In early summer, the Brown Rudnick Charitable Foundation has usually issued a Request for Proposals for its Relationship Grant Program. Over the past seven years, the Foundation has awarded nearly one hundred of these grants to improve inner-city education in Boston, Hartford, New York City, Providence and Washington, D.C. We are very proud of the grant program, the grant recipients and the promising results.

It is time for a "tweak" in our process, however. We have heard from some of our grant recipients and grant applicants, that an application process culminating just after Labor Day with the grants subsequently awarded for use during a calendar year present some challenges for them. We have listened and, therefore, are realigning our grant cycle with the traditional academic year.

For our 2009 grant awards, instead of issuing an RFP in June, 2008 for grants to be awarded for calendar year 2009, we expect to issue our RFP for Relationship Grants in early 2009,. Award decisions will be made in late spring and the grant year will commence at the beginning of the school year, around September 1, 2009. The exact details will be announced in the Center Quarterly Newsletter and notice will also be sent to anyone on our newsletter mailing list. (You can subscribe here: http://www.brownrudnickcenter.com/news/signup.htm)

We look forward to a robust involvement by applicants in our 2009 grant application process. In the meantime, we know that our 2008 Relationship Grant recipients are working every day to bring better educational opportunities to our communities.