Federal Grant Opportunities

Program Overview:

MFA grants support activities that strengthen museums as active resources for lifelong learning, as important institutions in the establishment of livable communities, and as good stewards of the nation’s collections. MFA grants can fund both new and ongoing museum activities and programs. Examples include planning, managing and conserving collections, improving public access, training, conducting programmatic research, school and public programming, producing exhibitions, and integrating new or upgraded technologies into your operations.

Cost Share Requirement: For applications requesting Museums for America funding of more than $25,000, you must provide funds from non-federal sources in an amount that is equal to or greater than the amount of the request. No cost sharing is permitted for applications requesting amounts of $5,000-$25,000.

Categories include:

Lifelong Learning 

IMLS supports the unique ability of museums to empower people of all ages through experiential learning and discovery. Successful projects provide high-quality, inclusive educational opportunities that address particular audience needs.

Community Anchors and Catalysts

IMLS promotes the role of museums as essential partners in addressing the needs of their
communities by leveraging their expertise, knowledge, physical space, technology, and other
resources. IMLS encourages applications for projects that empower museums to transform their
roles in their communities from being community resources to being community anchors or
catalysts.

Collections Stewardship and Public Access

IMLS supports the role of museums of all types and sizes as trusted stewards of museum
collections as the natural, cultural, artistic, historical, and scientific foundations of our shared
heritage and knowledge. Through the careful and responsible management of collections and
their associated documentation, museums facilitate access to information, ideas, and
connections for people of all ages, backgrounds, and interests.

Program Overview:

The goals of the Museum Grants for African American History and Culture (AAHC) program is to support projects that improve the operations, care of collections, and development of professional management at African American museums.

Grant projects may include, but are not limited to, the following activities:

• Digitization of collections designed to enhance outreach, expand access, or improve collections management.
• Training and professional development for staff and volunteers;
• Developing collection plans, interpretive plans, or strategic plans using consultants, researchers, and other sources of professional expertise;
• Cataloging, inventorying, documenting, and registration of collections;
• Rehousing collections and environmental improvements (non-construction) for museum collections storage and exhibit areas;
• Exhibit development, design, and fabrication

 

Program Overview

Native American/Native Hawaiian Museum Services (NANH) grants support Indian tribes and organizations that primarily serve and represent Native Hawaiians. They are intended to provide opportunities to sustain heritage, culture, and knowledge through strengthened activities in areas such as exhibitions, educational services and programming, professional development, and collections stewardship.

Program Overview:
Inspire! Grants for Small Museums is a special initiative of the Museums for America program. It is designed to help small museums implement projects that address priorities identified in their strategic plans. Inspire! has three project categories:

• Lifelong Learning
• Community Anchors
• Collections Stewardship and Access

Program Overview: 

Since its inception in 1981, MAP has helped more than 5,000 small and mid-sized museums of all types strengthen operations, plan for the future, and meet standards. The new MAP, developed through collaborative efforts between IMLS and AAM, continues to place a special focus on small museums while incorporating new and revised assessments to meet the changing needs of communities and improve program administration efficiency.

Through a one-year process of self-assessment, institutional activities, and consultative peer review with a site visit and recommendations, your museum emerges with:

• Greater alignment of activities, mission, and resources
• Analysis of its strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities
• Prioritized roadmap for improving operations and meeting standards
• Practices benchmarked to standards
• Enhanced credibility with potential funders and donors
• Improved communications between staff, board, and other constituents
• Expert advice, recommendations, and resources
• Increased capacity for strategic planning
• Preparation for core document verification, accreditation or reaccreditation

Eligibility:

Eligible organizations should select one of the assessment types and prepare an application. Application materials and additional information are located at MAP.

NOTE: Your museum’s MAP participation is IMLS funded but is not a grant. AAM does not disperse any money to your museum. AAM receives grant funding from IMLS to deliver this comprehensive program and service to your museum.

This program is designed to assist Native American tribes in improving core library services for their communities. Reflecting IMLS’s agency-level goals of championing lifelong learning, strengthening community engagement, and advancing collections stewardship and access, the goals for this program are to:

• Improve services for learning and accessing information in a variety of formats to support needs for education, workforce development, economic and business development, health information, critical thinking skills, digital literacy skills, and financial literacy, and other types of literacy skills.
• Enhance the skills of the current library workforce and leadership through training, continuing education, and opportunities for professional development.

Cost Share Requirements: There are no requirements for cost sharing in this program.

Eligibility: Federally recognized tribes are eligible to apply for funding under the Native American Library Services Basic Grants Program. See the Notice of Funding Opportunity for eligibility criteria for this program.

Project categories are: Preservation and Revitalization; Educational Programming; Digital Services

Program Overview

Native American Library Services (NALS) Enhancement Grants are competitive grants available to any library that has an active NALS Basic grant, but does not have an active Native American Enhancement or Native Hawaiian grant. Projects covered under these grants may enhance existing library services or implement new library services.

Eligibility:

Eligible applicants are Indian tribes, Alaska native villages, regional corporations, and village corporations are eligible to apply for funding under the Native American Library Services grant program. Entities such as libraries, schools, tribal colleges, or departments of education are not eligible applicants, although they may be involved in the administration of this program and their staff may serve as project directors, in partnership with an eligible applicant. Please see Tribal Organization eligibility criteria.

Program Overview

Administered by National Park Service in partnership with the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Save America’s Treasures grants from the Historic Preservation Fund provide preservation and/or conservation assistance to nationally significant historic properties and collections. Grants are awarded through a competitive process and require a dollar-for-dollar, non-Federal match, which can be cash or documented in-kind. 

Applications must include the following information:

• Describe in detail why the materials are of national significance.
• The source(s), nature, extent, and severity of the threat, danger or damage to the collection must be clearly and convincingly argued. Photos are encouraged to support this criterion.
• Clearly state what conservation activities will be undertaken as part of this project and how they will mitigate stated threats.

Eligibility

COMPLETE GUIDELINES HERE  - Grants.gov Grant Opportunity Listing 

QUESTIONS about the Save America's Treasures Grants?

Email: [email protected] or 202-354-2020

The CAP program is supported through a cooperative agreement between the Institute of Museum and Library Services and the Foundation of the American Institute for Conservation.    

The Collections Assessment for Preservation (CAP) program provides small and mid-sized museums with partial funding toward a general conservation assessment. The assessment is a study of all of the institution's collections, buildings, and building systems, as well as its policies and procedures relating to collections care. Assessments must be performed by assessors who is approved for the CAP program. NEDCC staff includes the following approved assessors: Bexx Caswell-Olson, Director of Book Conservation, and Monique Fischer, Senior Photograph Conservator. 

Participants who complete the program receive an assessment report with prioritized recommendations to improve collections care. CAP is often a first step for small institutions that wish to improve the condition of their collections.

Benefits:

A CAP assessment may assist your institution by:

• Providing recommendations and priorities for collections care that are specific to your collections
• Facilitating the development of a long-range preservation plan
• Serving as a fundraising tool for future collections projects

Every CAP report will contain an Executive Summary that serves as a prioritized list of recommendations for improving your institution’s collections care. Though you may be aware of many of these issues already, the assessment can help you decide where to invest limited resources. It may be valuable in drawing the attention of your board or leadership to collections care concerns. If you are interested in seeking grant funding or private support for conservation or preservation activities, a CAP report can provide a professional argument for the need for such work. 

Eligible institutions include museums of all kinds. (Not libraries, archives, or historic structures without collections.)

Learn more about eligibility requirements and the application process.

The Public Humanities Projects program supports projects that bring the ideas and insights of the humanities to life for general audiences through in-person programming. Projects must engage humanities scholarship to analyze significant themes in disciplines such as history, literature, ethics, and art history.

This program supports projects in three categories: Exhibitions (permanent, temporary, or traveling); interpretive programs at Historic Places; and Humanities Discussions related to the 250th anniversary of the nation’s founding

Questions?

Contact the NEH Division of Public Programs, 202.606.8269, or [email protected]

ELIGIBLE GRANT ACTIVITIES FOR "A More Perfect Union": NEH Special Initiative Advancing Civic Education and Commemorating the Nation's 250th Anniversary. (Up to $15,000)

• Consultations, planning, and pilot work with humanities professionals that would position smaller institutions to preserve and create enhanced access to their humanities collections for use in activities that would address the themes of "A More Perfect Union."
• Consultants who would offer education and training in staff professional development geared to capacity-building and leadership that would help the institution improve its care of American history collections.

Program Overview:
Preservation Assistance Grants help small and mid-sized institutions—such as libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, cultural organizations, town and county records offices, and colleges and universities—improve their ability to preserve and care for their significant humanities collections. These may include special collections of books and journals, archives and manuscripts, prints and photographs, moving images, sound recordings, architectural and cartographic records, decorative and fine art objects, textiles, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, furniture, historical objects, and digital materials.Note that neither conservation treatment nor reformatting (digitization) are eligible expenses under this program.

The PAG grants could also support first-stage preservation assessment of a/v holdings, to help identify and safeguard materials that might be appropriate candidates for projects using the IRENE3/D technology. See NEDCC Audio Preservation.

Program Overview:
The NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources program supports projects that provide an essential underpinning for scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities.  Funding from this program strengthens efforts to extend the life of collections materials and make their intellectual content widely accessible. Awards are also made to create various reference resources that facilitate the use of cultural materials. Applicants may request support for implementing preservation measures, such as digitization; preserving and improving access to born-digital sources; rehousing; and conservation treatment for collections, leading to enhanced access.

The grants could also support digital reformatting of analog sound recordings, such as those appropriate for the IRENE3/D technology, as well as initial planning and prototyping activity that might be important in certain cases, in order to establish a clear blueprint for full implementation.

NEH HCRR Foundations Grant Category

To help in the formative stages of initiatives to preserve and create access to humanities collections or to produce reference resources, grants of up to $50,000 will support planning, assessment, and pilot activities that incorporate expertise from a mix of professional domains. These projects might encompass efforts to prepare for establishing intellectual control of collections, to solidify collaborative frameworks and strategic plans for complex digital reference resources, or to produce preliminary versions of online collections or resources.

Match: Not required, but in most cases, grants in this program cover no more than 80% of project costs for Foundations projects, and no more than 50-67% of project costs for Implementation projects.

Program Overview:
The Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (SCHC) program helps cultural institutions meet the complex challenge of preserving large and diverse holdings of humanities materials for future generations by supporting sustainable conservation measures that mitigate deterioration, prolong the useful life of collections, and support institutional resilience: the ability to anticipate and respond to disasters resulting from natural or human activity.

Planning grants help an institution develop and assess sustainable preventive conservation strategies, grants of up to $50,000 will be available for a two-year period of performance to support planning projects, which may encompass such activities as on-site consultation, risk assessments, planning sessions, ongoing environmental monitoring programs, testing, modeling, project-specific research, and preliminary designs for implementation projects. Planning grants must be informed by an existing preservation or collection management plan and must focus on exploring sustainable preventive conservation or resiliency strategies. They also must involve an interdisciplinary team appropriate to the goals of the project. The team may consist of consultants and members of the institution’s staff and might include architects, building engineers, conservation scientists, conservators, curators, and facilities managers, among others. A preservation/conservation professional who works with collections must be included on the planning team. All members of the team must be identified in the application, and they should all work collaboratively throughout the planning process. See guidelines for 

Implementation grants help an institution implement a preventive conservation project, grants of up to $350,000 for a five-year period of performance are available. Implementation projects must focus on sustainable or resilient preservation strategies. Projects should be based on planning that has been specific to the needs of the institution and its collections within the context of its local environment. It is not necessary to receive an NEH planning grant to be eligible for an implementation grant. Planning for sustainable preservation strategies could be supported by NEH, other federal agencies, private foundations, or an institution’s internal funds.

Cost sharing: Cost sharing consists of gift money raised from nonfederal third parties to release federal matching funds. Voluntary cost sharing includes cash contributions to a project by the applicant and nonfederal third parties, in-kind contributions (such as donated goods and services), and unrecovered indirect costs. Although voluntary cost sharing is not required, this program is rarely able to support the full costs of projects approved for funding.

Though cost sharing is not required, in most cases, grants in this program cover no more than 80% of project costs.

QUESTIONS?
Contact NEH Division of Preservation and Access, 202-606-8570 or [email protected]

Program Overview:

Grants for Arts Projects is the National Endowment for the Arts’ principal grants program. Through project-based funding, NEA supports public engagement with, and access to, various forms of excellent art across the nation, the creation of art that meets the highest standards of excellence, learning in the arts at all stages of life, and the integration of the arts into the fabric of community life. Projects may be large or small, existing or new, and may take place in any part of the nation’s 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. territories. 

The National Endowment for the Arts is committed to supporting museum activity that demonstrates exceptional aesthetic investigation and meaningful community engagement. Specifically, the National Endowment for the Arts assists museums through the support of exhibitions, care of collections, conservation, commissions, public art works, community engagement, education activities, and other museum work. Museum projects funded by the National Endowment for the Arts demonstrate artistic excellence in and across a variety of mediums, movements, eras, and cultures.

While NEA welcomes applications for a variety of artistically excellent projects, they encourage projects that address any of the following activities below:

• Celebrate America’s creativity and/or cultural heritage.
• Invite a dialogue that fosters a mutual respect for the diverse beliefs and values of all persons and groups.
• Enrich our humanity by broadening our understanding of ourselves as individuals and as a society.
• In the spirit of White House Executive Orders that encourage federal agencies to engage with typically underserved constituencies, the National Endowment for the Arts encourages applications from:
• Historically Black Colleges and Universities,
• Tribal Colleges and Universities,
• American Indian and Alaska Native tribes,
• African American Serving Institutions,
• Hispanic Serving Institutions,
• Asian American and Pacific Islander communities, and
• Organizations that support the independence and lifelong inclusion of people with disabilities.

PROJECT TYPES:

• Exhibitions and related activities.
• Conservation, preservation, and/or restoration.
• Commissions or public art.
• Residencies.
• Provenance research.
• Collections management.
• Reinstallation of collections.
• Public programming such as workshops, lectures and symposia, or other outreach activities.
• Periodicals, publications, or catalogues.
• Education and related activities for youth, adults, intergenerational groups, and schools. (If your project is for youth, see "Choosing the Right Discipline for Youth Projects" to help you in your discipline selection.)
• Innovative uses of technology.
• Services to the field.

Cost share/matching grants generally will range from $10,000 to $100,000.

Match: 1:1

(NOTE: You must be registered with Grants.gov prior to submission.) 

QUESTIONS ABOUT THE GRANT?

Museums category, Toniqua Lindsay, [email protected] or 202-682-5529; Tamika Shingler, [email protected] or 202-682-5577

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission seeks projects that will significantly improve public discovery and use of major historical records collections.  All types of historical records are eligible, including documents, photographs, born-digital records, and analog audio and moving images. 

Projects may focus on broad movements in U.S. history, such as law, politics, social reform, business, military, the arts, and other aspects of the national experience, or on the papers of individual figure(s) in American history. 

Collections that center the voices and document the history of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color are especially welcome.

With the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence approaching, the Commission is especially interested in projects that promote discovery and access to collections that explore the ideals behind our nation’s founding and the continuous debate over those ideals to the present day. 

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission seeks Archives Collaboratives of three or more repositories working together to make their collections more readily available for public discovery and use. The grant program will fund Archives Collaboratives to share best practices, tools, and techniques; assess institutional strengths and opportunities; create replicable and sustainable digital platforms for historical collections; virtually unify records from multiple repositories; and promote management structures for long-term sustainability and growth.

The Commission welcomes collaborations that target institutional advancement for small and underserved local archives and repositories, especially those with collections that focus on the voices and perspectives of Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. 

Questions?

Contact NHPRC- Daniel Stokes, Director for State Programs

Program Overview:

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission seeks projects that ensure online public discovery and use of historical records collections. The Commission is especially interested in collections of America’s early legal records, such as the records of colonial, territorial, county, and early statehood and tribal proceedings that document the evolution of the nation’s legal history.

ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS INCLUDE:

• U.S. nonprofit organizations or institutions
• U.S. colleges, universities, and other academic institutions
• State or local government agencies
• Federally-acknowledged or state-recognized Native American tribes or groups

Applicants may consult with Nancy Melley, 202-357-5452, during both the preliminary and full proposal project phases.