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There's a $100,000 grant out there to fund the best idea for improving children's lives. It should involve lots of partnered organizations, produce testable results and be doable by Dec. 31.

Have your idea ready Wednesday.

“It's a real short time frame,” said Missoula Office of Planning and Grants grants administrator Peggy Seel. “The proposal is due two weeks after the meeting. Notification comes in late March, and the whole thing must be completed by Dec. 31. Usually, grants or funding opportunities are a little longer than that.”

The grant is offered by America's Promise, a decade-old national nonprofit organization headed by former Secretary of State Collin Powell. Last October, it recognized Missoula as one of the 100 Best Communities for Young People. It's likely that only three grants will be awarded. And the winners must show a combination of wide community involvement, solving an unmet need, a strong track record of similar accomplishments, and prospects for making this short-term effort gain long-term sustainability.

“Its not like raising public awareness,” said Susan Barmeyer, head of the Missoula Healthy Start Council. “It's got to be down to the kid level.”

While a simple way to respond might be to take an existing grant application and slap a new cover page on top of it, the Missoula Forum for Children and Youth is throwing the process open to the community at large for ideas. The forum already represents many of the city's public education, government and private youth organizations. But Seel said there's hope that a wider audience might bring fresh ideas.

Projects should meet one or more of the America's Promise five promises: caring adults, safe places, effective education, healthy starts and opportunities to help others. The requirement to have concrete results by the end of the year probably means Missoula's application should be aimed at a long-term project. So things like a proposed $60 million performing arts center or continued funding for police officers in schools might not be applicable, but building a new playground or buying computers for a citywide literacy project might.

And while many recent Missoula initiatives have cost

$1 million or much more, the possibility of a tenth of that amount is still exciting.

“For us nonprofits, $100,000 is a ton of money,” Barmeyer said. “We could make that go a long way.”

Share your ideas

There will be a meeting from 9 to 11 a.m. Wednesday in the Office of Planning and Grants Conference Room, 435 Ryman St., to discuss Missoula's application. For more information, call Peggy Seel 258-4743.

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