Call#: On Order
NEH main grants page
Directory of foundations making grants in PA
The Hewlett Foundation Open Educational Resources Initiative seeks to use information technology to help equalize access to knowledge and educational opportunities across the world. The initiative targets educators, students and self-learners worldwide. Supports high quality digitized educational materials offered freely for anyone with Internet access. Over 50 funded projects, including: MIT OpenCourseWare, African Virtual University, Creative Commons, Widernet eGranary See site/newsletter for more info
List of awardees, project descriptions, and pdfs of successful proposals Open Educational Resources/Open Content grants.
NHPRC Digitizing Historical Records
The Commission seeks proposals that use cost-effective methods to digitize nationally-significant historical record collections and make the digital versions freely available on the Internet. Project must make use of existing holdings of historical repositories and be made up of entire collections or series. The materials should already be available to the public at the archives and described so that projects can re-use existing information to create metadata for the digitized collection. Applicants must have the permission of all relevant copyright holders, where possible.
To make these projects as widely useful as possible for archives, historical repositories, and researchers, the applications will be evaluated on:
- The national significance of the collections or records series to be digitized;
- An effective work flow that repurposes existing descriptive material, rather than create new metadata about the records;
- Reasonable costs and standards for the project as well as sustainable preservation plans for the resulting digital records;
- Well-designed plans that evaluate the use of the digitized materials and the effectiveness of the methods employed in digitizing and displaying the materials.
A grant normally is for 1 to 3 years and up to $150,000. The Commission expects to make up to 3 grants in this category, for a total of up to $300,000. The Commission provides no more than 50 percent of the costs of Digitizing Historical Records projects.
The Endangered Archives Programme is offering a number of grants every year to individual researchers world-wide to locate vulnerable archival collections, to arrange their transfer wherever possible to a suitable local archival home, and to deliver copies into the international research domain via the British Library.
The specific focus of this Programme is upon archives relating to the pre-industrial stages of a society's development, whether in Asia, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America, or even Europe.
These grants will be the primary means by which Arcadia will contribute to the urgent task of identifying, preserving and making accessible such archival collections before they are lost to international scholarship forever.
Delaware Valley Grantmakers (DVG), the region’s forum for philanthropy, serves as a network, resource and voice to help philanthropy strengthen and improve the health and vitality of our communities.
See Resources for Grantseekers link.
News stories related to philanthropy. See Guide for database of funding resources
The Doris Duke Clinical Interfaces Award Program seeks to catalyze activity at the interface of clinical and other research disciplines by:
- Supporting the formation of new collaborations and strengthening existing collaborations of outstanding scientists across disciplines;
- Demonstrating successful models for clinical research at the interface of multiple disciplines; and
- Supporting interdisciplinary and inter-institutional endeavors that go beyond the program project mindset.
New Grant Opportunity: Investing in Innovation Fund/DoE
Local educational agencies (LEAs) (including charter school LEAs) and nonprofit organizations working in collaboration with one or more LEAs or a consortium of schools.
The program will support efforts to bring to scale educational practices with significant evidence of success in improving student achievement and support the development, implementation, replication, and further evaluation of promising innovative practices. The program will not support the simple expansion of well-established and resourced programs.
Page related to funding opportunities for Judaic studies, maintained by Arthur Kiron
Deadline: February 1, 2009
National Leadership Grants (NLG) support projects that have the potential to elevate museum and library practice.
Successful proposals will have national impact and generate results—new tools, research, models, services, practices, or alliances—that can be widely adapted or replicated to extend the benefit of federal investment. The Institute seeks to fund projects that have the following characteristics:
Strategic Impact—Proposals should address key needs and challenges that face libraries and museums. They should expand the boundaries within which libraries and museums operate, show the potential for far-reaching impact, and influence practice throughout the museum and/or library communities.
Innovation—Proposals should demonstrate a thorough understanding of current practice and knowledge about the project area, and show how the project will advance the state of the art of museum and library service.
Collaboration—While partners are not required in all NLG categories, the Institute has found that involving carefully chosen partners with complementary competencies and resources can create powerful synergies that extend project impact. Proposals should show understanding of the challenges of collaboration and propose means for addressing them.
Applications may be submitted in the following categories: Advancing Digital Resources, Research, Demonstration, and Library and Museum Collaboration Grants.
Collaborative Planning Grants are also available in any of the four categories to enable project teams from more than one institution to work together to plan a project for a National Leadership Grant
Deadline: December 15
This program supports projects to develop faculty and library leaders, to recruit and educate the next generation of librarians, to conduct research on the library profession, and to support early career research on any area of library and information science by tenure-track, untenured faculty in graduate schools of library and information science. It also supports projects to attract high school and college students to consider careers in libraries, to build institutional capacity in graduate schools of library and information science, and to assist in the professional development of librarians and library staff.
Research in Information Technology (RIT) is dedicated to supporting the thoughtful application of information technology to a wide range of scholarly purposes. The Foundation is interested in promoting the study of uses of digital technologies that can be applied to research and online and distance learning and teaching. The Foundation also supports investigations of new technical approaches to the archiving of textual and multimedia materials that require improved search and storage techniques and improvements in user-interfaces. The impact of information technology (and especially digitization) on scholarship, scholarly communication, and libraries is indisputable.
The Foundation seeks proposals related to technology that benefits one or more of its constituencies and/or multiple institutions, can realistically be developed by the grantee within the proposed timeframe and budget, provides a significant cost savings, is shareable, reliable, and objectively assessible, and has available IP.
Scholarly Communications program focuses broadly on all stages in the life cycle of scholarly resources. The program complements fellowships and other kinds of support for research and teaching at research universities, independent research centers, libraries, and museums by promoting the cost-effective creation, dissemination, accessibility, and preservation of high-quality scholarly resources in humanistic studies broadly defined.
Grantmaking occurs principally in five main categories: new methods of creating scholarly resources, innovations in scholarly publication, cataloging and other forms of access, preservation, and research and evaluation. The Foundation is especially interested in developments that:
- Use forms of scholarly communications to stimulate collaborations among scholars and scholarly institutions in ways that substantially advance knowledge;
- Foster the means economically to sustain forms of scholarly communication; and
- Apply technology to forms of scholarly communications in order to improve quality, lower costs, speed up work, open new perspectives, or make work possible that would otherwise be difficult or impossible.
The main goal of the Foundation’s higher education program in South Africa is to develop capacity in higher education by providing opportunities for individuals who were previously disadvantaged and individuals who have demonstrated a commitment to the previously disadvantaged.
Grants from the Foundation have supported regional library collaborations of universities and technikons (now universities of technology). All 21 higher education institutions and the National Library of South Africa have benefited from our support of five regional consortia. The Foundation also made grants to the South African Bibliographic Network (SABINET) to support library collaboration at the national level and to promote access to JSTOR, a scholarly journal archive (www.jstor.org). In addition, the Foundation has worked to improve access to the Internet for all of South African higher education through the Tertiary Education Network (www.tenet.ac.za).
Application Deadline: 1/28/09 for projects starting 9/09; 8/26/09 for projects starting 4/10
Grant funds can support all typical activities connected with project implementation and production, including:
- final exhibition design and fabrication, as well as crating and shipping;
- final consultation with scholars or other advisers;
- Web site development;
- completion of interactive program components;
- publication costs for complementary materials, including catalogues and curriculum guides;
- publicity expenses;
- staff training specifically for the project’s interpretive programs;
- development of teachers’ guides and curriculum materials;
- presentation and distribution of public programs and related materials; and
- audience evaluation.
Deadlines: 1/28/09 for projects starting 9/09; 8/26/09 for projects starting 4/10
Planning grants can be used to plan, refine, and develop the content and interpretive approach of a project and may be used for:
- meetings with scholars and other content advisers, program partners, and representatives of target audiences or other key personnel involved in the project;
- preliminary audience evaluation and beta testing of digital materials;
- travel to archives, collections, sites, or other resources;
- drafting of text for program or discussion guides, exhibition labels, brochures, publications, or other interpretive materials;
- preliminary design for any of the interpretive formats to be used;
- general preparation of the associated programs and materials for dissemination; and
- planning for training for docents, discussion coordinators, or other relevant interpretive leaders for the project.
Deadlines: 1/28/09 for projects starting 9/09; 8/26/09 for projects starting 4/10
Grants for America’s Media Makers support media projects that explore significant events, figures, or developments in the humanities and offer creative and new approaches to humanities content.
- offer cross-platform distribution of humanities content that combine radio or television programs with programs using emerging technologies, museum exhibitions, reading and discussion programs, and other formats that expand and enhance the program’s humanities content, deepen the audiences’ experience of the content, engage audiences in new ways, and expand the distribution of programs;
- advance the role of cultural repositories in online teaching, learning, and research for public audiences, teachers, students, and scholars;
- include but are not limited to DVDs, Web sites, games, virtual environments, streaming, video on demand, and podcasts, as well as user-generated content;
- engage in simultaneous production of a broadcast program and interactive companion content in order to extend the educational experience of the program’s audience, use resources efficiently, and keep the humanities ideas at the center of the project as the broadcast program and the interactivity are designed;
- engage public audiences interactively in exploring humanities ideas and questions by using new ways to contextualize, interpret, and distribute content;
- result in large-scale, collaborative programs featuring multiple formats; and
- build new programs around previously funded NEH projects using complementary formats that will add new dimensions to the original project and take advantage of new formats and technologies to reach audiences that were not served by the original project.
Deadlines: 1/28/09 for projects starting 9/09; 8/26 for projects starting 4/10
Production grants support the preparation of a program for distribution.
- offer cross-platform distribution of humanities content that combine radio or television programs with programs using emerging technologies, museum exhibitions, reading and discussion programs, and other formats that expand and enhance the program’s humanities content, deepen the audiences’ experience of the content, engage audiences in new ways, and expand the distribution of programs;
- include but are not limited to DVDs, Web sites, games, virtual environments, streaming, video on demand, and podcasts, as well as user-generated content;
- engage in simultaneous production of a broadcast program and interactive companion content in order to extend the educational experience of the program’s audience, use resources efficiently, and keep the humanities ideas at the center of the project as the broadcast program and the interactivity are designed;
- engage public audiences interactively in exploring humanities ideas and questions by using new ways to contextualize, interpret, and distribute content;
- result in large-scale, collaborative programs featuring multiple formats; and
- build new programs around previously funded NEH projects using complementary formats that will add new dimensions to the original project, and take advantage of new formats and technologies to reach audiences that were not served by the original project.
Deadline: May 5, 2009 Challenge grants augment or establish endowments that support humanities activities in education, public programming, scholarly research, and preservation. Examples include:
- faculty and staff positions,
- fellowships,
- lecture or exhibition series,
- visiting scholars or consultants,
- publishing subventions,
- maintenance of facilities,
- faculty and staff development,
- acquisitions, and
- preservation or conservation programs.
Deadline: May 5, 2009 Challenge grants augment or establish endowments that support humanities activities in education, public programming, scholarly research, and preservation. Institutions may use the income from invested funds to meet ongoing humanities-related costs. Examples include:
- faculty and staff positions,
- fellowships,
- lecture or exhibition series,
- visiting scholars or consultants,
- publishing subventions,
- maintenance of facilities,
- faculty and staff development,
- acquisitions, and
- preservation or conservation programs.
Overview of NEH programs
Deadline: May 14, 2009 Preservation Assistance Grants help small and mid-sized institutions, such as libraries, museums, historical societies, archival repositories, ... and colleges and universities, improve their ability to preserve and care for their 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 arts, textiles, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, furniture, and historical objects.
- General preservation assessments
- Consultations with professionals to address a specific preservation issue, need, or problem
- Purchase of storage furniture and preservation supplies
- Purchase of environmental monitoring equipment for humanities collections
- Education and Training
Deadline: February 18, 2009
The goals of the Institutes for Advanced Topics in the Digital Humanities program are to:
- bring together humanities scholars and digital technology specialists from different disciplines to share ideas and methods that advance humanities research through the use of digital technologies;
- reflect on, interpret, and analyze new digital media, multimedia, and text-based computing technologies and integrate these into humanities research;
- prepare current and future generations of humanities scholars to design, develop, and use cyber-based tools and environments for research;
- devise new and creative uses for technology that offer valuable models that can be applied specifically to research in the humanities.
NEH strongly encourages applicants to develop proposals for multidisciplinary teams of co-applicants, partners, and collaborators that will offer the necessary range of intellectual, technical, and practical expertise. This program is designed to bring together humanities scholars, advanced graduate students, computer scientists, and others to learn new tools and technologies and to foster relationships for future collaborations in the humanities. Partners and collaborators may be drawn from the private and public sectors and include appropriate specialists from within and outside the United States.
Deadline: July 1, 2009 These grants support national or regional (multi-state) education and training programs on the care and management of, and the creation of intellectual access to, library, archival, and material culture collections.
- digitizing collections;
- arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections;
- cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving image, art, and material culture;
- preservation reformatting;
- deacidification of collections; and
- preserving and improving access to humanities resources in “born digital” form.
Deadline: January 30, 2009 This funding opportunity offers successful applicants a $2,500 grant from NEH for exhibition-related expenses and for exhibition programming.
Deadline: January 30, 2009 The Coming Up Taller Awards recognize and support outstanding community arts and humanities programs that celebrate the creativity of America's young people, provide them learning opportunities and chances to contribute to their communities. These awards focus national attention on exemplary programs currently fostering the creative and intellectual development of America's children and youth through education and practical experience in the arts and the humanities. Accompanied by a cash award, the Coming Up Taller Awards not only reward these projects with recognition, but also contribute significant support to their continued work.
British Library Endagered Archives award winners for 2008
Selected list of foundation and government funding opportunities
The aim of this program is to increase access to human knowledge and the fruits of human culture while developing a better framework for understanding the information economy. To date, the program has primarily encouraged digitizing material in the public domain; assuring public archiving, preservation and open access of this material; and fostering its availability to people everywhere through such technologies as books on demand. The technology now exists for universal access to the sum of all knowledge. The potential benefit to humanity is enormous, but it needs to be done in a truly open and non-exclusive basis, with the emphasis on the public good.

