Core Eligibility Requirements For a
Grant From the Lend A Hand Program

DEADLINE: OCTOBER 15, 2007

The Abraham Lincoln Marovitz Lend-A-Hand Program (LAH) gives grants ranging from $500 to $5,000 to support exceptional youth mentoring programs in Chicago and the Cook County suburbs.

LAH also makes available three special grants:

1) Thomas A. Demetrio Award, which comes with a $10,000 grant and is given to most outstanding established tutor/mentor program; 2) Much Shelist Founders Award, which comes with a $7,000 grant and is given to a tutor/mentor program showing the most promise and in existence 5 years or less; and 3) Sun-Times Literacy Award.

There is no seperate application to be complete to be considered for these grants.

While many programs that receive grants are well established in the community, start-up and emerging programs are eligible for grants as well and are encouraged to apply. To be eligible for a grant, a program must meet the following core requirements:

The program must be operated by a 501(c)(3) organization or have an appropriate fiscal agency agreement with a qualified 501(c)(3) entity.

The program must primarily serve young people from disadvantaged communities in either Chicago or the Cook County suburbs.

The program must have a stated organizational goal or objective to provide regular one-on-one mentoring between an adult mentor and a young person, which means one adult paired with the same young person.

At least 50% of the program’s mentor/young person relationships must be consistent one-on-one mentor/young person relationships and there must be a plan in place to reach 100% long-term, one-on-one relationships in the program.

For tutoring programs, there must be consistency and longevity in the relationships between the tutor and the young person (i.e., tutors are not constantly changing) and there must be a mentoring component to the tutoring relationship that goes beyond simply assisting with schoolwork.

Should you have questions on whether your program is eligible contact Karina Ayala-Bermejo at 312-554-2041.

Click button below for complete application and guidelines.

(The application is in MS Word format.
You should save it to your computer.)