Hello and welcome to the Institute of Museum and Library
Services Informational Video, the 21st Century Museum
Professionals Grant Program Applicant Information Session.
My name is Mark Isaksen, one of the program staff here in the
Office of Museum Services at IMLS, and I'll be narrating this
presentation for you.
The goal of this video is to provide an overview of our 21st
century Museum professionals program referred to as 21MP, as
well as the process of preparing an application for funding.
The video is organized into six chapters.
What is 21 MP?
This introductory section explains the purpose and design
of the grant program.
Next is what can 21 MP grants fund and this section provides
detail on the types of projects funded in this grant program and
the amount of funds that can be requested.
Next is the application components where we introduced
the different components and documents that are needed to
create a grant application.
We can go into detail about two of the application components,
the narrative and the budget.
And then finally, some tips and next steps.
The complete set of instructions for how to prepare and submit a
21 MP grant application are found in the Notice of Funding
Opportunity published on grants.gov and also available on
the IMLS website.
Please refer to the Notice of Funding Opportunity for the most
detailed information To prepare your application.
To get the most out of this video, we recommend that you
watch it in its entirety.
This will give you an understanding of the 21 MP
program, the types of projects that can be funded, and the
necessary application components.
You may also want to review the Notice of Funding Opportunity
before, during, or after you watch the video.
Notice is a Funding Opportunity.
Also referred to as nofos are documents that detail the
requirements of each of our grant programs for fiscal year
2024.
All of our NOFOs can be found at imls.gov/grants as you navigate
the application process.
You can use this video as a reference tool.
And if you'd like to stick to a specific section, please use the
time bar or the links in the description box to navigate to
the different chapters.
In this section, we will answer the question What is the 21 MP
program providing information on the purpose and intent of the
program and who it is designed to serve.
The 21st century museum professionals or 21 MP program
provides grant funding opportunities to advance the
growth and development of a diverse workforce of museum
professionals.
The 21 MP program fulfils A strategic objective for IMLS to
support the training and professional development of the
museum and library workforce, which is listed in our agency
strategic plan for 2022 to 2026.
IMLS is legislatively authorized to create and operate this grant
program in 20 USC Chapter 72, Museum and Library Services,
Subchapter 3, Section 9175.
The 21 MP program supports projects that offer professional
development to the current museum workforce.
We also support projects that employ strategies to train and
recruit the future museum professionals and we support
projects that support evaluation efforts to identify and share
effective practices in museum training and professional
development.
IMLS recognizes the important role of strong local and
regional networks as an essential tool for providing
peer-to-peer learning, training and mentoring opportunities.
The 21 MP program encourages applications from museum
associations, museum studies, programs at institutions of
higher education, and museums that serve as key parts of the
professional learning and training environment.
Applicants to the 21 MP program may include museums that serve
as key parts of the professional learning and training
environment, and museums, like all applicants, must meet
certain requirements to be eligible for IMLS funding.
Your organization must be located in one of the United
States, 50 states, its territories, or the District of
Columbia, and your organization must be a unit of state, local
or tribal government or or a private nonprofit organization
with tax exempt status.
If you meet those two requirements then the next step
is to consider what it means to be eligible for IMLS funding as
a museum and basically museums must have at least one full time
or equivalent professional staff, person paid or unpaid,
have a physical location that it owns or operates, have been open
to the public for at least 120 days in a year prior to the
application deadline, and own or use tangible objects and museums
can be, you know, stand alone.
Organizations are part of a larger institution such as a
college, university, tribe, or state or local government.
The 21 MP program is also open to any organization or
association that engages in activities designed to advance
the well-being of museums and the museum profession.
Applicants in this eligibility category may be national,
regional, state, or discipline based associations or related
organizations that primarily serve the museum field.
These organizations, like all applicants, must meet certain
requirements to be eligible for IMLS funding.
Your organization must be located in one of the United
States, 50 states, its territories where the District
of Columbia and your organization must be a unit of
state, local or tribal government or a private
nonprofit organization with tax exempt status.
Also, the 21 MP program is open to institutions of higher
education.
An institution of higher education includes public and
nonprofit universities who may offer museum studies or related
programs that support the training of museum
professionals.
These programs may be in the form of undergraduate, graduate,
or professional and continuing education as an institution of
higher education.
Like other types of applicants, you must meet certain
requirements to be eligible for IMLS funding.
Again, your organization must be located in one of the United
States, 50 states, its territories, or the District of
Columbia, and your organization must be a unit unit of state,
local or tribal, government, or private nonprofit organization
with tax exempt status.
In this section, we will answer the question What can 21 MP
Grants Fund providing details on the types of projects and
associated goals within the 21st Century Museum Professionals
Grant Program.
Like so many of the IMLS grant programs, the 21 MP grants are
intended to support project based activities, so let's take
a minute to consider just what that means.
The Project Management Institute has a good definition, which is
a project is a temporary endeavour undertaken to create a
unique product, service or result.
They also further explain that a project is temporary because it
has a defined beginning and end, and therefore a defined scope
and resources.
A project is unique in that it is not a routine operation, but
rather a specific set of operations designed to
accomplish a singular goal, and we recommend that you keep this
definition in mind as you conceptualize your IMLS project.
Think of it as a temporary non routine set of activities which
collectively have a beginning and an end in time.
A defined scope requiring specific resources which are
designed to accomplish a specific and singular goal.
Now with a solid grounding and project based design, your
project should also contain a few additional key
characteristics that are essential in the 21 MP program.
First is in depth knowledge.
The project design reflects A thorough understanding of
current practice related to training museum professionals
inclusive approach.
This refers to employing inclusive strategies to reach
target audiences at multiple institutions.
Also, think about audience focus.
The project should engage museum staff, leadership, and
volunteers.
You know, really at any stage of career development and
measurable results, we want your project to generate measurable
results that tied directly to the need or challenge it was
designed to address.
And successful projects should exemplify all these
characteristics and will then fit well within the 21 MP grant
program.
Now it's time to consider how your project aligns with the
specific grant program goals and associated objectives.
Goal one is to support the professional development of the
museum workforce, including those from diverse and
underrepresented backgrounds.
Projects that have a primary focus on the current museum
workforce are aligned with this goal.
Supporting the goal one focus on the current workforce of museum
professionals are two associated objectives and you can select
one or both of these.
The first objective is to develop new or enhanced
professional development and training programs for the museum
workforce.
This objective applies to any project that is creating a new
training program or expanding an existing training program with a
target audience of the current museum workforce.
And the target audience can be for people at any stage of their
career.
It might be early career emerging, experienced, senior
level, all levels or any level of stage of their career.
It's for you and your project to design and describe the target
audience.
The 2nd objective under Goal One is to support the assessment and
evaluation of training and professional development
programs and to identify and share effective practices.
This objective is essential for those projects that will be
conducting rigorous evaluation and assessment of training
programs to analyze and distill those results and share findings
with relevant and interested sectors of the museum, field and
professional training and higher education ecosystem.
Now let's look at the second program goal for 21 MP.
Goal two is for projects that will recruit and train future
museum professionals, including those from diverse and under
represented backgrounds.
Projects aligned with this goal will have a primary audience
focus on the future workforce.
Supporting Goal 2 with the focus on the future workforce are
three associated objectives and you can select one or more of
these objectives.
Objective 2.1 is to increase the number of students from diverse
and underrepresented backgrounds enrolled in graduate and
undergraduate museum related programs.
This objective connects to projects that directly involve
museum studies or related programs at institutions of
higher education.
Objective 2.3 is to recruit future museum professionals from
diverse and under represented backgrounds through paid
internships or mentoring and fellowship opportunities.
And this objective aligns with projects that focus on the
recruitment, placement and retention of people entering the
museum field and may involve activities such as paid
mentorships, paid internships, mentorship opportunities, or
other activities that foster the connections between training and
professional development and higher education students and
job opportunities in the museum field.
Objective 2.3 is for projects that support assessment and
evaluation of recruitment, training, and higher education
programs to identify and share effective practices.
Now.
This objective is essential for those projects that will be
conducting rigorous evaluation and assessment of programs
focused on the future workforce.
This can be focused on evaluating new programs or
conducting retrospective or longitudinal analysis of
existing programs, and to share findings with relevant and
interested sectors of the museum field, and professional training
in higher education ecosystems.
Now, regardless of the program goals selected, all 21 MP
projects must stay within a specific range of funding.
In this grant program, your project budget can request a
minimum of 100,000 to a maximum of 500,000 in federal funds.
Keep your budget aligned to the scope and scale of your project
and include all costs necessary to complete the proposed
activities.
And in this program all project budgets are required to have at
least a one to one non federal cost share.
Now here are some examples to illustrate that point.
So if your total project budget was 200,000, you would be able
to request 100,000 in federal funds and provide a cost share
of at least 100,000.
Now let's say your total project budget was 500,000.
Then you would be able to request 250 in federal funds and
cost share another 250 for a total project budget of 500,000.
Now if your total project budget was $1,000,000, then you'd be
able to request 500,000 in federal grant funds and provide
a cost share of at least 500,000.
So again, the federal share, the minimum is 100 and the maximum
is 500,000 and cost share can take a number of forms.
Among them are cash, staff time, volunteer time, third party
contribution, grants from other sources and support from
foundations or state or local government.
Cost share cannot come from other federal sources.
In this section, we will introduce the components of a 21
MP grant application and provide an overview about the Required,
Conditionally Required and Supporting documents.
The 21 MP Notice of Funding Opportunity includes a complete
list of all the application components and most of these are
created by applicants and saved as APDF for uploading as part of
your application package and grants.gov The table of
application components list which application components are
required as well as those that are conditionally required.
For example, some components are included in the application
depending on the type of applicant or the type of
project.
These are the required documents and all applications must
include the documents listed here.
Omission of even just one might result in your applications
reject rejection.
Also important to note, there is a 7 page limit for the
narrative.
If you exceed the page limit specified in the Notice of
Funding Opportunity, we must remove the extras before your
application goes out for review.
So make sure your content fits into the page limits specified
and make sure the number of pages holds when you convert
your documents to a PDF.
The second category of application components is that
of Conditionally required documents.
Some applications must include 1-2 or even all of these, and so
it's your job to figure out which are required for yours.
If you're applying as a nonprofit, you must include your
proof of nonprofit status, such as your IRS determination
letter.
If you're using a federally negotiated indirect cost rate in
your budget, you must include a copy of your final rate
agreement and if you will, create a digital
If you were are creating digital products during the course of
your project, then you must complete and submit a Digital
products plan.
And just like the required documents, if you forget one of
these or omit one might result in your application being
rejected.
So Please note that the term digital product includes any
digitized and born digital content, resources or assets and
software.
And so, if you're creating any of these types of materials, you
should include the form with your application.
The third group of application components is supporting
documents.
Supporting documents are optional.
You may submit some or none, including only the, but just
include only those items that will supplement your proposal.
This is not the place to introduce brand new information.
Rather, it's an opportunity to provide documents that support
your project justification and your work plan and your results,
as well as your budget justification.
For example, have you identified a partner or consultant whose
involvement is key to the project's success?
Well, if so, a letter of support or commitment would go a long
way to reassuring reviewers that they are on board and the
project will succeed.
Now, we recommend that you be respectful of your reviewers
time and avoid any temptation to include hundreds of pages of
extraneous material.
So being judicious really does help and work to your benefit.
It's important to include what's helpful and directly relevant to
your project and stop there.
In the following sections of this presentation, we will focus
on these application components, the narrative, and the budget.
Go to the Notice of Funding Opportunity for complete
instructions on how to prepare and complete all of the
application components.
In this section, we'll go over the questions you'll need to
answer in your project narrative and offer details on the review
criteria associated with each section, project justification,
project work plan, and project results.
Let's talk about the narrative of your proposal.
You have 7 pages to cover 3 very important issues, and the Notice
of Funding Opportunity provides lengthy guidance on what the
narrative should cover.
First is the project justification, and in this
section will ask you to tell us which program goal and
associated objectives you're going to address.
What need, problem, or challenge you're going to address?
Who's the target group for your project and how have they been
involved?
Who are the beneficiaries for this project, and how will the
museum field benefit from your project?
Now, in Section E of the Notice of Funding Opportunity, under
Review criteria, you'll find a list of the questions that
reviewers are asked to consider when they review your proposal.
It's a good idea to refer to these as you craft your
narrative to be certain that you are providing reviewers clear,
solid information, and that you'll see that they correspond
fairly directly with the prompts you are given to write your
narrative.
Reviewers will want to see how your project connects to the
goals of the 21 MP program.
They want to understand how relevant data or best practice
has been used to describe the need, problem, or challenge.
And we want to know that you have appropriately identified
the target group and beneficiaries for your proposed
project and how stakeholders have been involved in the
planning and design of the project.
Now, one of the prompts in the project justification section of
the narrative is to is the identification of the need,
problem, or challenge that your project addresses, and it's a
foundational part of your application.
So keep these points in mind that the federal government
wants to invest in in something that's going to get better,
right?
Something's going to improve with the actions taken in the
grant.
So as you define your need, problem or challenge, articulate
what will get better as a result of your project as precisely as
possible.
Will someone learn something or develop a skill?
What's going to happen?
You want to identify why it is important that this particular
change happens and hone your problem definition carefully and
use clear and succinct terms and include data that's will support
your problem definition.
Next in the project work plan is where we talk about The Who,
what, when and how, who will do what activities, when and using
what resources.
You should explain how you will track your progress towards
achieving your results and what you'll do if you need to correct
course.
We also asked you to think about risks that are inherent in your
particular project and tell us how you've taken that into
account and your planning, And I'll talk about that again in
another slide.
And again, the reviewers are given this list of questions in
Section E of the Notice of Funding Opportunity.
You'll see this this list repeated, and reviewers are
asked to consider what when they review your proposal is to see
if you provided effective and substantive responses.
So, for example, they want to know how your proposed
activities are informed by relevant theory and practice.
They want to know that you've cleared, clearly stated, the
goals, assumptions, and potential risks that have been
formed the design of your project.
They want to know that you've discussed how the consultants
and service providers have the skills necessary to get the
results you want from your project, and that you've
allocated adequate staff, time and resources to be successful
in completing the work.
We also want to know that you've developed a method for tracking
your progress and making changes when necessary.
Now, I mentioned risks earlier, and we do ask you to think about
risks that are inherent in your particular project and if there
are risks, how you've taken that into account of your planning.
There's no checklist of risks, but every project probably has
them, and the best proposals will show that you're aware of
them and have thought through a plan for dealing with them.
So look at your activities and think about what could go wrong,
and focus on the ones where your experience tells you yes, that
could happen, you know and think through some steps and how you
would respond.
We know things sometimes go differently than expected, and
we just want you to be prepared by identifying some options.
So here's in an example or two.
So a project may be dependent upon fundraising to generate the
cost share, but it's not completed by the time the
application is submitted.
So what will the institution do if that money is not available
by the time the project gets under way?
Or maybe a project is going to do a listening session with
staff?
And what if staff feedback suggests different needs or
issues or challenges as a priority for training or project
may be structured around interns?
And what will happen if one or more interns drops out?
How do you replace the mid project?
Or maybe you have a key partner or consultant and they are no
longer available.
What do you do?
These are just a few examples, and again, we want you to just
think through what is likely to happen with your potential
project.
The third section of your narrative should be devoted to
articulating your project's intended results, and this
section is your chance to convince the reviewers that your
project will result in something getting better.
The need or problem you identified in your project
justification will be addressed directly, and it will be
diminished or eliminated altogether.
So we asked you to tell us what data you will collect and report
in order to measure your project's success.
And if your project's going to generate some tangible product,
you want to give you the chance to describe that product and
make the case that it's going to be useful to your target
audience.
And last but not least, we asked you to tell us how you will
sustain the benefit of the project and what's going to
happen after the grant.
Is over.
Again, the reviewers are going to be looking for this kind of
to answer these kinds of questions when they look at the
narrative.
These are also found in Section E of the Notice of Funding
Opportunity.
Basically, all of the results should tie back to your need,
problem, or challenge.
We often hear, though that defining intended results and
success measures is challenging for applicants.
So it's worth spending a moment here to talk about results.
So let's think back to the question we referenced a few
slides ago when we talked about defining the need, problem or
challenge that your project is addressing.
And if you said someone will learn something, how will you
know that?
And maybe you said you want to advance equity in the museum
field, Well, how will that be measured?
The focus on results and measuring success in meaningful
ways is not new.
And there's been a tremendous amount of work done on ways to
measure success and measure results For you as an applicant,
though, we encourage you to consider using a logic model or
an outcome Outcomes based Evaluation tool to explain your
intended results and your plan for achieving them.
So to recap, your narrative has three sections, a project
justification, a project Work plan, and Project Results, and
you have 7 pages for that.
The sections are all equally important, right?
Clearly address what we asked you to address in the questions,
and keep an eye on those review criteria.
We're telling you here exactly what the reviewers will look
for, so make it easy for them to find it and understand it.
In this section we will provide information on what to include
in your project budget, budget justification, and provide some
examples of allowable and unallowable costs.
An important component of your application is the budget.
This is the part of the application where you specify
all the costs associated with your proposed project.
The budget consists of two required components, the IMLS
budget form and the budget justification.
The budget form is a fillable PDF that accommodates up to
three years of project activities and expenses.
The budget should include the project cost that will be
charged to grant funds as well as those that will be supported
by cost share in kind.
Contributions to cost share may include the value of services
such as staff time, volunteer or consultant time, or equipment
donated to the project between the authorized start and end
dates of your project.
All the items listed, whether supported by grant funds or cost
share, must be necessary to accomplish project objectives
allowable according to the applicable federal cost
principles, auditable, and incurred during the award period
of performance.
The budget form can be downloaded directly from the
IMLS website.
As you develop your budget, keep in mind that there are certain
costs that are either allowable or unallowable according to
federal regulations.
The allowability of a cost item for all federal grants are
specified in the Code of Federal Regulations, sometime referred
to as two CFR 200 for short.
And using the two CFR 200 as a basis, we've developed a short
list of allowable costs that are most commonly seen in grant
applications.
The Notice of Funding Opportunity includes this
partial list of the most common examples, and we've provided
this here as a reference.
These costs may be part of what you asked IMLS to pay for with
federal funds or what you will pay for as part of your cost
share.
The rules of allowability apply equally to grant funds and cost
share, and when completing your project budget, be sure to check
that all the costs you include, whether grant funds or cost
share, are allowable.
There's also some costs which are unallowable according to the
federal regulations into CFR 200.
The notice of Funding Opportunity also provides an
abbreviated list of a lot unallowable costs, and which
we've shown here as well on this slide.
Now, allowable costs may not be part of what you asked by molest
to pay for, nor can they be part of what you will pay for in your
cost share.
Unallowable expenses should not be anywhere in your proposal.
So as you work through your application, compare your list
of proposed expenses against the list of allowable and
unallowable costs.
And after you've had a look at that, if you have questions,
specific questions about the allowability of a cost, you can
contact us and we'll be happy to talk you through the concerns
that you may have.
In addition to the IMOS budget form, you'll also prepare a
budget justification.
This is an opportunity to provide in more detailed
narrative format, an explanation or justification for the project
costs.
The budget justification should be written to follow the cost
categories in the IMLS budget form.
In the justification, you will identify each expense and show
the method of cost computation used to determine each dollar
amount, including any that you may have consolidated and
summarized on the budget form.
In other words, this is the place to show your math.
So for example, in the Salaries and Wages section, you should
identify each person whose salaries or wages will be paid
with IMLS funds or contributed and cost share.
Provide their names.
Describe their role in the project.
Document the method of cost computation by including the
base salary or wages for each person and the percentage of
time each person is allocated to the project activities.
This may be shown as a percentage of time, number of
days, or number of hours.
If cost share is being provided by unpaid volunteers, explain
how you arrived at the dollar amount used to represent the
value of their services.
Likewise, in the section for supplies, materials, and
equipment, you should list each type of supply, material or
equipment you propose to purchase and provide or provide
as cost share.
Now detail the number and unit cost for each item and explain
how you arrived at the dollar amounts, and you can also
provide vendor quotes or price lists as supporting documents
with your application.
In the final section of our presentation, we offer some
application tips and next steps.
We can only make grants to eligible applicants that submit
complete applications, including attachments on or before the
deadline.
So here are some tips to help you do that.
Start the process early.
By watching this video, you're off to a good start.
You should also become familiar with grants.gov's workspace.
There's many good features, such as the opportunity to
collaborate with others in creating your application, as
well as a validation process that allows you to correct
errors prior to submission.
Tutorials are available on grants.gov Be sure your
application is complete.
Check it against the table of application components in the
Notice of Funding Opportunity.
You also want to make sure that all application components are
in the proper format and follow the correct naming conventions.
And finally, submit your grants, your application, and grants.gov
well before the deadline so you can correct any errors and avoid
any issues before the deadline.
Now, it's important to get your application submitted through
grants.gov before the deadline.
We don't accept any applications by e-mail or mail or regular
mail for that matter.
And in order to submit your application at grants.gov, you
must have an active sam.gov registration and a unique entity
identifier or UEI.
Make sure your registrations for both of these sites are complete
and your accounts are active, and that any necessary passwords
are current.
These registrations do expire periodically, so do do not wait
until it's time to hit the submit button to check on them,
and you should coordinate with any other staff members, such as
your authorized organization representative who may hold the
accounts and passwords you need to submit now.
Both sam.gov and grants.gov websites have their own help
desks and help features and FAQs, so if you run into
technical issues with either of these sites, reach out to them
directly.
There are many components that make up the entire application
and narrative, and the narrative is an essential and critical
part of the package.
So remember that the peer reviewers, who are museum
professionals from all types of museums, will be selected by
IMLS to read each application and provide constructive
comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the proposed
projects.
They also base their reviews only on the information
contained in the application, so don't assume that a reviewer or
IMLS will know something about your museum or your proposed
project unless you tell us about it in the application.
So to help make sure your narrative is as clear and
complete as possible, here are some tips.
Revisit the Notice of Funding Opportunity and follow the
narrative outline.
Use headings and subheadings or numbered sections in your
narrative to make it easy for reviewers to read.
Be sure to consider the review criteria associated with each
section of the narrative.
Avoid acronyms, generalities, and jargon.
Remember, the people reviewing your application are your peers,
but they may not be totally familiar with your particular
shorthand or jargon, so make it easy for them to understand what
you mean.
And one advantage to starting your application early is that
you can ask a colleague or someone with fresh eyes to
review everything before you submit.
Ask them to act like a reviewer, seeing it for the first time,
and maybe they'll get some good you'll get some good feedback.
Now here are a few final important notes relating to 21
MP applications.
Applications must be received through grants.gov by 11:59 PM
Eastern Time on March 1st, 2024.
Your application will be time stamped by the grants.gov
system.
After the application deadline, IMLS staff will review your
application for completeness and eligibility, and you'll hear
from us via e-mail if there are any problems.
Next, we will select experienced and knowledgeable peer reviewers
to read your applications and provide scores and comments
based on the criteria outlined in the Know Phone.
IMLS staff will examine the budget, your financials, and
your track record with past and current grants.
We then prepared materials for the IMLS Deputy Director for
Museums and the IMLS Director, and by law, the IMLS Director is
charged with the authority and great responsibility of making
final award decisions, and in early July we will notify you by
e-mail of the award decisions.
And provide the scores and comments created by the
reviewers.
All 21 MP projects must be scheduled to start on the first
day of August 2024.
Now, in conclusion, as you read through the Nofo and repair your
application, additional questions may arise before the
deadline and we can help you with learning more about the
program or other programs at IMLS.
To address any specific concerns you may have about the
application components and help you understand the review
process, you may contact IMLS Program staff by e-mail or
phone.
Contact information is listed on the Grant program landing page
on the IMLS website.
You may also schedule a counseling call to meet directly
with program staff and use the links found on the Grant Program
landing page to find an available time slot on our
calendar and you'll then receive an e-mail with a calendar invite
and Microsoft Teams meeting link.
Again, I want to thank you for listening to our presentation
and wish you the best of luck in preparing and submitting your
IMLS grant application.