Grants

A new grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation illustrates the way lines have blurred between traditional media and new ways to communicate about health and development.

At $20 million, the five-year grant to the BBC World Service Trust is the foundation's largest so far with a media connection. But foundation officials say it is not like previous grants to news organizations, including ABC and PBS.

"This grant does not support the news gathering capacity of the BBC," foundation spokesman Chris Williams wrote in an e-mail. "This grant is essentially public education."

In a continued effort to fight childhood obesity, The Michael & Susan Dell Center for Healthy Living, part of The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston (UTHealth), has been awarded a four-year grant for $3.7 million grant from the Michael & Susan Dell Foundation.

With the new funding, the Center plans to expand its child health research. This grant provides funding for the Center to establish new initiatives such as a communications core, a community advisory board and a core for data analysis.

The CTK Foundation is proud to launch the 2011 Heart and Soul Grant Competition. Nonprofits of all sizes and types are invited to apply their creativity to win major grants of funds and technology.

Applicants are asked to submit an original four-to-eight-line poem that reflects the work and/or mission of the applicant nonprofit organization. This poem may be written by staff members, clients and/or volunteers of the submitting nonprofit, and must be wholly original.

The Department for International Development (DFID) and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation today announced a coordinated effort to reduce hunger and poverty in developing countries by supporting agricultural research projects to help small farmers increase their yields and incomes. DFID and the foundation will work together to identify the projects, and the foundation’s Agricultural Development initiative will manage them.

A Sacramento nonprofit will receive close to $100,000 to fight hunger, the U.S. Department of Agriculture announced Wednesday.

Community Services Planning Council will receive $99,396 to survey low-income residents to determine the causes, consequences and extent of hunger in Sacramento County – and then develop a plan to try to eliminate hunger in the county.

The USDA is investing $4.98 million in grants to 14 communities in eight states to end hunger and improve the nutrition of low-income Americans.

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art's new role as conservator of the Watts Towers has brought an almost immediate payoff: a $500,000 grant from the James Irvine Foundation, announced Wednesday, to help fund repair and preservation of the landmark folk-art masterpiece.

Before the grant came through, only $150,000 in city funding had been budgeted for the towers this year.

Leveraging Investments in Creativity (LINC) and the Ford Foundation announced the winners of the Space for Change Planning and Pre-Development Grants, awarding up to $100,000 each to 12 nonprofit arts organizations in the early stages of developing exemplary cultural facilities. The grants provide organizations with the initial startup funds that are most needed—and the most difficult to obtain—to develop new space.

The New York City-based Foundation Center, the European Foundation Centre in Brussels, and the Ford Foundation have announced that GrantCraft, a Web-based effort to equip grantmakers with an array of tools designed to enhance their effectiveness, is moving from Ford to the two centers. In addition, Ford, which incubated GrantCraft, has awarded $1 million to the two organizations to help expand the initiative.

UPS announced grants totaling $7 million to more than 80 nonprofit organizations whose mission is to support diverse populations. These grants will fund programs that develop leadership skills, promote education and encourage inclusion of all individuals.

Organizations receiving grants include the Human Rights Campaign, National Council of La Raza, National Urban League, NAACP, Alexander Graham Bell Association for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, Paralyzed Veterans of America, National Federation of the Blind, and Girls Inc.

Yogurt-maker Dannon will award grants of $30,000 to four nonprofit organizations for programs that promote healthy eating and support nutrition education for children in Salt lake County and three other communities where a Dannon facility is located.

Applications are due by March 29, 2011.

Last year, $120,000 in grants benefited nearly 4,000 children and families nationwide; and since the inception of the Dannon Next Generation Grant program, more than $580,000 has benefited nearly 14,000 children and their families.