There are millions of dollars waiting to be given to your school for digital signage! You can have the funding you need to wow parents, students and staff and you don’t have to spend a dime. Whats more, once you have digital signage up and running, you don’t have to spend more than a few minutes impressing everyone! Sounds great, right? This post will give you 7 powerful tips and resources to make sure your school gets the funding it needs.
If you are looking for grants for your school, make sure and check out our post on 40+ grants ideal for digital signage; if you are looking for even more ways to raise money for digital signage, check out our post on creative ways to get funding.
The 7 Tips Everyone Should Use When Applying for Grants
Below are the 7 tips you need to know to ensure that you get the funding you are asking for. Click the hyperlink to jump to the explanation:
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Think STEM
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Learn from the masters
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Be clear about the problem it solves
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Use statistics
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Budget
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Show how you will measure the results
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Train your staff and teachers
1. STEM for Digital Signage? Yes!
Many grants are looking for schools that are creating STEM Programming. That’s great! But how does this get your school what it needs to modernize your campus with additional displays?
Easy: You create your STEM programming around digital signage. Here’s an article about a school that did just that.
Digital signage used to be something that was handled by a teacher or secretary. Many schools, however, are exploring how to involve students with both the content creation and management.
What skills does digital signage teach students?
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Creativity - Schools that want to teach creativity will let them be in charge of designing presentations for their digital signage.
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Problem Solving - Rise Vision operates on the Google Cloud Platform--the same one used by places like Netflix--so you can be confident that the network will not go down. If your display or media player ever goes down, you could ask your students to try fixing the problem. Make sure you are using Display Monitoring to simplify this.
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Inquiry Skills - Good displays should not be a one and done project; put students in charge of finding out what kinds of signage gets the best engagement, where more displays are needed, and what additional presentations are needed.
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Collaboration - Designing and managing presentations should never be a one-man job; students should collaborate to get the job done.
2. Learn from the Masters
Before applying for any grant, find examples of successful grants. What do they look like? What data do they have? Here’s one example of a what a successful grant would look like.
Once you find a grant you want to apply for, ask if they have examples of successful proposals, so you know exactly what the committee is looking for.
There are also many grant writing trainings and workshops around the country; ask your principal or school administrator if it’s in the budget to send you to one.
3. What Problem Does It Solve
Committees don’t just want to know about what you need money for.
They want to know what problem you are solving with the program you are proposing. Clearly, show there is a problem and then show how this will solve that problem.
A problem might look like this:
Your school needs signage that alerts students of an emergency and tells them what to do.
Digital signage solves this problem by integrating CAP alerts.
Use this template in your digital signage.
4. Statistically Possible
Stats are your best friend when writing a grant.
As an example, this study in Sweden showed that people who were far more likely to look at digital signage than non-electronic displays (such as school bulletin boards).
You don’t want to just ask for digital signage hardware--you want to prove that you needed it because it will enhance your school.
5. Budget Accordingly
Make sure you are asking for exactly what you need and not just saying you want the money. Don’t ask for $5,000 and have no budget that proves you need it.
If you are applying for a grant to grow your digital signage network, this article will show you what you need so you can add up how much it will cost you.
6. How Do You Measure Success?
Don’t just define what the problem is or what you are going to do about it. Outline how you will measure it.
How will you know this program you are proposing for the grant will be successful? Be clear. Have a specific measurement that you can reference to that proved that it worked.
Also, show who will be in charge of running the program. Committees want to know you have thought this through thoroughly and you have a plan of action to make sure your measurement is successful.
7. Training Teachers
Teachers are the drivers of your school's digital signage success. There are hundreds of grants to send teachers to conferences and other training.
This ensures that your teachers will be ready for any digital signage initiative that you recommend for your campus.
Ready to Apply?
Once you're ready to apply for a grant to get new hardware for your campus, check out our post on 40+ grants for digital signage.
