School Safety Funds Are There, but Only if You Know How To Access Them
Enacted in 2022, the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) seeks to save lives and prevent tragedies like the Uvalde, Texas, elementary school shooting. However, the application process for school districts and local education agencies (LEAs) to request federal grants is incredibly complicated and, ironically, costly.
Worse, many LEAs aren’t aware of federal school safety grants like the BSCA, which are designed to identify school security threats, improve collaboration and coordination between law enforcement and schools, connect students with mental health programs and personnel, and promote a positive school culture and climate.
The bureaucracy and lack of awareness have left over $2 billion in BSCA and similar funds underutilized. Under-resourced school districts, which need the financial support the most, are losing out, and kids are left at risk of harm and tragedy.
Enter the Greenlights Grant Initiative
You may not know about the Greenlights Grant Initiative (GGI), but you’re undoubtedly familiar with its founders, actor and Uvalde native Matthew McConaughey and his wife, Camila Alves. The couple previously launched the just keep livin Foundation to empower high school students by providing them with the tools to lead active lives and make healthy choices for a better future. Their motivation for GGI was even more personal:
“Schools should be a sanctuary where our kids learn in an environment without fear. Our goal is to help every school district in the country access the resources available to them to keep their students safe. The parents in Uvalde asked us to do one thing, “make their lives matter.” We hope this can help do just that.”
As the GGI website indicates:
Applying for, and winning, federal grants is complex, expensive, and intimidating. There are dozens of school safety grants offered by different federal agencies at different times throughout the year. Completing a federal grant can take up to 100 hours and cost as much as $50,000 to hire a professional grant writer. School districts with limited resources and staff, often rural school districts or those in less affluent areas, are at a severe disadvantage in securing federal funding.
GGI offers various resources to help school districts navigate the grant application process, including webinars, guidebooks, how-tos, and tutorials to win federal dollars. It even has a network of volunteer grant writers who work with LEAs to draft applications and additional resources to assist them in implementing grants in the post-award phase.
Showing Cause for Children in 2024
Since its inception, Rain’s Show Cause social responsibility effort has allowed us to support a wide range of non-profits and their missions from month to month. We will continue those efforts in 2024 but are concentrating on organizations whose missions focus on children’s issues.
We’re pleased and proud to start the Show Cause year by supporting the Greenlights Grant Initiative. All right, all right, all right!
