Deadline: 1-Dec-22
The Digital Museums Canada (DMC) is pleased to announce its Small Investment Program that invests in online projects by Canadian museums and heritage organizations, helping them build digital capacity and share stories and experiences with people everywhere.
The Investment Program is administered by the Canadian Museum of History (CMH) with the financial support of the Government of Canada, the Digital Museums Canada (DMC).
Funding is available for bilingual online projects, modest or ambitious, that provide an interpretation of the subject matter and content as well as an engaging user experience. The “Small investment” stream is intended for small Canadian community museums and heritage organizations that wish to create community-focussed online projects with a user-friendly template. These projects are called Community Stories.
Objectives
The objectives of this stream are the following:
- Tell stories, past and present, of Canada’s communities and make them accessible to all Canadians.
- Strengthen the capacity of Canada’s community museums to create digital content for use online.
- Increase the online presence of Canada’s community museums.
- Promote collaboration between communities and museums to create online projects on local history.
- Encourage Canadians to share their personal heritage with others.
DMC issues an annual call for proposals. A proposal must be submitted online before the deadline by the organization responsible for the project, also referred to as the “applicant.” Only proposals that meet the eligibility requirements are evaluated by DMC. Agreements are signed with the organizations receiving an investment.
Funding Information
Organizations whose proposals are accepted receive an investment of $15,000 and the support and guidance of the DMC team throughout the project.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for the Small investment stream, the organization must meet the following criteria:
- Be administered in the public interest for the primary purpose of collecting, preserving, documenting, interpreting, exhibiting and disseminating physical collections and/or intangible cultural heritage. This includes artistic, scientific, cultural and historical material.
- Operate a permanent establishment or site accessible to the public year-round or seasonally.
- Be an aquarium, archive, art gallery, botanical garden, cultural centre, equivalent Indigenous peoples’ organization, exhibition centre, historic house, historical society, library, museum, planetarium, preservation project or site, professional cultural association or group, zoo or other organization that meets these eligibility requirements.
- Be not-for-profit.
- Not be a member of the Canadian Heritage Portfolio.
- Have a maximum of five (5) permanent, paid employees working full-time, which corresponds to 30 hours or more of work per week. Organizations run entirely by volunteers are also eligible.
Notes
- Applicants can submit more than one proposal in response to a call for proposals. However, DMC will only award an investment to one project at a time.
- DMC may reject a proposal if it determines that an organization’s performance in another DMC-funded project has been unsatisfactory or sufficiently poor to jeopardize the success of the new project.
- Any organization previously funded by the Virtual Museum of Canada (now called “Digital Museums Canada”) that wishes to submit a proposal in this call for proposals must have launched online any DMC-funded projects prior to the call deadline. That is, a new proposal cannot be submitted if a previously funded one is still in development.
- DMC reserves the right to request proof of eligibility at any time during the proposal review process and determine an organization’s eligibility in certain cases.
For more information, visit https://www.digitalmuseums.ca/funding/small-investment/?tab=overview
