Tuesday, October 19, 2010

October 2010 SatchGrant

Satchel's Pizza has successfully offered the SatchGrant program to schools and charitable organizations in Alachua County for 2 years. Because we are continually learning from this process, we've decided to make some adjustments in time for the 2011 SatchGrant. We've found that the most specific grant requests are the easiest to fund - ones that clearly state an attainable outcome. We're also interested in seeing growth in new program areas rather than contributing to normal operational funding for organizations. We've also decided to lengthen the time limit between SatchGrant awards to a particular organization to 2 years instead of just one. This increases the chances for first time applicants to receive an award. And finally, we've decided to add a third $500 SatchGrant per quarter in order to give funding to more organizations.

That said, once again it was difficult to settle on awards for the October SatchGrant. Ultimately we decided to award the SatchGrant to Florida Organic Growers for their GIFT garden program that provides sustainable nutrition asistance for at-risk populations, increasing local food production and beautifying neighborhoods. We also awarded Zeta Phi Beta Sorority a grant for their Stork's Nest program that promotes prenatal care participation and healthy behaviors during pregnancy to low income women through incentives and education. And we also decided to award a third SatchGrant to Mrs. Yassine's Pre-K ESE class at Lake Forest Elementary School for her Handwriting Without Tears curriculum in order to teach her students how to write successfully.

We'd like to encourage all applicants that didn't receive a SatchGrant this time to reapply for the January 2011 SatchGrant. We will be accepting applications until December 31, 2010 and will offer three $500 grants on January 15, 2011. I would also like to request that those who did receive an award send pictures of their program's progress to satchelsdonation@gmail.com so that I can post them on this blog. Congratulations and best of luck to you all. We really appreciate all that you do for our community.

Thursday, July 15, 2010

July 2010 SatchGrant




We've been accepting grant proposal's for more than year and a half and as difficult as it is to choose from among the many worthy requests, we've been able to fine tune our rubric. This time we awarded Christians Concerned for the Community (CCC) a grant for their request to build a wheelchair ramp as a part of their Fantastic Home Facelift program. We also awarded Micanopy Collaborators for Educational Excellence (MCEE) a grant for their after school program that provides free one on one tutoring to poverty level children. What we especially liked about these two grant proposals was their detailed request for funds for a specific item or program area. The proposals clearly addressed their need and made it easy for us to understand that our grant would help them to carry out their goal. Many of the other grants were compelling and we certainly would love to help more, but unfortunately we're finding that it's easiest to choose those who have the most clearly stated goal. As difficult as this process is, we're learning from it and it seems to be getting easier.

Congratulations to CCC and MCEE! When you get a chance, please send along some pictures or a video of your project so we can add it to this blog. And to those of you who weren't awarded a grant, please reapply for our fourth quarter grant and consider revising your grant proposal (if necessary). Grants are due September 30, 2010 for the October 15 award.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Sorry I'm so behind...

Wow, this has been a crazy month and a half! On May 22, I discovered that 5 fraudulent checks had been written from our account and I've only just recovered from the backlash it caused. Anyway, forgive me for falling behind. We've just awarded a new set of grants so I plan to fill you in about it and catch up on past grants very soon.

Friday, April 23, 2010

Florida Organic Growers GIFT Garden Program


Here's a video about the GIFT Garden program that was awarded our 3rd Quarter grant.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

July 2009 - Bats, Gardens and more Teachers!






Once again this quarter we had amazing grant submissions. We awarded grants to Lubee Bat Conservancy to help them with their annual Bat Festival, Florida Organic Growers for their GIFT garden program and W.W. Irby Elementary School for a classroom listening center to provide the basic tools needed to teach reading and writing for a challenging group of students. Lubee Bat Conservancy was kind enough to invite us for a private tour as a way to thank us for the grant. Oh what a fun day that was!

Friday, February 26, 2010

April 2009 - We love teachers!

Second quarter 2009 was just as difficult as the first. We received 13 grant applications for the 2 grants available. Applicants were creative in their grant presentations. We decided to award grants to two teachers. Ms. Longshore at Lake Forest Elementary needed a classroom library to promote literacy for her 3rd grade students. Ms. Foust at Howard Bishop Middle School planned a leadership project with her 8th grade students to raise money for Peaceful Paths who recently suffered a devastating loss when their administrative building caught fire. We also provided food for a women's conference sponsored by IHN to raise money to help run their day center, take care of guest expenses and help parents get trained for work. I've included the video IHN sent with their application. Enjoy!

Friday, February 19, 2010

SatchGrant beginnings - January 2009





2009's first quarter Satch Grant was an introduction to how difficult it would be to choose which organizations to award our grants. We received 23 applications for the 2 grants available. We ultimately decided to award grants to the Boys and Girls Club of Alachua County to help fund their Endeavor Baseball League for disabled children and the Gainesville Commission on the Status of Women to help fund their sexual battery conference aimed at raising awareness and improving assistance to survivors. We also decided to award a new teacher at Westwood Middle School an extra grant for her microbiology project on euglena (see picture above). Here's a link to the article written in the Gainesville Sun about the Endeavor Program.

Friday, January 29, 2010

cash contributions

Since January 2005, Satchel's Pizza has donated $14826.07 in cash to various organizations. The breakdown looks like this:

2005: $1700
2006: $250
2007: $1191.37
2008: $3347.45
2009: $7237.45
2010 (so far): $1100

In 2008 we started donating the ATM fee from our new machine at Lightnin' Salvage. From that we donated $1727 in 2008 and $601 in 2009. In 2009 we introduced the SatchGrant program from which we awarded $4242.45 in cash (and $500 in food) that year and $1000 so far in 2010. Finally, in 2009 we acquired the ATM machine in the restaurant and donated $1219 in ATM fees. There's more to come, so stay tuned!

Wednesday, January 27, 2010

gift certificates for pictures



We support local efforts to give to charitable causes in a variety of ways. Probably the most common way is by offering gift certificates to groups that are having fundraisers, meetings or raffles to raise money for their cause. I had the idea that groups who have received gift certificates could promote their event by sending an email with a picture so that we can post it here.

inception of giving

Working here is the easy part - we have plenty to give and believe in doing so. The hard part is choosing from among those in need. We’ve narrowed it down to local non profit organizations for the Satch Grant. But it’s still hard. Maybe someday we’ll get to them all - maybe.