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Photo courtesy Gary Kuwahara |
| Carol Jacobson's grant will replace inspection vehicles like this one with new Ford Escape Hybrids in June. |
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M.P.A. Student
Receives Hybrid Car Grant
As a
part of the curriculum in her Intergovernmental Relations and Grant
Writing class, graduate student Carol Jacobson was required to write
a grant under the guidance of instructor Eldridge Huntington, who
has worked in grant writing for more than 30 years. Jacobson, a
building official for the City of Manhattan Beach, had to look only
as far as the dilapidated inspection vehicles her division was using
to find her focus. After months of research and two years navigating
the approval process, Jacobson received the funding for two Ford
Escape Hybrids in January. The SUVs will be delivered in June, and her successful grant underscores not only CSUDH’s role in providing hands-on skills for its students but also the effective solutions students can find with a bit of creativity and a lot of hard work. “They were just eating up gas and leaking oil,” says Jacobson of the decade-old GMC Jimmy and Chevy Blazer. “One of them was in the shop one to three times a month, which meant we were delayed getting to inspections.” Jacobson and her staff use the vehicles to visit and inspect building sites throughout the city. So while many of her peers jumped at the chance of finding funding sources to offset their tuition costs for their grant projects (as Huntington detailed was an option), Jacobson found something that might help her employer. As her instructor explains, it’s a perfect example of what graduate students like Jacobson should seek out. “Students need to find ways to make sure that the classes they’re taking are going to serve them in the long run, not just give them a degree. Carol’s the perfect example of that kind of student. This was not a required class, but she sought it out, and in the end, she found more funding sources than she could actually use,” Huntington laughs. “The first thing you have to know about Carol is that she is extremely thorough.” The final grant for $33,778 was awarded by the South Coast Air Quality Management District in January. The grant paid the difference between the price of four gas vehicles and the hybrids, two of which will go to Jacobson’s division; the other two going to the Police Department. This isn’t the first time one of Huntington’s students has written a successful grant under his guidance. In fact, he references one student who received an impressive $275,000 award for the L.A. County District Attorney’s Office where she worked. And that’s just one other example. But what both suggest is the creative ways projects can be funded, particularly for non-profits and the public sector who face seemingly constant belt-tightening. “If you work in a public agency, be it on the local, county, state, or even federal level, money is always an issue. Or really, the lack thereof,” says Huntington. “But the thing I always tell my students and my clients is that if your program is worthwhile, there’s always a source of funding out there. It’s just a matter of finding it.” To find hers, Jacobson researched several options for her grant, exploring options with Southern California Edison, some federal programs, and others before finding the allocations given to the South Coast Air Quality Management District through the California Department of Motor Vehicles. In the end, she spoke with about 15 people from different agencies in the writing phase. It was a lot of work – and a long process that took two years, but it also brought new insight for this 31-year public administrator. “It was a great learning experience and really eye opening because I had never really thought of obtaining funding for budget items through a grant before,” says Jacobson, who plans to look to grants should her division need funding for a line item in the future. “It really was very practical. When looking at cities and issues like decreasing tax revenue or less monies given to local governments by the state, I learned that this is where we can help with that money gap.” |
