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.

New multi-sponsored opportunity encourages humanities and social science research using large-scale data analysis, challenging scholars to develop international partnerships and explore vast digital resources, including electronic repositories of books, newspapers, and photographs to identify new opportunities for scholarship.

The Office of Citizen Exchanges, ECA/PE/C, of the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs announces an open competition for grants that support exchanges and build relationships between U.S. non-profit organizations and civil society and cultural groups in Africa, East Asia, Europe, the Near East, North Africa, South Central Asia and the Western Hemisphere. Pending availability of funds, it is anticipated that approximately $5,600,000 or more will be available to support this competition. ECA/PE/C expects to fund approximately 10-15 projects under this competition in FY 2009. U.S. public and non-profit organizations meeting the provisions described in Internal Revenue code section 26 USC 501(c)(3) may submit proposals that support the goals of The Professional Exchange Program. Projects should promote mutual understanding and partnerships between key professional and cultural groups in the United States and counterpart groups in other countries through multi-phased exchanges taking place over one to two years. Proposals should encourage citizen engagement in current issues and promote the development of democratic societies and institutions, with a view toward creating a more stable world. All programs should be two-way exchanges and involve participants from the U.S. and foreign countries.

Technological Innovation and Cooperation for Foreign Information Access grants to develop innovative techniques or programs that address national teaching and research needs in international education and foreign languages by using technologies to access, collect, organize, preserve, and widely disseminate information on world regions and countries other than the United States.

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

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:

1. The national significance of the collections or records series to be digitized;
2. An effective work flow that repurposes existing descriptive material, rather than create new metadata about the records;
3. Reasonable costs and standards for the project as well as sustainable preservation plans for the resulting digital records;
4. 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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: 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.

NEH main grants page

Overview of NEH programs