The Museum Grants for African American History and Culture (AAHC) program is designed to build the capacity of African American museums and support the growth and development of museum professionals at African American museums.
Donor Name: Institute of Museum and Library Services
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 11/15/2024
Size of the Grant: $100,000 to $500,000
Grant Duration: 3 Years
Details:
The AAHC program supports projects that nurture museum professionals, build institutional capacity, and increase access to museum and archival collections at African American museums and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs).
Projects that build the capacity of African American museums should be designed to also meet the needs of their community. They may involve:
- increasing the number of museum professionals working at African American museums to enable the museum to expand and enhance their programming and exhibitions;
- fostering collaborations within the community, to include schools, institutions of higher education, and other cultural organizations;
- enhancing leadership and interpersonal skills, organizational operations, and professional management;
- providing for enhanced care, conservation, and expanded access to collections, including special collections housed within university libraries and archives at HBCUs; or
- creating organizational sustainability by developing emergency planning documents that address preparedness and response.
IMLS encourage museum professionals and institutions to share and adopt best practices and innovations by creating skill-building and capacity-expanding programs that focus on investing in all levels of existing and future museum staff.
Projects that support the growth and development of museum professionals at African American museums focus on enhancing the pipeline from student to museum leader by:
- hosting paid internships at African American museums that provide fair compensation for the level of work requested and the geographic locality;
- creating mentorship and/or apprenticeship opportunities for emerging and mid-career staff to connect with, learn from and engage with senior leaders and founders in the African American museum community; or
- reinvesting in current museum staff to create learning and growth opportunities that build hard and soft skills and enhance expertise in museum-related subjects and areas of need.
Funding Information
- Estimated Total Program Funding: $ 6,000,000.
- Expected amount of individual awards – Small Projects $5,000 – $100,000.
- Expected amount of individual awards – Large Projects $100,001 – $500,000.
Grant Period
July 1, 2025 – June 30, 2028.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for an award under the ALHC program, your organization must meet all three of the following eligibility criteria:
- Your organization must be:
- a unit of State, local, or Tribal government; or
- a private, nonprofit organization that has tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code of 1954.
- Your organization must be located in:
- one of the 50 States of the United States of America,
- the District of Columbia,
- the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico,
- the U.S. Virgin Islands,
- Guam,
- American Samoa,
- the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands,
- the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
- the Federated States of Micronesia, or
- the Republic of Palau.
- Your organization must qualify as one of the following:
- A museum whose primary purpose, as reflected in its mission, is African American life, art, history, and/or culture, encompassing: the period of slavery; the era of Reconstruction; the Harlem renaissance; the civil rights movement; or other periods of the African American diaspora; and:
- uses a professional staff;
- is organized on a permanent basis for essentially educational, cultural heritage, or aesthetic purposes;
- owns or uses tangible objects, including living collections;
- cares for these objects; and
- exhibits these objects to the general public on a regular basis through facilities that it owns or operates.
- A museum whose primary purpose, as reflected in its mission, is African American life, art, history, and/or culture, encompassing: the period of slavery; the era of Reconstruction; the Harlem renaissance; the civil rights movement; or other periods of the African American diaspora; and:
For more information, visit Grants.gov.
