Open Grants and RFPs

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (“CPB”), as part of the 2020-25 Ready To Learn initiative (“RTL”), intends to contract with up to thirty public television stations to participate in a capacity-building planning period (“Phase I”) from which a third and final cohort of 18 stations will be selected for funding as Learning Neighborhoods (“Phase II”), an innovative model of community engagement designed to extend the reach and impact of RTL content in low-income communities. A Learning Neighborhood consists of a group of partners, including a local PBS station, that are acutely focused on the early learning needs of children and their families in the local station’s service area (“Learning Neighborhood”). Learning Neighborhoods will intentionally coordinate parent, family and educator experiences and provide a comprehensive set of touchpoints for a community to support a child’s learning, encouraging sustained use and extending the impact of the RTL content. On a macro level, the goal of the Learning Neighborhood will be to foster a community-wide culture that promotes Ready To Learn’s “Learn Together” theme and empowers children and adults to learn anytime, anywhere – at home, in the neighborhood, and within local systems and spaces.

The Collaborative Operations and Services ("COS") grant program is intended to support multistation initiatives to fully develop and implement collaborations, strategic alliances and other forms of partnerships that will increase stations' abilities and capacities to achieve more together than each can accomplish alone. The COS will provide smaller grants to assist stations with facilitation, analysis, and research ("FAR") required for establishing parameters for collaboration efforts, as well as larger grants for the implementation of serious collaborative efforts.