Deadline: 31 January 2019
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is seeking applications for its Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections (SCHC) program to help cultural institutions meet the complex challenge of preserving large and diverse holdings of humanities materials for future generations by supporting sustainable conservation measures that mitigate deterioration, prolong the useful life of collections, and support institutional resilience: the ability to anticipate and respond to disasters resulting from natural or human activity.
Types of Awards
Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections offers two kinds of awards:
- Planning grants: To help an institution develop and assess sustainable preventive conservation strategies, grants of up to $50,000 will be available for a two-year period of performance to support planning projects, which may encompass such activities as on-site consultation, risk assessments, planning sessions, ongoing environmental monitoring programs, testing, modeling, project specific research, and preliminary designs for implementation projects. Planning grants must be informed by an existing preservation or collection management plan and must focus on exploring sustainable preventive conservation or resiliency strategies. They also must involve an interdisciplinary team appropriate to the goals of the project. The team may consist of consultants and members of the institution’s staff and might include architects, building engineers, conservation scientists, conservators, curators, and facilities managers, among others. A preservation/conservation professional who works with collections must be included on the planning team. All members of the team must be identified in the application, and they should all work collaboratively throughout the planning process.
- Implementation grants: To help an institution implement a preventive conservation project, grants of up to $350,000 for a five-year period of performance are available. Implementation projects must focus on sustainable or resilient preservation strategies. Projects should be based on planning that has been specific to the needs of the institution and its collections within the context of its local environment. It is not necessary to receive an NEH planning grant to be eligible for an implementation grant. Planning for sustainable preservation strategies could be supported by NEH, other federal agencies, private foundations, or an institution’s internal funds.
Award Information
- The maximum award for planning grants is $50,000, for a period of performance of up to two years.
- Applicants may request a period of performance of up to five years for implementation projects, with a maximum award of $350,000.
Eligibility Criteria
- Any U.S. nonprofit organization with 501(c)(3) status is eligible, as are state and local governmental agencies and federally recognized Indian tribal governments. Individuals are not eligible to apply. Eligible organizations include institutions of higher education.
- Individuals and foreign and for-profit entities are not eligible to apply.
- Applications must be complete, must observe the specified page limits, and must be received and validated by Grants.gov under the correct funding opportunity number to be considered under this notice.
- NEH generally does not make awards to other federal entities or to applicants whose projects are so closely intertwined with a federal entity that the project takes on characteristics of the federal entity’s own authorized activities. This does not preclude applicants from using funds from, or sites and materials controlled by, other federal entities in their projects.
- NEH will not review late, incomplete, or ineligible applications.
How to Apply
Applicants can apply via given website.
For further information, please visit https://www.grants.gov/web/grants/view-opportunity.html?oppId=310485
