Can you help out a brother with some tips, ideas, shorcuts?

A group of us have purchased an abandoned inner city ball park, got corporate donations and have done a complete rehab.

Here's an article link:
Wald Park newspaper article

What's left? Lights!!

LED lights last forever, but the upfront cost is crazy. I'll bet there are funds 'out there', just need to find them!

Any tips regarding grant finding and writing tips would be really appreciated!

Bill

I have written several small (sub-$100k) grants for the 501c(3) non-profit I am employed by.

You should start at grants.gov and start working your way through anything that has to do with energy (Dept. of Energy, etc.) also, I'd start looking at HUD money for property rehabilitation.Come up with 6-8 key words (baseball, lighting, property rehabilitation, inner city sports, etc.) and search by them. You never know what is out there.

In addition, look in the Maysville/Kentucky area for foundations. There are giant ones and small ones.

I'd also look at lighting companies like Musco and see if they have programs/charity for non-profit projects.

If you find a grant you want to apply for, know that you will need some solid data to back up your application. More research. Document the history of this ball park. Show the before/after and the effects on the city thereof, using data.

Find another ball park in another city/state that recently did the same type of things you are doing in Maysville. Use them as a similar project of reference. If you can, also cross-reference things like crime rate, population growth, etc. to show the effects the rehabbed facility had on the local area.

The more data you have (the feds LOVE data), the better.

Grant writing makes your head hurt. But it is oh-so worth it to finally fund a project that you do from the heart. Good luck to you.

VictimNM,

Thanks for the insight!

The learning curve and different terminology are the most dificult areas to jump into!