Grants

For Recipients

Now that you've received a PSC grant, you can get started working on what you really care about!

Here are some basic instructions about what to do now. Please read through ALL the information — you don't want to miss a detail that will cause complications when you try to get reimbursed!

If You're Traveling

If the PSC is covering your travel costs, you have three options for using the funds:

1. Have the PSC purchase your tickets for you.
2. Buy your tickets yourself with PSC funds.
  • You can access your funds through a travel advance.
  • Contact Jennifer Cook for details.
  • Keep in mind that advances typically take at least 10 business days to come through.

3. Buy tickets or other authorized items with your own money and be reimbursed.
  • Save your receipts and submit them to Jennifer Cook as you would submit any other receipt for reimbursement.

Additional requirements and tips for people traveling:
  • Please make sure you have all the visas, prophylactic medical care, appropriate documents (passport, health insurance cards), emergency phone numbers, and anything else you might need. We want you to come back safe and successful!
  • Pick up and sign waivers from the PSC office (4-104) to acknowledge your responsibility for your own well-being and arrangements. Your grant is contingent upon the completion of these forms before the start of your project.

How To Be Reimbursed

In general, to access your funds, you will need to work through Jennifer Cook
617-258-9361

Reimbursement Instructions:
  • Remember that MIT will NOT reimburse for MA state tax!
  • Tax-exempt forms are available at 4-104.
  • Save and itemize all original receipts. For purchases that do not have receipts, keep a record of the date, time, and amount.
  • Submit all records to Jennifer Cook in 4-104.
  • In case your trip or project is more expensive than you anticipated, save ALL your receipts (even if their total goes above the grant amount) and we may be able to cover additional costs.

If you are a student group receiving grant funding, the PSC requires that your treasurer be held personally responsible to turn in all required receipts, reports, pictures and other required materials.  If these requirements are not met, both the treasurer as an individual and the student organization as a whole, will be ineligible for future PSC funding until the requirements are completed.

WARNING!! It is the PSC's official policy that ALL requests for reimbursement MUST be submitted within 3 weeks of the last day of your project, conference, etc. Reimbursement requests submitted later than that day may not be approved. Don't procrastinate! Get your forms in ASAP!

Final Tasks

Acknowledge the PSC
We appreciate being acknowledged as a supporter. You can find our graphic identity at web.mit.edu/mitpsc/graphicidentity

Follow-up Report
We request that grant recipients submit a follow-up report so that we can share success stories with our donors, who enable us to continue offering these grants.

  • Include a paragraph or two describing your event or project, detailing how many MIT students participated, what was done, etc.
  • Discuss what community needs you addressed and how the community benefited. Did you accomplish your goals? Did you run into unexpected obstacles? Do you have any advice you would offer students with similar plans?
  • Outline any lessons you learned from the experience or things you would have done differently. Include some self-reflection — what did you and your group members gain personally from this experience?
  • Include a detailed breakdown of how the grant budget was used (you can organize this information in a table if that is helpful). If all the grant funds have not yet been spent, include an estimated budget for the rest of your spending (what the funds will be used for, amounts, dates, reasons).
  • Do you anticipate applying for another grant within the next six months? If so, for what?
  • If you traveled for your grant project, pass on the local knowledge you accumulated. Include where you went, what you know now about the location that you wish you'd known before, what you recommend packing for this location, and other useful information. For instance: What's the best way to get to and from the airport without getting ripped-off? Are there ATMs? Can you access your US bank account from the ATMS or bank branches? Is the electrical supply consistent? What are some great things to do on the weekend? How do you catch a bus? What were the best cheap eats?


Pictures
If you have any pictures taken at your event or project, please pass them along to us for publicity use. Please click here to access important information regarding photographs, photo releases, and other requirements.

Other Useful Materials
If you have any other useful materials (something you wrote or something you learned) that we could pass on to other students to help them maximize the effectiveness of a grant, we'd appreciate that too. Examples include a brochure you made, a report or proposal you wrote for a community partner, and curricula descriptions.

Where to go from here?
A PSC grant only marks the beginning of your work. Here are some suggestions for how to think about what happens next.

First off, don't forget to celebrate! Now you're getting caught up in spending the money and implementing your ideas, but make sure you take time to congratulate yourself. Your hard work paid off!

Once you get down to business, keep in mind what happens after your work is done. How will the community that you're helping continue to reap benefits after you're gone? Can your project become ongoing? Can you train members of the community to continue where you leave off?

And of course, don't forget to keep an eye out for other resources. Whether you want to expand your own work or enable the community your working with to develop its own plans, there's plenty of money out there if you look hard enough.