Shopping with Someone Else's Money

When I was in high school, I remember going to an awards ceremony, where we all sat down, bored in the bleachers, while the principal rattled off the names of all of the graduating seniors who had won scholarships.  Among the endless droning in that hot, stuffy gymnasium, one moment stuck in my memory.  A girl had been awarded a small scholarship from a local Huguenot Society.  For some reason, that made me sit up a bit.

A Huguenot Society?  What exactly did they do?  What does one have to do to get a scholarship from them?  How would anyone even find out about it?  And then, as I watched the beaming young lady traipse up to the stage to get her check, I wondered - How many people even applied for that?

I was a fairly indifferent student in high school - bright enough, but disinclined to show much effort in subjects which did interest me which, to the intense irritation of my parents and teachers, was most of them.  Something about that Huguenot Society scholarship stuck with me though, and I began to root around for obscure scholarships.  Some - most, actually - I stood no chance for, or seemed like too much work for too small a probability of success, and I let those slide.  I did, however, end up grabbing up a few long-hanging fruits, which did make a small but still-appreciable difference later on.

After college, I thought my scholarship-grubbing days were done.  How wrong I was.

It didn't take me too long to get introduced to the wonderful world of grants.  Grants - money with strings-attached, scholarships for organizations and individuals - are a wonderful opportunity to go shopping with someone else's money.  

There are all sorts of grants out there, some local some state or federal, some very specific and some very broad in their intended targets.  I've seen some that are geared specifically towards zoos and zoo professionals, maybe focused on a certain taxa of animals, or towards a certain aspect of care.  Others are offered for community nonprofits at large, everything from childhood literacy projects to soup kitchens to community art.  Some are very limited in what you can do with them - for example, you might find one which is a scholarship to a specific course or workshop - whereas others will let you do almost anything within reason.

Much like the Huguenot Society scholarship, I find that amazingly few people apply for them.

Getting a grant means knowing where to look and knowing how to fill out applications appropriately.  A subset of the first criteria involves looking at all possible grant opportunities and seeing if you can find a way to make them work for you and your organization.  Zoos have a somewhat broad mission, an intersection of conservation, research, education, and community outreach and recreation, and you can make a lot of grant applications dovetail with your mission if you try.  Sometimes, there might be something which you've wanted to do for a while but hasn't been an institutional priority - usually something non-animal related - such as fixing up a play area, or painting a mural... but perhaps there is a grant for that?  Maybe a keeper really wants to take a professional development opportunity, or get into the field to do some conservation work, but there's nothing in the budget for that... but if you find the money in someone else's budget...

COVID has slashed a lot of budgets and disposable incomes, but grants are still out there to be found, and they are a great, underused resource.  Many nonprofits, including several zoos and aquariums, employee people specifically to track down and apply for grants.  And small facilities don't need to be scared off - there are usually grants available on a local scale.

No one is guaranteed a grant that they apply for, of course - but the only way to be sure you don't get one is to not apply.