Overview

Mini-grants are awarded to girl-serving science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) focused programs to support collaboration, address gaps and overlaps in service, and share promising practices. Mini-grant projects must relate to either informal learning or evaluation and assessment. Mini-grants are a small amount of seed funding and are not intended to fully fund entire projects. The maximum mini-grant award is $1000.

Numerous organizations provide valuable but uncoordinated activities and support services related to motivating and supporting girls’ interest in STEM careers. These mini-grants are designed to build collaboration between existing programs and organizations in order to encourage girls to pursue STEM-related educational programs and careers.

If you have a program registered you can begin a Mini-Grant Application. If you do not have a program registered, you must first Register a Program so that it may be selected as your lead program.

Summary of NGCP Mini-Grants

This summary of 129 mini-grant projects funded by the National Girls Collaborative Project (NGCP) is based on responses to an online report administered to mini-grant recipients by the external evaluator of NGCP, Evaluation & Research Associates. The mini-grant projects implemented activities in 24 different states and reached a total of 12,163 girls and 5, 609 boys. Respondents provided information about their project implementation, the collaboration with their partners, and the exemplary practices they utilized. Findings suggest the collaborations between partners were successful, with 93% selecting a 4 or 5 on a scale from 1 = Not successful to 5 = Very successful. Recipients believed participants had an enhanced experience due to the collaborative effort of the projects and that activities benefited from each partner's resources and expertise. Seventy-one percent of respondents indicated they would continue to work with their partner(s) after their mini-grant project ended. This summary was prepared by Evaluation & Research Associates.

"Having a large network gives each individual/local organization or program more leverage, so the more we (STEM programs) collaborate and present our ideas as one entity, the more students benefit."