Grants

A total of $38,000 in grants from Anaheim's "Helping Hands" program has been awarded to 24 local organizations that assist youth and the elderly and provide services or events to the community. Anaheim residents and businesses are asked to make a tax deductible contribution to the program three times a year, with notices sent out in utility bills. Contributions are made to the Anaheim Community Foundation, which distributes the money.

The Amateur Athletic Foundation (AAF) of Los Angeles, has awarded $623,555 in grants to 23 Southern California organizations. The foundation has provided more than $23 million in grants for youth sports since 1985 when it received a $90-million share of the $222-million surplus from the Olympic games held in Los Angeles. Here are the latest recipients: Velodromes in Carson, Encino and San Diego: $140,790 Southern California Tennis Assn.'s National Junior Tennis League: $125,000 Mt.

Re "Senate Proposal Would Abolish State Arts Council," June 29: As a California artist living and working in Los Angeles since 1976, and never once applying for a public grant, I feel that the individual grant aspect of the California Arts Council is worthy of being eliminated. I also feel the same in regard to individual grants from the National Endowment for the Arts. I strongly believe the public should support, through taxes, institutions such as public museums, symphonies and festivals of culture.

Performing artists in music, dance and theater and arts organizations with budgets of as much as $150,000 may apply for grants and fellowships from the California Community Foundation's annual Brody Arts Fund Awards. Fellowships of up to $5,000 will go to individuals, and organizations will receive grants ranging from $2,500 to $5,000. Ten awards will be made in each category. Applications, which must be submitted by March 19, are available by calling the foundation at (213) 413-4042.

Fourteen independent film and video makers were awarded grants Tuesday in the American Film Institute's Independent Film Maker Program. The recipients, selected from among 450 applicants, will receive a total of $231,576, with no individual grant exceeding $20,000. Louis Hock of San Diego received a grant in the experimental category, and Rick Tejeda-Flores of San Francisco was picked in the documentary video and film maker category.

The Pasadena-based Flintridge Foundation has dropped its 10-year-old visual artists' grant program, blaming "severe investment losses" from 2002 to 2004. The foundation, founded in 1985 by the estates of Francis and Louisa Moseley, has awarded 10 to 12 grants of $25,000 every other year, distributing $1.4 million among 56 artists since 1997. In addition to ending the artist grants, foundation officials say they will stop making grants to theater organizations and conservation efforts in 2008.

Cal State Fullerton has been awarded several grants totaling nearly $2.5 million over the next four years for programs to train students for research careers in biomedical and other scientific fields. The programs are: * Minority Student Development, a program to increase the number of underrepresented ethnic minority science majors by providing students with jobs as researchers.

Over the next four years, the California Community Foundation will award $1 million in grants to community groups with projects to improve ethnic relations in the city's poorest neighborhoods. The program, called Community Bridges, was developed as a long-term response to the problems underlying last year's riots. Applicants for the grants, which generally will not exceed $25,000, must describe each group's goals and the operation of the project.

THE good news for big-city arts organizations statewide is that the James Irvine Foundation is handing out $5.2 million in a campaign to boost innovation at arts institutions, including $2.4 million to three Los Angeles museums. The bad news is, that's only about half as much money as the foundation handed out the last time it did this.

With a $500 grant from the Los Angeles Education Partnership (LAEP), Sandy Toth is helping her first-grade students at Balboa Magnet Elementary School discover numerous ways to save the ocean waters. Balboa is among several dozen public schools in the San Fernando Valley whose teachers have received grants from LAEP to work on various science and math projects.