I’ve written previously about grant-seeking and its challenges for a small school such as my employer. Now comes the rest of the story, as last June, a generous grant offer arrived in my inbox. We almost turned it down.

The offer would fund a new Reading Room for our school, paying $17,500 to help provide an attractive, quiet place for students to read. The brochure showed examples of how other schools had transformed an area of their campus with furniture, decor, and books. The funds specified the project, the square footage required, and the procedure. Besides that, there were some annual reports to submit. We hadn’t thought of a Reading Room project. Nor did we have the space to allocate for it. Or did we? We exchanged e-mails with the coordinator, at first saying we didn’t qualify, and then, responding to encouragement from the organization, agreeing to have the coordinator visit our campus and take a look.