Commercial Grants

Head each answer with the question to which you are responding. Do not print and include the entire page of questions.

Please respond to each question about your proposal carefully and succinctly. Don’t tell us everything you know, tell what is important for us to know.

A major goal for GMF’s founder, Ed Craney was to improve commercial broadcasting in the state. There is no deadline for grant applications from commercial stations if you can demonstrate that this is:

An urgent and critical issue (including the top priorities identified as most important by Montanans in the spring media survey: jobs and the economy; healthcare; and education)
Production is time-limited

Provide a budget for your proposal (not your entire organization) in a form GMF trustees can understand, with expenses and purposes clearly delineated. Be sure to list other sources of funding, if applicable.

If there are critical supporting documents, please include them.

The Process

When I receive a grant application, I first review it for eligibility and completeness and whether it meets the criteria for a commercial station no-deadline application. If there are questions, I will contact you.

I email the Grants Committee, outlining the application briefly, attach a copy of the application, with a request that the Grants Committee review and make a recommendation which I then send the full board to fund or to decline funding.

With the attached grant application and recommendation to fund, I attach a formal email vote form, with a deadline to respond. Each GMF board member reviews the grant application and votes on it.

If the majority of the board members vote to fund the grant proposal, I will send notification and a required grant agreement, to be signed and returned. I will then send a grant check from GMF.

A report is required when the program is completed, to include a narrative and a complete expense report, along with any other relevant information, including information about numbers of viewers.

You can download the commercial grant application here.

The Background on Commercial Grants

The Greater Montana Foundation (GMF) has a special commercial broadcaster grant category for time-sensitive news and/or public affairs programming on issues of importance, including multi-part reports within regular news programs.

This category is designed to encourage and assist commercial broadcasters in providing meaningful and timely coverage of emerging and developing issues. It is not a replacement for grants that should be proposed during the regular annual GMF grant consideration process in the spring and early summer of each calendar year.

More specifically, the Commercial Broadcaster Time-Sensitive Program Grants category is for short-turnaround consideration of commercial station grant requests for issue-related programs that could not have been foreseen for proposal during the regular annual grant consideration process, and which are likely to lose their importance, and even relevance, if delayed until the next annual grant cycle. Proposals in this category may be made anytime, and expeditious consideration will be given on a case-by-case basis at the discretion of the GMF Board of Trustees.

The Greater Montana Foundation requires that all programs receiving its funding be made available for use upon request by any Montana media outlets, schools and libraries.

Background

The Greater Montana Foundation (GMF) has long supported a range of public broadcasting and commercial radio and television programs in fulfillment of the vision of pioneer Montana broadcaster Ed Craney who created the Foundation. That vision is captured in the Greater Montana Foundation Vision/Mission Statement that appears on every grant application form received:

The Greater Montana Foundation benefits the people of Montana by encouraging communication with an emphasis on electronic media on issues, trends and values of importance to present and future generations of Montanans.

Also, on every form is the following statement. It reflects Mr. Craney’s -- and the GMF’s – conviction that commercial broadcasting does, and must continue to, provide an important and fundamental ongoing communication link “on issues…of importance…”:

The Greater Montana Foundation grants priority funding to programs that adhere most closely to the principles articulated in the GMF mission statement and for which applicants can demonstrate intention on the part of commercial television and radio stations to air the proposed programs. Special consideration will also be given to multi-part series written and produced to air within regularly-scheduled news and public affairs programs.

Intent

By the Commercial Broadcaster Time-Sensitive Program Grants category, the GMF Board of Trustees seeks to provide maximum encouragement for commercial radio and television stations to continually seek to produce and air quality news and public affairs program segments, or longer programs, that address topical or time-sensitive issues facing Montana and its citizens.

Funding by GMF is not intended to replace baseline program spending of commercial stations. It is to assist with costs of projects that would, in all likelihood, not be possible because of extraordinary costs.

Issues envisioned as being the focus of such projects are to be current, and of significant importance to Montanans. Treatment of these issues must be balanced.
Because of the potentially time-sensitive nature of the issues about which segments or programs may be proposed, the GMF Board will make funding decisions as needed, separate and apart from its annual spring and summer grant-making process.

Proposal Process

The process of making a proposal is designed to be simple and rapid.

Commercial television or radio personnel wishing to propose projects should fill out the special grant proposal form and email it to the GMF Executive Director.

Telephone and e-mail contact will follow, with the possibility of a meeting or conference call with the GMF Executive Director and/or Board members.