The JHSSF board has been more active since 2011, and we have received many grant requests.  We have approved some and denied others.  Following are some “lessons learned” about the combination of varying attitudes and philosophies of board members.  Clearly a “board” does not exist absent individual members, however our “board” operates under the concept of “democracy.”  While this is obviously not a perfect system, it is how we operate.  We hope that learning a bit about our historic decision-making process will help you better hone in on grant requests.

• We are more likely to approve a grant request that benefits children entering shooting sports versus adults.
• We are more likely to approve grants promoting shooting sports to women than men.
• We are more likely to approve beginning level classes than intermediate-level programing.
• We are more likely to support infrastructure or program requests than maintenance or other operating costs.
• We have approved grants that cost over $75/person (Wyoming Game & Fish) down to only a few dollars per person (JH Shooting Experience).  We prefer to affect as many people as possible for as small of a price per person as possible.
• We are strict about only supporting grant requests that are for shooting sports including rifles, shotguns, archery and pistols.  We are unlikely to support unarmed women’s self defense, skiing trips, etc.
• We have discovered that a local “for profit” shooting instruction business and its owners do 90% of the “heavy lifting” in actually reaching new people and getting them involved in shooting sports, so we are not opposed to “for-profit” organizations requesting grants.
• We do not accept donations that are “earmarked” unless we agree with the project, and the donor is contributing 100% of the  funds for the project.

Again, not all members agree with the above, and we have some heated debates in our meetings, but the above is often how things shake out in the end.  Please contact us for further advice as you prepare your grant request.  We respect the many hours of thought and deliberation that go in before even beginning write a grant request, and we understand that your time is likely valuable, so we want to make things as streamlined and transparent as possible.  jhshootingsportsfoundation (at) gmail.com