welcome to the institute of museum and library services inspire grants for
small museums applicant webinar my name is reagan moore and i am pleased
that you could join me today and that you are interested in preparing an
application for the imls inspire grants for small museums program
my goal in this presentation is to provide specific information about the
inspire grants for small museums program and make some recommendations that you
may wish to consider when preparing your application
since this is a pre-recorded webinar and you won't have the opportunity to ask
questions feel free to contact me or any of the 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
here are the topics i will cover in today's webinar
where to find information a program overview
imls funding eligibility criteria choosing a project category
project activities allowable and unallowable cost
application components narrative review criteria
where to learn more and application tips and next steps
this is one of a series of pre-recorded webinars designed to help you find the
information you need to create a competitive application for imls museum
funding choosing a funding opportunity for fy
2023 was pre-recorded and is available as a video and as a pdf of the slides
plus as a transcript on our website at the link identified here
in that webinar we cover the imls vision mission and strategic plan with an
emphasis on how they influence our grant making we also address institutional
eligibility provide a quick overview of all of our funding opportunities how to
find information online with the focus on our website and we cover the three
places you must be registered in order to apply for an imls grant
we strongly recommend that you view this webinar to get the complete picture of
preparing and submitting a competitive application to the inspire program
in addition to this pre-recorded webinar for inspire we are providing
pre-recorded webinars for all of our grant programs you can find links to
these on the grant program landing pages on our website
the imls website is an important place to find information when you go to the
website you will see a drop down menu for grants on our homepage
click on the section titled apply for a grant this section of our website is for
you
each grant program has a landing page on the imls website here you will find a
brief overview of the grant program contact information for the imls staff
assigned to this grant program and your primary point of contact if you have
questions and link to the pdf of the notice of funding opportunity
the notice of funding opportunity sometimes referred to as the nofo is the
official instructions and guidance for how to prepare complete and submit an
application for funding the text and information i am using in
this webinar derive from the instructions and guidance found in the
notice of funding opportunity a no-fo is available for each of the
grant funding opportunities now let's discuss the inspire grant
program in more detail inspire grants for small museums is a
special initiative of the museums for america program the overall goal of the
program is to support activities that strengthen the abilities of individual
small museums to serve their publics this might be through activities that
reflect museums as active resources for lifelong learning as institutions
important in improving the well-being of their communities or as good stewards of
the nation's collections inspire is all about what your museum
needs in order to better serve your public it may well be exactly the same
as what the museum across town or a neighboring streets
a neighboring state needs and that's okay
the important thing here is that our support should help you to make a local
impact before we jump into the details we are
often asked about numbers of applications and funding success rates
and so here are the figures for the just completed fy 22 inspired grant cycle
as you can see with just over 2.5 million in funds available we were able
to fund 59 of the applications we received
let's begin with eligibility requirements for museums
to be eligible to apply museums must be either a unit of state or local
government or be a private non-profit organization that has tax exempt status
under the irs located in one of the 50 states of the
united states of america the district of columbia the commonwealth of puerto rico
the u.s virgin islands guam american samoa the commonwealth of the northern
mariana islands the republic of the marshall islands the
federated states of micronesia or the republic of palau
it must use a professional staff and by that we mean at least one full-time
professional or the equivalent be organized on a permanent basis for
essentially educational or aesthetic purposes
own or use tangible objects either animate or inanimate
care for these objects and exhibit these objects to the general public on a
regular basis through facilities that it owns or operates
please note that our statute requires a museum to be open to the public at least
120 days a year in order to be eligible for funding
because of closures related to coba 19 museums are free to count days prior to
the pandemic or even in the previous calendar year
for more details on each of these points please take a look at the eligibility
information in the inspire grants for small museums nofo
there are a wide variety of museum disciplines in geographic locations
where museums are located across the country and determining an institution
size may rest on a number of factors as a result imls invites applicants to
consider whether their organization is a good fit for this special initiative and
to make a case clearly within the application's organizational profile
document for why they think they are a small museum
reviewers will use the information provided in the organizational profile
to determine if the applicant made a clear case for being a small museum
applicants should think about a range of attributes that describe their
organization such as number of staff members and volunteers
estimate of total person hours worked per week
operating budget and sources of revenue number and types of objects in the
collection size of facility and property
types and numbers of audiences served and size relative to the other
organizations of the same discipline or within the same geographic region
with this focus on supporting the individual museum what are the
characteristics of successful inspire applications
there are four and successful projects address all of them well
as you prepare your application then you should keep these characteristics in
mind first institutional impact the project addresses a key goal identified
in the institution's strategic plan 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 in fourth demonstrable results your
project should generate measurable results that tied directly to the need
or challenge it was designed to address it has been our experience that an
unfunded application is one that has failed to deliver convincingly on one or
more of these so it is a good idea to think about how to structure your
application to show how your project will be strong in each
i want to remind you of important dates for inspire applications
applications are due by 11 59 pm eastern time on november 15 2022.
the deadline is non-negotiable and the timestamp is auto-generated by the
grants.gov system we will say this over and over again but
start early and submit early that way if you encounter a difficulty of any kind
when submitting your proposal you'll have some time to resolve the problem
inspire awards will be announced in august 2023 and projects must be
scheduled to start on the first day of september 2023
please make sure that everyone involved in preparing your grant application is
aware of these dates
regarding how much money you may request there is only one option in inspire all
requests must be between five thousand and fifty thousand dollars including
both direct and indirect cost if you ask for less than five thousand
or more than fifty thousand your application will be rejected and not
reviewed there is no cautionary requirement for
inspire though you may include one if your organization will contribute funds
toward 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 the inspire program 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
we have made several time several we've made reference several times to projects
here and so let's take a minute to consider just exactly what that means
the project management institute has a good definition which is a temporary
endeavor undertaken to create a unique product service or result
they go on further to explain that a project is temporary because it has a
defined beginning and end in time and therefore defined scope and resources
and the project is unique in that it is not a routine operation but rather a
specific set of operations designed to accomplish a singular goal
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 and which are designed to
accomplish a specific singular goal
with that concept of project in mind let's turn to project categories
second to choosing to apply to the inspire grants for small museums funding
opportunity this is likely to be the most important decision you make about
your funding application as you can see here there are three
options lifelong learning institutional capacity and collection stewardship and
access you will find these three areas
described under the goals in the inspire program and the nofo you will also
select your project category on the museum program information form
why is your decision about which project category to choose so important
for one thing your application will be reviewed by museum professionals who
have experience and expertise in these general categories and for another your
application will be competing against others who have chosen the same category
in short the entire review process incorporates an assumption that your
project aligns with the category you've identified it's an important choice
also important is identified in identifying project element on the
museum program information form section 5 we ask that you select the primary
element that is core to your proposed project
your choice will help us match your application to reviewers with related
experience
so let's take a look at what kinds of activities a project in each of these
categories might include in this and the two slides that follow
the objectives provide a list of types of projects that fit within the goal and
the goals correspond to the inspire program categories a project in lifelong
learning might include but is not limited to all or part of an exhibit
program development for all types of audiences
creating interpretive plans media training for teachers partnerships with
schools or out of school audiences or program evaluation
as you plan your project in this category we strongly recommend starting
with the concept of learner at the center and build around it spend time
really thinking through who your learners are in this project and what
their needs are it's not likely going to be everybody so who is it really
what do they want to learn what do you want them to learn and what's the best
way to go about that we'll get to the whole idea of problems
and needs in just a few minutes but a major takeaway here is to be focused and
identifying your audience and thinking about how you were going to serve them
an institutional capacity project is likely to include activities that
contribute directly to your work to build the capacity of your museum
a project and institutional capacity might include but is not limited to
institutional planning and policy development the recruitment training and
development of museum staff and volunteers the enhancement of technology
such as your website and evaluation audience development and community
outreach
our third project category is out of collection stewardship and access and
this includes just about anything you need to do for and with your collections
except acquire them we are very open to projects that have
multiple components configured in ways that make sense for you
one project might consist of cataloging taking digital photographs and updating
database records while another might combine digitization activities with
rehousing we support conservation projects of all
kinds general detailed and environmental surveys as well as treatments and
environmental improvements and you are welcome to incorporate aspects of
training and or collections management into these projects if doing so make
sense for your situation it's important to note that in this
project category we encourage a step-by-step progressive approach to
collections work including conservation this means assessing needs creating a
prior prioritized list of activities and following through by doing the most
important things first
before we close our discussion on project categories we want to mention
our guidance for projects that could belong logically and more than one
sometimes it's tough to choose and you might be tempted to think about the best
strategy would be to align with more than one two
and maybe even three we advise against that for several reasons
the project categories have different goals and we expect the projects aligned
with each will address different problems use different approaches and
will measure success and achieving the attendant results in different ways
so how can you choose the best category for your project
here are three things we suggest you try think carefully about what is in the
center of your project is it the learner will people who engage with you as a
result of your project to create a new exhibition and programming to go with it
acquire new knowledge develop a skill experience a change in attitude about
the subject of your exhibit or is it that your institution that's at
the center of your thinking is your project one that will address an
important need within your museum and will it result in an enhancement of
technology or new policy or staff that has received a professional development
opportunity or is your project about the collections
will your project result in a better managed better cared for or more
accessible set of objects a second way to go at this might be to
think about who you want to review your application
if you apply under lifelong learning we will put your application in front of
educators learning theorists and professionals with deep experience and
understanding how people learn in museum environments
would you rather we put it in front of a combination of experts in museum
planning website design or policy creation
if that sounds right then it may push you toward institutional capacity
and if you apply under collection stewardship and access you can be
confident that your application will be reviewed by some combination of
registrars collection managers curators conservators or collections information
specialist if that seems appropriate then this is most likely your best
choice still undecided a third strategy to try
might be to make a list of all the activities you plan to carry out and
then assign each to a project category and then count to see where most of
these activities occur and where most of the time and money will be spent
that might well provide your answer our most heartfelt advice then is to
choose one project category study the instructions for preparing an
application as well as the review criteria for that category and write
your proposal accordingly as always if you have questions call the
imls staff to discuss them we'll turn now to allowable and
unallowable costs for your project be very careful in preparing your proposal
and include only allowable cost in both your imless request and your cost share
if you have one 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 2 cfr part 200 this is the part of the code of federal
regulations covering uniform administrative requirements cost
principles and audit requirements for federal awards
fortunately these regulations are available online in a searchable format
on the us government publishing office website and a tiny url link is listed on
this slide a particular interest is subpart e
cost principles a small section of which is shown on the right side of the slide
in the inspire notice to funding opportunity we provide a partial list of
the most common examples of allowable cost as pictured here
these costs may be part of what you ask imolest to pay for and or what you will
pay for as part of your cost share the rules about allowability apply to both
the grant fund columns and the cost share columns on the imls budget form
which you will submit as part of your application
we also provide a list of generally unallowable costs again both for imless
funds and for cost share these costs may not be part of what you ask imls to pay
for nor can they be part of what you will pay for as part of your cost share
in fact unallowable expenses can't 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 lists of allowable and unallowable costs and
against the appropriate set of cost principles
if after that you have specific questions please contact us and we'll be
happy to help
next up are application components your application will consist of a
series of individual documents and it's very important to make sure you prepare
and submit everything you should these application components fall into
three categories in the inspire grants for small museums funding opportunity
the first is that of required documents all applications must include the
documents that are listed here omission of even just one might result in the
exclusion of your application from further consideration
also important to note are page limits if you exceed the page limit specified
in the nofo we must remove the extras before your application goes out for
review that means your reviewer may well see a
paragraph or sentence end in midair and will wonder about your planning skills
and your attentiveness to detail make sure your content fits into the
page limits specified and make sure the number of pages holds when you convert
your document to a pdf two of our required forms are ones you
will download through grants.gov and they are dynamic by that i mean that
your answers to certain questions will determine which questions you see next
these are the imls supplementary information form including the abstract
and the imls museum program information form
the second category of application components is that of the conditionally
required documents some applications must include one two
or a combination of these and it's your job to figure out which are required for
yours if you are applying as a non-profit then
you must include your proof of non-profit status issued by the irs if
you are using a federally negotiated indirect cost in your in your budget
then you must include a copy of your final rate agreement
if you will create digital products during the course of your project then
you must complete and submit a digital products plan
if you are requesting support for conservation treatment then you must
include detailed condition reports and or formal conservation treatment
proposals just like the required documents a
mission of even one might result in the exclusion of your application from
further consideration please note that the term digital
product includes digitized and born digital content resource and assets
software and research data 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 is a partial list of examples supporting documents are completely
optional you may submit some or none we urge you to make good decisions here and
include only those that 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 viewers that they are on board and the
project will succeed pictures can help give reviewers who may
not be familiar with your institution programs collections or community a
better idea of what you're describing within your narrative
vendor quotes or equipment specifications show you've done some of
the legwork and getting appropriate estimates for project cost
we recommend that you be respectful of your reviewers time and avoid any
temptation to include hundreds of pages of extraneous material that is not
directly relevant to your project being judicious really does work to your
benefit as supporting documents can make or break an application include what is
important and helpful and stop there
let's turn to three specific documents that are very important and about which
applicants seem to have the most questions
first is the organizational profile we ask that you create a two-page document
describing your organization on the first page we ask that you address your
organization's mission or statement of purpose your organization's governance
structure including if your museum is an organizational unit under a larger
parent organization for instance if the applicant is an art museum under a
university and the level of support provided by the
parent organization your service area and a brief history of your organization
on page two of this document we ask that you describe your organization's size
using the range of attributes that i shared earlier in this presentation
this is where you make your case for being a small museum
next is the strategic plan summary as you read the inspire nofo you will see
frequent references to strategic plans or strategic goals
imls wants to help you achieve your goals and indeed we've seen that one of
the characteristics of a successful inspire project is addressing a key need
or challenge that faces your museum and whose resolution is identified in your
strategic plan we ask for a summary of your plan no more than two pages so that
reviewers will be able to understand how your proposed project's activities will
further your institutional goals and objectives
to verify its legitimacy we ask that you indicate when and by whom the plan was
approved for some institutions this might be the
board of trustees for others it might be someone or a group representing the
authority for a division or department a little inside advice
use a narrative format for your strategic plan summary although
infographics and cleverly designed imagery might be just the thing for
communicating your strategic plan for some audiences it typically doesn't work
well for our reviewers these two pages are all they have and they tell us they
find a well-constructed thoughtful written summary the best way to confirm
connections to your project make it easy for them to see them
recently the government added a new requirement to all federal awards
agencies are now required to measure the performance of awardees this performance
measurement requirement is different from project evaluation which is
typically included in your project proposals
performance measurement tells us how good a job you did as a federal awardee
it helps imless understand manage and improve our grant programs and the
assistance we provide to applicants and awardees and it helps us inform internal
stakeholders imls leadership key staff and programs
grants management and finance and external stakeholders legislative and
oversight committees media public about our grant making
project evaluation by contrast is all about your project intended results or
outcomes the prompts that help you write your narrative which we will talk about
in a moment will guide you through a discussion of your evaluation methods
we ask you what you need you are addressing and
what associated results do you want your project to have
how you will track progress toward achieving your intended results and how
the knowledge skills behaviors and and or attitudes of your target audience
will change as a result of your project so let's turn now to focus on
performance measurement and how we will ask you to plan for it and report on it
in the nofa we provide a sample chart which applicants may but are not
required to use on the left side of the chart are four commonly used performance
measures that imls has adopted for this effort
effectiveness the extent to which activities contribute to achieving the
intended results efficiency how well resources eg funds
expertise time are used and costs are minimized while generating maximum value
for the target group quality how well the activities meet the requirements and
expectations of the target group timeliness the extent to which each task
activity is completed within the proposed time frame
across the top are the information points we're asking you to use in your
statements with examples of each for instance with data we will collect are
listed counts costs weights volumes temperatures percentages and hours as
well as qualitative observations opinions and feelings
for each performance measure we ask a couple of examples addressing issues
that might turn up in museum and library projects
our intent was to make it easy for applicants to see the relationship
between this request and the project they are proposing
the blank space is where we suggest applicants write their own performance
measure statements and the chart is constructed such that it can expand to
allow as much space as needed we are looking for one statement for each
required performance measure you may provide more than one statement per
measure if you wish we do limit the performance measurement plan to two
pages
and now let's talk about the narrative of your proposal
you have five pages to cover three very important issues and the nofo provides
lengthy guidance on what the narrative should cover
project justification what need problem or challenge will your
project address and how was it identified
describe how you have 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 was the target group for your project and how have they been involved
in the planning target group refers to those who will be
most immediately and positively affected by your project identify the number of
individuals in the target group or in each target group if you identify more
than one 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 accounts 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 consider when they review your proposal it is a good
idea to refer to these as you craft your narrative to be certain you are
providing reviewers clear solid information
you will see that they correspond fairly directly with the prompts you are given
to write your narrative
because the need problem or challenge is foundational in your application keep
these points in mind the federal government wants to invest
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 and
attitude will members of your community be better able to work together to solve
problems will collections be better cared for will their lifespan be
extended well access to your collections and the information surrounding them be
expanded identify why it is important this particular change happens
hone your problem definition carefully and clear succinct terms
gather and present data that support your problem definition
project work plan this is where you identify who will do what activities
when and using what resources note that we ask you to think about
risks that are inherent in your particular project and to tell us how
you've taken that into account in your planning
we'll say more about that in a few minutes we want you to explain how you
will track your progress toward achieving your proposed results and what
you'll do if you need a correct course reviewers will evaluate your proposal on
how well your activities are informed by appropriate theory and practice
whether the goals assumptions and risks are clearly stated
reviewers want to see that the team you've put together has the experience
and skills necessary to complete their work successfully and whether your
schedule is realistic and achievable you'll also be looking at whether the
time personnel and financial resources identified are appropriate for the scope
and scale of the project they will consider if you've described a
clear methodology for tracking your progress and adjusting course when
necessary 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 is no longer on your to-do list an activity is not a goal a result
or an outcome whether it is something you do as part of striving to achieve
those aim for a reasonable level of granularity and identifying your
activities that might be hard but strive for not too much not too little but
rather just right we also ask that you think about risks
that are inherent in your particular project and to tell us how you've taken
that into account in your planning think of it as answering the question
what if there is no checklist of risk but every
project has them the best proposals will show that you are aware of them 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
your own or that of your group tells you yes that could happen and identify steps
you would take in response imless knows things go differently than
expected we just want you to prepare by identifying implementable options
here are some examples of risk that might be part of a project for which you
might seek inspire funding a project may be structured around
interns who will be selected and trained according to well thought out processes
what will happen if one or more interns drops out what's the plan for replacing
the mid project a project involving re-housing collections into new museum
quality collection storage furniture might run into delays in preparing the
space or in the delivery of the cabinets what happens to the collections items
how will the institution ensure that they remain safe and secure
project results the third section of your narrative
should be devoted to articulating your project's intended results it is equally
as important as the project justification and the project work plan
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 we ask you to tell us what data you will collect and report
in order to measure your 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 and 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 reviewers will give us their opinions on
how well you designed a feasible plan for collecting and reporting data
how likely the improvements that you propose will be realized will the
tangible products you plan to create be accessible to the target audience you
identified and whether your plan for sustaining the benefits of the project
are reasonable and practical we often hear that defining intended
results and success measures is challenging for
applicants so it's worth spending a bit of time on this here
let's think back to the questions we referenced a couple of slides ago when
we talked about defining the need problem or challenge that your project
is addressing if you said someone will learn something
how will you know if your problem related to segments of your community
being better able to work together how will you know when that has been
achieved if 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 you've done it all of your results should tie back to
your need problem or challenge you may well experience tangential benefits and
or positive outcomes but make sure you identify them as in addition to and not
instead of your original intended results reviewers are likely to see that
as a disconnect
many inspire applicants use logic models and reviewers appreciate their
conciseness and focus there are many excellent resources available to help
you construct a logic model and among these are imless shaping outcomes a free
online course developed in partnership with indiana university purdue
university of indianapolis it is available at
www.shapingoutcomes.org
and it is customized to meet the names of museum applicants there are
downloadable worksheets and numerous examples that you are likely to find
relevant to your own work so to recap your narrative has three
sections project justification project work plan and project results and you
have five pages for it the sections are all equally important write clearly
address what we ask you to address 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 i want to share with you the places to
look for more information such as the imls website where you can find the
awarded grant search to learn more about the projects we have funded through the
inspire program the awarded grant search gives you an
opportunity to explore our archive of grants that we have awarded in past
years using a variety of criteria such as institution name location and keyword
your search will will basic information about the award
and a brief description of the project this can be extremely helpful as you put
ideas together for your own project we have also posted the narrative and
schedule of completion from nine successful applications from 2022
to find these examples go to the sample applications on the imls website looking
at these proposals might help clarify your thinking about your own
at this point i'd like to share a few tips based on our experiences with the
inspire application submission process each year
first off you must submit your application online through grants.gov
imls does not accept applications by mail or email in order to register with
grants.gov you must have an activesam.gov registration and unique
entity identifier number so make sure your registrations for both
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 such as your authorized
organization representative who may hold the accounts and passwords you'll need
to submit both the sam.gov and grants.gov websites
have robust help features and faqs if you run into technical issues with
either of these sites you should reach out to their help desk and request a
tracking case or ticket number in order to document your issue and attempts at
resolving it failure failure to have active sam.gov
or grants.gov registrations by the application deadline is not an excuse
for submitting a late application so again
start early important to know our regulations state
clearly that we can make grants only to eligible applicants that submit complete
applications including attachments on or before the deadline those are the
concepts we must live by so here are some tips to help ensure that you can
you can too start early you've already done that by
participating in this webinar but don't lose momentum keep going
become familiar with the grants.gov workspace this has been available as an
option for a few years now and it is now the only option it has many good
features including upfront validation which allows you to correct errors prior
to submission and the opportunity to collaborate with others in creating your
application consider starting in the workspace
overview and check out the tutorials do your background research
make it easy for the reviewers to see that you are up to date and know what
you're talking about revisit the inspire nofo frequently and
follow the narrative outline it provides use headings subheadings or numbered
sections in your narrative to make it easy for reviewers to read
avoid generalities acronyms and jargon the people who will review your
application are experts but they may not be totally familiar with your particular
field shorthand make it easy for them to understand what you mean
check your spelling grammar and math it counts with reviewers
one of the advantages of starting your work early is being able to allocate
time for a colleague to review everything with fresh eyes before you
submit ask them to act like a reviewer who's
seeing this for the first time be sure your application is complete
check it against the table of application components in the nofo
submit to grants.gov early so you can correct any errors and avoid any trauma
created by technology challenges this is the general schedule of events
to show what happens to your application once we receive it
imls staff will review it for completeness and eligibility and you
will hear from us via email if there are any problems
from february through june your experienced and knowledgeable peers will
provide scores and comments based on the criteria outlined in the inspire nofo an
imls staff will examine your budget your financials and your track record with
past and current grants we then prepare materials for the imls deputy director
for museums and the imls director by law the imless director is charged with the
authority and responsibility to make final award decisions and this happens
in july in august we will notify you by email of
the award decisions and provide the scores and comments created by the
reviewers and on september 1 2023 funded projects begin
thank you very much for your interest in imls and in the inspired grants for
small museums funding opportunity i hope you found this information this
webinar helpful here is a listing of the names email addresses and direct phone
numbers for program staff in the office of museum services who are answering
questions about the inspire grants for small museums program we encourage you
to contact us with any questions you might have about what you've heard or
seen in this webinar or in the online inspire materials we're very happy to
help so with that we wish you good luck and
we look forward to seeing your application in november