When no grant application was received by June 2023, the Foundation made a "renewal grant" for the program for which funding had been provided in the previous year. For more information about the program, see the Grants Section of the 2021-22 Dater Foundation Annual Report on this web site and/or go to the grantee organization's web site.
Program Results:
No formal Grant Evaluation Report was submitted with results for the program. This “Success Narrative” was submitted in January 2024.
Your support over the last two grant cycles has helped the five schools mentioned above to continue to deepen the impact of these programs for their students and begin to change culture. Additionally, we have continued to provide supportive services for these school communities including offering them a Parent Education Series, Advisor Lunch and Learns, Advisor Drop-In Support Meetings, QPR Gatekeeper Suicide Prevention Trainings, Annual Student Hope Squad Conference participation, Student Share Fairs and opportunities to schedule coaching sessions with our Hope Squad facilitators. The entirety of this $30,000 grant has been used to support these efforts, along with covering the licensing costs for Hope Squad curriculum for the current school year and for the upcoming school year for the schools.The Future of Grant Us Hope
For the last several years, Grant Us Hope has been the sole provider of Hope Squad in the region – responding to the suicide prevention and mental health needs of hundreds of thousands of students in Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
We have done this through a licensing agreement with Hope Squad National, which is the for-profit provider of the curriculum. However, the national entity has changed its business model and has not renewed our contract for the coming year. They will instead be selling the program to area schools and managing the current 200+ school Hope Squad relationships that had been fostered by Grant Us Hope.
We are working closely with Hope Squad national to hand off these relationships, including the relationships with Evendale Elementary School, Woodlawn Elementary School, Glendale Elementary School, Springdale Elementary, Lincoln Heights Elementary and Norwood Middle School, as seamlessly as possible, and we are hopeful that the program will continue to actively save lives throughout Ohio and beyond.
With this significant change, Grant Us Hope will no longer operate in its current iteration. The organizational direction and operation will now be volunteer-led by board chair and founder Diane Egbers, who is currently evaluating how the remaining organizational funds will be allocated. Her current intent is to utilize the remaining resources to provide scholarships to Hope Squad students who are interested in pursuing careers in mental health fields. Additionally, she is writing a book to provide resources to parents whose children are facing mental health struggles.
While the closing of the current office is bittersweet, we are heartened by the deep impact the organization has had on the lives of over 300,000 young people since 2016, and we are grateful that by bringing the Hope Squad program to Ohio, Grant Us Hope has made it possible for students to have the resources they need to find help and hope for many years to come.
: July 2023
