Grant Amount: $500 (2 recipients)
Essay Deadline: October 31, 2020 at Midnight EST
Small businesses are facing unprecedented challenges due to the Coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak. With that in mind, my nonprofit, KFM Making A Difference/Kerry’s Autism Journey, wants to help these businesses, through these financially challenging times, with a grant opportunity!
We are asking small businesses to write an essay of no more than 1,000 words sharing their story. This should be an original essay that has never been shared before. Things you might want to include in your essay include…
- The year the business started, your businesses EIN number, and how many people with disabilities you’ve hired (both overall and currently employed at your company)
- Your role in the company and how long you’ve been there
- The name of the small business.
- The small business’s mission.
- Why it’s important to give people with a disability a chance to find meaningful employment
- Any success stories you’ve had over the years.
- What it means to you to have a month (National Disability Employment Awareness Month) to celebrate the importance of hiring people with disabilities.
Once we receive your essay it will go live on Kerrymagro.com for others to view. Before we can post your essay you’ll have to sign, scan and email back to us this form here: Final Essay Consent Form Grant. Please at the bottom of your essay include any social media links to your company so we can follow your team!
The decision on the winners of the scholarship shall be in the sole discretion of KFM Making A Difference and will be announced in Mid-December. The winning essay will be based, at least in part, on the amount of online interest in your essay (amount of times it’s shared on social media via Facebook/Twitter/Etc. and the amount of pageviews it receives up till December 7th). We encourage you to share your essay, once it’s live on Kerrymagro.com, as many times as you can with your friends and family to help build the online interest for your essay. We will send you an email with the link to your essay once it’s live on Kerrymagro.com. We may edit the essay but for the most part any edits would simply be grammatical changes.
Requirements:
- Your business must have an EIN number
- Your business must currently employ at least 10% of people with disabilities
- If you are an owner of a company and have a disability you are also eligible
- Your business headquarters must be in the United States
- Sending the essay in a Microsoft word document
Questions? Email me at KFMMakingADifference@gmail.com
Need a speaker for your next event? I travel the country as a professional speaker & autism self-advocate and would love to work with you. Email me at Kerrymagro@gmail.com for more details.
Help support Kerry Magro, a young man on the autism spectrum who started this grant to help others in our disability community!
Kerry has made it his mission to help others with autism and special needs via this grant and if you’d like to pay it forward that would be amazing. Kerry considers referrals of places he may be able to speak as one of the highest compliments. Kerry has spoken to companies small and large about the ROI Benefits of hiring people with disabilities. If you know of a group who may need a speaker please send him an email at Kerrymagro@gmail.com! You can learn more about our nonprofit founder Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author on the autism spectrum at Kerrymagro.com You can also follow him on Facebook here and Instagram here.
