Thursday is education & youth day on The Grant Brief.

Two open grants this week for organizations doing education work in places institutional funders often overlook: one global, one rural-Midwest. Both have application windows that close within six weeks, and both use a staged process, so the work you do now is a short first step, not a full proposal.

What we know: A joint FIFA and Global Citizen initiative funding grassroots nonprofits that combine education and football (soccer) for children in underserved communities. The first cohort of grantees has already been selected, and applications for the next round are open now. Recipients must be able to legally accept a grant from a US-based 501(c)(3), so organizations outside the US typically apply through a US fiscal sponsor. Global Citizen notes that full application criteria will continue to be published in the coming months, so check the page before you submit.

Realistic fit: small, direct-service nonprofits already running combined education-and-sport programs for kids. Policy shops and research orgs are not the target here.

What we know: Patterson is a $140 million-a-year funder focused on rural Kansas and Western Missouri. Across its most recent filings it made 632 grants averaging about $222,500, with roughly three-quarters going to Kansas organizations and most of the rest to Missouri. Its Open Call Grants run on a two-step process: register for the grants portal, submit a short letter of intent, and aligned projects are invited to a full application. Education sits alongside economics, healthcare, and community as the foundation's four focus areas. Letters of intent submitted after February 18 fall into round two, which closes June 29.

Realistic fit: nonprofits and schools serving rural communities in Kansas or Western Missouri with an education project ready to describe in a short letter of intent. If you are outside that geography, this is not your grant.

If you run education-plus-sport programming for kids anywhere in the world, the FIFA fund closes May 29 and is worth a close look now. If you are a rural education organization in Kansas or Western Missouri, Patterson's June 29 letter of intent is a low-lift first step into a large regional funder.

#EducationGrants #YouthDevelopment #RuralEducation #NonprofitFunding #GrantWriting