Welcome to the Institute of Museum and Library Services,
Office of Museum Services Informational Video Native
American/Native Hawaiian Museum Services Grant Program Applicant
Information Session. The goal of this video is to provide an
overview of our Native American/Native Hawaiian Museum
Services Grant Program, which we call NANH for short, and the
process of preparing an application for funding.
This video is organized into six chapters. What is the Native
American/Native Hawaiian Museum Services Grant Program? The
section explains the purpose and eligibility criteria of the NANH
Grant Program. What can NANH Grants Fund? This section
explains the types of projects that could be funded in NANH and
the amounts of funds that can be requested.
Application Components Overview. This section describes the types
of documents that are needed to create an NANH grant
application. Application Components Narrative. This
section provides guidance on composing the narrative part of
your application. Application Components Budget provides
details on the information to include in your project budget
and application tips and next steps
is a concluding section to provide a few tips and next
steps. The complete set of instructions for how to prepare
and submit an NANH grant application can be found in the
Notice of Funding Opportunity published on grants.gov and
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 NANH grant program, the types of projects that can be
funded, and the necessary application components. You may
also want to review the NANH Notice of Funding Opportunity
before, during, or after you watch this video. Notices of
Funding Opportunities, also called NOFOs for short
are documents that detail the requirements of each of our
grant programs for fiscal year 2024. All of our NOFOs can be
found via imls.gov\grants. As you navigate the application
process. You can use this video as a reference tool. If you'd
like to skip to a specific section, please use the time bar
below or the links in the description box to navigate the
chapters.
What is NANH? In this section, we will answer that question and
provide information on the purpose and intent of this grant
program and who it is designed to serve. The overall goal of
the NANH grant program is to build the capacity of Native
American tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations to
provide museum services to their communities in order to help
their heritage, culture, and knowledge thrive.
Some, but not all of the ways tribes and Native Hawaiian
organizations might do this are through exhibitions, educational
services and programs, professional development and
collection stewardship. It's important to note, however, that
applicants do not have to have a physical museum or Cultural
Center constructed in order to provide museum services to your
communities.
The NANH program has unique eligibility criteria from other
museum grant programs offered at IMLS. Specifically, in order to
be eligible for an award under this program, the legal
applicant must be either a federally recognized Indian
tribe, an Alaskan Native village or corporation, or a nonprofit
organization that primarily serves and represents Native
Hawaiians.
Definitions of eligible tribal organizations can be found on
our IMLS Eligibility Criteria web page, linked here, or within
the Notice of Funding Opportunity for this program. In
most circumstances. other entities such as museums,
libraries, cultural centers, schools, tribal colleges, or
departments of education are not eligible to apply on their own,
however
the three types of eligible entities listed here are welcome
to partner with non-eligible entities or organizations. The
applicant for the grant must meet the eligibility criteria,
but the partners aren't required to do so.
In this section we will answer the question, "What can NANH
fund," providing details on the types of projects and objectives
within the NANH Grant program, as well as offer some summary
data on the number and type of NANH projects that were funded
last year. NANH grants are designed to support
project-based activities, so let's take a minute to consider
exactly what that means. The Project Management Institute has
a good definition, which is,
"a project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to create a
unique product, service, or result." A project is temporary
because it has a defined beginning and end in time and
therefore defined scope and resources. And a project is
unique in that it's not a routine operation or general
operating support, for example, but rather a specific set of
activities designed to accomplish a singular goal."
We recommend that you keep this definition in mind as you
conceptualize your NANH 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, and which are designed to accomplish a
specific, singular goal. How long can your NANH project last?
Your scheduled completion must be at least one year, but no
more than three years in length.
Keeping our focus on project-based activities, let's
look a little closer at what characteristics are most often
seen in successful NANH applications. First -
Institutional Impact. Your project should address a key
need or challenge that faces your tribe or organization.
Second - In-depth Knowledge. Your proposal should reflect a
thorough understanding of current practice and knowledge
about the subject matter.
Third - Project based Design. Your work plan should consist of
a set of logical interrelated activities tied directly to
addressing the key need or challenge that you've
identified, And Fourth - Demonstrable Results. Your
project should generate measurable results that tie
directly back to the need or challenge it was designed to
address.
It has been our experience that unfunded applications fail to
deliver convincingly on one or more of these areas, so it's a
good idea to make sure your application shows how your
project will be strong in each. Still, keeping that concept of
project in mind, let's turn to the program goal and its
associated objectives.
You should align your proposed project with one or more of
these objectives and clearly identify which one or ones you
have chosen in your application narrative. This goal and these
objectives may seem broad and that's on purpose. You only need
to choose the one that is the best fit or most closely aligned
with the key need or challenge you plan to address in your
project.
This slide shows a list of some of the types of projects we can
fund under the NANH program, and we invite you to develop and
apply for projects that best meet your tribe's or
institution's needs. Again, you're not necessarily required
to have a physical museum or cultural center established in
order to provide these types of services. Whatever activities
you have in mind, you should make sure to describe them
thoroughly and show how they will logically progress to meet
your chosen objective.
You should be cautious about trying to cram too many
different types of activities into the same proposal. Just
because they all might fit under the overarching goal of the NANH
program to help you provide museum services to your
communities to promote heritage, culture, and knowledge doesn't
mean you should try to do them all at once. We often call those
kitchen sink projects.
You can certainly have a project that is multifaceted or that has
multiple complementary components, if that's what makes
the most sense for you and your goals. However, the strongest
proposals are clearly defined projects with logical
interrelated activities that have manageable scopes, budgets,
and timelines. If you're not sure about which project
objective or objectives are the best fit for your particular
project,
keeping in mind that you may choose more than one, but then
you must address each in your narrative, here are some more
ways to think about them. For projects focused on preserving
and perpetuating native language or traditional cultural
practices, make sure you think through who your target
audiences are and what their needs are. What do you want them
to learn or accomplish, and what's the best way to go about
that. For professional development and capacity
building,
what does the successful outcome look like for your tribe or
institution? Is it recruiting and training more staff? Is it
enhancing technology such as your website or upgrading your
software? Just remember that general operating support is not
something we can fund. For projects focused on collections
or conservation, we often encourage a step-by-step
approach. This means assessing needs,
creating a prioritized list of activities and following through
by doing the most important and logical things first. Think
carefully about what is in the center of your project and who
will benefit from your work. NANH supports projects of all
sizes, but there is a specific range of funding available in
this program.
You can request a minimum of $5000, up to a maximum of
$250,000 in federal funds. If you ask for less than $5,000 or
more than $250,000 in federal grant funds, your application
may be rejected and not reviewed. Remember to keep your
budget aligned to the scope and scale of your project, including
all costs necessary to complete the proposed activities.
In the NANH grant program, project budgets are not required
to have any non-federal cost share, although you may include
it if your organization will contribute funds towards your
particular project. Cost share is not considered in the review
of NANH applications. It's also important to note that if you
decide to include a 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 include funds from
another federal source. There's no limit to the number of
applications you can submit in response to the FY24 funding
announcement for the NANH program. However, if you do
submit multiple applications, they must be for separate and
discreet projects.
Meaning they must not overlap in terms of staffing or costs. For
example, you could submit a proposal to support your native
language revitalization programs, as well as a separate
proposal to inventory and rehouse your museum collection.
You'll want to consider your organization's capacity, not
just to write and submit multiple strong proposals, but
then to manage multiple federal awards at once.
Demonstrating that you have the internal administrative and
financial controls necessary to track and maintain multiple
federal awards simultaneously will be important. The amount of
applications we receive varies from year to year, and the
number of awards we make is dependent on how much funding is
appropriated by Congress for the program each year. Here's a
snapshot of our most recent award cycle.
In FY23, IMLS funded 35 out of 36 eligible applications,
awarding $3.772 million. This was the largest amount allocated
for this program since it was founded in 2005. The funded
awards represent 18 Native American tribes based in seven
states, 4 Alaska Native villages and corporations, and 12 Native
Hawaiian organizations.
8 of these 35 awards, 23%, were from first time applicants to
the NANH program. On the IMLS website, you can use the Search
Awarded Grants function to explore our archive of grants
that we have awarded in past years. All 35 of the FY23 NANH
Awards announced in June are listed here, along with those
from prior years. You can search this database using a variety of
criteria
such as institution name, location, and keyword. Your
search will retrieve basic information about each award,
including the amount of federal funds awarded and a brief
description of the proposed activities and expected results
for each project. We have also posted some examples of
successful application narratives from recent years on
our website.
To find these, go to the Sample Applications page on the IMLS
website and scroll down the page to find the NANH examples.
Looking at these proposals might help you clarify your thinking
about your own project. In this section, we will introduce the
components of an NANH grant application and provide an
overview about the Required, Conditionally Required, and
Supporting documents.
The NANH Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) includes a
complete list of all the application components starting
on page 6. The table of application components lists
which application documents are required, conditionally
required, or optional. Aside from the SF-424S and the IMLS
Museum Program Information form, which are both completed as
fillable forms within the grants.gov workspace, the rest
of the application components
must be created by you, the applicant and saved as PDF
documents to be uploaded as part of your application package in
grants.gov. These are the required documents. All
applicants and applications must include the documents listed
here. Omission of even just one might result in your
application's rejection. Also important to note,
there is a 7-page limit for the narrative. If you exceed the
page limit specified in the NOFO, we must remove the extra
pages before your application goes out for review. That means
your reviewers may well see a paragraph or sentence cut off in
midair and will wonder about your organizational skills and
your attentiveness to detail. Not to mention, any information
contained within those excess pages won't be visible to them,
so make sure your content fits into the page limits specified
and double check the number of pages is still correct after you
convert your document to a PDF. The second category of
application components is that of conditionally required
documents. Some applicants must include 1, 2, or all of these,
and it's important that you know which are required for your
application. If you are a nonprofit organization that
primarily serves and represents Native Hawaiians,
then you must include your proof of nonprofit status issued by
the IRS, as well as appropriate proof of eligibility
documentation as outlined in the Notice of Funding Opportunity.
If you're using a federally negotiated indirect cost rate in
your budget, then you must include a copy of your current
final rate agreement. If you create digital products during
the course of your project, then you must complete and submit a
Digital Products Plan.
And if you are requesting support for conservation
treatments or for collection subjects, then you must include
detailed condition reports and/or formal conservation
treatment proposals. Just like the required documents, omission
of even one of these can result in the exclusion of your
application from further consideration. And please note
that the term digital product includes any digitized and born
digital content, resources or assets, software or research
data.
So, if you are creating any of these types of materials, you
must include the plan with your application. The third group of
application components is Supporting Documents, and here's
a partial list of examples. Supporting documents are
optional. You may submit some or none. We urge you to make good
decisions here and include those that will supplement your
proposal.
This is not the place to introduce brand new information.
Rather, as the name suggests, they should lend support to your
project justification, work plan, and intended results that
you've already spelled out in your application narrative. For
example, have you identified a partner whose involvement is key
to the project's success? 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.
Pictures can help give reviewers who may not be familiar with
your institution's programs, collections, or community a
better idea of what you're describing within your
narrative. Vendor quotes or equipment specifications show
that you've done some of the legwork in getting appropriate
estimates for project costs. We recommend that you be respectful
of your reviewer's time and avoid any temptation to include
hundreds of pages of extraneous material,
especially if it's not directly related and relevant to your
project. Being judicious really does work to your benefit.
Supporting documents can make or break an application, so include
what is important and helpful and stop there. In the following
sections of this presentation, we will focus on two key
application components - the project narrative and the
project budget.
Refer to the NOFO for complete instructions on how to prepare
and complete all of the application components. In this
section, we'll go over the questions you will need to
answer your project narrative and offer details on the review
criteria associated with each section: project justification,
project work plan, and project results.
The narrative is the heart of your proposal, and the Notice of
Funding Opportunity provides lengthy guidance on what it
should cover and how it should be formatted. The first section
is your project justification. This section should clearly
identify which program objective or objectives your project
supports, as well as how it will support the overall NANH program
goal of strengthening your tribe's or organization's
ability to provide museum services to your communities.
What needs, problem or challenge will your project address and
how was it identified? Describe how you've used demographic
information, economic circumstances, condition
assessments, and other relevant data from reliable sources to
define the need, problem, or challenge and develop the scope
for the project. Who is the target audience or target group
for your project and how have they been involved in the
planning? Target group refers to those who will most
immediately and positively be affected by your project.
Identify the number of individuals in the target group
or in each target group if you have more than one, and who are
the ultimate beneficiaries for this project. Beneficiaries
refers to those who are likely to be aided in the long term by
your project. They may or may not be the same as your target
group. Identify the number of individuals who will benefit
from your project in the long term, if reliable and defensible
counts are possible.
Otherwise, describe the characteristics of the
beneficiaries you expect to be served eventually by your
project. In Section E of the Notice of Funding Opportunity
under Review criteria, you will find a list of questions that
reviewers are asked to answer when they review your proposal.
It's a good idea to refer to these as your write your
narrative to be certain you are providing your reviewers with
clear, solid information.
You will see that they correspond fairly directly with
the prompts that you're given to write in your narrative. One of
the prompts in the project justification section of the
narrative is the identification of the need, problem or
challenge your project addresses. It is foundational in
your application, so keep these points in mind. The federal
government wants its investment to result in something getting
better.
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? Develop
a skill? Change an attitude? Will members of your community
be better able to work together to solve problems? Will
collections be better cared for? What will their lifespan be
extended? Will access to your collections and the information
surrounding them be expanded?
Identify why it is important that this particular change
happens. In other words, why should we care? Hone your
problem definition carefully, in clear, succinct terms, and
gather and present data that supports your problem's
definition. If the Project Justification section was the
Why, the Project Work Plan section is where you identify
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 intended results and what you'll do if you need
to correct course. You should also think about risks that are
inherent in your particular project and tell us how you've
taken that into account in your planning. I'll say more about
risks in a few minutes. Remember, your project must be
at least one year (12 months) and up to three years (36
months) in length.
Again, this is the list of questions that reviewers are
asked to answer for this section when they review your proposal.
So, make sure your narrative is answering these effectively.
Remember, the people reading and scoring your application may not
be familiar with your specific history, institution,
collection, etcetera, so don't be vague.
You want to provide enough detail to reassure them that
your project is manageable and can be accomplished with the
staff, time and resources allocated. Your work plan will
be built on activities, so it's important to be clear about what
an activity is. An activity is something that someone does. It
has a beginning and an end, just like projects, and you know when
you finished it because it doesn't need to be done anymore.
It's no longer on your To Do List.
An activity is not a goal, a result or an outcome. Rather,
it's something you do as part of striving to achieve those. Aim
for a reasonable level of detail in identifying your activities.
Too much and your work plan becomes bogged down and
confusing, but too little and someone who's reading your
application won't understand the who, when, what, and how of your
project. You should aim for a balance.
We also ask that you think about risks that are inherent in your
particular project and tell us how you've taken those into
account in your planning. Think of it as answering the question,
"What if X doesn't go according to plan?" There is no checklist
of risks, but every project has them. The best proposals will
show that you're aware of the risks and have thought through a
plan for dealing with them. Look at your activities and think
about what could go wrong.
Focus on the ones where your experience tells you, "Yes, that
could happen," and identify steps you would take in
response. We know things often go differently than expected, we
just want you to prepare by identifying implementable
options. And here are some examples of types of risks. If
you intend to hire someone into a grant funded position to work
on the project activities, what will you do if it takes longer
than expected to find the right candidate, bring them on board
and train them.
Another example, a project depends on your community
partners to achieve success. But what if a partner becomes
unavailable? What do you do now? And finally, a project involving
rehousing collections into new museum-quality storage might run
into delays in the delivery of the cabinets. So, what happens
to the collection items then? How will you ensure that they
remain safe and secure?
The third section of your narrative should be devoted to
articulating your intended project results. This is your
chance to convince the reviewers that the activities you've
spelled out in your project work plan will result in something
getting better. The need or problem you identified in your
project justification will be diminished or eliminated
altogether. This section should be should logically tie the
narrative together by explaining how you will know that your
project has been successful and how you will measure project
success.
If your project will generate tangible products, and most do,
here's the opportunity to describe them and make the case
that they will be useful. Remember that Digital products
plan I mentioned as a supporting document can be useful to expand
on this section if it's applicable. Last but not least,
we ask that you tell us how you will sustain the benefit of the
project. How will this improvement that you propose to
make continue once your grant is over?
What will the longer-term impacts be? And again, here's
the list of questions that reviewers are asked to answer
when they read the Project Results section of your
narrative. Again, these are found in Section E of the Notice
of Funding Opportunity. We often hear that defining intended
results and success measures is challenging for applicants, so
it's worth spending a little bit of time on this here.
Essentially, we are asking you to explain what will be better
as a result of this project and how will you know. Think back to
the questions we referenced in the project justification
section when we talked about defining the need, problem, or
challenge that your project is addressing and how it fits into
one or more of the program objectives. Your results should
tie it back directly and logically to those elements. If
you said someone will learn something, how will you show
that?
If your problem is related to the preservation of traditional
cultural practices, how will you know when that's been
successfully achieved? If you're saying collections will be
better cared for, how will you be sure, and how will you
measure "better"? If you're digitizing to expand
accessibility, how will you know when you've successfully done
it?
You may think of tangential benefits or general positive
outcomes, but make sure you identify them as in addition to
and not instead of your original intended results. Reviewers are
otherwise likely to catch that as a disconnect, so you should
be specific and refrain from broad, vague, or unrealistic
claims. This focus on project results and measuring success in
meaningful ways is not new, but it isn't necessarily easy
either.
There are many ways to measure success, and each situation and
project is unique. To aid you in visualizing what success could
look like for your project, we encourage you to use or consider
using a logic model or evaluation tool to explain your
intended results and your plan for achieving them. And there
are numerous examples and downloadable worksheets that you
can find with a simple Internet search.
So to recap, your narrative has three sections: Project
Justification, Project Work Plan, and Project Results, and
you have 7 pages for it. The sections are all equally
important and should all logically tie together. Please
write clearly, address what we asked you to address, and keep
an eye on those review criteria. We're telling you 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 and budget justification and provide
some examples of allowable and unallowable costs. Your budget
is a critically important component of your application.
This is where you specify all of the costs associated with your
proposed project. The budget consists of two required
documents, the IMLS Budget form
and the corresponding budget justification. The IMLS budget
form is a fillable PDF that accommodates up to three years
of project activities and expenses. The budget should
include the project costs that will be charged to grant funds
as well as those that will be supported by a cost share, if
applicable. All of 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 IMLS budget form can be downloaded directly
from the IMLS website and is linked within the Notice of
Funding Opportunity. 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 is
specified in the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR), sometimes
referred to as 2 CFR 200 for short, but the full title is
Title 2, Subtitle A, Chapter 2, Part 200, Uniform Administrative
Requirements, Cost Principles, and Audit Requirements for
Federal Awards.
Yes, that is a mouthful, but these regulations contain
important guidance that all federal grant applications and
recipients should be aware of. Using 2 CFR 200 as a basis,
we've developed a short list of allowable costs that are common
to IMLS projects. These costs may be part of what you ask IMLS
to pay for with federal funds, or what you will pay for as part
of your cost share, again if you include any.
The rules about allowability apply equally to both, so when
completing your project budget, be sure to check that all the
costs you include, whether grant funds or cost share, are
allowable. There are also some costs that are unallowable
according to the federal regulations in 2 CFR 200.
Unallowable costs may not be part of what you ask IMLS to pay
for with federal funds,
nor can they be part of what you will pay for as part of your
cost share. Unallowable expenses cannot show up anywhere in your
proposal. As you prepare your application, it's a good idea to
compare your list of proposed expenses against these sample
lists of allowable and unallowable costs and against
the federal cost principles. If after that, you have specific
questions about allowability of certain costs, please contact us
and we'll be happy to help.
In addition to the IMLS budget form, you must also prepare a
budget justification. This is an opportunity to provide an
explanation and justification for the project costs in a more
detailed narrative format. The budget justification should
correspond with 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 or
summarized on the IMLS budget form. In other words, please
show and please double check your math. For example, in the
section Salaries and Wages, you should identify each person
whose salary or wages will be paid with IMLS funds or by cost
share.
Provide their names and 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, and that
can be shown as a percentage of time or a number of days or a
number of hours, or whatever makes sense. 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.
In the section for supplies, materials and equipment, you
should list each type of supply, material or equipment you've
proposed to purchase or provide as cost share for the project.
Detail the number and unit cost for each item and explain how
you arrived at the dollar amounts. You should also provide
vendor quotes or price lists as supporting documents with your
application.
In this final section of our presentation, we will offer some
application tips and next steps based on our experiences with
the NANH application submission process each year. We can only
make grants to eligible applicants that submit complete
applications, including all attachments, on or before the
deadline. So here are some tips to help you do just that. Start
early, do not try to pull together an entire application
within three days.
Become familiar with grants.gov's workspace. It has
many useful features, including upfront validation which allows
you to correct errors prior to submission, and the opportunity
to collaborate with others in creating your application. If
you're not used to working with grants.gov, consider starting
with the workspace overview and check out their tutorials. Make
sure you're looking at and applying to the correct grant
program within grants.gov.
You can do a keyword search for the IMLS Native American/Native
Hawaiian Museum Services Program, or you can enter the
Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance CFDA number, which is
45.308. Be sure your application is complete. Double check it
against the table of application components in the Notice of
Funding Opportunity.
And make sure all of those application components are in
the proper PDF format and follow the correct naming conventions.
And finally, please submit to grants.gov early so you can
correct any errors and avoid any issues created by slow Internet
or other technology challenges. It's important to get your
application submitted online through grants.gov before the
deadline.
IMLS does not accept applications by mail or e-mail,
and nor do we accept late applications. In order to
register with grants.gov, you must have an active sam.gov
registration and unique entity identifier number. So, make sure
your registrations for both of these sites are complete, your
accounts are active, and that any necessary passwords are
current.
These registrations expire periodically, so do not wait
until it's time to hit the submit button to check on them.
You should coordinate with any other staff members or
departments, such as your authorized organization
representative or your financial or grants office, who may hold
the accounts and passwords you'll need to submit. If you've
had staff turnover in the past year, that might be a flag to
double check who has access to these accounts.
Both the sam.gov and grants.gov websites have robust help
features and FAQ's. If you run into technical issues with
either of these sites, you should reach out to their help
desks and request a tracking case or ticket number in order
to document your issue and attempts at resolving it. IMLS
does not accept failure to have an active sam.gov or grants.gov
registration by the deadline as an excuse for submitting a late
application.
So again, please start early. Peer reviewers who are museum
professionals with experience working in or with tribal,
Alaskan, and Native Hawaiian communities will be selected by
IMLS to read each application and provide constructive and
critical comments on the strengths and weaknesses of the
proposed projects. They are instructed to base their reviews
only on the information contained within the
application,
so don't assume that a reviewer or IMLS will know anything about
your museum or your proposed project. To help make sure your
narrative is as clear and complete as possible, you should
revisit the NANH Notice of Funding Opportunity and follow
the narrative outline it provides and make sure you
address each prompt. Be sure to consider those review criteria
associated with each section of the narrative.
Please use the headings, subheadings, or numbered
sections in your narrative to make it easier for the reviewers
to read. Avoid generalities, acronyms and jargon. The people
who will review your application are museum professionals, but
they may not be familiar with your particular field's or
tribe's shorthand or acronyms, so make it easy for them to
understand what you mean.
An advantage to starting your application early is you can ask
a colleague or a friend to review everything with fresh
eyes before you submit. Ask them to act like a reviewer who's
seeing this for the first time and doesn't know any background
information about your project or your institution. Remember to
limit your narrative to 7 pages, and please try to stick to the
recommended page limits for the other application components.
Applications must be received through grants.gov by 11:59 PM
Eastern Time on November 15th, 2023. This date is
non-negotiable. The time stamp is auto-generated by the
grants.gov system and we have no ability to override it. That is
why we say repeatedly to start early and submit your
application early.
That way, if you encounter a difficulty of any kind when
you're submitting your proposal, you'll have some time to resolve
the problem and resubmit. After the application deadline, IMLS
staff will review your application for completeness and
eligibility, and you will hear from us via e-mail if there's
any issues there. Next, peer reviewers will read your
applications and provide scores and comments based on the
criteria outlined in the NOFO.
IMLS staff will closely review your project budget and your
track record with past and current grants. We then prepare
all of the application materials for review by the IMLS Deputy
Director for Museums and the IMLS Director. By law, the IMLS
Director is charged with the authority and responsibility to
make final award decisions. This typically happens by the end of
May.
So, it's about a six-month turnaround time from when you
submit your proposal to when you'll hear if you've been
awarded. In June 2024, we will notify you by e-mail of the
award decisions and provide the scores and comments generated by
the reviewers. And NANH projects must be scheduled to start on
July 1, 2024, and again they can last from one to three years.
Please make sure everyone involved in preparing your grant
application is aware of those dates and deadlines. As you read
through the NOFO and prepare your application, you might have
additional questions come up before the deadline. IMLS staff
can help answer your questions about this or any other museum
grant program. You may contact us by e-mail or phone. Contact
information is listed on the NANH Grant Program landing page
on the IMLS website.
You can also schedule a counseling call to meet
virtually with program staff. Use the scheduling link found on
the NA and H Program landing page to find and book an
available time slot on our calendars. You will then receive
an e-mail with a calendar invite and a Microsoft Teams meeting
link. Thank you very much for your interest in IMLS and in the
Native American Native Hawaiian Museum Services funding
opportunity. I hope you found the information in this video
helpful.
Good luck and we look forward to seeing your application in
November.