Clean Air for Kids Program Working Hard to Find Grant Money for Schools
November 2010 Update - More than 110 schools have installed Purifans, and they want more Purifans in more classroom to help more students and teachers, but they just do not have the money they need to purchase and operate more Purifans. This is why Purifan created the Clean Air for Kids funding program. We are working with schools to identify the costs of installing all the units they need and pay for 3 to 5 years of filter changes. Some schools have been able to put the money in their budgets and are paying for their Purifans. Here are all of the ways we help schools find the funding needed to equip more classrooms:
1. School Board Recognizes the Justification for Purchase or Lease Program
Once a school board sees the payback calculations showing up to 25 times the payback to families, insurance companies, employers and the school district, they sometimes implement a program to purchase the Purifans, or lease them to allow the cost to be considered an operating expense.
For example, one typical 365 student elementary school with 75 teachers and staff would cost only about $2.50 per person per month using a 60 month lease/purchase plan, with a total monthly payment of just $1,099.56 including filter change services. The school owns the Purifans for $1 at the end of the lease. The Purifans have a lifetime warranty so the second 5 years cost drops by more than 50% for continuing filter service from the Purifan local dealer. The school board recognizes the payback they will receive on lowering health costs on 75 people in the building, reduced substitute teacher costs, reduced sick days for teachers and reduced maintenance costs on electronic equipment like computers, LCD projectors and smart board because of less dust in cooling ports. Even the building HVAC ducts and filters stay cleaner helping the system do a better job at a lower energy cost.
Families save money on a projected 4 fewer sick days per student allowing parents to stay at work and avoid costly doctor's office visit and prescription drugs. For a modest $13,200 per year, test scores go up and students and teachers are projected to save a projected 1,910 sick days at a total cost of about $6.91 per saved day. The government studies say an average sick day for an elementary student costs more than $300 for health care costs, family costs and missed work costs because more than 50% of these illnesses will require a parent to miss work, losing the employer the value of what that employee produces during a work day. That means the $300 total payback on the $6.91 is more than 43 times the costs, a pretty amazing ROI.
Most 365-student school's annual operating budgets can afford to be increased by $13,200 per year for so many important and valuable health and education benefits. This funding approach requires no capital dollars since the purchase and installation costs are all covered by the lease program which becomes an operating expense for the school. After the five year lease is paid off, the operating costs for filter and cleaning services drops to only $462 per month or $1.05 per month per person to save an average of 4 sick days per child and 2 sick days per teacher per year. Schools may even able to talk their teacher health insurance provider to donate to offset the $13,200 per year lease costs since the projected health insurance costs by 75 staffers saving 150 sick days should more than offset any donation by the insurance company.
1A. Put the Cost in an Improvement Bond Issue
It is a fact that many school districts periodically create a bond issue to build schools and provide significant upgrades or refurbishments to existing buildings. This is an ideal program to add to a bond issue to pay for the purchase and installation of the clean air technology for their existing school classrooms.
2. PTA/PTO Fund-raising to help Purchase the Technology
Once the total costs are known, the PTA can help provide fund-raising support to supply the school with the funds needed to purchase the technology and pay for filter services. The payback of fewer sick days, healthier children, fewer missed work day and higher test scores is a big motivator for PTA/PTO groups to work to raise funds for the school. The school can install a few classrooms at a time, and does not have to wait until 100% of the money is raised to reap the benefits of the PTA/PTO efforts.
3. CAFK School Specific Grant Applications to Area Foundations
Schools who register with the Clean Air for Kids Program get a free service. The school needs are determined and the total cost of purchase, installation and 5 years of filter maintenance is calculated. The CAFK staff then searches for matching foundation grant opportunities and submits applications for grant funding on behalf of the school. This continues until the total amount of funding needed has been arranged. The total needs of this school are also included in justification for larger grant programs shown in option 4 and 5 below. So if one of these larger, multi-school grant programs produces funding, then this school might be part of the distribution of a larger pool of funding. The CAFK program has been seeking a partnership with a major 501c3 in each state to act as the recipient of a larger amount of money to be distributed to the individual schools.
4. CAFK Large Foundation or Corporate Sponsor Funding of Grants
The CAFK staff evangelizes the need for funding for schools to major foundations and potential corporate donors. During these funding request presentations, they list all those unfunded school needs as an aggregate amount that is currently needed to clear the back-log of applications. The CAFK program has
been seeking a partnership with a major 501c3 in each state to act as
the recipient of a larger amount of money to be distributed to the
individual schools.
5. The Clean Classroom Air Wellness Act Funding at the Federal Level
The CAFK staff has also started the process of getting a Clean Classroom Air Wellness Act introduced, supported, passed and funded to provide a substantial amount of money in a grant program for schools. The primary reason the government might provide a substantial amount of funding for this program is that they are already committed to paying all of the health and sickness costs for about 36% of the children in America who get their health insurance from Medicaid. Medicaid spends about $12,500 per child on health care expenses over a five year period. The implementation of proper technology in classrooms to lower the particulate levels can have a payback to Medicaid that repays the entire cost of equipping the school building. In fact the return on Investment (ROI) can be 4 to 6 times the costs, just in Medicaid cost savings alone. The total ROI to society is actually more than 25 times the costs when you consider the total real dollar value of saving sick days for the children and teachers. These savings are based on saving about 4 sick days per child per school year, and 2 sick days per teacher per school year. In some fully equipped elementary schools we have already achieved an 11 sick day per student reduction from 18.23 to 6.99 sick days per student in the first year after implementation.
Register Your School for Clean Air for Kids Grant Money
Now you can register your school easily using the Contact Us form on our website. This simple online registration will put your school on our list of schools who would like to improve the indoor air quality in their classrooms, but just doesn't have the money in their budget right now. We will contact you to get some basic information, like the number of classrooms, teachers, staff and students in your building. We then know how much money it will take to properly equip your school. We also seek enough funds to pay for filters changes and cleaning services for five years. We combine the needs for your school with hundreds of other schools so we can ask for larger sums of grant money from private foundations, corporate donors and government sources.
Plus - By registering, your school, your school is automatically entered into our monthly drawing to win 2 Purifans and 2 Motors, a $1,000 value. You can install these in one of your classrooms to help one teacher and student group to breathe cleaner, healthier air that is filtered 40 times per hour to reduce allergies, Asthma triggers, odors and the spread of contagious illnesses. The EPA also reports that cleaner air quality has been linked to test scores up to 17% higher than classrooms with the poorest air quality. We can also arrange for installation, for a small additional charge, of these Purifans with our local dealer, or factory installation technicians. Most school facility departments can also install Purifans, since they install just like a ceiling fan. When you register, please include in the Comments Section, the Name of your school, number of students, number of teachers and the number of classrooms. Click Here to Go to the Contact Us form page.
Purifan Started the Clean Air for Kids to Help Schools Find Funding
Now that Purifans have been installed in more than 110 school districts, teachers, parents, school administrators and facility managers agree that schools would be healthier, 
and teachers and students would perform better, with filtered classroom air to remove allergens and odors. The problem for many schools is where to find the funding necessary to cover the entire school building and 100% of their classrooms.. Available funding in local school budgets is limited and that typically means Purifans can only be placed in classrooms where teachers or students are having the most serious allergy or asthma health problems. The best solution is to raise enough money to fully equip the school buildings. To help schools find the funding, Purifan started a Grant Writing Service that prepares grant applications and helps the schools submit them to local sources of funding including corporations, private donors, foundations and government funding sources. Here are some examples of the Fund Raising Proposals for various size schools or school districts. 350 Student Single School 1,250 Students for Four Elementary Schools Proposed School District Policy Statement Clean Air for Kids Funding Registration Packet.
One of the most important issues for parents, educators, teachers and administrators to understand is that for many schools, the air quality problems are costing much more each year than it costs to install Purifans to dramatically reduce the problems. The actual financial payback is typically 20 times the cost, especially in states that fund schools based on daily attendance. The missed work costs for parents and teachers, medical costs run up for allergy and asthma treatment and the costs of common seasonal illnesses that spread through school like wildfire are real dollars being spent every year in most schools.
Even more important is that children who feel better in class, and miss fewer sick days will learn more and score higher on tests. This will give them a better foundation from first grade to learn more and test higher in second grade since lessons in second grade are based on material they were supposed to learn in first grade. By the end of a 7 years in a pre-K to sixth grade school equipped with Purifans, the average child in the school could be testing much higher, and be much better prepared to take on middle-school and high school. Give students a better learning environment and a better education is THE primary goal of a school system and the primary mission of a School Board. We challenge you to find an easier, cheaper way to improve student performance and test scores than installing Purifans. In states that fund their schools based on average daily attendance Purifans will pay for themselves with a 1/4 or 1/2 of 1% improvement in attendance. In actual schools Purifans helped achieve a 6.2% increase in attendance! See more about the fantastic financial payback of Purifans in this report. Click here for the IAQ Payback Whitepaper.
There are Many Ways to Get Funding for Cleaner Classroom Air Quality
When search for funding there are many sources of funding that can provide enough money to install Purifans in a classroom or an entire school. Someone just has to be motivated and committed do the work necessary. Here are 10 ways for any school to raise the money to install Purifans. See the expanded information below.
- School facility maintenance and repair budgets can have some funds available.
- Lease or Rent Purifans to eliminate the capital funding requirement. In states that get paid based on attendance increase state funding can pay for lease costs.
- Smart school boards are putting funding in their budgets to improve schools, raise test scores and keep teachers and students healthier.
- Schools are putting Purifans in bond issues for new buildings or renovation programs.
- PTA and Parent Fund raising groups can get very motivated by the health benefits for their children. Click Here to Download our PTA payback report.
- Ask parents to donate money for Purifans and Filter Service costs.
- Ask parents' employers for funding or at least some type of matching funding, they get their donation back when parents don't have to miss work and children don't run up health insurance costs.
- Teachers and their spouses have purchased Purifans to keep the teacher healthier and lower their personal health care costs and problems.
- Put on a Clean Air for Kids Fundraiser at your school. No product sales and a lot of fun!
- Apply for a funding grant from the EPA. Grants can go up to $25,000.
- Apply for a funding grant from local health foundations.
- Apply for a funding grant from health insurance companies like Blue Cross and Blue Shield.
- Apply for a funding grant from National Foundations focused on children, preventative health care and education improvement. Foundations like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dell Foundation and others support education, young children and wellness programs.
- Talk to your state legislators about special funding programs for schools in your state. They get this money back in many easy to understand ways.
- Talk to your national politicians about funding for low-income, head-start, child-care or special education classrooms
School Boards and School Budgets - School Board and Administrators that do their research on the internet will find hundreds and hundreds of scientific research reports on websites operated the EPA, CDC, New England Journal of Medicine, Teacher Unions, American Lung Association, Academy of Allergy, Asthma and Immunology, Healthy Schools Network, IAQ Symposium and many more. The bottom line from reading all of these research reports will be that 50-60% of schools have serious air quality issues that are impacting the short and long-term health of the occupants including teachers and students. Portable classroom, older building and newer buildings with tighter construction and non-opening windows are all cited as problems. But our experience at Purifan is that anytime 20 to 30 people share the limited air in a 700-900 square foot classroom you will have higher rates of allergies, asthma problems and spread of contagious illnesses. It happens in offices, call centers, day-cares, nursing homes and school classrooms. While studies show water damaged buildings with mold or mildew will increase sickness rates by up to 300%, we believe all evidence points to the particulates brought into the room by the occupants can create a health problem in the newest building, facility or classroom. The tighter the construction the worse the problem will be. An airliner is the worst cast scenario with 160 people re-breathing the same small volume of air. School Boards are also faced with increased liability and risk of expensive lawsuits and recent suits by teachers have been successful in jury trials. There are overwhelming numbers of scientific research studies that show high levels of fine particulates are create serious health problems in school classrooms. In our opinion at Purifan this indoor air quality problem is not something that can be fixed WITHOUT filtering these allergens out of the air in the classrooms. Since the children are the source of the particulates, you have to filter the air in the classrooms to lower the health risk and problems they create.
Leasing Purifans Can Help Lower the Need for Capital Improvement Funding - By putting Purifans on a 3 year operating lease the monthly costs can be about $55 per month per classroom. That is less than the value of saving one sick day for one student in the classroom. The government estimates a sick day costs the parents, their employer and insurance company about $240 per sick day for an elementary school child. The cost for a teacher sick day is higher because of their salary and substitute teacher costs. In a school with 95% attendance a 25 student classroom is averaging 23 student sick days each month! In one school that installed Purifans the average number of sick days dropped from over 18 per student per school year to under 7 sick days per student per school year! So cutting sick days can offer substantial payback to the families, their parents, the parents� employers and their health insurance companies. Using the $240 per sick day saved the paybacks being achieved are 10 to 20 times the lease costs each year. In a lease program, the fourth year the school owns the Purifans for $1. Then the only cost is filter change costs 2 times per school year. This means the total costs typically are less than $10 per student per year to save $240 sick days!! Once a school building is equipped with Purifans, every class of students and teachers who use that building will have healthier, cleaner air.
PTA and Parent Fund-raising Groups - Reports have shown the tremendous financial contribution to education from PTA and Parent Fund-raising Groups. When school budgets are tight and parents understand the many benefits for their children's health and education that cleaner classroom air will provide, they typically take it on themselves to raise the funds needed to equip their school with Purifans. The great part about making Purifans a PTA project is the parents receive a tremendous personal benefit including:
- Children are healthier, so parents can stay at work, fewer missed work days.
- When children feel better in class they do better on test.
- Children who stay healthier need less costly health care, medicine and doctor's visits.
- Long-term health of children's respiratory system is a key to a healthy life.
- Teachers stay healthier, miss less school and feel better in the classroom.
What other fund-raising school project would provide such important benefits to the children, teachers and families. Contact Purifan for more information on how to raise the funds needed to make your school a Clean Air School. Download the PTA Payback Report. Download a Letter to Handed Out At School.
Grants from Government, Local and National Foundations Can Help Provide Funding
There are many local and national foundations who support children's wellness, children's health, improving education, local schools, local teachers and improving the local community. You can search the area for Health and Wellness Foundations, Private Foundations, Company Foundations, Health Insurance Foundations, Teacher's Retirement Fund Foundations and local corporate employers who would benefit from having lower health care costs for families, and would benefit from keeping employees at work instead of home with sick children. To get more information or help in filling out foundation grant applications send an email to stan@purifan.com.
Here are some additional Foundations or Sources of Funding Grants to apply to for funding:
There are thousands of local, regional and national sources of funding for children's health, wellness and improving education. We can help you by supplying word documents with answers to typical grant questions. We can give you cost estimates for funding your Clean Air for Kids Project. The typical cost to properly equip an elementary school or day-care is about $85 per student for the first year and $15 per year for filters in year 2 and 3. This means you should be seeking funding for about at least $115 per student or a bit more, to purchase Purifans, motors and pay for shipping, installation and 3 years of filter changes. This typically is sufficient for 2 Purifans in each classroom, Purifans in music rooms, computer rooms, teacher's lounge, nurse�s station, hallways, library, school offices and cafeteria. We can also provide you with benefits analysis to show the significant impact Cleaner Classroom Air can have on children's health, wellness and learning.
