Palo Alto Rotary - Community Grants

The Rotary Club of Palo Alto distributes funds annually to support charitable activities in the Palo Alto area as part of our commitment to community service. We invite you to apply in support of projects that will benefit the communities of Palo Alto and East Palo Alto. We expect to award a total of about $50,000 in grants ranging from $2,000 to $15,000.

Our guidelines for the process are simple:

You are encouraged to propose a specific project rather than a contribution to your general fund, and we are especially interested in projects that we can fund completely.

The project must benefit the Palo Alto and/or East Palo Alto communities.

You must be a tax-exempt organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code.

No grants will be made that benefit only one or a few individuals.

Organizations that have received gifts from Rotary for two years in a row must wait a year before applying again. On occasion, the club may approve a multi-year program that provides financial and other support to an organization for two or more years.

To be considered for a grant, you must submit a short (one page) letter of intent no later than 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 6, 2009. This letter should provide a brief description of your project and the funding amount you are requesting. Please do not attach any other information with your letter of intent.

After reviewing the letters of intent, we anticipate inviting 12-15 organizations to submit more detailed proposals, which will be due on December 11.

We will inform you by November 20 of our reaction to your letter of intent. Final grant decisions will be announced on or around February 12, 2010. Checks will be presented at a dinner honoring our recipient organizations in March 2010. If you receive a grant, the executive director or board chair of your organization will be asked to attend that evening and make brief remarks.

Please e-mail your letter of intent to Rotary grant committee chairperson Bill Johnson at rotarygrants@paweekly.com. Put the name of your organization in the subject line of the e-mail and then attach your letter as a PDF or Word document to the e-mail.

All letters will be acknowledged by e-mail. All correspondence with you in the future will be by e-mail, so please make sure you send your letter from an e-mail address that you will be regularly checking.

If you have questions about the grant process, you may contact Amy Renalds at (650) 326-8210.