Welcome to the Institute of Museum and Library Services
Webinar for American Latino Museum Internship and Fellowship Initiative
as part of our Fiscal Year 2023 Information session.
My name is Gibran Villalobos and I'll be hosting this webinar.
We're delighted that you are interested in learning more
about the American Latino Museum Internship and Fellowship Initiative,
which I'll refer to as ALMIFI moving forward.
Our goal in this presentation is to provide specific information
about the American Latino Museum Internship and Fellowship
Initiative and make some recommendations that you may
wish to consider when preparing your application.
Since this is a prerecorded webinar and you won't have the
opportunity to ask questions, feel free to contact me or other
staff in the Office of Museum Services to seek answers to your
questions or to discuss a project idea. The staff contact
slide is shown later in this webinar.
This is one of a series of webinars designed to help you
find the information you need and to create a more competitive
application for IMS museum funding. Choosing a Funding
Opportunity for FY 2023 is available as a recording and as
a PDF of the slides, along with transcripts on our website at
the link on this slide.
The webinar covers the IMLS vision, mission and strategic
plan with an emphasis on how they influence our grant making
process.
We also address institutional eligibility, provide a quick
overview of all our funding opportunities, discuss how to
find more information on our website, provide tips to help
you complete an application, and we cover the places with which
you must be registered in order to apply for an IMS grant. There
are also individual webinars for each of the museum grant
programs.
In this presentation we'll be addressing the following topics
where to find information I'll meet the overview, eligibility
characteristics of successful amici projects, important dates.
How much and how many? I'll meet the goals, application
components, Review criteria, application tips, timelines and
contexts.
I also want to make sure to point out where the application
process begins which is on our website. Use the Grants drop
down menu and choose Apply for a grant.
Clicking that will take you to a list of grant programs from
which you will choose American Latino Museum Internship and
Fellowship Initiative.
These guidelines, or our notice of funding opportunity that we
call NOFOs you can see on the right, are downloadable as a
PDF.
These NOFOs, as we call them, will walk you through the
application process and contain most of the information I will
provide today.
Now for some background. The American Latino History and
Culture Grant program was created by an act of Congress in
2020, the same act that created the Smithsonian National Museum
of the American Latino.
The legislation that directed IMLS to create a
grant program to improve operations, care of collections,
and development of professional management at American Latino
museums. The American Latino Museum Internship and Fellowship
Initiative sits under the A, L, H C, and it's designed to strengthen
the institutional capacity in the American Latino Museum
community.
You can be one of three types of organizations to be eligible to
apply to ALMIFI. If you're applying as a museum, you will
need to certify that you use a professional staff.
The organized on a permanent basis for essentially
educational or esthetic purposes.
Own or use tangible objects, either animate or inanimate, and
care for these objects and exhibit these objects to the
general public on a regular basis at at least 120 days a
year, and conduct these activities in facilities that
you own or operate.
Regarding the 120 day rule during our current COVID-19
reality, you can count that these 120 days in either the
year preceding the application due date, the year preceding
your first shutdown due to COVID-19 and this might be
helpful if you're local,
has had an on and off closures throughout the pandemic,
or you can use a calendar year preceding the current one. So in
this case that would be 2022.
You must also be in partnership with an institution of higher
education, including Hispanic serving institutions. The lead
applicant can be the university or college in partnership with
the museum or vice versa. Either is correct, as long as there is
a partnership in place.
In addition to the general IMLS funding eligibility criteria,
the ALMIFI grant program has specific eligibility criteria
that is described in the NOFO. The Notice of Funding
Opportunity. To be eligible for an award under the FY 2023
American Latino Museum Internship and Fellowship
Initiative, you must qualify as one of the following.
A museum whose primary purpose is reflected in its mission
is American Latino Life, Art, history, and or culture.
A not-for-profit museum, service, organization or
association whose primary purpose, as reflected in its
mission, is to support American Latino museums and an
institution of higher education, including Hispanic serving
institutions.
Let's now discuss the purpose of this grant program.
ALMIFI will support projects that engage in museum based
internships and fellowship opportunities in
partnership with institutions of higher education so that museums
can improve services for the American public.
ALMIFI is all about meeting the needs of the museum field,
our institutions and our professionals.
We invest in these partnerships that expand opportunities in the field
and devise plants to move museums forward through the development
of resources and tools for use by multiple institutions, and, or
groups of museum professionals.
All requests must be between $100,000 and $750,000, including
both direct and indirect costs. If you ask for less than
$100,000 or more than $750,000, your application will be
rejected and not reviewed.
There is no cost share requirement for ALMIFI, though
you may include one if your organization will contribute
funds towards this particular project. It's important to note
that if you decide to include cost share in your application,
it must be met by the end of the award. We will hold you to that
figure, so keep that in mind when applying.
Cost share may be in the form of cash, staff or volunteer time or
third party contributions. It may not be funds from another
federal source. In terms of how many applications you may
submit, there is no limit to the number of applications you can
file in response to the FY 23 funding announcement for ALMIFI.
As you consider the option to submit more than one
application, we urge you to think about the capacity of your
organization to manage multiple federal awards at once.
Now I want to talk about the two program goals for ALMIFI.
Your project must align with one of the two program goals and a
set of corresponding objectives.
Goal and Objective choices should be identified clearly in the narrative
For this, you'll want to look at Section D2c as part of the NOFO.
Goal one is the support of museum-based undergraduate internships.
Its objectives correspond to the types of projects ALMIFI supports.
An example of this would be developing a new curriculum for museum studies programs,
with a lens on American Latino life for use by museums across the country.
This could correspond to Objective 1.1.
If there's already an existing internship program that is being
expanded in relation to American Latino culture, this could
correspond to objective 1.2.
Goal #2 is about the Museum Based Fellowship to increase
museum career opportunities for individuals focused on American
Latino culture.
The two objectives are parallel to those that we saw in Goal
Number one, they support the development or scaling up
fellowship models for museum professionals on topics that
increase their ability to work with the museums centering
American Latino culture.
Projects with in Goal #2 would establish or expand advanced
professional studies, mentorship, or practical
research.
Next up are the documents that make up your application and
that you will upload into grant.gov.
These application components fall into 3 categories. The 1st
is required documents. All applications must include these.
The second group is conditionally required
documents. Some applications must include these. It might
depend on the nature of your institution or some aspect of
your project. For example, if you are a nonprofit
organization, you must include your proof of nonprofit letter
from the IRS if you are proposing a project that will.
Produce a digital product. You must include a digital product
plan.
If you meet the condition, omission of any one of these can
result in the exclusion of your application from further
consideration.
The third group of application components are supporting
documents. These are completely optional. You may submit some or
none. Think about including only those that supplement or backup
your narrative.
You may refer to these materials in your narrative so your
reviewers know where to look. For example, if you are basing
your project on successful work you have done in your museum,
you may want to indicate that an evaluation report is included as
supporting material. This is not the place to introduce new
information and also be respectful of your reviewer's
time.
In the ALMIFI NOFO, you will find a table of application components.
We recommend that you use this as a checklist to keep yourself
organized. It is divided into required, conditionally required
and supporting documents.
The middle column tells you about document formats, and the
third tells you how to name each document.
Note that deviating from the naming convention or upload a
document that is not a PDF, such as Word or Excel, will result in
an error and the system might think that the document is not
present.
This table also provides links to instructions and forms.
Now let's talk about the narrative of your proposal. You
have 10 pages to cover, 3 sections.
Project Justification. In this section of the narrative, you
should lay out the reasoning for your project. Tell us in the
clearest terms what need, problem, or challenge you expect
to address, how you identified it, or who or what will benefit
from your work, and how your project will address the goals
of the American Latino Museum Internship and Fellowship
Initiative.
Note that reviewers have prompts that correspond to these
questions. You will find this information in section E1 of the
Notice of Funding Opportunity.
For this section of the narrative, reviewers will
consider how well you've defended the need, problem, or
challenge that you are seeking to address. How well have you
identified who or what will benefit from the project, and
how good of a job you've done in involving them in the planning
process.
Reviewers also value external needs assessment or research
that can support and validate your need. They'll look at who
particularly will benefit and how the museum field will
benefit, and they will weigh in on your demonstrated
understanding of current research and practice in that
area.
Project work plan.
The project work plan is the part of the narrative in which
you explain what you will do, how you plan to address risks
that may be present, who will do the project when, and using what
resources. Consider who will plan, implement, and manage your
project and what time, financial personnel, and other resources
will you need to carry out these activities. The reviewers will
be looking for evidence that you know what you are doing. Have
the right people at the table.
That the project is realistic, that there is room to change
course if needed.
Project results.
The final section of your narrative should be devoted to
articulating your projects intended results.
What specific results are you intend to achieve in your
project and what will change as a result?
Tell us how you will sustain the benefits of your project beyond
the lifespan of this particular project. So in other words, when
the federal funding goes away, how will the benefit to the
field be sustained?
Reviewers will register their thoughts about how likely it is
that you will deliver on the results that you've proposed.
How useful, and whether your plan for sustaining the benefits
of the project are reasonable and practical.
When preparing your proposal, be careful to include only
allowable costs in both your IMLS requests and your cost share.
To do otherwise can hurt your chances of getting positive
reviews and being recommended for funding. We'll go through
some common expenses that are allowable and unallowable, but
for details, please see two CFR 200. This is the part of the
Code of the Federal Regulations covering Uniform Administrative
Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for
Federal Awards.
Fortunately, the regulations are available online in a searchable
format on the US Government Publishing Office website, and a
link is listed on this slide.
Of particular interest is subpart E, cost principles.
So, allowable costs in the ALMIFI Notice of Funding Opportunity,
we provide a partial list of the most common examples
of allowable costs for this grant program.
These include: personnel salaries, wages and fringe
benefits, travel expenses for keep project staff and
consultants, materials, supplies, software and equipment
related directly to project activities.
Third party costs, for example, program evaluation or software
development. You can also include honoraria, stipends and
other compensation from project participants, for example
community members or advisers.
Staff and volunteer training, paid internships or fellowships,
indirect or overhead costs. So these costs may be part of what
you ask IMLS to pay for and or what you will pay for as part of
your cost share if one should be included.
Now, the unallowable costs include general fundraising
costs, such as development, office staff or other staff time
devoted to general fundraising,
contributions to endowments, general operating support.
These costs are part of what we support through your indirect costs,
Acquisition of collections, general advertising,
or public relation costs, designed solely for promotional activities,
other than does related to the specific project.
Construction or renovation of facilities.
And fabrication and other types of work can be allowable.
Check with us if you have any questions regarding this.
Social activities, ceremony's, reception or entertainment.
Note that sometimes food can be allowable,
for example, when you need to feed kids or teens during working lunch
at a training workshop and research projects.
So, these costs may not be part of what you're asked IMLS to pay for,
nor can they be part of what you will pay for as part of your cost share, if one is included
In fact, unallowable expenses can't show up anywhere in your proposal.
Something to keep in mind.
I want to provide some application tips. First on the
list is to register early. You must have an active sam.gov
registration and know your unique entity identifier, your
UEFI, which is generated through your Sam account. You must also
have a current and functional grants.gov registration.
Check to see whether your grants.gov registration is
associated with the former staff member whose password might be a
mystery to you.
And of course, leave time to deal with these eventualities.
They are bound to happen.
It's also crucial to remember that your sam.gov registration
expires each year and you must renew it. This can sometimes
take about two or three weeks, so be sure to check in on
sam.gov and find out your status at login.gov.
Some other important things to know.
Read the application guidelines: the NOFOs we know it's a long document,
but it contains essential information on how to prepare your application components.
Schedule a counseling call with one of our staff. We're available to answer
your questions and these often come as part of the process on general questions.
And later, you may have a very specific or detailed question about a particular component.
You can e-mail us or call us with your questions.
Describe your museum well and vividly, and use recent,
relevant data to make your point. Reviewers will look at
the application to try to understand your museum. Be sure
to give them a good description.
Follow the narrative outline in the NOFO and consider using the
same headings to make it easy for reviewers to read your
application.
Avoid acronyms and jargon. The people who will review your
application are experts, but they may not be totally familiar
with your shorthand.
Make it easy for them to understand what you mean.
Ask a colleague to read the narrative with fresh eyes.
Ask them to act like a reviewer who's seeing this for the very
first time. Do this well in advance of the submission
deadline, so you have adequate time to edit the narrative if
necessary.
Be sure your application is complete. Check it against the
table of application components to be sure you're not missing
any required components.
Then submit to grants.gov early so you have time to correct any
errors before the deadline.
Other important things to know.
Applications are due on grants.gov on August 7, 2023.
The awards will be announced in late September, and we look to
seeing the projects begin on September 27, 2023.
Thank you very much for your interest in IMLS and in the American Latino Museum,
Internship and Fellowship Initiative.
We hope you have found this information and this webinar
helpful. Here's a listing of the names, e-mail addresses and
direct phone numbers for program staff in the Office of Museum
Services. There is also a list of staff on our website with
contact information.
We encourage you to contact us with any questions that you
might have. We'll be sure to respond and always we're happy
to help.
And remember that our website is the central place for
information about applying for IMLS grants.
Thanks.