How do I get grant money to operate a planetarium?

Question

A planetarium at a local high school is closed because there is no money allocated by the school board to keep it running. It is a tremendous waste of a valuable educational tool. School children and the community are missing out.

Answer 1

My guess is that it won’t be as simple as getting a grant—that might help get money to re-open the planetarium, but the school will have to find money to continue operating it once it opens, which means it’ll need an annual budget and continued support.

First off, I’d recommend contacting a local planetarium, perhaps the one in the nearest big city (look at http://www.lochnessproductions.com/lpco/lpco.html for planetarium locations and email addresses) or contact one of the affiliate organizations of the International Planetarium Society (listed on the page http://www.ips-planetarium.org/or/affiliates.html). You need to become well-informed on the planetariums and technology and such, and it will help to have professional educators on your side. Besides, the planetarium community is quite small, so a local planetarian (what you call someone who works in a planetarium) may very well know the person who used to run the facility that’s now closed.

To keep up with what’s going on in the planetarium world, you can also join the DOME-L mailing list (http://planetarium.net/dome-l/ gives you a form), which is used by professionals to keep in touch with one another and by others such as yourself to learn about the community. (If you’re interested, you can learn about new planetarium technology by reading a mailing list that I moderate, the Fulldome Mailing List at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/fulldome/ that also features an archive of old messages.)

You can also read up planetariums on Wikipedia: I include links for the “planetarium” and “fulldome” articles below.

Then, once you’re prepared to describe the benefits of a planetarium, you should talk to people at the school if you haven’t already. Find out why the planetarium closed and what they think would be needed to make it worth re-opening. Then be prepared to work with the parent-teacher association and other members of the community to get momentum for the project.

Good luck!


Ryan Wyatt
Rose Center for Earth & Space
New York, New York

Answer 2

I'm not sure exactly how one gets the grants, but I'm sure if you contact the people in the article links I've provided may give better details than I could.

Answer 3

Get a grant.