Disability Funding Guide, Second Edition
Explore funding possibilities, resource categories, family stories, practical questions, and the established 13-step financial advocacy process.
Get the Second EditionDisability Funding Guide, Second Edition + Companion Workbook
Helping Families Navigate the Costs of Disability
Families raising children with disabilities may face expenses connected to therapies, equipment, transportation, accessibility, specialized care, education supports, adaptive technology, insurance gaps, recreation, and other needs.
The Funding Project helps families understand where to begin, explore possible sources of support, organize what they need, and take practical next steps.
Second EditionWhere the Funding Guide work began
It began with one family trying to find funding for one child.
After Tammy helped raise nearly $13,000 for her nephew Jacob's hyperbaric treatments, the process began to grow.
Jacob's father, Hal, later secured funding toward an above-ground pool for Jacob and started sending other adaptive bike families to Tammy for help. Tammy turned what she had learned into an adaptive bike funding packet families could follow themselves: understand the need, organize the information, identify possible funding sources, tell the story, make the ask, follow up, and keep going after the first no.
That original packet eventually grew into the Disability Funding Guide. The packet did not disappear when the books came along. The idea behind it expanded.
The history behind the resource
The weekend that showed how big the need really was.
At an Abilities Expo in Texas, families could sit down and talk through what their child needed, what it cost, what insurance had or had not covered, and where they might begin looking for funding.
Family after family needed the same kind of help: not the same product or the same dollar amount, but help understanding where to look, what to ask for, and how to begin.
And during that weekend, Melissa Copp sat down.
That conversation became one of the most important stories connected to the Disability Funding Guide.
Real families. Real experiences. Real voices.
Melissa Copp and the confidence to ask.
Melissa and her husband, Jody, were raising two boys with a rare genetic mitochondrial condition. Their sons relied on assistive equipment, and Melissa had recently faced an insurance denial for her youngest son's medically necessary wheelchair.
“It all started with Tammy's book, the Disability Funding Guide.”
Melissa Copp
What followed for the Copp family was extraordinary. The point of the story is not that every family can expect the same result. The repeatable part is the process: understand the need, organize the story, identify possibilities, ask, and keep going.
How the work grew
From the Disability Funding Guide to a much larger national vision.
What could happen if families learned much earlier that funding possibilities may exist, that there are questions worth asking, and that they do not have to discover every resource through years of trial and error?
The lessons learned through Disability became part of the work that ultimately grew into The Funding Project's National Children's Financial Advocacy Initiative. Today, the Disability Funding Guide remains a foundational part of that work.
Second EditionSecond Edition
The Disability Funding Guide
A practical place to begin when the funding process feels confusing or overwhelming.
The Guide brings together funding ideas, resource categories, questions to ask, and places to look for possible support. It helps families explore options based on their child's individual needs without promising that every family will qualify for every resource.
Inside the Guide
The established 13-step funding process
Identifying exactly what your child needs
Estimates, documentation, and letters of medical necessity
Insurance information and denials
Researching possible funding sources
Preparing your child's story and Ask Letter
Applications, follow-up, and funder guidance
Community fundraising and crowdfunding
Expanded content
When the diagnosis is rare or complex.
A child does not have to fit neatly into one category for the financial advocacy process to be useful.
The Second Edition includes stronger content for families whose child may have a rare diagnosis, complex medical needs, an evolving diagnosis, or no final diagnosis at all.
Important: Rare Disease & Complex Medical Needs is included within the Disability Funding Guide and broader Family Resource Library. It is not a separate fifth Guide + Workbook.
- Physical or mobility disabilities
- Neurological or neuromuscular conditions
- Genetic or chromosomal conditions
- Developmental or intellectual disabilities
- Sensory or communication-related disabilities
- Rare diseases or undiagnosed conditions
- Progressive or degenerative conditions
- Chronic illnesses affecting daily life
- Multiple diagnoses or complex medical needs
- Disabilities resulting from illness, injury, surgery, or medical complications
Second EditionSecond Edition
The updated guide, shown in its flat cover version.
The same trusted Disability Funding Guide, now updated and expanded for more families.
The Second Edition reflects the broader work Tammy has built over the years, including stronger content for rare disease and complex medical needs, while staying grounded in the practical financial advocacy process families can return to again and again.
UpdatedExpanded13-step processFunding ideasQuestions to askRare diseaseComplex needsPractical guidanceFamily-focusedNext steps
Voices
Disability is not one story.
The Disability Funding Guide includes real families and real experiences because financial advocacy is more than a list of organizations.
Families may be navigating equipment needs, therapies, school meetings, paperwork, insurance denials, applications, waiting lists, and the emotions that come with trying to support someone they love. The Voices in the Guide add lived experience and perspective to the funding information.
Family Resource Library
Download the Disability resources
The Disability Funding Guide, Second Edition and Companion Workbook are designed to work together, one helps families understand where to look and how to ask, the other helps them organize what comes next.
Help Keep Disability Resources Available to Families
Future sponsorship support can help expand digital access, printing, Companion Workbooks, outreach, and distribution to families and organizations serving the disability community.