Prepared for the PEACE Academy Board of Directors
At its July meeting, the board committed publicly to strengthening fundraising. PRISM builds AI-powered systems that turn that commitment into prospects found and applications in flight, with a light lift from staff: review and sign-off only.
PRISM AI Consultants · September 2026 · For PEACE Academy leadership and the Board of Directors
The new building is open. Grades 5 through 7 are arriving, with the school growing toward its full 465 seats. Growth of this size brings real costs that state formulas alone were never designed to cover. After a year of disciplined budgeting, the goal is capacity the school does not have to hire for. And with the State Charter Schools Commission looking closely at academic and financial results, a documented funding pipeline is part of a stronger financial story.
The board spoke openly about falling short of its fundraising goals. Several funding windows that fit schools like PEACE are open this fall. The hard part is rarely finding them. It is having the capacity to track, write, and submit while also running a school.
Funding windows that fit a school like PEACE, each checked against the funder's own page on September 13. Eligibility is confirmed with your team before any writing starts. Select any bar for the detail.
Swipe the timeline sideways to see every month.
Windows and dates verified against the State Charter Schools Commission and each funder's own published page on September 13, 2026. Award decisions belong to the funders. We promise capacity and applications in flight, never outcomes.
The engine is a working system PRISM builds and runs with your team, so the fundraising chair opens every board meeting with motion, never with a blank page.
Each option starts as one defined, flat-fee engagement, then continues month to month only if the results earn it. Choose one, or combine them. The decision for the board is simple: approve one first engagement. The exact scope and flat fee come to the chair in writing, for the board's normal approval process.
The lead option, anchored to the goal the board set in July. Paid from unrestricted funds, because federal rules generally do not allow federal grant dollars to pay for fundraising.
Hands-on sessions built on the school's own work, following Georgia's published guidance on AI in K-12. Training for teachers and school leaders is the kind of professional development that may qualify for Title II-A; your finance team confirms. Board sessions are paid from unrestricted funds.
Filling the new grades starts with families seeing the new building and the people in it.
After the first engagement proves itself, PRISM stays in the room as the school's AI partner. No long contract. The results carry the renewal.
Results from our coaching work
A workforce development consultant PRISM began coaching in August 2025 applied for a state workforce grant in October and reported winning it in December, using AI throughout the application.
After our sessions, the CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Lehigh Valley wrote a first-time application to a new foundation for the organization's Sports Buddies program in a single three to four hour block.
Reference: Susan Bartels, CEO, Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Lehigh Valley. Contact details on request.
How a yes happens
Five samples of what the engine produces, drafted from PEACE's own public numbers. Each is a starting point for your team to shape and approve, never sent without you.
What the fundraising committee would open at every board meeting. Owners shown are suggestions for the board to assign.
| Opportunity | Owner | Next step | Due |
|---|---|---|---|
| SCSC Expansion subgrant | Finance and academic leads | Eligibility check | Before Oct 1, noon ET |
| Teacher Grants for Innovation | Interested teachers | Confirm charter eligibility, then submit | Oct 15 |
| Goizueta Foundation | Executive Director | Request an introductory call | Ahead of the November review |
| DonorsChoose | Interested teachers | Post first classroom projects | Rolling |
| Title II-A | Finance | Confirm FY27 professional development fit | This month |
A first draft of the introductory request the Goizueta Foundation asks for before any application.
A first draft for Giving Tuesday, December 1, 2026, ready for email and social posts.
Written to win, not as a sample. It is built to the foundation's own definition of innovation, aligned to the Georgia Early Literacy Act and Georgia's guidance on AI in schools, and every budget line is priced from the vendor's current list price. Teachers at state charter schools have won this grant before, and a past winner was funded for a third grade small-group reading project.
Every Reader, Every Day. Only 47 percent of our third graders read on grade level, and more than 100 of our roughly 250 students began last year below the 30th percentile. Many of our families move often, so reading practice at home is inconsistent. This project targets that root cause inside our daily 30 minute intervention block. After a student interest survey, I will use AI to draft new decodable passages each week, matched to the exact phonics skill we are teaching and to what students care about, like sports, music, and our new building. I review and edit every passage before it reaches a student. Students read them in small groups, practice fluency at a listening station, and take a copy home in a book bag to read with family. Every passage joins a shared bank for our intervention team and our tutors by teachers program, so the approach grows across grades. It builds directly on the structured literacy approach PEACE adopted under the Georgia Early Literacy Act.
Heggerty Decodable Books, Grades 2 to 4 Toucan Series classroom set, built for Tier 2 and Tier 3 intervention ($224.00). Heggerty Second Grade Series 3 decodable classroom set for students still building foundational skills ($359.00). Two sets of six classroom headphones for a fluency listening station, where students hear a passage modeled before reading it on their own ($137.98). Thirty reusable take-home book bags ($18.49). Weekly passages print on the school copier. Total: $739.47 plus shipping and tax.
1. On our state-required universal reading screener, given three times a year, reduce the share of students in my intervention groups scoring in the lowest band by at least 10 percentage points from fall to spring. 2. Students read and return at least 80 percent of their weekly take-home passages, tracked on a simple weekly log. 3. By May, build a bank of at least 60 teacher-reviewed decodable passages mapped to our phonics sequence and share it with PEACE's other K-3 teachers and our tutors by teachers program.
Decodable text usually means a fixed set of books students outgrow in weeks. AI lets me create fresh decodable passages every week that match the phonics skill we just taught and each group's interests, so practice stays new and students want to read. Georgia's AI guidance lists modifying a text's reading level for individual learners as an appropriate use. I review every passage before students see it, and no student names, scores, or personal information ever go into the tool. Everything we create is shared with other PEACE teachers.
Small-group, systematic foundational reading instruction is rated strong evidence by the What Works Clearinghouse. Matching books to each student's reading level and interests improved reading comprehension in a randomized study of 5,319 second and third graders. Prices: Heggerty Toucan set, Heggerty Grade 2 Series 3, headphones, book bags, checked September 14, 2026.
Needed from PEACE before submitting: the applying teacher's name, years of experience, and a photo of them in their classroom. Confirm the teacher has not won this grant before, and confirm eligibility with the foundation.
A 28 second vertical video for Instagram and Facebook, cut from the school's own building footage. No student faces are used without a signed family release.
Sample cut from building footage the school shared. A final version would add the school's music and approved photos.
We start with one scoped, flat-fee project so the board sees results before considering anything longer, then month to month. PRISM has coached nonprofit and small business leaders across the Lehigh Valley, including Susan Bartels, CEO of Big Brothers Big Sisters of the Lehigh Valley. PEACE would be our first charter school client, which is exactly why we start small and flat-fee.
Training for teachers and school leaders is the kind of professional development that may qualify for Title II-A. Board sessions are paid from unrestricted funds. PEACE's FY26 budget, presented at the May 2025 public hearing, carried $62,400 for staff development and $40,000 for recruitment, the natural home for enrollment storytelling. Fundraising support is paid from unrestricted funds, because federal rules (2 CFR 200.442) generally make fundraising costs unallowable without the federal agency's prior written approval. Your finance team confirms the fit for FY27.
Grant support is a flat professional fee, never a percentage of any award, the standard set by the Grant Professionals Association Code of Ethics.
Our work follows Georgia's published guidance on AI in K-12. Student records stay out of AI tools entirely, and educators stay the decision-makers.
Two windows are real this fall: Teacher Grants for Innovation by October 15, and a Goizueta introduction ahead of its November review. The Expansion subgrant is a long shot we will check in a day. PRISM would be honored to build this with PEACE.