Humanities Grants

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Humanities Grants

• Phyllis McBride, Ph.D.
• Assistant Director
• Office of Proposal Development

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Why seek funding?

• To obtain a fellowship to reduce teaching load
  and focus on a research project
• To travel to an archive, library, or museum to
  access primary and secondary materials
• To attend a professional conference to give a
  presentation and/or networkwith colleagues

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How to identify funding opportunities

• Articulate the topic and purpose of your proposed
  research project
• Ensures that your research agenda drives your
  funding search
• Enables you to conduct a more refined search

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How to identify funding opportunities

• Remain open-minded as you search
• Do consider collaborating with a colleague on an
  interdisciplinary project
• Do consider framing your research project in a
  new way
• Dont force your topic to fit a program for
  which it is obviously not appropriate

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How to identify funding opportunities

• Numerous resources are available to help you find
  the funding program that is most likely to
  support your research
• Campus resources
• Sponsor web sites
• Funding opportunity databases

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How to identify funding opportunities

• Become self-sufficient in conducting searches of
  funding opportunity databases
• Recognize that self-directed searches are the
  most productive
• Sign up for automatic funding alerts!

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Consider all possible sources of funds

• Internal funding opportunities
• External funding opportunities

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Consider internal funding

• Departmental grants
• College grants
• Program to Enhance Scholarly and Creative
  Activities
• Mexican-American and Latino Research Center
• Race and Ethnic Studies Institute

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Consider external funding

• Federal, state, and local grants
• Private, corporate, and community foundations
• Professional associations

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Find external funding

• Community of Science
• http//www.cos.com
• Grants.gov
• http//www.grants.gov
• Foundation Center
• http//foundationcenter.org/pnd/rfp/
• TAMU Office of Proposal Development
• http//opd.tamu.edu/funding-opportunities

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Find funding opportunities Community of Science

• Located at http//www.cos.com/
• Features
• International scope
• Includes opportunities from federal agencies,
  private foundations, and corporate sponsors
• Presents 24,000 records representing 400,000
  opportunities worth more than 33 billion
• Offers an automatic funding alert service

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Community of Science
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Community of Science

• Search by keyword, sponsor, or geographic region

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Find funding opportunitiesGrants.gov

• Located at http//www.grants.gov
• Features
• National scope
• Includes opportunities from federal sponsors
  only
• Single point of contact for all 26 federal
  grant-making agencies
• Presents more than 900 grant programs
• Offers an automatic funding alert service

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Grants.gov
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Grants.gov
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Find funding opportunitiesFoundation Center

• Located at http//www.fdncenter.org/
• Features
• Profiles of more than 75,000 foundations
• http//lnp.foundationcenter.org/finder.html
• Virtual training classroom
• http//fdncenter.org/learn/classroom/index.jhtml
• Philanthropy News Digest RFP Bulletin
• http//www.fdncenter.org/pnd/rfp/

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Foundation Center
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PND RFP Bulletin
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Major funders of humanities research

• Federal
• National Endowment of the Humanities
• National Endowment for the Arts
• Institute of Museum and Library Services
• American Council of Learned Societies

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National Endowment for the Humanities

• Background
• Created in 1965
• Largest funder of humanities programs in the
  United States
• Requesting an appropriation of 144,355,000 for
  FY 2009

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NEH

• Mission
• Serves and strengthens the nation by promoting
  excellence in the humanities and conveying the
  lessons of history to all Americans
• Dedicated to supporting research, education,
  preservation, and public programs in the
  humanities

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NEH

• Program areas
• Research
• Education
• Public programs
• Preserving and providing access to cultural
  resources
• Endowment-wide initiatives
• We the People
• Digital Humanities
• Rediscovering Afghanistan

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NEH

• Funding mechanisms for research
• Fellowships
• Home institution
• Independent research institutions
• Teaching development
• Digital humanities
• Special topics
• Scholarly editions
• Summer stipends

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National Endowment for the Arts

• Background
• Created in 1965
• Largest annual funder of the arts in the United
  States official arts organization of the United
  States government
• Requesting an appropriation of 128,412,000 for
  FY 2009

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NEA

• Mission
• To support excellence in the arts, both new and
  established
• To bring the arts to all Americans
• To provide leadership in arts education

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NEA

• Program areas
• Arts Education
• Dance
• Design
• Folk Traditional Arts
• Literature
• Local Arts Agencies
• Media Arts Film/Radio/Television
• Museums
• Music
• Musical Theater
• Opera
• Presenting
• State Regional
• Theater
• Visual Arts

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NEA

• National initiatives
• The Big Read
• Operation Homecoming Writing the Wartime
  Experience
• Poetry Out Loud
• NEA Jazz Masters
• American Masterpieces
• NEA Arts Journalism Institutes
• Shakespeare in American Communities
• Great American Voices Military Base Tour

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NEA

• Funding mechanisms for research
• Literature Fellowships for creative writing
  and translation projects
• Jazz Masters fellowships the nations highest
  honor in this distinctly American music
• National Heritage Fellowships for master folk
  and traditional artists

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Institute of Museum and Library Services

• Background
• Created in 1996
• Primary source of federal support for the
  nations 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums
• Requesting an appropriation of 271,246,000 in FY
  2009

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IMLS

• Mission
• Primary source of federal support for the
  nations 122,000 libraries and 17,500 museums
• To create strong libraries and museums that
  connect people to information and ideas.

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IMLS

• Program areas
• Collections management
• Community engagement
• Conservation
• Demonstration
• Digital collections/tools
• Formal education
• Informal learning
• Partnerships
• Professional development
• Public programs
• Research

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IMLS

• Funding mechanisms for research
• Research
• Early career development program
• Doctoral programs
• Masters level programs
• Pre-professional programs
• Continuing education programs
• Programs to build institutional capacity

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American Council of Learned Societies

• Background
• Created in 1919
• A private, nonprofit federation of 70 national
  scholarly organizations
• The preeminent representative of American
  scholarship in the humanities and related social
  sciences

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ACLS

• Mission
• To advance humanistic studies in all fields of
  learning in the humanities and the social
  sciences
• To maintain and strengthen relations among the
  national societies devoted to such studies
• To explore new methods and subjects of humanities
  research
• To represent humanities scholarship at home and
  abroad

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ACLS

• Program areas
• American studies anthropology archaeology art
  and architectural history classics economics
  film geography history languages and
  literatures legal studies linguistics
  musicology philosophy political science
  psychology religious studies rhetoric,
  communication, and media studies science,
  technology, and medicine studies sociology and
  theater, dance, and performance studies.
• Proposals in the social science fields listed
  above are eligible only if they employ
  predominantly humanistic approaches (e.g.,
  economic history, law and literature, political
  philosophy).

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ACLS

• Funding mechanisms for research
• Fellowships
• ACLS Fellowship Competitions and Deadlines
• http//www.acls.org/grants/Single.aspx?id352

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Conclusion

• Questions?