foundation raised $48,000 last year from a fundraising letter mailed to each local property owner. "Seven out of 10 parents in the district donate," reports Riordan. A one-day telephone solicitation raised $67,000, giftwrap sales brought in $52,000, and pledges for a middle school jogathon yielded $17,000. Sales of grocery store certificates and retailers' scrip brought in $43,000 last year, adds Riordan, who calls this a great fundraising strategy "since people use [certificates and scrip] on something they buy anyway."

Tapping the resources of Silicon Valley businesses takes several forms in Saratoga. "We have a lot of Hewlett-Packard parents," Riordan says, one of whom launched an e-mail campaign within the company that--together with the efforts of the foundation's grants committee--netted the district three of the four servers used for school networks. Hewlett-Packard triple-matches any contributions its employees make to the school district and, with other businesses, made $50,000 worth of in-kind donations of software, hardware, and expertise last year.

A separate business partnership program uses a personal approach to get local entrepreneurs involved, bringing in $7,700 last year. "For those who contribute as much as $1,000, we put their names and photos in the local paper, which donates half [what the space would cost], and we treat them to lunch with the superintendent," says Riordan. "They say it's a real eye-opener when they see what the schools do with the funds. About 50 percent who participate sign up to do it again."

None of the foundation representatives interviewed for this article strayed far beyond their own locality for funds, but all expressed interest in acquiring the skills and assistance to do so. "We need somebody on our board with some connections," muses Niwot High School's Mary White. CETA aims to hire someone to write grants someday, and Pendleton is "still looking for ideas of how to approach corporations and seek out those groups that have larger sources of funds," says Sutton.

Whether the fund-raising method an education foundation uses is up close and personal or based on a proposal sent to a distant, unknown corporate executive, the goal is the same: finding the money that will help educators make optimum use of technology and, in the end, help young people learn. As they target parents' concerns and strive to form new alliances, foundations such as the ones profiled here are discovering how to focus community pride and national interest on the needs of their own schools.