The Skillman Foundation

Over the past two school years, young people and their champions have said that their personal wellness is in a fragile state. We know that this has affected school communities – including students, staff, and families – on many levels. School leaders deeply understand the needs of and have incredible ideas about how to support their schools.

We are excited to offer a grant opportunity so school leaders can better support the social, emotional, and mental well-being of both young people and adults in their school communities and promote a healthy and transformative school culture.

School leaders from any K-12 Detroit Public School Community District or Detroit charter school are eligible to apply for grant funding up to $20,000 to launch or expand activities, projects, or programs that support staff and/or student wellness. Funds may be used to support a variety of activities and approaches, based on the wants and needs of individual schools. Selected project proposals will be:

• Centered on wellness. It must be clear how the activities supported by the grant support the well-being of people in the school community.
• Responsive to what members of the school community – staff, students, parents and caregivers – say they want and need.
• Collaboratively designed. The proposal should be designed with input from and as a collective effort of the school leadership team or school culture team and be supported by the school principal.
• Additive and aligned: linked to the school’s existing plans (e.g., culture plan, improvement plan, strategic vision).
• Designed for direct impact in SY 2021-22: The funds will support people within the school community – staff, students or families – beginning this school year. A budget must be included to show how the funding will be used and the expected reach (how many people served).

We expect to fund 25 to 30 proposals from DPSCD and charter schools across a range of geographies and grade bands.

View more details about this opportunity and application process
Applications are due by Friday, October 22, 2021
Apply here

Metro Solutions, Inc. is administering this grant opportunity in partnership with The Skillman Foundation. If you have any questions, please contact Ashlee Schmidt (aschmidt@skillman.org).

About The Skillman Foundation’s Support of Wellness

The Skillman Foundation was founded with the mission to help children thrive and excel into adulthood. To do so, we constantly seek to understand and address the biggest factors standing in the way to young people’s happiness and prosperity. One key theme emerged in our conversations with Detroit youth and their champions during the pandemic – personal wellness was in a fragile state. Our kids, and the adults who serve them, have undergone a good deal of hardship and stress and long to feel whole, stable, and well. To respond, The Skillman Foundation launched the Wellness Works Initiative. From the summer of 2021 through the summer of 2022, we will grant $3 million toward wellness programs and activities for Detroit youth, educators, and youth-service providers. Wellness Works is partially supported by a grant from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative.

Under this initiative, earlier this year we launched a Principal Wellness Professional Learning Community to provide school leaders with transformative practices and a support system of peers that support individual and schoolwide wellness. Additionally, we made grants to 27 youth-serving partners to enable them to implement a range of activities and supports to address the social, emotional, and mental well-being concerns they are seeing.