Funding Focus

Virginia Literacy Foundation grants target community-based and faith-based volunteer organizations that provide literacy and numeracy services to adults 18 years of age and older and who read at a fifth-grade level or below.

Activities eligible for funding

1. Literacy instruction and services to adults, including teaching basic literacy, pre-GED, GED, ESOL, and numeracy skills. This instruction may be one-on-one or in small group classes. Distance learning and use of technology are encouraged, but only as a means of providing literacy instruction.
2. Recruitment and retention of students and volunteers.
3. Board development and staff development. (Be aware that these services are offered for free through the Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center. A minimum of 15 participants is required.)
4. Strategic planning. (Be aware that a facilitator is offered for free through the Virginia Adult Learning Resource Center. A minimum of 15 participants is required.)
5. Instructing literacy and numeracy skills instruction to parents in family literacy programs (teaching adults to read to children, for example).
6. Using technology to teach literacy skills (creating online homework assignments and writing emails, or taking distance learning courses such as GED Connection, for example).
7. Community awareness, outreach, and marketing (includes web development).
8. Strengthening or initiating collaborative efforts with community partners.
9. Increasing program capacity to serve more students in a larger geographic area.
10. Data collection, management, and dissemination.
11. Salaries related to the grant project.
12. Tailoring an established, scientifically-researched curricula to program needs.
13. Innovative projects with university or college partners.

Activities not eligible for funding:

1. Wholesale purchase and distribution of children's books and/or handing out free giveaways. (Your program must provide direct literacy instruction to parents – handing out books does not fall into this category.)
2. Teaching individuals how to use the computer. (Using the computer to deliver literacy instruction is allowed.)
3. Family literacy activities that involve only children. Parents and adult literacy must remain the focus.
4. Developing new curricula. Adapting current curricula that are based on best practices is allowed. In this case, a résumé of the individual who is adapting the curriculum must be attached.
5. Out-of-state travel.
6. Parties or celebratory events, like graduations.
7. Purchasing accounting or legal services.

This year our focus will be on projects* that:

1. offer integrated literacy instruction to parents/caretakers of children, by finding ways to collaborate in a meaningful way with current family literacy programs, adding components to your current program that will improve parents’ literacy skills in order to improve their children’s chances for success in school, or researching how your program can provide services to parents of at-risk children and coming up with solutions;
2. use data to drive program improvement;
3. describe improved services to your clients and/or volunteers;
4. collaborate in an integrated way with other community agencies;
5. describe methods to retain students and volunteers;
6. follow a strategic plan to grow and strengthen your organization’s capacity to serve the community; or
7. use technology in innovative ways to teach clients and reach stakeholders.

*The term project may be defined loosely. You may choose to improve specific program components, such as recruitment, or, fund development activities, or start new program components. Or you may choose to fund a salaried position for a particular program or project in your organization. If this is the case, then your grant should focus on the salaried position and how this position advances the project. The activities you describe will then be related to the salaried position, not to the project itself. If you have any questions about activities that are eligible for funding or how to write for a salaried position, please contact Victoire Gerkens Sanborn at 800-237-0178 or vsanborn@valrc.org

Organizations we fund and do not fund:

1. The VLF funds: community-based literacy organizations, faith-based literacy organizations, library-based literacy programs, community-based ESOL programs, adult literacy instruction in family literacy programs, instruction that uses technology as a tool to deliver literacy instruction (not how to use the software and hardware as an end in itself), GED programs for low literate adults, and ESOL instruction for adults with very low literacy skills.
2. The VLF does not fund: community colleges, colleges, or universities, events for children, for-profit organizations, start-up organizations, and learning how to use computers.