Listening and Acting With Urgency

The Schott Foundation for Public Education has been actively fundraising for our Loving Communities Response Fund for Racial Justice to respond to racial justice emergencies – from supporting COVID relief efforts in Black and Brown communities to ensuring the safety of youth of color who have been traumatized, harassed, and overpoliced in our nation’s public schools.

We worked with four national coalition partners – Alliance to Reclaim Our Schools, Dignity in Schools Campaign, Journey for Justice Alliance, and Alliance for Educational Justice – to identify local grassroots organizations already doing the work on the ground; Schott then implemented a streamlined process to move money to them quickly.

Some organizations recommended for funding were already Schott grantees; in those cases, needing no new information, we sent funds right away. For new groups, I created a five-minute grant application, and gave applicants the option to complete it by phone or over email. Even with this truncated process, we’re still capturing the data we need to tell the stories of the students, parents, teachers, and community leaders we support.

In addition to streamlining applications, we’ve sped up our grant decisions, approving and distributing rapid response grants as fundraised dollars become available. We communicate guidelines (e.g. that grants cannot support lobbying) to grantees in our award letters, rather than risk delays using the traditional grant agreement process. Grantees also have the option to receive funds electronically or with a physical check.

In six months of this work, I’ve learned the importance of being nimble, creative, and ready to ask a grantee anytime I’m not sure what to do. The Schott Foundation didn’t need to reinvent the wheel to make this happen: We just needed to trust our partners, ask them what they need, and then get it done.

Each of us, from where we sit in our own organizations, can think of one quick change to implement right now that could save applicants and grantees time; even five minutes is valuable for these extremely busy activists.