Twice each year, the IEA Foundation funds SCORE grants of up to $1,000 to IEA members who have ideas for community service or school projects. Those members collaborate with our community partners to organize anything from food drives to outdoor classrooms to blanket-making parties for nursing home residents.  These projects unite students to communities, teach the value of service, fill the needs of schools that may not otherwise be being met and deepen relationships in school buildings.

Since 2013, more than $360,000 worth of these grants have been awarded across the state of Illinois. To see a list of those projects, videos, photos and more, you can visit the SCORE page on the IEA website.

Thousands of students have benefited from the program – from ideas as simple as “birthday parties in a bag” for kids who may not otherwise have had one to a snow-shoveling program in northern Illinois where grade-school students shoveled the drives of elderly neighbors.

And communities have benefitted, too, like the Bloomington-Normal area where ISU students set up their sewing machines and did quick clothing fixes for people for free – sewing on buttons, fixing holes, hemming pants.

THE STUDENTS AND IEA MEMBERS NEED YOU and here is why: The IEA Foundation funds these grants and it relies on donations.

Join the Foundation as we rally around our students, teachers, aides, bus drivers, librarians, nurses, secretaries, support staff, higher ed faculty and support staff, schools and community. Your support helps build relationships between schools and communities and within school communities.  Every dollar counts, because every student and every good SCORE grant idea counts!