Notice of Funding Opportunity: Museums Empowered Grant Program (US)

Deadline: 15-Nov-24

The Institute of Museum and Library Services is offering grants to support projects that use the transformative power of professional development and training to generate systemic change within museums of all types and sizes.

Museums Empowered (ME) is a special initiative of the Museums for America grant program.

IMLS recognizes the many challenges facing individual museums and the need to invest resources, time, and energy towards nurturing the professional development of staff and strengthening museum operations. The Museums Empowered grant program identifies four areas of museum operations to focus for professional development.

• Digital Technology focused projects will support the work of museum staff in using digital technology to enhance audience engagement, collections access, or general museum operations.
• Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion focused projects will increase cultural competency among museum staff and support relevancy of museum programs through learning activities that strengthen their ability to connect with the communities they serve.
• Evaluation focused projects will enhance the ability of museum staff to understand a broad spectrum of evaluation methods and techniques as well as better use evaluation reports, data, and metrics to improve the design and delivery of programs.
• Organizational Management focused projects will help museum staff develop and implement effective practices in organizational management, human resources, and strategic planning in response to emerging internal or external priorities.

They expect successful Museums Empowered projects to:

• reflect a solid understanding of relevant theory and effective practices in professional development, organizational dynamics and change management.
• engage staff, leadership, and volunteers in a series of training activities tied to directly to a key need or challenge.
• generate systemic change or organizational growth that results in a more agile and sustainable museum.

Goals and Objectives

• Goal 1: Digital Technology
  • Provide museum staff with the skills to integrate digital technology into museum operations.
• Objective 1.1 Support staff learning and integration of digital communication platforms and social media tools to enhance audience engagement and community outreach.
• Objective 1.2: Support staff learning and integration of digital tools and services that enhance access to museum collections.
• Goal 2: Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
  • Support museum staff in providing inclusive and equitable services to people of diverse geographic, cultural, and socioeconomic backgrounds and to individuals with disabilities.
• Objective 2.1 Create training and learning opportunities that increase cultural competency of museum staff and enhance relevancy of museum programs.
• Objective 2.2 Develop and implement inclusive and equitable fellowship, internship, and mentoring programs to increase support for emerging professionals from diverse communities entering the museum field.
• Goal 3: Evaluation
  • Strengthen the ability of museum staff to use evaluation as a tool to shape museum programs and improve outcomes.
• Objective 3.1 Increase staff knowledge of program evaluation methods and the usefulness of evaluation reports, tools, data, and metrics.
• Objective 3.2 Provide museum staff with the tools and strategies to adapt evaluation methods to address a specific audience or institutional need.
• Goal 4: Organizational Management
  • Strengthen and support museum staff as the essential part of a resilient organizational culture.
• Objective 4.1 Develop comprehensive organizational learning opportunities that address one or more emerging priorities facing a museum.
• Objective 4.2 Develop programs that address the specific learning and growth opportunities identified by staff needs assessments.

Funding Information

• Total amount of funding IMLS expects to award through this announcement: $4,299,000
• Expected amount of individual awards: $5,000 – $250,000
• Anticipated number of awards: 20

Eligibility Criteria

• To be eligible for an award under the ME program, your organization must meet all three of the following eligibility criteria. Your organization must be:
  • a unit of State, local, or Tribal government; or
  • a private, nonprofit organization that has tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954, as amended (you will need to include proof of this if applicable to your organization).
• Your organization must be located in:
  • one of the 50 States of the United States of America,
  • the District of Columbia,
  • the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,
  • the U.S. Virgin Islands,
  • Guam,
  • American Samoa,
  • the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands,
  • the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
  • the Federated States of Micronesia; or
  • the Republic of Palau.
• Your organization must qualify as one of the following:
  • A museum that:
    • uses a professional staff;
    • is organized on a permanent basis for essentially educational, cultural heritage, or aesthetic purposes;
    • owns or uses tangible objects, and/or living collections;
    • cares for these objects; and
    • exhibits these objects to the general public on a regular basis through facilities that it owns or operates.
• A museum located within a parent organization that is a State, local, or Tribal government or multipurpose nonprofit entity, such as a university, historical society, foundation, or cultural center, may apply on its own behalf if the museum:
  • can independently fulfill all the eligibility requirements listed in the above three criteria;
  • functions as a discrete unit within the parent organization;
  • has its own fully segregated and itemized operating budget; and
  • has the authority to make the application on its own.
• When any of the last three conditions cannot be met, a museum may only apply through its parent organization.
• They may determine that a nonprofit organization affiliated with a museum is eligible for this program if:
  • its sole mission is to support the specified museum;
  • it has the ability to administer the project; and
  • it can ensure compliance with the terms of this Notice of Funding Opportunity and the applicable law, including the IMLS Assurances and Certifications.
• They require that you provide an agreement from the museum that details the activities the applicant and museum will perform and binds the museum to the statements and assurances in the application.

For more information, visit Grants.gov.