RM 3610: Administration of Recreation Services II

This guide provides brief information on library reference books and databases to use to find sources for your grant proposal. This guide lists the most important sources to consult for your research and is not intended to be exhaustive. For more information and assistance, please sign up for a RAP Session, come by the Reference Desk, or try our Ask a Librarian service.

Current grants available:

NORTH CAROLINA'S STATE TRAILS PROGRAM GRANT APPLICATIONS FOR TRAILS, GREENWAYS AND BLUEWAY PROJECTS

Strategies for finding information

I. Information related to grants and grant-writing

Grant-related reference books

Catalog of federal domestic assistance . Annual. Ref HC 110 .P63 U53a. [Also searchable as a Web site; see below.]

Foundation directory . Annual. Ref AS 911 .A2 F65

National directory of corporate public affairs . 2001. Ref HD 59 .N24 [Lists over 2,000 companies of varied sizes which have public affairs programs. Under "Corporate Foundation Contributions" in each company's listing, you'll see information on how much the company granted (for the latest year available) and its giving preferences. *There is a geographic index.]

North Carolina giving: directory of the state's foundations . 1999. Ref HV 98 .N8 M56 1999
[Use this print directory if you're unable to search the database verions, North Carolina Giving Online , which is much more up-to-date.]

Grant-related Web sites
Catalog of federal domestic assistance www.cfda.gov

You can search by keyword, for grant programs only, or by any of several other parameters.

Federal money retriever www.fedmoney.com/subj_ndx.htm

Useful keywords to search include recreation, disadvantaged, homeless, volunteers, women, youth programs.

Foundation center fdncenter.org

I. At the top of the screen, in the grey border, click on Learning Lab to find the following useful guides. You'll see them under "Virtual Classroom," on the left border of the page. Under Learning Lab, click on Proposal Writing Short Course. Or, use the Guide to Funding Research, Proposal Budgeting Basics, Glossary, or FAQs (the latter includes links to examples of grant proposals, letters of inquiry, proposal cover letters, and budgets).

II. Look at the left border of the page. When you have the names of some foundations to which you're thinking of submitting proposals, use the Foundation Finder to link to the foundation's Web site or (if corporate) recent tax return. You can search by name and, if necessary, limit to a particular state.

III. Look at the left border of the page. Click on SearchZone. Then, under Sector Search, click on Advanced. The Sector Search is very imprecise for recreation and leisure topics, but you can give it a try. Use the Advanced search form. Leave al l types of sites checked except government resources (the latter introduces a lot of irrelevant information). Check: updated within last year. Ask that search words must contain (recreation or recreational) or whatever words are relevant for you. If you want to search a phrase, enclose it in quotation marks.

GrantSelect | About Subscription database provided by Belk Library; open to valid library users only.

Contains "listings for over 10,000 grants offered by over 4,000 federal and state government agencies, corporations and corporate foundations, nonprofit organizations, research institutions, and universities." Updated daily.

Search tips:

Look at the left border of the page. Click on Search.

Below the search blank, click on Show More Options.

Many grants have geographic restrictions. Searching with the Geographic Location tab blank DOES bring up grants which have geographic restrictions; leaving the tab blank simply means you're not limiting your search to a particular state or region. So, limit to North Carolina, or South, or Southeast to start with.

Use the Subject Headings pull-down menu to indicate the subject of your grant--if you see something in the list that seems to fit. Potentially useful terms include: Recreation and leisure | Parks| Recreational therapy | Sports | Adolescents | At-risk youth. Or, in this blank, you could type in words for the types of programs the grantors you're targeting want to fund. Potentially useful terms include: Building construction and/or renovation | Service delivery programs | Educational programs

If there's nothing in the Subject Headings pull-down menu that fits your grant proposal, use the Keywords blank. Type a word or phrase for your topic into this blank.

North Carolina Giving Online
http://www.capdev.com/ncgivingonline/login.cfm

Ask a Reference Librarian for login information.
This database provides comprehensive information on funding available from 997 North Carolina foundations. You can search by:

Subject Category (such as Sports/Athletics or Education);
Subcategory (such as Athletics and recreation, Camps, Environmental, Grants of less than $1,000, Handicapped/Autistic, Land & Wildlife Preservation/Conservation, Needs of poor, parks, Services for the aged;
County; or
Foundation name.

For each matching foundation, the database provides information for contacting the foundation (including URL, if any); names of Board members and staff; and financial data on number of grants, highest grant, lowest grant, and average grant for several years. In addition, the database provides the purpose and activities of the foundation; the types of causes it supports; the geographic distribution of the grants; application guidelines; and grant restrictions. Click the link for Grants Listing at the bottom of the screen. This page shows each grant awarded in the last fiscal year, arranged by broad category. The list provides each grant recipient's name and theamount of the grant.

Books on grant-writing available in the Western North Carolina Library Network [ Note: Some of the books shown in this list may be checked out, may not yet be available, or may need to be borrowed using ABC-Express.]

II. Information related to your project, target population, or the geographic area where your project will be located

Sports Business Research Network

This database contains a wealth of demographic data, broken down by date and gender, on participation in various sports and recreation and on purchases of sporting goods. You can find these statistics by clicking on one of the sports/activities on the left, under Consolidated Market Research . Then, click on Participation . The database also contains a large collection of full-text articles from sports business and sporting goods trade journals.

National Sporting Goods Association. Sports Participation in 2002: State-by-State . Ref GV 583 .S7 2002 [This report participation January-December 2002 for a variety of sports and activities. The data for each state (based on a survey) gives frequent, occasional, and infrequent participation, measured by number of days people participated in the activity. There are thirty-eight different activities listed, including backpacking/wilderness camping, fishing, hiking, hunting with firearms, soccer, boating (motor/power), canoeing, mountain biking, paintball, and working out at a club. Data is not broken down by age or gender.]

Academic Search Premier | About

Here are some of the journals related to recreation and leisure that are indexed, with full text, in Academic Search Premier, with the beginning date of full text coverage

Journal of Leisure Research Full text since 1992

Journal of Sustainable Tourism Full text since 2003

Leisure Sciences Full text since 1998, except most recent 12 months

Leisure Studies Full text since 1996, except most recent 12 months

National Parks Full text since 1990

Parks and Recreation Full text since 1996

SPORT Discus | About

This international database lists books, theses, dissertations, journal and magazine articles, Web sites, and conference papers on subjects related to sports, exercise science, physical education, coaching, training, sport psychology, recreation, and sport law. The items listed were published from 1975 to the present. About 25% of the items are at the research/scholarly level.

ERIC | About

This Web-based index to over 810 journals in education includes many articles related to recreation and leisure. It also provides access to other unpublished materials (such as manuals, handbooks, conference presentations, and descriptions of projects which received grant funding) which are available either full text from the E*Subscribe database or on microfiche in the Microforms Room on the bottom floor of Belk Library.

Here are some groupings of search terms that you might include in your search (there are many others that could be used; these are for convenience):

Leisure and recreation terms

Leisure time
Recreational activities
Recreation
Recreational programs
Recreational facilities
Outdoor activities

Evaluation terms

Needs assessment
Evaluation methods
Program evaluation
Program design
Assessment
Program effectiveness

Terms for a target population

Developmental disabilities
Older adults
Welfare recipients
Mental retardation
Youth
Children
Elementary school students
Secondary school students

Leisure Recreation and Tourism Abstracts (LRTA). Available from LeisureTourism.com

Lists material published from 1972 to the present. Indexes over 280 journals--along with books, conference proceedings, and technical reports. Subject areas include leisure,recreation, tourism, sports, hospitality, facilities management, natural resources, and the environment.

Search tips:

On the left side of the screen, click on Search Abstracts.
Click to accept the Terms and Conditions of Use.
Use a simple keyword search.
When you get the Browse List, click on All Fields to see the abstract (if there is one) for the item you're viewing.
If you need to limit your search to items published in the United States (for instance, if your search includes quite a few items about other countries, and you prefer to see only items about your topic dealing with the U.S.), go back to Search. If, for example, your previous search was #5, type in: #5 and USA in GE then click on Search.

Finding information about the geographic area where your project will be located

CPA (Community Profile Analysis) . Consumer and Business Demographic Reports. Watauga County, NC. 2001 edition. Ref HC 107 .N82 W35 2001

Demographics USA: county edition . Business Reference Table. Ref HF 5415.1 .D46

FedStats
http:// www.fedstats.gov
This handy collection of statistics is grouped by state, then by county. On the left side of the page, under MapStats, select North Carolina (or another state, if applicable) and click on Submit. Then, select the county you want and click on Go. When you see the results page, notice on the right side, at the top of the chart, a link to "Browse more data sets for [name] County."

High Country Council of Governments
http://www.regiond.org
Provides links to demographics for Watauga, Ashe, Avery, Mitchell, Wilkes, and Yancey counties and for communities within each.

News and newspapers online
http:// library.uncg.edu/news/
Use this convenient page to get to the newspaper Web site for the city or county where your project will be located. Search the news archives for articles that will help you provide background information on the community and its needs, or articles to help you justify your project.

North Carolina Institute of Government. Municipalities Page http:// ncinfo.iog.unc.edu/library/cities.html
This page is a useful alphabetical table of all North Carolina cities and towns which have a Web site. Besides the link to the town's Web sites, it provides (when available) a link to the Visitor's Bureau or Chamber of Commerce Web site, as well as a link to the county's Web site. Use these Web sites to gather more information about recreation in the community you plan to target; information about the community overall, or information about agencies or organizations that might collaborate with you on the grant project.

Official City Sites
http://officialcitysites.org
This site attempts to locate four specific areas of interest in cities worldwide, including officially sanctioned Web sites, commerce and business organizations, community and economic development, and travel and tourism.

State Data Center
http:// sdc.state.nc.us/

U. S. Census Bureau
http:// www.census.gov
The main page for census information. You can also get to census data from the FedStats and State Data Center links, above.

Compiled by Glenn Ellen Starr Stilling, stillngges@appstate.edu