Funding sources for awesome projects?

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I work as a para for autistic middle and high school students, many of whom don't have much to do over the summer. There are also some students who are graduating and have more or less no plan for the future. I'm on vacation at the same time as they are, so I'm planning on starting some kind of aspie engineering crew to engage in some fun and bizarre projects. My first plan is to construct a squeeze machine, which some staff at the school and a local physical therapist have expressed excitement about. The problem of course is that we don't really have any money to buy the equipment we'll need. Does anyone know if there are mini-grants out there that might help? It seems like most of the grant money related to ASDs gets funneled through hate organizations like Autism Speaks. Is there anyone out there who will help out with fun, celebratory, and engaging projects for autistic people, or does every single penny go to the people who want to get rid of us?

Our local liberal arts college offers classes that are non-credit and like $100 bucks, that they offer in all subjects. One that they offer is in grant writing. If there is anywhere around that offers classes like that maybe see if you could find that sort of class.

The college I'm going to in the fall has this grant program specifically students to do projects that they come up with. Colleges all around have students trying to come up with projects to do, students who need to do research, and colleges have lots of money. Maybe if you could get the word out there you could somehow partner up with a school....they could fund something in return for the students getting credit for their ideas or research (if they did any of that along the way).

The Kelberman Center for Autism has a summer day camp for kids ages 5 to 16 years during the summer months and it started as a "grass roots" project simply by developing all kinds of fun activities during the day. It funds the summer camp experience by charging a small tuition fee for all participants in this "Awesome Summer Day Camp." ASD...taken from the phrase Autism Spectrum Disorders. You can learn more about this summer program if you Google...Kelberman Center for Autism.

http://www.kickstarter.com/ is worth a look when you're trying to fund a project.

If the money's put to good use, that's good. If it goes to those of us, who want to prevent any more of us, from coming into this world, that's bad. I can imagine all the wonderful things that we could be doing, with all the money that Autism Speaks doesn't deserve.