The Collections Care grant program supports the work of King County non-profit heritage organizations by providing the funds necessary to assess, organize, catalog, clean, repair, document, digitize, and, ultimately, preserve heritage resources in King County.
Donor Name: 4Culture
State: Washington
County: King County (WA)
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 09/23/2026
Size of the Grant: $1000 to $10,000
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
You can use this grant for:
- The care of historic and cultural materials, artifacts, and archival records held in public trust and regularly accessible for the public
- Purchasing materials and consumable supplies used for collections care purposes.
- Developing and/or implementing a collections management policy, improving emergency preparedness plans, instituting and improving security methods for collections.
- Performing collections needs assessment surveys and implementing recommendations, completing inventories, descriptive catalog, and/or condition surveys, bridging a funding gap to conduct assessments such as Museum Assessment Program, Collections Assessment for Preservation Program, or Standards and Excellence Program for History Organizations.
- Digitizing of collections or archives to minimize handling.
- Training and professional development for staff and/or volunteers in preventive collections management.
- Contractor fees for conservators, heritage specialists, interns for collections care projects; fees directed to staff, if their work on the project is outside their regular job duties and payment is structured as contractor fees.
Funding Information
Your request amount must be at least $1,000, but no more than $8,000.
Criteria
For this particular grant, they’ll look to see how well your project shows the following:
- Quality: how your project meets the goals of your organization’s mission or needs in the community, how well your project aligns with professional standards, best practices, and culturally-specific needs of source communities.
- Project impact and public benefit: how your project develops and preserves heritage in King County, its potential to cultivate understanding of heritage of diverse communities in King County, its potential to raise the visibility of heritage collections care and preservation, its ability to preserve heritage resources held in the public trust, your project’s ability to generate broad and/or lasting public benefit.
- Feasibility: your organization’s ability to develop and complete your project within 24 months of the award date. This is demonstrated through the qualifications of you and your project team, and your budget—including your ability to raise additional funding if needed. Demonstration that your organization has completed the necessary planning and assessment to care for collections in the long-term.
- Advancing equity: how clearly the project is preserving the heritage of historically marginalized communities in King County, especially communities that have been disproportionately impacted by structural racism. How clearly those source communities are involved in the decision making of the project.
Are You and Your Project Eligible
- You
- You must be a registered King County-based nonprofit that is stewarding or serving collections located in King County that collects and preserves historic artifacts, photographs, documents, and ephemera.
- You must be a King County-based nonprofit organization that stewards collections of historic artifacts and records that are held in the public trust and regularly accessible to the public.
- They do not fund K-12 schools, school districts, or religious worship or instruction.
- Your Project
- Your request amount must be at least $1,000, but no more than $8,000.
- Your proposed project must focus primarily on collecting, cataloguing, inventorying, and/or preserving the historical record in King County, i.e. historic and cultural materials, artifacts, and archival records.
- Your proposed project should demonstrate a public benefit to King County residents and visitors—learn more about that requirement in the “What Collections Care Funds” section of this page.
- This program gives priority to basic collections issues and provides institutions with support to evaluate collections needs and to implement resulting recommendations.
- If you are a college or university, your project must be accessible beyond your student body.
For more information, visit 4Culture.
