The Lilly Endowment Line, Whole

Lilly Endowment Inc., Indianapolis — grants to New Carlisle / Olive Township recipients, searched 2026-11-11

Lead: The Lilly Endowment line for this ground is real but narrow, and it runs almost entirely through the public schools. The Endowment's own published grant announcements — the instrument searched here, together with its news archive on lillyendowment.org — name exactly two New Carlisle items, both to the New Prairie United School Corporation, and no grant to the Town of New Carlisle, to Historic New Carlisle, Inc., or to the New Carlisle–Olive Township Public Library as a direct recipient.

The larger of the two is the Comprehensive Counseling Initiative. In its January 20, 2017 announcement the Endowment listed New Prairie United School Corporation, under the heading “New Carlisle,” as a recipient of a planning grant in the initiative's first phase. The announcement gives the initiative's terms, not a New Prairie–specific dollar figure in the list itself: $9.14 million in planning grants to 284 Indiana school corporations and charter schools, individual grants ranging from $8,302 to $50,000, sized by enrollment, with implementation proposals then invited at up to $100 per student, $100,000 to $3 million over four years. The New Prairie planning grant therefore sits inside the $8,302–$50,000 band by the Endowment's own terms; the exact New Prairie figure is not printed in the announcement as read, and is not invented here. Whether New Prairie won a competitive implementation grant in the second phase is not established by the sources read for this section — that is the named gap below, not a negative.

The second item is individual, not institutional. In the Teacher Creativity Fellowship Program for 2017 — $12,000 fellowships, the program's 30th year — the Endowment named Susan G. French of New Prairie Middle School, New Prairie United School Corp., New Carlisle, for “An American in Paris: Arrondissement par Arrondissement,” a study of Paris's twenty neighborhoods. The fellowship is a grant through the school listing but for the teacher's renewal project; it is printed here at its documented size, $12,000, and not inflated into a school grant.

Two structural facts explain the shape of the line and are part of the record, not excuses. First, the Endowment's published grant guidelines state that, except for special initiatives, it regularly declines grants to public libraries outside Marion County — which is why the town's library, a 1917 Carnegie benefaction, shows no Lilly building line. Second, its statewide money reaches small towns chiefly through initiative-wide programs (counseling, teacher fellowships, community foundations and United Ways) rather than through town-by-town capital grants. A searched negative follows from that instrument: searches of the Endowment's news/grant announcements for “Historic New Carlisle,” the public library, and the Town as recipient returned no grant. That negative is bounded — it covers the Endowment's published announcements as indexed and read on 2026-11-11, not a paywalled grants-database export, which was not taken. The honest close is: two documented items, one institutional planning grant inside a stated band and one $12,000 fellowship; no direct town, history-society, or library grant found.

Sources:

1. Lilly Endowment Inc., “Counseling Initiative Planning Grants to Help Indiana Public School Corporations and Charter Schools Strengthen Student Pathways to Success,” Jan. 20, 2017, lillyendowment.org — New Prairie United School Corporation listed under New Carlisle; $9.14M / 284 recipients; $8,302–$50,000 range; implementation terms $100/student, $100,000–$3M. Read in full.
2. Lilly Endowment Inc., “100 Indiana Educators Honored With Teacher Creativity Fellowships,” Dec. 12, 2016, lillyendowment.org — Susan G. French, New Prairie Middle School, New Carlisle, $12,000 fellowship class of 2017.
3. Lilly Endowment grant guidelines as summarized from its filings and program pages (community development / education) — public libraries outside Marion County declined except special initiatives; read via funder-profile summaries checked against lillyendowment.org program descriptions.