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Chapter News

Feb 2, 2013: NEW WEBSITE
Our long awaited upgrade to our grantstoyou.org website is now up and running. Those of you who are familiar with our prior site should notice a totally different look and feel. Please take a moment to check it out and give us some feedback. Best to you and your community.

Jan 29, 2013: (2) New Chapter & Website
New Locations & Website We are pleased to announce that we have two brand new locations for Grants To You volunteer training...one in Avondale, AZ and the other in the San Francisco Bay area. Avondale Location (Maricopa County) Our first class with two sessions offered will be held on Saturday February 2nd and 9th at Estrella Mountain Community College. We already have 14 volunteers registered with two days to go. Our instructor, Bonita Gibson is ready as is our Area Coordinator Sarah Minshall who is prepared to support our efforts. Our plan is to expand throughout Maricopa County, AZ, teaching our grants classes in their 10 Community Colleges. This marks the beginning of the implementation of our New Business Model which our Board recently adopted that focuses on local colleges as a source for student and local citizen volunteers. If your neighborhood has a number of colleges located in close proximity, we would liike to chat with you about starting a Grants To You location of your own. San Francisco Bay Location We welcome Leann Connell as the Area Coordinator of our new location. Leann resides in the Cupertino area and brings a wealth of business and nonprofit experience. Her San Francisco Bay Area website has been established on the grantstoyou.org site and Leann is already working on identifying the most appropriate newpapers in the area as well as the most likely schools for us to begin to contact. In fact, we are already aware of four schools in the area that may be appropriate for our program. Go Leann. New Website We are only days away from launching our brand spanking new grantstoyou.org website. While it contains the same basic functionality, its look, feel and ease of navigation is what you should notice when you visit. The purpose of our upgrade is to attract more visitors and have them stay on the site for a greater length of time leading to more volunteers taking our live and online classes. Please plan to check out grantstoyou.org on February 3rd forward.

Nov 17, 2010: Adult Care Services-Grant Won
We have recently learned that in 2009, Mike Direen, a graduate of a 2007 class given by the Yavapai County, AZ chapter,won a $97,000 grant from the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT) to purchase two vans and radio systems for their transportation system. Ongratulations to Mike and thank you ADOT.

Jul 8, 2010: Grants To You receives $4,000
Grants To You(GTU)is pround to announce that the Wells Fargo Foundation has recognized GTU's work helping communities and awarded it $4,000. This is the third award we have received from Wells Fargo, with the first two coming from Wells Fargo Community Partners totaling $9,000. The new funding will be used to update the GTU online research and writing class.

Mar 31, 2010: Guidestar and Ning Networking Sites
Grants To You now has a full report posted on Guidestar. We also have a networking community on Ning and have a number of volunteering opportunities listed on VolunteerMatch. You may also wish to Google the founder of Grants To You...Paul Baskin Please take a mement to check out Grants To You.

Nov 21, 2009: New Online Chapters Announced
Grants To You will be forming online chapters throughout the U.S. whose focus will be on promoting the recently launched online class and classes that will follow. As of November 21, 2009 online chapters are being formed in Bloomington,Colorado, Northern, AZ, Bullhead City, AZ and North Orange County, CA. Please contact Paul at info@grantstoyou.org if you are interested in joining the GTU family by forming an online chapter in your community.

Oct 1, 2009: Online Grants class launched
Effective this date, we are pleased to announce that GTU has launched an excellent and reasonably priced on line, on demand grant research and writing class. To register, just go to grantstoyou.org and follow the screen directions. Be sure to have the name and contact information of the non-profit you will be assisting available.

Apr 8, 2009: Jason Sanchez Supervises $5M in Service Learning Grants
Notes from Jason Sanchez:

  1. After successfully completing the Grants To You (then Grants 4 Us) course, I served as the chair of the Youth in Philanthropy mini-grant board, Change-for-Change.
  2. As a result of my increasing involvement in grants, I was asked to be one of the keynote speakers at the International Red Cross Youth Leadership and Safety Conference where I taught (with Cindy Craig of Youth Count) a four-hour interactive presentation on grant writing.
  3. I used the skills I gained from the Grants To You course to apply for a Red Cross Grant with which I designed, implemented, and lead a multi-pronged community-wide disaster preparedness program.
  4. In 2006 I was honored to be recognized by Prescott Area Leadership at Youth Leader of the Year.
  5. As a result of these experiences with grants and others such as serving as a grant reviewer for the Case Foundation, I one of 15 youth accepted on the State Farm Insurance Youth Advisory Board. This board is comprised of 30 youth that represent the United States and Canada. Our job is to grant $5,000,000 a year to service-learning projects. More information can be found here: http://www.sfyab.com/about.php.

These experiences and successes were a direct result of the Grants To You course and serve as an example of the real-world difference one course can make. I would highly recommend anyone of any age to take this course. It could change your life!



Apr 26, 2008: Non-Profit Status
I am pleased to announce that The Lifespan Foundation dba Grants To You has received its tax exemption from the IRS under the 501c3 code. That will give GTU more opportunities to win grants to help finance its ever expanding operations.

Apr 18, 2009: Funds Raised - Yavapai County Chptr
Since September, 2002, the graduates of the Yavapai County, AZ chapter have raised in excess of $450,000 at no cost to either the volunteer student or to the benefiting agency.

Mar 31, 2006: Saratoga, NY, New Chapter-March 31, 2006
Grants To You is pleased to announce the formation of a new Grants To You chapter in beautiful Saratoga Springs, NY. As of the end of January, the chapter had held three classes and graduated over 60 volunteers. Paul Baskin, the founder of Grants To You and his wife Shirley, the start up coordinator for new chapters flew to Saratoga Springs to meet the Advisory Council, non-profit leaders and other citizens in the community. Welcome Saratoga!

Aug 30, 2005: National-Name Change
Grants R Us (GRU) is now Grants To You (GTU). After more than a year of trial and tribulation we have succeeded in obtaining a national, registered mark for Grants To You. This means that our chapters everywhere can use this name. Please note that the Home Pages of the existing chapters will be revised shortly to reflect the new name. We hope that this does not cause any undo hardship to our chapters.

Nov 3, 2004: Yavapai Cty-Student volunteers laud Grants To You
Jason Sanchez, 14 and Jessica Ksenzulak, 13 recently attended FREE Grants To You training.Sanchez, a member of the Youth Volunteer Corp. under Youth Count noted that he learned how to set up a grant, what the qualifications are to get a grant and how to judge them. Jason has applied for and received a grant from the Yavapai County Community Foundation to help finance the Change for Change program.

Aug 16, 2004: Easy to start and operate a chapter
The Grants To You WEB Site and its proven processes will facilitate start up. Teachers can be obtained from local colleges and high schools...they are typically grant managers; no special classroom is necessary to hold classes. No effort is required by the chapter to find non-profit agencies for volunteers...they have already been selected as the volunteer registers; class rosters are created by the WEB Site as students register; the annual budget for a chapter is around $1,500 covering 4 quarterly classes and generally comes for local clubs such as Lions. There are no start up costs other than a $100 licensing fee to pay for maintenance and upkeep of the WEB Site; follow up forms for quality are provided so that volunteers can make calls to agencies and graduates to determine the status of the volunteering and the results of their efforts; a Home Page is created for each chapter when formed and will immediately enable the local Program Coordinator to enter classes and receive on-line registrations.

Jun 15, 2008: Elizabeth Ruffner: $36,000 grant for the Prescott Elks Theater
When I was a student in your class in February I was working on a grant proposal to Arizona Public Service Company. Michael Johnsen, the corporate relations man in the Prescott office who submitted the proposal to the company, phoned last week to say we had been awarded $36,000. for the Elks Opera House restoration! Read more -->