Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions | 20170502 PG

Opportunity Information: Apply for 20170502 PG

The Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions program is a discretionary grant opportunity from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) designed to strengthen the preservation and long-term care of humanities collections held by small to mid-sized organizations. The program focuses on improving an institution's practical capacity to responsibly manage and protect culturally significant materials, especially in settings that may not have extensive in-house preservation staff or resources. Rather than concentrating on large-scale conservation treatment projects, the opportunity is framed around helping organizations take concrete steps that make their collections safer, more stable, and better managed over time.

Eligible applicants cover a wide range of public and nonprofit entities, including state, county, and city or township governments; special district governments; public and state-controlled colleges and universities; private institutions of higher education; federally recognized Native American tribal governments; and nonprofit organizations with 501(c)(3) status (excluding institutions of higher education in that nonprofit category). This broad eligibility reflects the reality that important humanities collections are often held in many different types of institutions, from local historical societies and small museums to academic repositories and local government records offices.

The collections that may be supported under this opportunity are intentionally expansive and reflect the many formats that document humanities history and culture. Examples include special collections of books and journals; archival materials such as manuscripts and institutional records; prints and photographs; audiovisual media like moving images and sound recordings; architectural drawings and maps; decorative arts and fine art objects; textiles; archaeological and ethnographic materials; furniture and other historical objects; and digital materials. In practice, this means an applicant can be working with anything from brittle paper archives and photographic negatives to magnetic tape recordings or born-digital files, as long as the project is aimed at preservation and care of humanities materials.

A central requirement of the program is the use of qualified consultants whose preservation expertise matches both the type of collection involved and the specific activities proposed. The description emphasizes that preservation and conservation are specialized fields, and that applicants should not take a one-size-fits-all approach when selecting professional help. For example, within conservation, professionals commonly specialize by material type (such as paper, objects, or paintings), so a collection of historical documents and photographs should be paired with a conservator experienced in paper-based materials, while a collection of three-dimensional artifacts would call for an objects conservator. Likewise, when the work involves assessing the preservation needs of library, museum, or archival holdings, the consultant should be specifically knowledgeable about preservation practices in that environment, since standards, risks, and workflows differ across libraries, archives, and museums.

Key administrative details from the source information include the funding opportunity title, Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions, with funding opportunity number 20170502 PG. The activity category is Humanities, and the CFDA number listed is 45.149. The award ceiling is $7,000, signaling that these are relatively small grants meant to support targeted, high-impact improvements, assessments, or planning activities rather than major capital projects. The original closing date provided in the source data is May 2, 2017, and the opportunity record shows a creation date of February 27, 2017.

• The National Endowment for the Humanities in the humanities sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Preservation Assistance Grants for Smaller Institutions" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 45.149.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2017-02-27.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2017-05-02. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $7,000.00 in funding.
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Special district governments, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Nonprofits having a 501 (c) (3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education.

Apply for 20170502 PG

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