Council on Library and Information Resources
Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives
Deadline: Annually in March/April. Exact 2019 date TBA.
Award Range: $50,000-$250,000 for single-institution projects; $50,000-$500,000 for collaborative projects.
Match Required: None.
Digitizing Hidden Special Collections and Archives supports projects that aim to digitize and provide access to non-digital collections of rare or unique content in cultural heritage institutions.
Deadline: June 29, 2018.
Award Range: $5,000-$25,000.
Match Required: None.
Recordings at Risk is focused on digitally reformatting “at-risk” audio and audiovisual materials of high scholarly value.
Institute of Museum and Library Services
Deadline: Annually in December. Exact 2018 date TBA.
Award Range: $5,000-$500,000 (up to 3 years).
Match Required: None (for requests up to $25,000) ; 1:1 (for requests over $25,000).
Museums for America supports projects that strengthen the ability of an individual museum to serve its public. Project categories include: (1) Learning Experiences: projects that position museums as teaching and inquiry-focused institutions within today’s formal and informal learning ecosystem; (2) Community Anchors: projects that strengthen museums’ capacities for civic engagement; and (3) Collections Stewardship: projects that help the museum field address state-of-the-art collections care and collections-information management, curation, preventive conservation, conservation treatments, database creation and enhancement, digitization, and the use of digital tools to facilitate discovery and deepen engagement with museum collections.
National Leadership Grants for Museums
Deadline: Annually in December. Exact 2018 date TBA.
Award Range: $5,000-$1,000,000 (up to 3 years).
Match Required: 1:1 (non-federal sources).
National Leadership Grants for Museums support projects that address critical needs of the museum field and that have the potential to advance practice in the profession so that museums can improve services for the American public. Project categories include: (1) Learning Experiences: projects that position museums as teaching and inquiry-focused institutions within today’s formal and informal learning ecosystem; (2) Community Anchors: projects that strengthen museums’ capacities for civic engagement; and (3) Collections Stewardship: projects that help the museum field address state-of-the-art collections care and collections-information management, curation, preventive conservation, conservation treatments, database creation and enhancement, digitization, and the use of digital tools to facilitate discovery and deepen engagement with museum collections (includes cross-collaboration with libraries).
National Endowment for the Humanities
Deadline: May 31, 2018.
Award Range: Up to $12,000 (up to 18 months).
Match Required: None.
Common Heritage grants support both the digitization of cultural heritage materials and the organization of public programming at community events that explore these materials as a window on a community’s history and culture.
Deadline: September 18, 2018.
Award Range: Research Projects – up to $150,000 (for up to 3 years). Fellowships – up to $50,400 (for up to 12 months).
Match Required: None.
The Documenting Endangered Languages (DEL) program is a partnership between the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) to develop and advance knowledge concerning endangered human languages. Awards support fieldwork and other activities relevant to recording, documenting, and archiving endangered languages, including the preparation of lexicons, grammars, text samples, and databases.
Deadline: October 24, 2018.
Award Range: Up to $100,000 (for up to 2 years).
Match Required: None.
The National Endowment for the Humanities offers the Dialogues on the Experience of War program as part of its current initiative, Standing Together: The Humanities and the Experience of War. The program supports the study and discussion of important humanities sources about war, in the belief that these sources can help U.S. military veterans and others think more deeply about the issues raised by war and military service. Although the program is primarily designed to reach military veterans, men and women in active service, military families, and interested members of the public may also participate.
Deadline: July 19, 2018.
Award Range: Up to $350,000 for up to three years.
Match Required: None.
Humanities Collections & Reference Resources offers planning and implementation funding that supports efforts to extend the useful life of humanities collections and to make them more accessible to the public.
Deadline: September 26, 2018.
Award Range: $50,000-$100,000 (up to three years).
Match Required: None.
Humanities Open Book Program supports projects that provide expansive public access to outstanding out-of-print humanities books using “ebook” technology.
Deadline: January 10, 2019.
Award Range: Up to $325,000 (two-year period).
Match Required: None.
NEH is soliciting proposals from institutions to participate in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). NDNP is creating a national digital resource of historically significant newspapers published between 1836 and 1922, from all the states and U.S. territories.
NEH-Mellon Fellowships for Digital Publication
Deadline: April 10, 2019.
Award Range: Fellowships cover periods lasting from 6 to 12 months at a stipend of $4,200 per month. The maximum stipend is $50,400 for a 12-month period. (Awards are given to individuals, not institutions.)
Match Required: None.
Through NEH-Mellon Fellowships for Digital Publication, the National Endowment for the Humanities and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation jointly support individual scholars pursuing research projects that require digital expression and digital publication. To be eligible for this special opportunity, an applicant’s plans for digital publication must be essential to the project’s research goals. That is, the project must be conceived as digital because the nature of the research and the topics being addressed demand presentation beyond traditional print publication. Successful projects will likely incorporate visual, audio, and/or other multimedia materials or flexible reading pathways that could not be included in traditionally published books.
National Historical Publications and Records Commission
Access to Historical Records – Archival Projects
Deadline: Annually in October. Exact 2018 date TBA.
Award Range: Up to $100,000 (up to two years).
Match Required: At least 25%.
The Access to Historical Records – Archival Projects grants program All types of historical records are eligible, including documents, photographs, born-digital records, and analog audio and moving images. Projects may preserve and process historical records to: (1) Create new online Finding Aids to collections, and (2) Digitize historical records collections and make them freely available online.
Deadlines: January 18, 2018 (Preliminary Proposal deadline). July 11, 2018 (Full Proposal deadline).
Award Range: Up to $350,000 (one to three years).
Match Required: At least 50%.
The Access to Historical Records – Major Initiatives grant program All types of historical records are eligible, including documents, photographs, born-digital records, and analog audio and moving images. Projects may: (1) Digitize historical records collections, or related collections, held by a single institution and make them freely available online; (2) Provide access to born-digital records; (3) Create new freely-available virtual collections drawn from historical records held by multiple institutions; and (4) Create new tools and methods for users to access records.
Deadline: Annually in October. Exact 2018 date TBA.
Award Range: $50,000 to $150,000 (up to 3 years).
Match Required: 50% of total direct project costs.
Public Engagement with Historical Records grants support create models and technologies that other institutions can freely adopt. Projects might create and develop programs to engage people in the study and use of historical records for institutional, educational or personal reasons. For example, an applicant can: (1) Enlist volunteer “citizen archivists” in projects to accelerate access to historical records, especially those online. This may include, but is not limited to, efforts to identify, tag, transcribe, annotate, or otherwise enhance digitized historical records; and (2) Develop educational programs for K-12 students or community members that encourage them to engage with historical records already in repositories or that are collected as part of the project.
Next Deadline: June 13, 2018.
Award Range: Up to $200,000 (for one year).
Match Required: 50%.
The National Historical Publications and Records Commission seeks proposals to publish documentary editions of historical records. Projects may focus on the papers of major figures from American history or cover broad historical movements in politics, military, business, social reform, the arts, and other aspects of the national experience.