Grants for purchasing bikepacking equipment?

[southwestbackcountry]

Hi there,
I'm a teacher in an experiential ed program at a school and would love to incorporate bike packing into our 8th, 10-12th grade curricula.  Does anyone know of any bike equipment/ wellness grants that would help me make such a purchase?  Any thoughts or suggestions would be excellent, as the cost of 12 seat post/ handle bar bags is our entire annual equipment budget, thanks!

[THE LONG RANGER]

I wonder if Kurt Ref. (krefs on here?) would have any guidance - he's done some pretty cool projects with his students and bikepacking.

[southwestbackcountry]

Good idea.   

[Scottyo42]

I was looking up topics about bike packing grants and this popped up.  Were you able to ever find anything out there??  or would it be more associated with wellness grants?

Thanks

[Payton MacDonald]

One way to do this is to roll equipment purchases into a specific project.  In general, my experience in the non-profit world is that projects are more fundable when they benefit people beyond those involved with the project and if the project has a long tail, with many other benefits that play out over a period of years.  In other words, if you can develop something that is great for those students, but also benefits the broader community that might be to your advantage. 

For example, let's say you put together a great bikepacking overnighter.  The planning, execution, and documentation of it will benefit your students (obviously), but if you can wrap some community service in it (e.g., trash collection, trail maintenance, etc) that makes the whole thing bigger and more powerful and also introduces the notion of stewardship into the project.

As for grant sources, try your local library or local university.  In fact, you might want to partner with a professor who works in the education field.  S/he will generally know about grants for this kind of thing.

I hope that helps, and best wishes for a successful project.