DPSF Awards $233,000 to 47 schools in fall of 2023

Each year, DPSF holds a grants cycle where we are giving funding directly to schools to lead the charge with their ideas. With our anniversary this year, we’re marking five years of providing this funding across DPS–and in those five years we’ve awarded more than $1 million in grants.

Our annual grant cycle is called “Innovation Grants.” These grants fund transformative ideas that impact the students in schools across DPS. We also have a WHOLE Schools Fund that provides grants for mental health initiatives in our schools. This year we were able to fund 42 Innovation Grants projects & 27 WHOLE Schools Fund projects, providing a total of $121,257 for Innovation Grants and $112,392 for the WHOLE Schools Fund. 

To plan for this cycle we wanted to make sure we could pour into our grantees as much as possible. After research and conversations with colleagues about best practicies, we decided to implement a cohort model for our grants. 

This year we’ll be engaging with grantees as a cohort, providing technical assistance, connecting outside of school, attending and supporting with planning projects, and building a resource bank. This change helps us as a foundation support schools directly and learn more about the different ways we can show up for them. 

In addition to shifting the model, we also made sure to celebrate our grantees – visiting schools for photos with the big check, providing certificates for the main offices, and yard signs for outside of their schools to really show off how awesome they are.

Laughter. Joy. Innovation. We’ve spent the last several weeks delivering checks to schools and gathering with our 23-24 grant cohort and these are the themes that come through for us.

In early October we held a grantee kickoff event! We gathered to ensure that all grantees had the opportunity to connect before their projects officially get started, get inspiration from each other, learn from each other, and more. When we gather in community, great things happen!

All of our grant-funded projects, are supporting a combination of DPS teachers, staff members, students, and a DPS families. This is the lasting impact and legacy we want to see in our schools - and we do it by listening, advocating, empowering, and centering these voices in the changes across the district. 

Here’s to our grantee cohort having innovation meet impact, and for their dreams to take flight!