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Announcement: America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations Planning Grants Due September 5 (Posted May 30), National Endowment for the Humanities.

Their Description: Public humanities programs promote the experience of lifelong learning in American and world history, literature, comparative religion, philosophy, and other fields of the humanities for broad public audiences....

Planning grants can be used to plan, refine, and develop the content and interpretive approach of programs that reach broad audiences, including exhibitions, interpretation at historic sites and houses, reading and discussion programs, Web-based or other digital projects, or other public programs that encourage discussion, analysis, and reflection in the humanities. Applicants should have already conducted preliminary consultation with scholars to help shape the humanities content of the project and with other programming advisers appropriate to the project’s format.

NEH encourages complex projects that reach exceptionally large audiences in any of the following ways:

• Creating collaborations among institutions, especially non-traditional partners, to expand the project’s scope and reach. Projects that take advantage of statewide or regional associations (e.g., library networks, museum associations, state humanities councils....   

•Envisioning diverse and wide-ranging program formats that expand or deepen the audience’s engagement with the humanities by extending the project’s scope to larger audiences or engaging the same audience in different ways;

• Conducting programming at large number of venues across the nation; or

• Devising a Chairman’s Special Award exhibition. These are traveling, large-scale exhibitions of national visibility....

Each project should be guided by a team of advisors who have helped develop the project’s concepts and themes. The advisory team’s expertise normally complements that of the applicant’s staff. The team must include humanities scholars.... Proposals that are competitive have a variety of consultants representing a wide range of humanities perspectives....

Applications that make innovative use of digital technology are encouraged. Digital projects should do more than simply provide a digital archive of material. They should offer new ways of contextualizing and interpreting information that engages public audiences interactively in exploring humanities ideas and questions. Applications may, for example, include plans to create Web sites, PDA tours and resources, podcasts, virtual environments, wiki formats or others that utilize user-generated content, virtual imaging, GIS mapping, online scholar-led discussions, video on demand, streaming video, games, or other digital components. Digital components should rest on sound humanities scholarship and enhance the project’s humanities content for the general public in ways that take unique advantage of the chosen technology....

Planning grants support all activities connected with project planning.... . Awards of up to $75,000.... are available for more complex projects that would have exceptionally wide reach to audiences. In most cases, NEH grants cover no more than 50-60% of project costs.... Any U.S. nonprofit organization with IRS 501(c)3 tax-exempt status is eligible, as are state and local governmental agencies. Individuals are not eligible to apply.

Our Thoughts:  For-profits simply need a nonprofit or government partner. This kind of project seems tailor-made for a school improvement firm focused on the development of learning activities based on new technologies. If you have the means, you can now subsidize the acquisition of content. Much of what is produced for NEH can be re-purposed for sale in the market k-12, and the road tour is great public relations.