Literacy Fund Grant – School Application – Indigo Love of Reading Foundation

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Step 1 of 9 – School Information

Section A: Tell us about your school community

ILOR Key Decision-Making Factor: Community Need – how the quantifiable data and anecdotes from your school community directly link to your school’s literacy challenges.

1. Explain in as much detail as possible, the literacy challenges and opportunities at your school. In doing so please cite any relevant local or national research, test scores (reading inventories, qualitative/quantitative surveys, report card data, etc.) to support your current reality.*

2. Please speak to how the demographic landscape of your school community may have impacted your reason to apply for this grant. In doing so, please cite any relevant information to support your statements.*

Some examples of information you can provide that help to paint a picture of the scope of need faced by students and families in your school community:

Average Median family income within your school community
The percentage (%) of lone-parent (also referred to as single-parent) families in your school community
The percentage (%) of students in your school community that speak a language other than French or English in the home
The percentage (%) of students in your school community that self-identify as Indigenous (I.e. Aboriginal, First Nations, Métis, or Inuit)
The percentage (%) of people/families in your school community who have a post-secondary certificate, diploma, or degree (e.g. university, trade school, college, etc.)
The percentage (%) of people who moved from one residence to another at least once in the last year (e.g., family moved to a new apartment)
The percentage (%) of your students’ families needing financial support to by school supplies and/or enable their child to participate in school activities (e.g. field trips and clubs)?
The percentage (%) of students that access nutrition programs through your school
Any special learning designations or indexes such as the TDSB Learning Opportunities Index (LOI) that apply to your school. When citing a special learning designation or index, please ensure you are describing the criteria that define the designation.

*For any metrics provided you must state the source of this information. This can be derived from a number of different sources, eg. Census data (Stats Can), family/caregiver surveys, school board data, etc.

Section C: Project summary and need

ILOR Key Decision-Making Factor: Vision and Objectives – how your project will address both immediate gaps and long-term literacy engagement.

Note on scale/scope of your proposed project: Participation in the Literacy Fund Grant program represents a multi-year commitment with funding being provided over a 3 year period in annual allotments. Your proposed project should therefore represent a scale and scope where both short- and long- term impacts can be tracked that have the potential to reach a wide number of students (if not all students) at your school.

To help inform your project summary and need review this checklist of critical gaps and consider using student voices in identifying gaps (e.g., student surveys)

Project name*

Please indicate the objective(s) of the ILOR Literacy Fund Grant program that your project will fulfill*

Improve School Literacy Infrastructure and Inventory (increase access to a greater number of relevant literature and reading resources in an enhanced learning library environment)

Increase student Literacy Engagement (increase student engagement with literacy and reading to develop a life-long love of reading)

Enhance student Literacy Achievement (improve reading level outcomes; more readily meet curricular expectations through expanded access to books)

Enhance student and educator skills (i.e. increase student/educator skills within certain curricular areas such as: Indigenous Knowledge and Worldviews, DE&I concepts, Environmental literacy, STEM, etc. through books)

Enhance community engagement (involvement of parents, family and community members) around literacy initiatives at your school)

Enhance student school engagement (increase overall student engagement with their library/school over time through expanded access to literature)

Tell us about your literacy project idea and how the project satisfies the objective(s) of the ILOR Literacy Fund Grant program that you indicated in the previous question.*

Please note: your overall project idea may be multi-faceted in approach, however each initiative must connect clearly to an objective(s) of the literacy fund grant program.

Why is your literacy project needed? What critical gaps are being filled?*

Please cite any school-based performance data and/or research that support your response.

Section D: Project plan

Note that funding is allocated in early September of 2025 with subsequent annual allotments being distributed to schools over a period of 3 school years.

What major milestones (outcomes) will your literacy project achieve?

List and describe up to five (5) MAJOR MILESTONES your school team will achieve over the 3-4 years of the grant to execute the main goals of your literacy project
When listing supporting activities that will help achieve each of your milestones, please keep your descriptions short/concise wherever possible
Please include a general timeline that outlines the duration of when you will execute your activities to achieve each milestone
Please list any staff members, special committees, or community members (e.g. Intervention teams, Parents associations, etc.) that may be working to help your school accomplish each milestone

Please see a sample project plan HERE

Milestone archieved	Supporting activitiy (ties) to achieve milestone	When (dates)	Who’s responsible?	Actions

There are no milestones.

Turnover plan*

Many schools will experience turnover in key roles (e.g. principal, librarian, educators on school literacy teams) in the course of the multi-year Literacy Fund grant process. Describe the general transition plan that you would put into place in the event there are key staffing changes at your school over the duration of this grant program.

Anticipated challenges*

What challenges do you anticipate facing in implementing your literacy project? Please describe how these challenges might impact the success of your project and outline specific strategies you will use to address them. (e.g., obstacle: time limitations due to competing school priorities; actionable plan: scheduling regular team meetings to ensure alignment and progress tracking)

Section E: Project Budget

In this section, you will be asked to identify and describe all the items/services that your school will need to purchase with your grant funding to support execution of your project plan. Recipient schools are part of the grant program for 3 years.

90% of the funding is set up as a corporate account to buy books from Indigo Books & Music Inc. at a 30% discount.

10% of the funding is given in the form of a discretionary cheque to fund special literacy events or initiatives (eg. read-a-thons, literacy based-school trips, author visits) at your school that stir the imagination of the students in a way that will help inspire a love of reading.

You can view a sample of a project budget plan HERE.

How will you spend the grant funds on books (your 90% allotment)?

When completing your budget, please consider the following criteria carefully:

Identify and describe ALL the book items that will be purchased with the grant funding to support your literacy project; please keep your descriptions as concise as possible
Your budget items should directly relate to the project summary (Section C) and project plan (Section D) of this application
Feel free to use the supporting notes column to contextualize your book costs
Please note that books purchased through grants funds are at a 30% discount to the listed price. For example- a book found at Indigo with a $10.00 regular listed price can be purchased at $7.00 (with the 30% discount applied) with your grant funding
When listing a budget item, please ensure you have researched current costs of the item to the best of your ability and you have considered any operational funding that you may already be set to receive to finance the cost of your item

Budget Item	Description of the item	Grant funding amount in Canadian funds ($)	Supporting notes	Actions

There are no Items.

How will you spend the grant funds on supporting literacy resources (your 10% allotment)

When completing your budget, please consider the following criteria carefully:

Identify and describe ALL the items/services that will be purchased with the 10% portion of your grant
Your budget items should directly relate to the project summary (Section C) and project plan (Section D) of this application
Feel free to use the supporting notes column to contextualize any listed item costs
Please note that this portion of the grant cannot be used to pay for items such as salaries, major furniture upgrades, capital investments (playgrounds, building additional rooms, etc.), or school textbooks
Your 10% discretionary amount CAN be spent on items like school trips, student awards for literacy initiatives, professional learning opportunities for teachers, author visits, etc.: items/ services that will help to bolster a love of reading culture in your school
When listing a budget item, please ensure you have researched current costs of the item to the best of your ability, and you have considered any operational funding that you may already be set to receive to finance the cost of your item

Budget Item	Description of the item	Grant funding amount in Canadian funds ($)	Supporting notes	Actions

There are no Items.

Book budget*

This should be 90% of your budget

Support budget*

This should be 10% of your budget

Remaining allocation*

Please ensure your number is $0 or above before moving to the next section of this application.

Section F: Project impact

ILOR Key Decision-Making Factor: Sustainability – how your school plans to maintain and scale the impact of the grant beyond the 3-year period.

1. Who are the groups of people that will benefit from your project?*

Please check all that apply

Students at your school

Student’s parents, caregivers, other family members

Educators

Community members (not parent/caregivers)

Other

Please specify other groups

2. Please estimate how many individuals (e.g. # students, # teachers, # parents/caregivers, # community members, etc.) will be directly involved, participate and benefit from your literacy project?*

3. What is your plan to create awareness or promote your literacy project?*

Tell us about the communication tools (e.g. emails, social media, newsletters, etc.) that you will use.

4. How will you track and measure the success of your project?*

Please refer to the application guide for examples of qualitative and quantitative indicators that you may want to use to evaluate the success of your project.

5. Please specify if there are certain benchmarks that you are looking to lift (eg. reading and writing scores in your standardized testing) and to what degree would you look to lift these benchmarks through the support of the grant?*

6. The Indigo Love of Reading Foundation works with grant recipients to track quantitative and qualitative change in key impact areas. Examples of key impact areas include improvements in variety of books, student literacy engagement, and student literacy achievement.

Recipient schools will be required to complete an annual report each year of the grant that will require collaborative input from teachers, students, librarian/library staff, and other stakeholders. Please review the information HERE to see a sample of some of the quantitative (metrics-based) and qualitative (reflection-based) questions that your school will be asked if you are chosen as a recipient of a literacy fund grant.

After reviewing this information, please answer the following questions:

A. Does your school have sufficient capacity to collect this kind of data over the next three years of the grant?*

Yes

Please specify the barriers that will allow you to answer some or all of these questions*

B. Does your school currently collect information quantitative/qualitative data of this kind?*

Yes

Please elaborate on the quantitative and/or qualitative data that you currently document that aligns with Love of Reading’s reporting requirements.

7. Describe any current literacy-focused programs, initiatives, or partnerships in place at your school. Explain how these efforts align with your goals to enhance literacy and foster a love of reading.*

8. How does your school plan to maintain and scale the project after the grant ends?*

Section H: Community Involvement

The creative community project will be evaluated using a 1 to 5 scale rubric, assessing various aspects of the project on a scale from “needs improvement” to “exceptional.” This rubric ensures clear and consistent evaluation based on predefined standards.

At the Indigo Love of Reading Foundation we truly value youth voice, in addition to hearing from other members of your school community such as educators, school staff, parents/caregivers about your culture of literacy. We ask that you use this portion of the application as an opportunity to share a creative project that highlights your school’s need for additional funding and your vision for how the grant would support transformational change around literacy at your school. There are two options for submitting this creative community project component:

1. A video that captures the values of your school, its commitment to literacy, and need for funding. Your submission should include interviews/reflections from your school community, including:

Your school principal
A student or group of students at your school
Teacher(s) at your school, including any librarians/library staff (if applicable)
Community members external to your school (eg. parents/caregivers)

The video should be a maximum length of 5 minutes

Link to video

Share a video link from an online video storage such as YouTube or Vimeo. Please ensure it is viewable as a guest user.

Upload video

Upload a video in MP4 (h264/h265) format

Drop files here or

Accepted file types: mp4, m4v, mov, mkv, Max. file size: 100 MB.

2. A PowerPoint/Google Slides presentation or Google/Word document that captures the values of your school, its commitment to literacy, and need for funding. Your submission should include the following voices:

Your school principal
A student or students at your school (you may consolidate letters, quotes or reflections from students)
Teacher(s) at your school, including any librarians/library staff (if applicable)
Community members external to your school (eg. parents/caregivers)

You are welcome to integrate multimedia components such as photos and video within your presentation that reflect your school’s culture of literacy and need for funding.

Please refer to the Application Worksheet for the Creative Community Project Criteria Rubric

Link to slide/document

Share a link from an online storage such as Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive or Box. Please ensure it is viewable as a geust user.

Upload slide/document

Upload a slideshow, document or PDF

Accepted file types: pptx, ppt, pdf, doc, docx, Max. file size: 100 MB.

Please enter the email address(es) of the people to whom you would like a PDF copy of your grant application sent

Separate email addresses with a comma

Please note that once you have submitted your school’s application, the submission will be final.

Schools will not be able to revise their applications once submitted. If you have further questions please contact the Foundation at loveofreading@indigo.ca.

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