Enhancing Community Life in Northeast Wisconsin 

The Fond du Lac Area Foundation strives to enhance community life in the region by promoting philanthropy, awarding grants, and fostering sustainable leadership initiatives throughout northeast Wisconsin. Their grants program favors projects that 

• Propose practical solutions to current community problems;
• Promote cooperation among agencies without duplicating services;
• Stimulate others to participate in problem solving;
• Promote volunteer involvement;
• Strengthen an agency’s effectiveness or stability; and
• Address themselves to prevention as well as remediation” https://fdlareafoundation.com/whatwefund.html 

To see what kinds of projects have recently received funding, visit the foundation’s “Community Grants” page: https://fdlareafoundation.com/communitygrants.html.

We challenge your group to identify a significant community problem in the Fond du Lac area and write a grant proposal to address it. To secure the grant, you must conduct intensive research on the problem, analyze its various components, and propose innovative solutions to improve them. Make sure to contact several stakeholders and interested parties so you can incorporate their insights into your project. 

Reference resources provide a starting point for your research projects.

Credo Reference

Credo Reference provides hundreds of encyclopedias, dictionaries, thesauri, and more in one place. Below is a sample of keyword searches in Credo Reference related to this topic.

• Identifying Social Issues
• Social Issues
• Social Services
• Social Issues Solutions

Call Numbers and Subject Headings

You can use the list of call numbers and subject headings below as keyword searches in our catalog and databases, or you can go to these sections of the library to find books on these topics.

• HV40s – Social Services
• RC500-600 – Drug Addiction

Books from Lane Library

All books in this list are located either in the Franzen Center on Floor 3A or are e-books.

• Growing Up Empty/ HC110.P6 S327 2002
• Chasing the American Dream / HD7287.96.U6 C43 2007
• Evicted / HD7287.96.U6 D47 2016
• Challenges For Rural America in the 21st Century / HN59.2 .C43 2003
• The Left Behind / HN59.2 .W867 2018
• Social Programs that Work / HV91.S615 1996
• Successful Grant Writing: Strategies for Health and Human Service Professionals / e-book
• Improving community readiness for change through coalition capacity building: Evidence from a multisite intervention / e-book

Discovery Search: Search Lane Library’s books, ebooks, and articles in one place.

Books from other libraries

WorldCat: Search for books not available at Lane Library and borrow from other libraries for free through interlibrary loan.

Databases

The following databases are useful places to search for articles. Contact a librarian if you would like more information on how to search for articles on your specific topic.

• Academic Search Complete: Wide range of academic disciplines, including for scholarly and popular journals.
• JSTOR– Full-text archive of scholarly journals in the arts and sciences. Issues from the past three to five years may not be available.
• New York Times: Access to news and archival content from NY Times. If you run into a paywall, here is more information on how to sign up.
• ProQuest Research Library: Includes both popular and scholarly periodicals covering a variety of subjects, with over 3300 titles available in full text.

Get articles from other libraries

If you cannot find a full-text version of the article you need, request it through interlibrary loan. Interlibrary loan is a free service that allows you to borrow books and articles from other libraries. Find answers to frequently asked questions about ILL here.

Government sources

• USA.gov: Access to information from federal agencies.
• U.S. Department of Education Data & Statistics
• Wisconsin.gov: State of Wisconsin government and demographic information.
• Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction: state agency that advances public education and libraries in Wisconsin.

Statistics

• CIA World Factbook : Background information on each country in the world.
• National Center for Education Statistics: primary federal entity for collecting and analyzing data related to education in the U.S. and other nations.
• ProQuest Statistical Abstracts: Over 1400 indexed tables of statistics on the social, political, and economic organization of the United States.
• US Census Bureau: Access to data from federal surveys and censuses.
• World Almanac: Annual book with political, economic, scientific, and educational statistics. / Lane Library AY67 .N5 W7.
• The World Bank EdStats: Comprehensive data and analysis source for global education information.