Institute of Museum & Library Services
As we have previously reported, funding for projects that were supported previously under the Conservation Project Support (CPS) Grants program will now be included as part of the Museums for America (MFA) program. In the last two fiscal years, $2.675 million was appropriated for Conservation Project Support Grants. The good news is that even more IMLS support for conservation is possible if there are enough excellent applications.
While final guidelines have not been posted, the draft guidelines indicated that:
- Final guidelines will be posted as soon as approved by the Office of Management and Budget. A projected date of October 15, 2012 was given. We will alert you as soon as a firm date is available.
- The deadline for submitting applications for FY 2013 funds is January 15, 2013.
Given that the late fall through the end of the year is a particularly busy time, we encourage everyone to begin planning now for applications for conservation support.
IMLS will open the Grants.gov portal and begin accepting applications as soon as it receives OMB approval. We will alert you to this as soon as we know. Additionally, IMLS staff will be offering webinars throughout the fall season to assist applicants with application preparation and to answer questions about the new guidelines.
IMLS has indicated that “applications submitted under each of these program areas will be reviewed by subject-matter experts.” And further that “in 2013, there will be no restrictions on the number of applications a museum may submit to MFA. We encourage you to read http://blog.imls.gov/?p=1590.
National Endowment for the Humanities
The deadline for Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections is December 4, 2012 for Projects Beginning October 2013. This program helps cultural institutions plan and implement preservation strategies aimed at mitigating the greatest risks to collections in ways that pragmatically balance effectiveness, cost, and environmental impact. For information and guidelines see http://www.neh.gov/grants/preservation/sustaining-cultural-heritage-collections and http://www.neh.gov/files/grants/sustaining-cultural-heritage-dec-4-2012.pdf
While this is a continuing program category, we wanted to alert you to the deadline.