Rotary Club Honors Bill Steele With Teacher Mini-Grant Program

It’s one of the Rotary Club of San Marino’s most popular projects named for one of its most passionate supporters and two weeks ago, teachers and staff members at schools throughout San Marino received more than $25,000 through the Bill Steele Mini-Grant Program.

The Mini-Grant program awards up to a $1,000 cash grant for a single project to a teacher to support an innovative classroom instructional project. Teachers can collaborate on projects and request in excess of $1,000 for joint projects. Several projects funded by the Mini Grant program have been subsequently adopted throughout the local schools after having been successfully tested as a prototype project in the classrooms of teachers receiving the awards.

In  2007, San Marino Rotarian Andy Barth offered to create the San Marino Rotary Charities William “Bill” G. Steele, Jr. Mini-Grant Endowment Fund as the initial major donor to honor Steele, who passed away in 2006. Steele was a member of the Rotary Club of San Marino for over 33 years and served as president of the club in 1979-80. San Marino Rotary Charities annually sponsors the program for San Marino’s public and private schools. The program started modestly in the mid-1990s and today awards up to $40,000 annually at to teachers at local schools. Since the inception of the program, over $250,000 has been awarded to the city’s educators.

Steele served eight years on the San Marino Planning Commission, and held leadership positions with the local Community Chest, San Marino Schools Foundation and many local election campaigns. He was awarded the coveted PTA Founder’s Day Award. Bill was also president of City Club in 1983 and served for decades on the Board of Overseers at the Huntington Library. In 2005, was appointed Overseer Emeritus and was so beloved by The Huntington, his funeral was held on its grounds.

These projects totaling $25,540 were funded in 2018 by the Bill Steele Mini-Grant Program.