Welcome

Welcome to the National Resource Center on Charter School Finance and Governance! We are here to support you—state policymakers, charter school authorizers, and charter school operators—in creating successful and sustainable charter schools through effective finance and governance. The National Resource Center helps you address these issues by providing the following:

a resource clearinghouse that includes links to research reports, articles, tools and toolkits; and that includes links to research and policy organizations, state departments of education, state charter school associations, and charter advocacy groups.
state policy guides, which examine the challenges and opportunities that charter school legislation and policy present for financing and governance strategies;
profiles of promising practices utilizing successful finance and governance strategies; and
a catalog of over 100 federal funding sources that can help you access a wide variety of federal funding grants.

What's New

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NRC Publications
Mapping the Landscape of Charter Management Organizations: Issues to Consider in Supporting Replication
This Issue Brief summarizes the findings of a new national study by the NRC on trends in the growth of charter management organizations and provides recommendations for state policymakers, authorizers, and CMOs to support CMO replication.

A Cost Estimation Tool for Charter Schools
The Cost Estimation Tool helps start-up charter school operators identify and estimate the range of costs and timing of expenditures they will be obligated to cover during start-up and the early years of operation. The tool provides several worksheets to help charter school operators identify basic cost assumptions (e.g., student enrollment and facilities needs) and use those assumptions to estimate their operating costs. Download the cost estimation template in Excel.

Finding Federal Funding for Charter Schools: A User's Guide for the National Resource Governance Federal Funding Catalog
The user's guide is a companion to the Federal Funding Catalog of the National Resource Center on Charter School Finance and Governance (NRC). The online, searchable Catalog includes more than 100 federal resources that can support charter school operations.

A Revenue Planning Tool for Charter School Operators
In a difficult economy, charter school leaders need to think strategically about building a sound and reliable base of revenue to support their work. The Revenue Planning Tool walks charter school leaders through the process of collecting and evaluating information about funding sources so they can make informed decisions about which ones will help them establish a strong revenue base for their schools.

How Charter Schools Can Benefit from the Economic Stimulus
For more information on general application processes and eligibility requirements for funding sources within the recently passed American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), we encourage you to visit the US Department of Education

For more information on upcoming grant opportunities, recent charter school finance and governance articles, and upcoming conferences, visit our What's New page.