NEH Collections Stewardship Grant Consulting
The National Endowment for the Humanities Collections Stewardship program offers museums, libraries, archives, colleges, universities, and other cultural institutions an opportunity to improve the preservation, management, and accessibility of their collections.
Planning and Implementation Projects
Backlog can be your partner for a planning or implementation project.
For a planning project, we can conduct archival needs assessments, establish priorities, develop policies, create a digitization or preservation plan, or test a proposed workflow through a pilot project.
For an implementation project, we can create finding aids and metadata, rehouse materials, carry out digitization work, establish sustainable systems, or train staff to maintain the work over time.
NEH currently defines planning awards as $50,000 to $100,000 and implementation awards for a single organization as $100,001 to $350,000.
How Backlog Can Support Your Project
Backlog works with organization that have a collection in mind and need experienced archivists to assess, organize, preserve, or make it more accessible.
Grant funds may be used to partner with Backlog to:
Assess physical or digital collections
Develop preservation plans, policies, and project priorities
Arrange and describe archival and manuscript collections
Create inventories, finding aids, catalog records, and metadata
Rehouse materials in appropriate archival storage
Plan digitization projects
Develop digital preservation workflows
Improve storage, handling, and collections-care practices
Create practical procedures that allow the work to continue after the grant period
A Partner for the Work
Backlog is not a grant-writing firm. Your organization will remain responsible for preparing and submitting the application.
We can, however, help you determine how Backlog’s work would fit into a project you are already developing. This may include discussing the proposed scope, identifying realistic project activities and deliverables, estimating the time and cost of our work, and providing the information needed to describe our role in the application.
The best place to begin is with a specific collection and a general understanding of what it needs. You do not need to have every detail worked out, but you should have a potential project in mind. For example, an unprocessed archival collection, materials that need rehousing, a digitization initiative that needs structure, or a collection that has become difficult for staff and researchers to access.
Applying for the December 15th NEH deadline?
Backlog can help define the project, develop a scope of work and budget, establish a project timeline, and provide the qualifications and letter of commitment needed for your application. Organizations seeking a Backlog proposal should contact us by November 30th.
Email Emma at emma@backlog-archivists.com to schedule a 45-minute phone or Zoom conversation. We’ll discuss the collection, the proposed work, the grant timeline, and the information you may need from Backlog for your application.