Funding Sources for ILXO

Possible Funding Sources

• 826 Valencia: Children's education program in Chicago, http://www.826valencia.org/
• Community Outreach programs in Chicago area
• Education grants and programs at local universities and colleges
• Google.org (http://www.google.org/inform.html - I think we fit pretty well into their inform & empower goal, but the application process may be a little long)
• General Grants (Chris will look more into this)
• Ben & Jerry's Foundation- request for small grants $1000 or less (http://www.benjerry.com/foundation/guidelines.html)
• Community foundations in Chicago
• Churches
• City/Local government-special projects funding
• Support for local businesses
• Rotary International
• Educate the Children Foundation ---> I don't know that they actually have money, but they'd probably be interested in OLPC, and easy to talk to since they're based in Barrington.

Approach

• We're requesting funding fairly last minute, so having an organization who would be able to write off a few thousand dollars to us as a part of some existing program that they're doing would be ideal. To do this we should consider the following:
  • Focusing on groups that work on children's education, general community outreach, appropriate technologies & sustainable development, one's that fund and support non-profits or new initiatives or something along those lines so that the organizations values fit more closely with ILXO's.
  • Sticking to organizations in the Chicago area and offering our office space for them to use as their own hacking space
  • Offering organizations to "sponsor" some our workshops and/or classes and get some of our funding that way
  • What's the perceived value of funding us, what are we offering?

Resources

• Grassroots grants: an activist's guide to grantseeking, Andy Robinson, http://www.chipublib.org/search/details/cn/1935371
• Donors Forum [1]
• Foundation Center [2]
• Funds Net Services [3]