The California State Library has launched a one-stop portal for all grant and loan opportunities offered on a competitive or first-come basis by California state agencies and departments. The Grant Information Act of 2018 – AB 2252 created the California Grants Portal, which features more than 126 grants totaling over $18.3 billion in potential funding.
According to State Librarian Greg Lucas, the grant and loan opportunities exist to help California communities and innovators succeed. “The easier we make it to find the right funding, the faster Californians can start putting it to good use,” he said.
The new portal touts searchability as being central to its design. The Library team surveyed and met with grant seekers and state grant makers multiple times to gather ideas and understand challenges over a 14-month period. In f
The California State Library has launched a one-stop portal for all grant and loan opportunities offered on a competitive or first-come basis by California state agencies and departments. The Grant Information Act of 2018 – AB 2252 created the California Grants Portal, which features more than 126 grants totaling over $18.3 billion in potential funding.
According to State Librarian Greg Lucas, the grant and loan opportunities exist to help California communities and innovators succeed. “The easier we make it to find the right funding, the faster Californians can start putting it to good use,” he said.
The new portal touts searchability as being central to its design. The Library team surveyed and met with grant seekers and state grant makers multiple times to gather ideas and understand challenges over a 14-month period. In fact, over the course of the project the team heard from more than 1,000 grant seekers via surveys and online sessions and met with more than 120 state staff involved in grant making through one-on-one meetings and cross-department collaboration sessions
The CA Grants Portal design is imbued with multiple functionalities. Grant seekers can filter grant opportunities by using keywords or selecting from a wide-range of categories. The Portal also makes it possible to search by eligible applicant types, including nonprofit organizations, public agencies, businesses, tribal governments, and others. Subscriptions and updates on new grant opportunities for over a dozen categories are also available. There is also a feed on the page that lists recently added grants, as well as a statistical tracker named “By the Numbers” that tracks how many grants were added in the past week, the total number of grant opportunities and the total amount of funding available. As of July 22, the California Grants Portal dashboard listed 18 grants added in the past week.
The California Department of Technology (CDT) worked closely with Library CIO Michael Martinez and Executive Sponsor Anne Neville-Bonilla, director of the California Research Bureau of the State Library, to understand the Project Approval Lifecycle (PAL) deliverables. PAL was a requirement since the project was developed using General Funds.
To be as efficient as possible, the project team used its experienced technical staff and existing web portal technology. The partnership with CDT assisted with submitting solid project documentation in a relatively short amount of time. Once launched, the California Grants Portal became an excellent example of a successful collaborative, user-centered and agile project approach.
For more information visit the California Grants Portal: www.grants.ca.gov.