KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

KB6NU's Ham Radio Blog

grants

ARDC on the ICQPodcast

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I’m not a presenter on Episode #362 of the ICQPodcast, but this episode’s feature is my interview of ARDC Executive Director Rosy Schechter, KJ7RYV; Grants Manager Chelsea Párraga, KF0FVJ; and Outreach Manager John Hays, K7VE. In the interview, we talk about some of the cool grants that ARDC has awarded lately, including following:

  • M17 Project. The M17 Project is an international group of Amateur Radio operators working on a new digital radio protocol that’s focused on being fully open, including the implementations. The ARDC grant of $250,000 will support the RF design and development, including test equipment, prototypes, and developer kits. They will also be used to provide bounties for solutions to particularly hard problems, and for the administrative work that is less likely to get done on intrinsic motivation alone. Additionally, the ARDC grant will support server hosting and similar operating costs as needed, and travel for a working meeting.
  • Paradox Sonic Space Research Agency (PSSR). PSSR was awarded $17,300 an open-source, universal small satellite platform within a single unit cube-satellite standard, weighing less than 1 kilogram, which could be used as a baseline to carry out suborbital space missions. They will develop a nano-satellite with all the basic satellite subsystems and a Plug-and-Play (PnP) port installed for integrating additional experiments or payloads without any hardware modifications.

The interview starts at the 1:25:45 mark.

Apply for a grant from the ARRL

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In our division director’s missive to the membership yesterday was this nugget:
ARRL IS CURRENTLY OFFERING GRANTS to fund amateur radio projects. This program, sponsored by the ARRL Foundation, is specifically for organizations and aimed primarily for education, licensing and support of ham activities. A special focus is on youth-related plans. We are now entering the last phase of this year’s grant cycle, so the opportunity exists for your club or organization to submit a grant request. You can find the full details on the grant page of the ARRL web pages, check: http://www.arrl.org/amateur-radio-grants.
The ARRL accepts grant requests three times a year:
  • February 1 – February 28
  • June 1 – June 30
  • October 1 – October 31

Since this is September 1, you have two months to get your request in. As I’ve written before, our club was awarded $1,500 to help us put up a tower for a club station at the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. The money is available. Go get it!

ARDC talks about their grant process with RATPAC

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Last week, Rosy Wolfe, KJ7RYV, Executive Director of Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC), addressed the Radio Amateur Training Planning and Activities Committee (RATPAC). She talked about how to apply for ARDC grants and how the organization decides which proposals get funded and which don’t.

This was a really great presentation, and if your club has any projects that you’re working on, but don’t how you’re going to fund it, you really should watch this video. Actually, you should watch it even if you don’t currently have a project that you’re working on. It’s bound to give you ideas about things that you can do.

You can find a PDF file of the slides presented by going to the RATPAC Video Presentation List. In addition, you’ll also find links to the other RATPAC presentations and a schedule of upcoming events.

Learn how to get amateur radio grants Saturday February 6!

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Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC) is an organization whose mission is to “support, promote, and enhance digital communication and broader communication science and technology, to promote Amateur Radio, scientific research, experimentation, education, development, open access, and innovation in information and communication technology.” They have a bunch of money that they raised by selling some of the IP addresses that were initially allotted to amateur radio.

TOMORROW, Saturday, February 6, they will be holding a community meeting to inform folks about their activities. Consider attending if you think that you mighth be interested in applying for a grant from ARDC. Here’s the memo:

From: Rosy Wolfe <[email protected]>

Hello, ARDC Grantees!

I hope this new year is off to a good start and that all is well in your
world, or at least as well as it can be given pandemic times.

I’m writing with some invitations – which are both for you and extend to other amateur radio enthusiasts in your communities.

# Invitation 1: Please join us for our next community meeting!

  • Saturday, 06 Feb 2021
  • * 18:00 GMT (10am PT / 1pm ET / 7pm CET)

Join us by signing up here: https://www.ampr.org/feb-6-meeting-sign-up/

In this meeting, we’ll cover:

  • Highlights from 2020
  • Grantmaking goals in 2021
  • Introductions of new Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and Grants Advisory Committee (GAC) Members
  • Survey results from our latest survey, discussed below
  • Questions from our attendees.

We held a similar meeting on 10 Oct. 2020, which was primarily for
people using 44net addresses.

This one is intended for a much broader audience. So – please tell your
friends! We also plan to record this meeting for those who can’t make it.

# Invitation 2: Please take and share this survey!

Leading up to the meeting, we’re also asking amateur radio enthusiasts to give us their thoughts in this survey. Please share it with other hams you know. As with the last survey, the aim is to get to know the people we aim to support through our grantmaking. And like our upcoming meeting, it too is meant for a broader audience.

That’s all for now! Looking forward to sharing more with everyone soon.

Thank you for all that you do.

All the best,
Rosy
ARDC Executive Director

I plan to attend myself.

How to Raise Funds for Your Club

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On the arrl_prez mailing list, Ruth KB9VDG wrote:

Hi, my name is Ruth Powell, KB9VDG, and I am the Secretary for the Vermilion County Amateur Radio Association in Danville, IL. We are in need of raising big money ASAP. Our repeater antenna is in need of being replaced, and unfortunately we don’t have that kind of money in our funds. I was wondering if you give send me some information on types of grants that we might apply for and/or ideas for major fund raisers. I am also the Chairperson for our fundraiser committee.

Here are some of the responses:

It depends on your particular group and the size of the need. In one of the local clubs here, special needs such as what you describe are communicated to the club with a request for financial help. Usually the result is that sufficient funds are generated by the response that nothing else is needed. Now, your club may not be large enough or “flush enough” to do this. But you could try it to see what happens….73, Duane AC5AA

We are wrestling with this issue as well and are about to ask for a special campaign to ask people just to donate money to the club. There may be some grant money running around, if you are tied to some other public service/ESDA groups. We have almost given up on traditional ham fest or outright fundraising gimmicks, like food. We have resorted to begging! (just kidding)…Rob K9RST

A local club here in Southern CA is holding an AUCTION this Friday. Most items are outright donations (club gets 100%), but others have a minimum bid set by the seller (club gets 10%). You do NOT need to be a club member to participate! I may stop in myself! The club website is at http://www.w6ze.org/ and the auction rules are at http://www.w6ze.org/Auction_Rules_2005.pdf…Dino K6RIX

Here in Michigan, the Grand Rapids club was able to obtain a $10,000 grant to update their repeater system. There are many community foundations that grant money for community improvement or community service projects. The problem is that writing grant proposals can be difficult, and because amateur radio clubs generally do not rely on this source of funding, they are not experienced in proposal writing.

Another idea for clubs that are within driving distance of Dayton is to sponsor a bus trip to the Dayton Hamvention. Here in Ann Arbor, we are 4-1/2 to 5 hours from Dayton so it’s perfect for us. Last year, our Dayton bus trip netted us almost $1,000.

What does your club do to raise funds?

UPDATE 10/26/25

Back in 2005 (wow…20 years ago), when I first published this post, there was no such thing as Amateur Radio Digital Communications (ARDC). ARDC is a private foundation that awards grants to amateur radio clubs and projects. You can apply for a grant directly from them, or indirectly through the ARRL’s Club Grant Program. ARDC provides the funding for the ARRL program.