The Lilly Endowment line, whole

ROW 83-3 · DUG · 1997–2026

The Lilly Endowment's course to this ground runs through two channels, and both are printed entire: the first is a single large grant. In 2000 the Lilly Endowment offered Indiana's community foundations the chance to compete for $5 million education grants; the Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, working with The Family Connection of St. Joseph County, wrote a winning proposal, and in 2001 the Community Foundation received $5 million from the Lilly Endowment to improve education in St. Joseph County — the foundation's own words, on its own initiative page. The money became Early Years Count: from 2001 to 2005 The Family Connection coordinated the project, training the county's early-childhood teachers in the HighScope program, evaluating classrooms through the Early Childhood Assessment Project, and funding mini-grants and seminars; since 2005 the Community Foundation has funded the initiative from local generosity, the Lilly grant's course thus running as seed, not endowment. It is the largest single foundation grant the open record attaches to the institutions that serve Granger's children — PHM's preschool-age residents are inside its county frame, at county strength, and no Lilly grant addressed to a Granger institution by name appears anywhere in the Endowment's published record reached.

The second channel is a scholarship, and it runs every year. The Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship Program — funded by Lilly Endowment grants to Independent Colleges of Indiana since 1997–98, administered in this county by the Community Foundation — awards four St. Joseph County students a year (the foundation's 2024, 2025 and 2026 announcements each name four) a scholarship carrying full tuition and required fees and up to $900 a year for books and equipment, for four years at any eligible Indiana college. Statewide, the Endowment's own accounting puts the program's tuition grants at more than $505 million to over 5,400 students since inception — a state figure, printed as a state figure; the county's share of it is four scholars a year, some of them, in years the announcements name PHM students, this ground's own. A third Lilly thread runs at pointer size and is printed as a pointer: the Endowment's grantmaking underwrites, statewide, the Indiana Historical Society's Heritage Support Grants (Heritage Support Grants to St. Joseph County history organizations appear in the society's 2025–26 rounds at small sums — $1,349 to Acting Ensemble is the county entry the latest round prints), and its Giving Indiana Funds for Tomorrow (GIFT) initiative is the program that built Indiana's community-foundation network in the 1990s, this county's foundation included in the network it seeded. The direct database test closes the article: the Lilly Endowment's grants record, filtered in this run's searches to St. Joseph County recipients touching the CDP, returns the $5 million of 2001 and the scholarship channel — and no grant to PHM, to the Mishawaka-Penn-Harris library district, or to The History Museum naming Granger ground. (A parks-channel Lilly program announced in 2026, the Indiana Community Parks Initiative, is a Bloomington-seated planning story in the record reached, not this county's; it is not carried.)

Sources:

1. Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, "Early Years Count Education Initiative" (cfsjc.org) — the $5 million Lilly grant of 2001; the HighScope course; the May 2018 arrival of Dolly Parton's Imagination Library in the county under the same initiative.
2. The Family Connection of St. Joseph County, "Our History" (famconn.org) — the 2000 Lilly opportunity, the winning proposal written with the Community Foundation, coordination 2001–2005, local funding since 2005.
3. Community Foundation of St. Joseph County, Lilly Endowment Community Scholarship announcements, 2024, 2025 and 2026 (cfsjc.org) — four county scholars a year; full tuition, fees, up to $900 for books; the program's statewide totals ($505 million, 5,400+ students since 1997–98) as the foundation prints them.
4. Indiana Historical Society, Heritage Support Grants releases, 2025–2026 — the Lilly-funded channel and its St. Joseph County entries at their true (small) size.