The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Division of Preservation and Access is accepting applications for the Sustaining Cultural Heritage Collections program.
Donor Name: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 01/12/2023
Size of the Grant: $2,000,000
Grant Duration: 2 years
Details:
This program helps cultural institutions meet the complex challenge of preserving large and diverse holdings of humanities materials for future generations by supporting sustainable conservation measures that mitigate deterioration, prolong the useful life of collections, and strengthen institutional resilience (i.e., the ability to anticipate and respond to disasters resulting from natural or human activity).
Cultural institutions, including libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations, face an enormous challenge: to preserve humanities collections that facilitate research, strengthen teaching, and provide opportunities for lifelong learning. To ensure the preservation of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art, and historical objects, cultural institutions must implement measures that slow deterioration and prevent catastrophic loss from emergencies resulting from natural or human activity. They can accomplish this work most effectively through preventive conservation. Preventive conservation encompasses managing relative humidity, temperature, light, and pollutants in collection spaces; providing protective storage enclosures and systems for collections; and safeguarding collections from theft, fire, floods, and other disasters.
Funding categories
The SCHC program offers three levels of funding: Planning, Implementation Level I, and Implementation Level II.
Planning
The Planning category provides funding for institutions of any size to develop and assess sustainable preventive conservation strategies. These awards are up to $50,000 for a two-year period of performance.
The Planning category supports activities such as on-site consultation, risk assessments, planning sessions, ongoing environmental monitoring programs, testing, modeling, project specific research, and preliminary designs for implementation projects. An existing preservation or collection management plan must inform Planning proposals, and they must focus on exploring sustainable preventive conservation or resiliency strategies. Planning projects must involve an interdisciplinary team appropriate to the goals of the project. The team may consist of consultants and members of the institution’s staff and might include architects, building engineers, conservation scientists, conservators, curators, and facilities managers, among others. You must include a preservation/conservation professional who works with collections on the planning team. You must identify all members of the team in the application, and they should work collaboratively throughout the planning process.
The Planning category addresses complex preservation challenges, which only an interdisciplinary team can solve. Therefore, if you are applying for a Planning award, you must have completed basic preservation planning and identified any preservation challenges and priorities. The SCHC program does not support basic activities such as completing general preservation/conservation assessments.
You might use a Planning award to:
- reevaluate environmental parameters for collections and establish realistic and achievable targets
- study the performance characteristics of buildings and building envelopes to understand how they could moderate collection environments
- examine passive (nonmechanical) and low-energy alternatives to conventional energy sources and energy-intensive mechanized systems for managing environmental conditions
- analyze and optimize existing climate control systems to enable improved operation, effectiveness, and energy efficiency explore the potential of actively managed mechanical systems to achieve desired conditions along with energy and cost savings
- conduct a risk assessment to improve institutional resilience in the face of disasters resulting from natural or human activity
- examine options and develop strategies for lighting collection spaces that protect collections while improving energy efficiency
- evaluate the effectiveness of previously implemented preventive conservation strategies, including energy-efficient upgrades to existing systems and performance upgrades to buildings and building envelopes
perform a building reserve study or reinvestment plan for infrastructure and systems associated with collection storage and display
Implementation Level I
The Implementation Level I category provides funding for institutions to implement preventive conservation projects. These awards are up to $100,000 for a period of performance of up to two years.
The Implementation Level I category is intended to address discrete preservation challenges that are identified through general preservation assessments at small to mid-sized institutions. Level I awards support projects that have undertaken a general preservation assessment or other targeted collections assessment, identified preservation challenges and priorities, and are ready to implement small-scale improvements to environmental conditions and other sustainable conservation measures. Interdisciplinary planning is not required for this level of Implementation project. You must include a preservation/conservation professional who works with collections on the team.
You might use an Implementation Level I award to:
- manage interior relative humidity and temperature by passive methods (such as creating buffered spaces and housing, controlling moisture at its sources, or improving the thermal and moisture performance of a building envelope by installing film, filters, weatherproofing, or vapor barriers)
- establish an environmental monitoring program
- reorganize collections by material type, locating more vulnerable collections in spaces that are more naturally stable
- install storage systems and rehouse collections to reduce risk and/or improve energy efficiency and allow for greater temperature and relative humidity fluctuations in building-wide spaces
- improve security and the protection of collections from fire, floods, and other disasters
- upgrade lighting systems and controls such as installation of LED lighting, to achieve energy efficiency and levels suitable for collections
Implementation Level II
The Implementation Level II category provides funding for institutions of any size that have completed interdisciplinary planning and are prepared to implement preventive conservation projects. These awards are up to $350,000 for a period of performance of up to three years.
You might use an Implementation Level II award to:
- manage interior relative humidity and temperature by passive methods (e.g., creating buffered spaces and housing, controlling moisture at its sources, or improving the thermal and moisture performance of a building envelope by installing film, filters, weatherproofing, or vapor barriers)
- upgrade a building automation system to enable more active management of a heating, ventilating, and air conditioning system, and to improve energy efficiency
- recommission or install heating, ventilating, and air conditioning systems to improve energy efficiency reorganize collections by material type, locating more vulnerable collections in spaces that are more naturally stable
- install storage systems or rehouse collections to reduce risk and/or improve energy
- efficiency and allow for greater temperature and rh fluctuations in building-wide spaces
- improve security and the protection of collections from fire, floods, and other disasters
upgrade lighting systems and controls, such as installation of LED lighting, to achieve energy efficiency and levels suitable for collections
Funding Information
- If you are applying for a Planning award, you may request up to $50,000.
- If you are applying for a Level I Implementation award, you may request up to $100,000.
- If you are applying for a Level II Implementation award, you may request up to $350,000.
- NEH will award successful applicants outright funds, which are not contingent on additional funding from other sources.
- NEH anticipates awarding approximately $2,000,000 among an estimated 14 recipients.
Period of performance
- If you are applying for a Planning award, you may request a period of performance up to two years.
- If you are applying for an Implementation Level I award, you may request a period of performance up to two years.
- If you are applying for an Implementation Level II award, you may request a period of performance up to three years.
- You may request a period of performance start date between October 1, 2023, and January 31, 2024.
Eligible Applicants
To be eligible to apply, you must be established in the United States or its jurisdictions as one of the following organization types:
- a nonprofit organization recognized as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code
- an accredited institution of higher education (public or nonprofit)
- a state or local government or one of their agencies
- a federally recognized Native American Tribal government
If you are an eligible applicant, you may apply on behalf of a consortium of collaborating organizations. If NEH selects your proposal for funding, you will be programmatically, legally, and fiscally responsible for the award.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
