- Now the next step is the most basic one;
where are good places to start looking for grants?
My experience has shown me
that we've got some wonderful resources ready at hand,
either on the internet or at your local library.
And I would encourage everyone to investigate,
whatever main public library you have in your community.
Here in Houston we have Houston Public Library downtown,
and they actually have a foundation room.
And this particular area has CD-ROM products
to a resource called the foundation directory,
which is probably the best resource
for looking for foundations who will give grants
to your organization.
The CD-ROM or the web-based product are available
through Houston Public Library free of charge
to whomever comes in.
There are staff people available
to answer questions you may have.
So certainly, your local public library could be a resource
that would be a great place to start for looking for grants.
The other place I mentioned of course is the internet.
And, it is a good place to look for government grants.
And I found a few places that were actually, in preparing
for this, I decided to do a few searches on my own.
Now I raised money for medical research,
and a number of projects related to medical science.
But I have raised money for music for myself before.
So, it was an interesting experiment to go in
and look for government grants.
I've found grants DACA,
and again, this URL will be provided,
on another navigation page in this website,
so don't worry about looking it up right now.
And I was looking for a friend
of mine who has a music project,
that specifically takes American music abroad.
And he wanted to see if I could give him any advice
for getting started looking for funding for his project.
And sure enough, I did a search on grants.gov
and came up with American Music Abroad.
The deadline on this is in a month,
but that's typical for some of these grants.
When you look at it you need to be ready to go,
again, another reason to have all of your materials ready,
to hit the ground running.
So, that internet resource has already proved useful to me,
and I'll be able to assist my friend with this information.
Another excellent resource here
in Houston, Texas is the Cultural Arts Council of Houston.
They are a fabulous resource
for people who are getting started.
I believe they even offer workshops on how
to apply for grants and how to get started
in the fundraising process.
So we have, foundation directory, which could be had
by a public library.
We have government grants, which you can search for
on the internet,
and you have your local chamber of commerce type offering
such as the Cultural Arts Council of Houston, for instance.
And I'm sure there are other resources
that you can find once you start talking
to people who are in the business of raising money.