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Ellis Abel Learns.
Funding a Coalition — Ellis Abel Learns neurodivergent parent mastermind group icon, for families of children aged 4-18.

Ages 4-18 · every US county

Funding a Coalition

Grants are usually written for organizations of a size that most parent groups will never reach alone. A coalition can hold a grant that no single chapter could apply for, and pass the work down to the groups doing it.

Available in all 4,299 US metro areas, cities and counties listed below.

What a meeting looks like

  1. 1

    What funding exists at county, state and federal level

  2. 2

    What a coalition can apply for that a chapter cannot

  3. 3

    How money flows down without strings attached

  4. 4

    Reporting burden, shared not duplicated

  5. 5

    This quarter's application

Questions families ask first

Does the coalition keep the money?

It passes through to the chapters doing the work, minus agreed shared costs.

Will funders talk to a new group?

Not usually. They will talk to a coalition of forty.

Do we have to fundraise?

No. Chapters that do not want to, do not.

From one circle to a national count

  1. Step 1

    Your circle,

    Eight to twenty families who meet monthly. Local operations stay local: your meeting time, your venue, your rules, your members. Nothing about joining changes how your group runs.

  2. Step 2

    Your county chapter

    Every circle in the county New York sits in reports one number — how many families it speaks for — and agrees on three asks per school year. The chapter is who a school board, a superintendent or a county commission talks to.

  3. Step 3

    The New York coalition

    County chapters send one delegate each. The coalition tracks state bills, testifies at hearings, and works alongside the structures New York families already have a legal right to: the state's federally funded Parent Training and Information Center under IDEA, its Protection and Advocacy agency, and its Developmental Disabilities Council.

  4. Step 4

    The national assembly

    State coalitions meet quarterly. One count, one set of federal priorities — IDEA funding, evaluation timelines, restraint and seclusion, transition services, and the gap between what the law says and what a district does.

Funding — 4,299 places across America

Every metro area, principal city and county in the United States. No place is too small.

Alabama (87)
Alaska (33)
Arizona (43)
Arkansas (86)
California (273)
Colorado (85)
Connecticut (27)
D.C. (1)
Delaware (5)
Florida (158)
Georgia (185)
Hawaii (8)
Idaho (54)
Illinois (155)
Indiana (117)
Iowa (112)
Kansas (116)
Kentucky (129)
Louisiana (81)
Maine (21)
Maryland (35)
Massachusetts (53)
Michigan (120)
Minnesota (111)
Mississippi (88)
Missouri (131)
Montana (61)
Nebraska (97)
Nevada (22)
New Hampshire (13)
New Jersey (45)
New Mexico (40)
New York (90)
North Carolina (127)
North Dakota (57)
Ohio (124)
Oklahoma (88)
Oregon (51)
Pennsylvania (88)
Rhode Island (6)
Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (5)
South Carolina (65)
South Dakota (68)
Tennessee (114)
Texas (340)
Utah (48)
Vermont (16)
Virginia (158)
Washington (77)
Washington, D.C. (1)
West Virginia (64)
Wisconsin (95)
Wyoming (25)

The rules that make it work

Local groups keep local control

Your meetings, your members, your money, your name. Affiliation adds a count and a shared ask. It never adds a boss.

Nobody is diagnosed here

This is a working group of parents, not a clinical service. Families share what they did and what happened. Nobody prescribes, nobody treats, nobody assesses.

Experience is shared as experience

What one district approved is a fact worth passing on. What worked for one child is a data point, not a prescription. That distinction is enforced in every meeting.

The child is not the problem to be solved

The systems around the child are. Meetings are about paperwork, access, instruction and policy — not about fixing children.

One ask, said the same way

A group of forty saying forty different things is still forty individuals. The count only becomes power when the ask is identical.

The infinity symbol, not the puzzle piece

Neurodivergent people are not missing a piece. The language and the symbols used here follow the community that lives it.

Other circles

All circle types