There are plenty of educational grants out there to help students meet the costs of obtaining a college education, and because they are grants, that’s money you don’t have to pay back. Anyone planning to enroll in college this year can take a short-cut by applying for all federal, state, and institutional financial grant programs at once by completing the free application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA).
Completed FAFSA forms can be submitted online at www.fafsa.ed.gov and must be submitted by June 30th of the year you are planning to attend college.

Other grants students can apply for include the federally funded Chafee Grant Program by completing the application online at https://www.chafee.csac.ca.gov/, or they can get the paperwork from their current school. Financial aid eligibility for the Chafee Program will be determined by your school’s financial aid office and students must maintain satisfactory academic progress in a course of study at least one year long.

Federal Pell Grants are another source of funding that is need-based financial aid that does not have to be repaid. The current maximum Pell Grant amount for a full-time student is $4,050 per school year.
Pell Grants are available to all qualified students and interested parties can apply for the Federal Pell Grant by submitting an application at FAFSA online at www.fafsa.ed.gov.

Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grants are yet another grant opportunity that are aimed at those undergraduate students receiving the Federal Pell Grant, but with exceptional financial needs. Depending on the level of need and the funding level of the school attended, students can receive up to $4,000 per school year and more if enrolled in a study-abroad program.

Although you should always visit your own college financial aid office to find out what types of aid might be available locally, there are also other grants, scholarships and resources that can be accessed through the following online resources:

• Studentaid.ed.gov – A U.S. Department of Education Federal Student
Aid Program.
• Edfund.org – A student financial aid Information site.
• Americorps.org – A Job and education site.
• studentjobs.gov – Jobs for student at the U.S. Department of Labor.
• Collegeboard.com fastaid.com – Listings of college aid programs.
• casey.org – Casey Family Student Loan Programs.
• orphan.org – Educational aid from Orphan Foundation of America.

Student Aid Preparation Calendar:

September 2012 –
First chance to submit your application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), and second chance to apply for a Cal Grant if you plan to attend a Community College in California.

October 2012 -
Time to work on college admissions forms.
Time to sign up for financial aid at your school.
Time to research private grants and scholarships.

November 2012 -
Time to complete all college admission forms.
Time to get all financial aid applications from colleges you’re applying to.

December 2012 -
Time to gather all year-end payroll stubs in preparation for financial aid documentation purposes.

January 2013 -
Time to submit your application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) immediately following January 1st of current academic school year.

June 2013 -
Last chance to submit your FAFSA application forms. Postmark deadline is June 30th.

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) just announced it is seeking applications for loans and grants to help rural businesses create new jobs and encourage general economic development in rural areas by way of funding provided under the Rural Economic Development Loan and Grant (REDLG) program.

The new grant program is part of the current administration’s efforts to improve the lives of rural Americans by putting more people back to work and to help build more robust economies in rural communities. In conjunction with the American Jobs Act and the White House Rural Council, the federal government is working toward being an active partner for rural businesses and for those Americans who want to live, work and raise families in the rural parts of the nation. The USDA contends that giving people better access to capital leads to job creation and a revitalization of the rural economy. The USDA said it will work more closely in partnership with cooperatives and utilities across America because the agency intends to use the new program to leverage both federal and private investments in order to put more rural residents back to work.

The eligible recipients under the program are USDA rural utilities program borrowers that will pass the funds along to local organizations. The intent is to leverage the funding to create projects that will retain jobs or create new ones and upgrade the public infrastructure at the same time. The maximum amount of funding under this program for any single project is $1 million in direct loans or $300,000 in grants. The USDA currently administers and manages housing, business and community infrastructure through a network of state and local offices that oversee an active portfolio of more than $165 billion in affordable loans and loan guarantees. The existing programs, like the new rural grant program, were all designed with the goal of improving the quality of life in rural America by bolstering the economic stability of rural communities, businesses, residents, farmers and ranchers across the country.

The USDA said it plans to award up to $79 million in loan and $10 million in grants through the rural grant program before the end of this year. The deadline for submitting applications is the last business day of each month through September 30th, 2012. All applications must be submitted to the Rural Development state office where the project will be located. More detailed information on the grant program as well as a list of Rural Development offices is available at the United States Department of Agriculture web site.

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) has announced it will provide $42 million in “housing counseling grants”
to 468 national, regional and local organizations. The money will be used to help families become new homeowners as well as provide assistance to renters and the homeless in finding transitional housing as they move toward a permanent place to live. Some of the funds will also be used to offer financial literacy training to individuals and families.

The grant recipients will help new home buyers and existing homeowners to evaluate their readiness for a home purchase so they can understand their financing and down payment options. The agencies will also help fight predatory lending practices by helping borrowers review their loan documentation to avoid potential mortgage scams, bad interest rates, inflated appraisals and other situations that can result in the loss of equity, increased debt, default, and even foreclosure.

The Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Shaun Donovan, said the agency fought hard to persuade Congress to restore funding for housing counseling in HUD’s budget and that “The HUD-approved counseling agencies this funding supports are crucial in helping struggling families on a one-to-one basis to manage their money, navigate the home buying process, and secure their financial futures.”

Over $36 million in grant funds is earmarked to support the counseling services provided by 27 national and regional organizations, 6 multi-state organizations, 16 State Housing Finance Agencies and 419 local housing counseling agencies. Additional counseling agencies will receive $4 million to help assist senior citizens seeking reverse mortgages or other home equity conversion mortgages that will allow elderly homeowners to convert the equity in their homes into income that can be used to pay for home improvements, medical costs, and other living expenses.

As soon as the ambitious new HUD grant plan was unveiled, critics pointed out that the way HUD money has been handed out to non-profit organizations in the past has proven ineffective because most of the money was used up simply to keep the various agencies in the black, instead of being used to help struggling homeowners. Alarmed by reports that some states and agencies might divert the mortgage settlement assistance money, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan said he would be calling on state governors and attorneys general to do “the right thing” with the money, although he admitted that he had no direct control over what states do with the money after they receive it.

The various housing counseling agencies claim additional funding is badly needed because last year Congress eliminated about 500 different agencies’ main source of federal funding along with an $88 million grant program administered by HUD. Even though Congress later restored
$45 million to the program for 2012, Secretary Donovan said the allocation was not adequate and that the agency had requested $55 million going into 2013.

Every year the search for college grants gets more intense. The cost of higher education has been steadily increasing, and available money is becoming more difficult to find. More students are in positions of needing college grants in order to begin or continue their education.

What are Grants for College?

A grant is money that is awarded to a student who has been accepted into an accredited education program post high school. Grants differ from loans in that they do not have to be repaid and are generally based on high academic performance, degree-specific program enrollment or financial need. The amount of grant money awarded can be in the low range of a couple hundred dollars to over $100,000.

There are two basic types of grants. Direct grants are given by the federal government and a student applies directly to the federal government for these grants. Pass-through grants are when a state applies for money from the federal government and the money is passed to the state. There are over 26 federal government agencies that offer over 1,000 grant programs. The federal agency most commonly known that awards grant money is the Department of Education.

Categories of College Grant Programs
There are several different types of grants offered to students.

• Federal Grants – grants that are provided by the federal government.
• State Grants – money that individual states award to students who reside in that state. Money is awarded based on financial need, academic merit or specialized area of study.
• Minorities Grants – African American, Latino, Asian and other groups identified as minorities can apply and receive grants if they qualify.
• Women Grants – these grants are awarded to help promote women in non-female traditional areas of study such as the sciences or mathematics.
• Student Specific Grants – these grants are for non-traditional students such as adults, low income, military and graduate programs.

Types of College Grants

• Pell Grant – the grant is the most popular grant and has awarding money since 1972. It provides money to low income students and generally is awarded to students in undergraduate programs, but is occasionally given to students in who are getting a graduate degree in a teacher certification program. Many students apply for and receive Pell Grants. Students can only receive one Pell Grant per year and the amount depends of available funding. The maximum amount awarded per student per year is around $5,500 based on need. If a student has a parent that died in the military in Afghanistan, Iraq or after 9/11 they are eligible to receive the full amount of the grant.
• Federal Supplemental Education Opportunity Grant – these are campus-based programs awarded to students in undergraduate programs who have demonstrated financial needs. Priority is given to students who have been awarded Pell grants. The amount awarded is between $100 and $4,000. There are approximately one million students that are awarded this grant each year.
• Teacher Education Assistance for College and Higher Education (TEACH) Grant – This program offers grants up to students who want to teach in schools that are in areas that enroll low income families. A student that is awarded a TEACH Grant must agree to teach for at least four years after completing their studies and receiving a degree. If the student does not complete the four year teaching requirement the grant converts into a loan.
• State Grants – just about every state offers grant programs to students residing in that state. If a state has a lottery program much of the money from the lottery is earmarked for higher education grant programs. The monies awarded are also based on financial need, minority student categories, or study-based programs.
• Scholarships – while not technically considered grants, scholarships do not have to be repaid by the student. Many colleges and organizations have scholarship programs that offer merit-based monies to help a student with college expenses. There are scholarships for many areas and should be researched by students as part of a total financial package.

Many top-ranked universities and colleges are responding to the growing needs of students and are increasing the number of grants they offer to students. These prestigious schools have higher endowment monies, and Harvard and Yale actually have the most generous financial aid packages for students.

All students applying for any federal college grants begin the process by completing the Free Application for Federal Student Aid Form (FAFSA).

The National Education Association Foundation (NEA) is an independent, public charity supported by contributions from educators, corporate sponsors, and other sources. The NEA partners with education unions, districts, and communities to create sustainable improvements in teaching and learning and to provide quality public education for every student.

The NEA Foundation also provides grants to improve the academic achievement of students in U.S. public schools and public higher education institutions in many subject areas. The goal is to engage students in critical thinking and problem solving that deepen their knowledge of standards-based subject matter. The work is directed at improving students’ habits of inquiry, self-directed learning, and critical reflection. Proposals for work resulting in low-income and minority student success with honors, advanced placement, or other challenging curricula are particularly encouraged by the NEA.

The best news for teachers is that the NEA also provides direct grants of $5,000 that can be used for resource materials, supplies, equipment, transportation, software, or scholars-in-residence. Although the NEA allows that some funds may be used to support the professional development necessary to implement the project, the majority of grant funds must be spent on materials or educational experiences for students.

Although there a few actual restrictions on the way the grants are used, they cannot be used to support after-school, weekend, or summer programs, pay indirect costs like grant administration fees, or salaries, they cannot pay stipends to the applicants; and are not to be used to support conference fees for more than one person per grant. The NEA grant money is also restricted from being used for lobbying or religious purposes. Additionally, the NEA will not consider multiple identical applications from one person.

Applications for NEA grants can be submitted at any time, and because the applications are reviewed three times per year, every year, all applicants are encouraged to plan well in advance. Applications received by February 1st. will get mailed notification by April 15th. Those applications submitted before June 1st. receive notification by September 15th, and any applications received by October 15th. are notified by January 15th.

Applicants need to pay attention to the timelines that apply to their applications because applications that include activities scheduled prior to their date of notification will not be considered as valid by the NEA, but all applicants will be notified of their status in writing. Contacting the NEA regarding the status of your application prior to the notification date will not advance the chances of being approved.

All NEA grants will fund activities only for the 12 month period from the date of the initial award. All applicants must be practicing U.S. public school teachers, public school education support professionals, or faculty and staff at public higher education institutions. The NEA Foundation is especially interested in encouraging grant applications from teachers with less than seven years of experience in the profession.

All education support professionals are also encouraged to apply. Education support professionals are classified as school bus drivers, maintenance and custodial staff, food services staff, school nurses and student services workers, clerical and office assistants, school security officers, and technicians too.

Obviously, employees and immediate family members of the staff and board of the NEA Foundation are not eligible to receive the grants. Inquiries about the NEA Foundation’s Student Achievement Grants for Teachers should be directed to 1201 16th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036.

Healthy Smiles, Healthy Children (HSHC) is a Foundation of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry that was established to support and promote service, education and research that advances the oral health of infants and children in the United States. The HSHC’s endowment is most commonly employed to support community-based initiatives that provide Access to Care for all children, including those with special health care needs. More recently, the Foundation of the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry (AAPD), has announced the availability of three new grant programs under the auspices of the Healthy Smiles, Healthy Children program.

The Foundation is accepting applications for the grant programs on Access to Care, Oral Health Research and Future Dental Researcher Fellowships through August 2011. The first of the three are HSHC Access to Care Grants consisting of grants up to $20,000 per year supporting United States service initiatives that provide dental care to underserved and limited access children. The HSHC says it will give special consideration to programs that have demonstrated success and have potential for replication. The funds can be applied to cover costs of clinic supplies and instruments, patient/parent education materials, take-home supplies and any other activity with direct impact on child oral care.

Next up are the HSHC Oral Health Research Grants that are awards of up to $100,000 a year for up to three years that can be applied to research initiatives or projects designed to better understand caries and its impact on child oral health and to evaluate the performance of dental care programs targeting underserved and limited access children. HSHC research funds can also be utilized for larger scale projects that involve multiple donors. The final HSHC grant is a Future Dental Researcher Fellowship to allow those entering into a 3rd year of research to focus on dental care programs targeting underserved and limited access child populations.

The HSHC says its Oral Health Research Grants and Future Dental Researcher Fellowships will help provide all children with the most up-to-date science and evidence-based care possible. Guidelines, requirements and grant application instructions are available from the HSHC through the American Academy of Pediatric Dentistry.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recently announced that over $100 million in funding will now be available for Community Transformation Grants. The Community Transformation Grants were made possible by the Affordable Care Act, which provides grants to help communities implement projects to reduce chronic diseases. The goal is to promote healthy lifestyles among those population groups experiencing the largest incidence of chronic disease. The new grants are targeted to help improve overall health, reduce health disparities, and lower health care costs.

The office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services Secretary, Kathleen Sebelius, released a statement saying the grant money will allow creation of new programs to promote healthier lifestyles and save millions in health care costs in the process. Sebelius said “Community Transformation Grants will empower local communities with resources, information, and flexibility to help make their residents healthier, and by helping to transform communities at the ground level, these efforts can have a major impact on the health of Americans.”

The grants are primarily aimed at chronic diseases like heart disease, cancer, stroke, and diabetes. Health experts estimate that seven out of every ten deaths in the U.S. are caused by chronic diseases linked to tobacco use, obesity, poor diet, and not enough physical activity. Treatment of chronic diseases currently account for more than 75% of the $2 trillion spent on annually on medical care costs in the United States today. The problem of obesity alone already accounts for more than $147 billion in medical costs annually.

The new grants are focusing on five key areas of priority including tobacco-free living, active living and healthy eating, evidence-based clinical and preventive services, social and emotional wellness, and healthy and safe physical environments. Spending $100 million today could actually save millions more in health care costs in the future and the infusion of cash could make a significant impact on programs to halt the spread of heart disease, cancer, and stroke in the nation.

The bill recently approved by Congress financing the U.S. Department of Education and the rest of the federal government through the end of the year comes after months of negotiations between Republicans in the U.S. House of Representatives, who aimed to significantly cut domestic spending, and the current Democratic administration, which sought to shelter education and other priorities in the deal. Although many smaller programs ended up being cut back, in total, just over $1 billion was sliced from the U.S. Department of Education’s discretionary budget.

Democrat legislators were happy the spending agreement did not cut the Head Start early education program or slash all Pell Grant funding, although summer Pell Grants did take a hit. Sen. Tom Harkin (D-Iowa), said “We have no reduction in Pell Grants and we kept a lot of our other priorities in there. There will be no reductions in Head Start.”

As the budget stands now, funding for the Education, Labor, and Health and Human Services Departments will be cut by $5.5-billion, a 3.4% reduction from the previous fiscal year. Pell Grants and Head Start funding were spared, but funds were decreased for exchange programs which send students to study aboard and for foreign language study. Many scientific research programs also saw significant decreases in their budgets.

Some of the education programs that were completely eliminated included $100 million for Educational Technology State Grants, $19 million for the Literacy through School Libraries program, and $42 million for the Byrd Honors Scholarship Program. Programs that were not eliminated but did experience significant cuts in funding included a $10 million cut to the School Improvement Grants that would have been funded at $536 million and a drastic $73 million cut to the Teaching American History program that was only financed at $119 million to begin with. The GEARUP college access program will lose $20 million of its annual $323 million budget and the TRIO college access program will lose $25 million of the $910 million it received last year. Individual grants from the Pell Grant program will remain at the same $5,550 annual maximum, but the new budget bill will eliminate year-round Pell Grants.

The exchange student programs that fund American students to study abroad and funds international scholars to visit the US. for foreign language study lost 40% of their total funding. Even though House Republicans had sought to cut The Head Start program by $1 billion, the new budget deal instead gives Head Start an increase of $340 million, bringing the total program budget to $7.57 billion. The new Race to the Top initiative for early childhood education program received $700 million. Findings released by the World Economic Forum showing that the US is lagging behind in technology sector education will not be improved by the loss of $260 million by the National Institutes of Health, nor the $53 million slashed from the National Science Foundation budget.

What you can use a student grant for depends largely on where the grant was issued from. A Federal Pell Grant can be used for any expense that is related to your getting your education. Although these grants are not tracked, meaning you are not required to provide an inventory of how you spent your Pell Grant money is spent, it is recommended that you spend the funds on school related items.

There are also personal student grants given out that may have their own sets of rules and restrictions for what may or may not be purchased with the student grant money that they distribute. These restrictions would be at the discretion of the person or organization that issues that particular grant money. This is not the case with Federal Pell Grants for Higher Education. There are no conditions to the Pell grant that you are issued, it is only expected that the funds be utilized for the purposes of furthering your education.

These items can vary from things as basic as school books and tuition to gasoline or transportation to get yourself to and from your classes. If you are taking online classes, a new computer or a laptop could be considered necessary school supplies. Other items such as computer printers, ink cartridges and paper are all things that are needed for class. Even certain living expenses can qualify as a necessary expense for you to be in school. After all, you can not complete your online courses without internet access or electricity; therefore these are living expenses that directly affect your education.

So ultimately your student grant money can be used for just about anything, although with the costs of higher education there will most likely not be much left once your educational expenses have been paid.

Most people know not to give out personal information to anyone you don’t know over the phone or through email. The attempt to obtain personal information from unsuspecting people over the phone or computer is a typical indicator of most telemarketing scams. You never want to give your banking information to someone that calls or contacts you out of the blue. Armed with your personal information, crooks can steal your identity, drain your bank account or worse.

Well-intentioned and educated people sometimes fall prey to scams when they think there is a larger and more significant benefit available to them. They will often ignore obvious scam warning signs like demands for ongoing fees if they think they are in for a windfall of some type and that is exactly how people get into trouble with grant fraud. The lure of being awarded a large government-backed grant can blind some hopeful applicants to the fact that they are being scammed.

The important thing to remember when dealing with grant resources is that federal, state and local governments do not charge fees to process grant applications. Government grant agencies are funded by taxes and do not need to charge applicant fees or one-time processing fees. When someone claims they will give you a large amount of money if you will pay a few small fees upfront, you can be pretty sure you are dealing with a fraud.

Grant fraud usually begins with a message from someone claiming to represent a government grant association or a federal grant association and they will tell you that you have already been approved for a grant. You will then be asked to pay a small fee in order to finalize your grant award and the fee will be much smaller than the grant so as not to raise suspicion. Grant scammers may even be so bold that they will claim to represent a specific government agency with a recognizable name, but there are no charges involved with real government grants. You don’t need to join any type of association or club in order to receive a government-backed grant either.

Tips to avoid grant fraud:

A real government agency will never require payment of an advance fee before you can collect a grant.

You will never receive a genuine grant award by surprise. You must apply for a grant before it is awarded in every instance.

Never give out personal information to people making unsolicited calls. If you are asked for personal information, ask for the caller’s information first and check it out carefully.

Never accept verbal grant contract information as genuine. Demand all information in writing.

If you are approached by a suspected grant scam you should notify your local Attorney General’s office and file a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov/ftc/consumer.htm. You can also report grant fraud to the National Fraud Information Center at 800-876-7060.