Deadline: 30-Sep-21
The Indiana Humanities is offering Action Grants to provide tax-exempt organizations with funds to develop and implement responsive and meaningful humanities programming.
Action Grants support projects that help people learn new information, consider different perspectives, share ideas and understand one another better. Programs may come in a variety of formats—workshops, presentations, reading/discussion programs, exhibitions, podcasts, film documentaries and more—as long as they’re open to the public and utilize the humanities as a tool for engagement.
Goals
To help illustrate and inspire, here are some projects they have funded that align well with the goals of the Action Grants:
- The Civil Rights Heritage Center in South Bend hosted a civil rights film series that paired nationally acclaimed documentary films with panels of local individuals and humanities scholars who spoke to each film’s topic and impact in the South Bend community.
- Historic New Harmony hosted Heritage Artisans Days a three-day festival that allowed elementary students to experience what life was like in New Harmony, the site of two utopian communities in the early 1800s. Reenactors engaged with the students and provided history lessons through hands-on activities.
- As part of its “Plant the Seed, Read!” program, Warsaw-based Kosciusko Literary Services purchased copies of Ernest Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms for a community-wide reading program. It brought in a scholar to discuss Hemingway and the book at a number of public gatherings and school assemblies in towns around the region.
- The Indiana Medical History Museum in Indianapolis created an app that allows deaf and hearing-impaired visitors to fully experience guided tours of the museum via transcripts and ASL interpretation videos. Guests can borrow iPads with the app loaded and follow along during the tours.
- The General Lew Wallace Study and Museum in Crawfordsville hosted a series of six public programs related to the theme “From Crawfordsville to Constantinople: Traveling with the Wallaces.” Activities included presentations, a reading-and-discussion program and an author fair.
- The Jackson County Public. library in Seymour hosted a professor from the University of Notre Dame, who gave a presentation highlighting Indiana’s African-American history. A local historian also spoke about black history in Jackson County and efforts to renovate the town’s Lynn Street Colored School Center of Good Will.
- To help local residents learn about different religions and better understand and accept others’ beliefs, the Batesville developed and hosted “A World of Faith and Cultures in Neighborhoods.” As part of the project, religious-studies scholars from Indiana University presented talks at four libraries across Ripley County, and each site hosted a festival featuring food, music and dress associated with different religious groups.
Eligibility Criteria
- To be eligible for an Action Grant, you must apply on behalf of an Indiana-based tax-exempt organization.
- Schools, public libraries, churches, community organizations and government entities are eligible; 501(c)3 status is not required.
- Indiana Humanities will not award Action Grants to individuals or for-profit entities. Also, note that they will not award an organization more than one Action Grant per calendar year.
Requirement
Your proposal must meet the following requirements in order to be considered. The review committee will use these to evaluate, rate and rank your application. Your project must:
- Contain a strong focus on the humanities. When considering which humanities-related projects to fund, they use guidelines provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities. According to the NEH, the humanities include activities in the following disciplines:
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- Literature
- Comparative religion
- Language
- Law
- History
- Ethics
- Philosophy
- Theory, history and criticism of the performing and visual arts
- Archaeology
- Social sciences that have humanistic content and/or humanistic method.
For more information, visit https://indianahumanities.org/grant/action-grants/