MTEF reviews and awards general grants twice annually – during a fall cycle and spring cycle. Educators, school groups and students are encouraged to submit funding requests for projects that enhance curriculum or school environment and directly benefit students, especially those that incorporate new technologies and innovative practices, facilitate peer-to-peer interaction or involve hands-on, experiential learning.
Latest Grants
Sprouting Learners
Engaging our youngest learners and promoting school readiness, two district-wide parent-child sessions for ages 0-2 and 3-5 included pre-literacy, early math, STEM and motor skills activities as well as take-home materials and resources.
Bone Clone Hominid Skulls
Tangible materials help educators demonstrate complex scientific concepts. 7th grade life science students use high quality fossil replicas to make evidence-based conclusions about how species change over time.
First in Math
At Nitrauer Elementary this high-interest activity covering all kindergarten math standards increases student engagement, encourages higher thinking to expand on base skills, and helps teachers provide individualized instruction.
Promoting Collaborative and Interactive Learning
Whiteboard tables in a mathematics classroom provide a welcome break from paper and pencil experiences and offer problem-solving space iPads don’t. These unique surfaces promote creativity, engagement, peer cooperation and editing skills.
28,000 Square Inches of Whiteboard
100 High School Students
Students are active in the lesson and willing to work together and to make mistakes. Whiteboards have allowed students to take risks in the learning process; an answer is just one wipe away from being correct!
Jeanine Bonner, MT High School
Frequently Asked Questions
Once you have completed your application and received a grant, the only additional paperwork required is that you submit a final evaluation report, including an expense report, and photos of the grant in action upon completion of your project.
Almost anything that enhances the curriculum or school environment and directly benefits students may be proposed. We look specifically at three areas:
- Cutting edge (new technology, innovative practice)
- Peer-to-peer (social component, promote goodwill)
- Hands-on (outside of the classroom, experiential learning, real world)
MTEF does not typically fund stipends, transportation, textbooks or tuition unless the grant qualifies as an EITC (Educational Improvement Tax Credit) program. We do not fund salaries for district staff positions.
Your access to grant funding is dependent on the source of funding for your grant. Some sources permit you to make arrangements with MTEF to access funding almost immediately. Other sources may take longer. Your acceptance letter will provide you guidance.
The majority of grants have averaged $100 to $10,000. However, applicants should view these average awards merely as guidelines. Funding for larger amounts have been granted through alternative funding sources. If you have a very large project, get in touch with us prior to submitting your application so we can discuss how to move forward.
Typically you will hear within 30-60 days of the application deadline.
The Grant Review Committee takes many factors into consideration. Among the questions that are often asked:
- Is the project new to the district or to a specific school?
- How does it impact the curriculum?
- Is it community service related?
- Will the proposal impact a large number of students or a targeted needy group of students?
- Can it impact the community in a positive way?
- Can the proposal become a part of the regular curriculum or school environment in subsequent years? If a grant is approved through our EITC funding stream, you may apply for it through MTEF again. If not, it is our goal to fund programs once.
Potentially any person in the world! While your application is first reviewed by a subcommittee of MTEF, portions of an application may be posted publicly (on the MTEF website or social media, for example) to assist others with their applications and to illustrate examples of our impact for donors and the community. Please remember that your submission should be of “publishing quality”.
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Awarded Grants
Learn more about recent grant awards and the exciting projects underway around the district.
See All Awarded Grants