Community Collections Grant Application
Applying for a Community Collections Grant
The Community Collections Grants from the American Folklife Center (AFC) fund and support contemporary cultural field research and documentation within diverse communities. Available to Individuals and Organizations, the grants offer up to $50,000 each to support projects within their communities to produce ethnographic cultural documentation, such as of interviews with community members and audio-visual recordings of cultural activity, from the community perspective. The center will archive the collections from grant projects to preserve and showcase this rich and valuable cultural documentation, expanding its representation and inclusion of contemporary cultural expressions and traditions that may otherwise be absent from the national record.
The program is open to US-based Individual applicants and non-profit Organizations (subject to 26 U.S.C. 501 c (3)), including institutions of higher education, colleges and universities, as well as professional associations and community groups. For 2023, the Library intends to award ten 12-month grants of up to $50,000 each.
This opportunity closed on August 1, 2022. For the latest updates on the next round of applications, subscribe to the Of the People blog.
Webinars
View previously recorded informational Community Collection Grants webinars
Commonly Asked Questions (Grants for Individuals)
- What’s the purpose of this program?
Through a gift from the Mellon Foundation, the Library of Congress will support a multiyear initiative that entails public participation in the creation of archival collections.
Specifically, the Library seeks to award grants to support contemporary cultural documentation focusing on the culture and traditions of diverse, often underrepresented communities in the U.S. These projects will result in archival collections preserved at the American Folklife Center (AFC) and made accessible through the Library web site. The major goals of this grant program are to enable communities to document their cultural life and experiences from their own perspectives, while enriching the Library’s holdings with diverse materials featuring creativity and knowledge found at the local level. As such, successful applications will come from individuals closely affiliated with the community they propose to document.
- Who is eligible to receive this grant?
Applicants must be individuals located in the U.S. territories. If a group of individuals wishes to work together on a proposed project, the application must identify one individual as the potential awardee.
Commonly Asked Questions (Grants for Organizations)
- What’s the purpose of this program?
Through a gift from the Mellon Foundation, the Library of Congress will support a multiyear initiative that entails public participation in the creation of archival collections.
Specifically, the Library seeks to award grants to support contemporary cultural documentation focusing on the culture and traditions of diverse, often underrepresented communities in the U.S. These projects will result in archival collections preserved at the American Folklife Center (AFC) and made accessible through the Library web site. The major goals of this grant program are to enable communities to document their cultural life and experiences from their own perspectives, while enriching the Library’s holdings with diverse materials featuring creativity and knowledge found at the local level. As such, successful applications will come from non-profit organizations closely affiliated with the community they propose to document.
- Who is eligible to receive this grant?
Applicants may be non-profit organizations located in the U.S. territories and subject to 26 U.S.C 501 c (3), including institutions of higher education, colleges and universities, as well as professional associations and community groups. For-profit applicants are not eligible.
For both Individual and Organization applicants
- What kinds of projects can be proposed?
Projects will document contemporary cultural traditions, practices, and expressions of communities in the U.S. territories. For examples, see the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) document (links below).
Learn more about the 2022 Community Collections Grants recipients
Resources
For more information, view the links below:
Proposal Development Resources
About the American Folklife Center
Since shortly after its inception in 1976 through the American Folklife Preservation Act (Public Law 94-201), the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress has operated as steward for a significant ethnographic archive. Now numbering about 6.5 million items and comprising just over 3,400 distinct collections, the AFC archive contains documentation of diverse cultural communities and traditions spanning the late 1800s on through today. Beyond caring for these collections, the AFC has also actively built the collections by conducting large scale folklife survey projects between 1977 and 1998 around the country, training people in cultural documentation methods, and offering financial support through the Archie Green Fellowship program to build the Occupational Folklife Project, among many other programs, activities, and awards. The Mellon Foundation funding enables us to build on these efforts through direct work with cultural communities, and the staff at the AFC is excited to be a part of this historic initiative!
Read earlier Of The People blog posts on the AFC’s Community Collections Grants here: