I work in a nursing home and interested in finding grant money to purchase a custom wheelchair for one of the residents secondary to Pt's changing needs from a traumatic brain injury (TBI). The Pt needs a manual chair with custom seating and back rest with specialized hand rims on main wheels.

Have you checked with Medicare/Medicaid?

Your local library's reference desk should have a list of local organizations and businesses that may pay for such a chair. Check also with local churches. Write to or email an area newspaper or specific columnist. Columnists always love feature stories like this.

Wondergirl the issue here is that once they are in a nursing home, medicare and medicaid no longer pays for their wheel chairs, ( in the US) It is because if the nursing home is accepting their money for the nursing home has agreed to be responsible for the DME, so it is actually the responsibility or the nursing home to provide the proper wheel chair for them.

That is why once a patient we ever had, went into a nursing home, or under hospice care, we could no longer service or work on their chairs, unless the nursing home paid us.

So if a regular wheel chair will no longer work, to transport the person, the nursing home is to provide one with recline or tilt and provide the proper cushions to prevent sores.
** most don't, I had to provide one for my wife's grandfather a couple of years ago, because the home he was in would not provide a proper chair for him.