Atlanta Falcons Owner Awards $20 Grant To Texas University To Create Stuttering Center

Over 70 million people worldwide are impacted by stuttering also known as stammering. Stuttering is a speech disorder characterized by the repetition of sounds, syllables, or words; prolongation of sounds; and interruptions in speech known as blocks. With over 3 million people with a stutter in the United States alone, Arthur Blank, the owner of the Atlanta Falcons, (who also co-founded Home Depot), has awarded a $20 million grant to Texas University, to create the Arthur Blank stuttering center.

Here’s what Arthur Blank said in a statement announcing the grant:

The moment I met Dr. Byrd, I was immediately struck by her intellect and her life-long commitment to advancing the field of stuttering, which she translated into extraordinary proposals that captured her vision to meaningfully impact the stuttering community in the United States and beyond.

Through her impressive research and dedicated practice towards stuttering, I know she will change the world in this area and help as many human beings as she possibly can. She is the perfect person to lead the charge because she’s hard-wired now in her beliefs, and you see it in her results, the participants, the clinical work that she’s doing, the research, the education, all of which we will be connected to through the establishment of this center.”

With so many people in the United States and the world who are impacted by some sort of speech impediment, centers like this need to be set up to help those affected. Arthur Blank himself struggled with stuttering throughout his life, this being partly the reason that he chose to fund the program to help people in similar situations.

The Blank Center has some heady goals for this program, namely to be able to increase the number of clinicians trained in this field every single year, as well as patients served.

One of the ways they will be able to accomplish this is by funding and establishing 10 satellite campuses around the world, through this 10-year grant.

Featured grant

Grants of up to $50,000 to USA nonprofit organizations for programs that enhance healthcare for individuals with developmental disabilities. A Letter of Intent must be submitted before submitting a full proposal. Collaborative programs and partnerships are encouraged. While preferential consideration may be given to applications from the San Francisco Bay Area, applications from other areas in the United States will not be excluded.