Thursday, August 28, 2008

EPA Proposal Guidelines for Brownfields Grants (Assessment, Revolving Loan, and Cleanup)

The Small Business Liability Relief and Brownfields Revitalization Act (“Brownfields Law”, P.L. 107-118) requires the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to publish guidance to assist applicants in preparing proposals for grants to assess and clean up brownfield sites. EPA’s Brownfields Program provides funds to empower states, communities, tribes, and nonprofits to prevent, inventory, assess, clean up, and reuse brownfield sites. EPA provides brownfields funding for three types of grants:
1. Brownfields Assessment Grants - provides funds to inventory, characterize, assess, and conduct planning (including cleanup planning) and community involvement related to brownfield sites.
2. Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) Grants –provides funds for a grant recipient to capitalize a revolving fund and to make loans and provide subgrants to carry out cleanup activities at brownfield sites.
3. Brownfields Cleanup Grants - provides funds to carry out cleanup activities at a specific brownfield site owned by the applicant.
Applications are due by November 14, 2008.

Document Type: Modification to Previous Grants Notice
Funding Opportunity Number: EPA-OSWER-OBLR-08-07
Opportunity Category: Discretionary
Posted Date: Aug 26, 2008
Creation Date: Aug 26, 2008
Original Closing Date for Applications: Nov 14, 2008 Please refer to the full announcement, including Section IV for additional information on submission methods and due dates.
Current Closing Date for Applications: Nov 14, 2008 Please refer to the full announcement, including Section IV for additional information on submission methods and due dates.
Archive Date: Dec 14, 2008
Funding Instrument Type: Grant
Category of Funding Activity: Environment
Category Explanation:
Expected Number of Awards: 183
Estimated Total Program Funding: $37,500,000
Award Ceiling:
Award Floor:
CFDA Number(s): 66.818 -- Brownfields Assessment and Cleanup Cooperative Agreements
Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement: No

Proposal Guidelines for Brownfields Assessment Grants
Proposal Guidelines for Brownfields Revolving Loan Fund Grants
Proposal Guidelines for Brownfields Cleanup Grants

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Tuesday, August 26, 2008

IMLS Museums for America

Museums for America is the Institute’s largest grant program for museums, supporting projects and ongoing activities that build museums’ capacity to serve their communities. Museums for America grants strengthen a museum’s ability to serve the public more effectively by supporting high-priority activities that advance the institution’s mission and strategic goals. Museums for America grants are designed to be flexible: funds can be used for a wide variety of projects, including: ongoing museum work, research and other behind-the-scenes activities, planning, new programs, purchase of equipment or services, and activities that will support the efforts of museums to upgrade and integrate new technologies. Grants are awarded in the following categories: Engaging Communities (Education, Exhibitions, and Interpretation); Building Institutional Capacity (Management, Policy, and Training); and Collections Stewardship. Applications are due by November 1, 2008.

Eligibility: All types of museums, large and small, are eligible for funding. Eligible museums include aquariums, arboretums and botanical gardens, art museums, youth museums, general museums, historic houses and sites, history museums, nature centers, natural history and anthropology museums, planetariums, science and technology centers, specialized museums, and zoological parks. Federally operated and for-profit museums may not apply for IMLS funds. An eligible applicant must be: either a unit of state or local government or a private not-for-profit organization that has tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code; located in one of the fifty states of the United States of America, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated states of Micronesia, or the Republic of Palau; and a museum that, using a professional staff, (1) is organized on a permanent basis for essentially educational or aesthetic purposes; (2) owns or uses tangible objects, either animate or inanimate; (3) cares for these objects; and (4) exhibits these objects to the general public on a regular basis through facilities which it owns or operates. An organization uses a professional staff if it employs at least one professional staff member, or the fulltime equivalent, whether paid or unpaid primarily engaged in the acquisition, care, or exhibition to the public of objects owned or used by the institution. An organization “exhibits objects to the general public” if such exhibition is a primary purpose of the institution. Further, an organization which exhibits objects to the general public for at least 120 days a year shall be deemed to exhibit objects to the general public on a regular basis. An organization which exhibits objects by appointment may meet the requirement to exhibit objects to the general public on a regular basis, if it can establish, in light of the facts under all the relevant circumstances, that this method of exhibition does not unreasonably restrict the accessibility of the institution's exhibits to the general public. Please note that an organization which does not have as a primary purpose the exhibition of objects to the general public. but which can demonstrate that it exhibits objects to the general public on a regular basis as a significant, separate, distinct, and continuing portion of its activities, and that it otherwise meets the museum eligibility requirements, may be determined to be eligible as a museum under these guidelines. A museum located within a parent organization that is a state or local government or multipurpose non-profit entity, such as a municipality, university, historical society, foundation, or a cultural center, may apply on its own behalf, if the museum: (1) is able to independently fulfill all the eligibility requirements listed above; (2) functions as a discrete unit within the parent organization; (3) has its own fully segregated and itemized operating budget; and (4) has the authority to make the application on its own. When any of the last three conditions cannot be met, a museum may apply through its parent organization. Prospective applicants that cannot fulfill all of these requirements should contact IMLS to discuss their eligibility before applying. IMLS may require additional supporting documentation from the applicant to determine the museum’s autonomy. Each eligible applicant within a single parent organization should clearly delineate its own programs and operations in the application narrative. A parent organization that controls multiple museums that are not autonomous but which are otherwise eligible may submit only one application per grant program; the application may be submitted by the parent organization on behalf of one or more of the eligible museums.

Document Type: Grants Notice
Funding Opportunity Number: MFA-FY09
Opportunity Category: Discretionary
Posted Date: Aug 26, 2008
Creation Date: Aug 26, 2008
Original Closing Date for Applications: Nov 01, 2008
Current Closing Date for Applications: Nov 01, 2008
Archive Date: Dec 01, 2008
Funding Instrument Type: Grant
Category of Funding Activity: Arts (see "Cultural Affairs" in CFDA)
Humanities (see "Cultural Affairs" in CFDA)
Category Explanation:
Expected Number of Awards: 150
Estimated Total Program Funding: $17,000,000
Award Ceiling: $150,000
Award Floor: $5,000
CFDA Number(s): 45.301 -- Museums for America
Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement: Yes

http://www.imls.gov/applicants/grants/forAmerica.shtm
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Thursday, August 14, 2008

IMLS Connecting to Collections Statewide Planning Grants

IMLS invites proposals for statewide, collaborative planning grants to address the recommendations of the Heritage Health Index (HHI), which found the collections held in the public trust by libraries, museums, and archives to be at great risk. The report offered four recommendations for collecting institutions: that they provide safe conditions for their collections; that they develop an emergency plan; that they assign responsibility for collections care; and that they marshal public and private support for and raise public awareness about collections care. These planning grants are intended to engage institutions with responsibility for collections stewardship within a state, commonwealth, or territory in consultation and planning for ways to address the HHI recommendations most relevant for their state. It is not necessary for all four recommendations to be addressed, but all four may, indeed, be pertinent. These grants are aimed at fostering effective partnerships among organizations that have a strong commitment to shared collections stewardship goals. This program will fund ongoing or new collaborations. Projects may build on previous or nascent statewide planning efforts. Projects should demonstrate how the participating organizations (representing libraries, museums, archives, and other relevant statewide organizations) will work together in a planning process that moves the state closer to achieving the recommendations of HHI through an appropriate and achievable plan for action. These planning grants are a central component of the Connecting to Collections: A Call to Action initiative and will result in a series of models and best practices for institutions nationwide. Applications are due by October 16, 2008.

Additional Information on Eligibility:
All applications are required to reflect multiple partnerships, including representatives of libraries, museums, archives, statewide service organizations and state agencies. Any U.S. nonprofit library or museum is eligible (please see IMLS eligibility criteria at www.imls.gov/applicants/criteria.shtm a full definition of these kinds of institutions). In addition, a library or museum consortium or association is eligible to apply. Any single organization need not have statewide stewardship; this statewide perspective can be achieved through partnerships. More than one application may be submitted from an individual state, commonwealth, or territory, but only one application per state will be funded. Individuals are not eligible to apply.

Document Type: Grants Notice
Funding Opportunity Number: CTC-FY09
Opportunity Category: Discretionary
Posted Date: Aug 12, 2008
Creation Date: Aug 12, 2008
Original Closing Date for Applications: Oct 16, 2008
Current Closing Date for Applications: Oct 16, 2008
Archive Date: Nov 15, 2008
Funding Instrument Type: Grant
Category of Funding Activity: Arts (see "Cultural Affairs" in CFDA)
Humanities (see "Cultural Affairs" in CFDA)
Category Explanation:
Expected Number of Awards:
Estimated Total Program Funding:
Award Ceiling: $40,000
Award Floor: $1
CFDA Number(s): 45.312 -- National Leadership Grants
Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement: No

Connecting to Collections Statewide Planning Grants
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Tuesday, August 12, 2008

NEH Scholarly Editions Grants

Scholarly Editions Grants support the preparation of editions of pre-existing texts and documents that are currently inaccessible or available in inadequate editions. Projects must be undertaken by a team of at least one editor and one other staff member. Grants typically support editions of significant literary, philosophical, and historical materials, but other types of work, such as musical notation, are also eligible. Applicants should demonstrate familiarity with the best practices recommended by the Association for Documentary Editing or the Modern Language Association Committee on Scholarly Editions. Applications are due by November 05, 2008.

Editions produced with NEH support contain scholarly and critical apparatus appropriate to the subject matter and format of the edition. This usually means introductions and annotations that provide essential information about the form, transmission, and historical and intellectual context of the texts and documents involved. Proposals for editions of foreign language materials in the original language are eligible for funding, but proposals for editions of translated materials should be submitted to the Collaborative Research program. Providing Access to Grant Products As a taxpayer-supported federal agency, the NEH endeavors to make the products of its grants available to the broadest possible audience. Our goal is for scholars, educators, students, and the American public to have ready and easy access to the wide range of NEH grant products. For the Scholarly Editions program, such products may include edited documentary or literary texts, musical scores, or Web sites, and the like. For projects that lead to the development of Web sites, all other considerations being equal, the NEH gives preference to those that provide free access to the public.

Document Type: Grants Notice
Funding Opportunity Number: 20081105-RQ
Opportunity Category: Discretionary
Posted Date: Aug 11, 2008
Creation Date: Aug 11, 2008
Original Closing Date for Applications: Nov 05, 2008
Current Closing Date for Applications: Nov 05, 2008
Archive Date: Dec 05, 2008
Funding Instrument Type: Grant
Category of Funding Activity: Humanities (see "Cultural Affairs" in CFDA)
Category Explanation:
Expected Number of Awards:
Estimated Total Program Funding:
Award Ceiling: $300,000
Award Floor: $0
CFDA Number(s): 45.161 -- Promotion of the Humanities_Research
Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement: No

http://www.neh.gov/grants/guidelines/editions.html
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