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Getting Started

To be eligible for consideration, please thoroughly review our guidelines to ensure your organization’s proposal fits with KDK-Harman Foundation’s mission and programming interests. All applicants must complete a Letter of Inquiry as the first step. If you have a question about whether the program you have in mind is a good fit, please feel free to contact a program officer. For your convenience, downloadable forms are available.

Grant Guidelines

The mission of KDK-Harman Foundation is to break the cycle of poverty through education while promoting a culture of giving excellence.

Our vision is to inspire educational success and life-long learning. We focus on:

· serving economically disadvantaged Central Texas families, especially women, to help them achieve educational success;

· transforming their lives from poverty to financial independence and enabling a better life for future generations;

· providing financial and capacity building resources to education focused nonprofits; and

· creating a culture of giving excellence in our community through leadership, high-engagement, advocacy and innovation.

KDK-Harman Foundation distributes grants only to qualified public entities or 501(c)(3) charities. Both unsolicited and solicited requests are accepted. Programs eligible for KDK-Harman funding must meet the guidelines listed below and address one or more of the following areas of interest:

Program Areas:

Preschool (3 to 5 years of age)
K-12 programs
Adult Education

KDK-Harman Foundation funds educational programs from preschool through adult education. We focus strictly on academic education. The Foundation’s program interests include early literacy, tutoring, college access, GED certification, academically rigorous after-school and summer programs, and traditional education during the school day. In addition, KDK will favor those programs in the areas of math, science, and computer technology. Although we have made grants in the area of adult literacy in the past, the Foundation has decided to cease funding in the areas of adult basic literacy and adult ESL as we continue to refine our grant guidelines and focus our grants to targeted areas of education. Adult basic literacy is defined as those individuals who do not have at least a fifth grade education. The Foundation continues to fund programs in other areas of adult education such as GED and post-secondary educational opportunities for low-income adults.

We seek “best in class” programs with proven programmatic endeavors with measurable outcomes. Further, we seek organizations looking to collaborate with us as to break the cycle of poverty through education, as we view our grantees as our partners without whom we cannot achieve our mission.

The Foundation recognizes that the most disadvantaged and underserved people in society are disproportionately women and their children; and therefore, we favor programs that serve this group. However, a focus on women is not synonymous with women-only programs. The Foundation supports many programs that benefit both genders.

The Foundation seeks proposals with the following characteristics:

Demonstrated organizational strength and success
Programmatic endeavors with measurable and proven outcomes
Best-in-Class programming
Organizations with a mission directly in alignment with ours
Majority of organization’s budget is allocated to educational programs and services
Collaboration with other entities to maximize the impact of service
The proposed project is needed and supported by its surrounding community
Financial support from other sources already exists to ensure that the project will be implemented and continue after the grant period
Reasoned, efficient, and sound process plan, which includes measurable outcomes of proposed project. See Evaluation: Measuring Your Results a downloadable PDF file posted on our website.

Please refer to Examples of Funded Projects which provides the types of projects and organizations that we have funded in the past.

Rural Central Texas Grant Initiative:

KDK-Harman Foundation is committed to serving communities throughout Central Texas. We fund counties exclusively in Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, Caldwell, Burnet, and Llano. To emphasize this commitment, we have developed a new Rural Central Texas Grant Initiative to award grants of $10,000 to organizations in the rural counties of Central Texas with a need for capacity building funds. A typical applicant for our Rural Central Texas Grant Initiative will have limited infrastructure, a smaller budget than large urban non-profits, little or no professional staff (volunteer-driven), and/or may or may not have a long operating history. Applicants who qualify for this category should follow the same grant application process that the Foundation outlines on the website; however, please acknowledge that you are applying under the Rural Central Texas Grant Initiative in your Letter of Inquiry (LOI).

Restrictions:

KDK-Harman Foundation does not support:

Organizations that do not have a majority of their overall budget allocated to educational programs
Organizations with a mission significantly different than ours
Organizations that exclude participants based on race or religion
Adult Basic Education (ABE) and adult ESL
Arts and athletic education
Job skills and life skills programs
Tax-generating entities (municipalities, school districts, etc.) for services within their normal responsibilities
Grants or loans to individuals
Political campaigns or purposes
Any one program more than once per calendar year
Scholarships at any level
Pregnancy prevention programs
Sponsorships or purchase of tickets for galas, festivals, or raffles
School fundraisers or events (including sports and other extracurricular activities)

Geographic Areas:

For grantmaking purposes, the KDK-Harman Foundation is exclusively interested in contributing to the communities of Central Texas, defined as Travis, Williamson, Hays, Bastrop, Caldwell, Burnet, and Llano counties. We are seeking 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations with programming excellence that align with our mission and serve the economically disadvantaged within those geographic areas.

Grant Process

Step One: All applicants must complete a Letter of Inquiry, a downloadable file posted on our website. Letters of Inquiry ("LOI") are to be from the executive director of the nonprofit organization. LOI’s must be submitted electronically. Foundation staff will review submitted Letters of Inquiry and respond in a timely manner. The Foundation will send an email either inviting you to submit a grant application for further consideration or declining your LOI request. Letters of Inquiry are accepted any time throughout the year, and organizations can submit more than one LOI per year. However, the Foundation needs to receive the LOI at least two months prior to the next board meeting to allow for enough time to process the request. See below for board meeting calendar.

Step Two: If you are invited to submit a Grant Application, please download the file posted on our website. All grant applications must be submitted electronically. A site visit will be scheduled as part of the review process. Grant applications are accepted at any time throughout the year. However, it is recommended that the application be submitted within three weeks of invitation to allow enough time to process the request and complete the due diligence process on a timely basis for the next board meeting.

Decisions on all grant applications are made at the quarterly board meeting. Funds are disbursed typically within 4 to 6 weeks of board approval, once the grant contract and evaluation plan have been executed.

Board Meeting Calendar:

February
May
August
November