Deadline: May 1, 2012
New guidelines available now!
Preservation Assistance Grants help small and midsize institutions—libraries, museums, and historical societies, town and county records offices, archival repositories, community colleges, and underserved departments and units within colleges and universities and other larger institutions—improve their ability to preserve and care for their humanities collections.
Deadline: December 1, 2011
The Division of Preservation and Access at the National Endowment for the Humanities announced a new preventive conservation grant program, Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections. The program offers U.S. nonprofit museums, libraries, and archives, as well as state and local governmental agencies and tribal governments with humanities collections two kinds of awards: planning and evaluation grants, with awards up to $40,000, and implementation grants, with awards up to $400,000.
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Deadline: December 15, 2011
The Conservation Assessment Program serves as an adjunct to the IMLS Conservation Project Support program. Funded by IMLS and administered by Heritage Preservation, the program provides eligible museums with a general conservation survey grant. Applications are funded on a first-come, first-served basis. Museums that have received a grant for a general conservation survey through the Conservation Project Support program are not eligible for the Conservation Assessment Program. Museums may be eligible to update their CAP Report if seven years have passed since participating in the program.
The program supports a two-day site visit by a conservation professional to perform the assessment and up to three days to write the report. For museums located in historic structures, the grant supports a two-day site visit by a preservation architect or an architectural conservator and up to three days to write the report. As the preservation needs of a historic structure and the collections it contains often differ, this collaboration is vital to the assessment's success.
The general conservation survey or assessment (unlike a detailed collection survey) provides an overview of all of the museum's collections, as well as its environmental conditions, policies, and procedures relating to collections care. The assessment report assists the institution by: 1) providing recommendations and priorities for conservation actions, both immediate and long-term; 2) facilitating the development of long-range institutional plans for the care and preservation of the collections; 3) serving as a fundraising tool for future conservation projects.
Deadline: October 3, 2011
The IMLS Conservation Project Support program awards matching grants to help museums identify conservation needs and priorities and perform activities to ensure the safekeeping of their collections.
Conservation Project Support grants help museums develop a logical, institution-wide approach to caring for their living and nonliving collections. Applicants should apply for the project that meets the institution's highest conservation needs. All applications must demonstrate that the primary goal of the project is conservation care and not collection management or maintenance.
Deadline: December 1, 2011
The Museum Assessment Program (MAP) is funded by IMLS and administered by the American Association of Museums. It is designed to help museums assess their strengths and weaknesses and plan for the future.
The program provides noncompetitive grants of technical assistance for four types of assessments: Institutional, Collections Management, Public Dimension, and Governance. Participants in the Governance Assessment will be part of the pilot phase of this new assessment. The grants are awarded on a first-come, first-served basis after being approved by the director of IMLS. Museums may apply for MAP assessments in any sequence. Museums that received an IMLS grant for any given MAP assessment on or before September 1996 may apply for a grant to fund participation in that assessment a second time.
In all MAP assessments, members of the museum staff and governing authority complete a self-study and receive a site visit by one or more museum professionals who tour the museum and meet with staff, governing officials, and volunteers. The surveyors work with the museum and with MAP staff to produce a report on the museum's operations, making recommendations and suggesting resources.
Deadline: November 1, 2011
Museums for America grants strengthen a museum’s ability to serve the public more effectively by supporting high-priority activities that advance the institution’s mission and strategic goals. Museums for America grants are designed to be flexible: funds can be used for a wide variety of projects, including ongoing museum work, research and other behind-the-scenes activities, planning, new programs, purchase of equipment or services, and activities that will support the efforts of museums to upgrade and integrate new technologies. IMLS also welcomes proposals that promote the skills necessary to develop 21st century communities, citizens, and workers.
Grants are awarded in the following categories:
- Engaging Communities (Education, Exhibitions, and Interpretation)
- Building Institutional Capacity (Management, Policy, and Training)
- Collections Stewardship
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Please note: Grant deadlines are subject to change. Check directly with the funding agency for the most current information.
