Call for Proposals for Community-Based Archives

_NOTE:_

• _All interested applicants must first complete a registration request by March 12, 2025 at 5:00pm Eastern._

Call for Proposals for Community-Based Archives

The Mellon Foundation invites community-based archives in the United States and its territories to submit applications for general operating support.

These grants may provide support in one or more of the following areas of need:

• Operational costs, including staff, space, and utilities.
• Collections care, including the acquisition of new materials, physical and digital storage fees, and access and preservation efforts.
• Programming activities, including events, exhibitions, and increased community usage.

This funding opportunity is overseen by the Foundation’s Public Knowledge program.

About this Grant Program

For the purposes of this call, community-based archives are defined as organizations that gather and share materials as members of under-documented communities to preserve and celebrate their collective histories. These archives serve to affirm and uplift their community’s existence and identity, to help combat patterns of misinformation, and to provide a trusted environment for the perpetuation of community traditions, art forms, and languages, among other forms of empowerment. Formed as counter responses to a long legacy of oversight and extraction by mainstream cultural heritage institutions and by the academy, these archives are essential to the creation of a more inclusive and multivocal American story.

Over the course of three open calls for proposals from 2019-2021, the Foundation awarded nearly $5 million to 46 community-based archives. As Mellon reopens this funding opportunity, it commits to funding another $5 million over three calls.

Funding

Awards will range from $25,000 to $100,000 for grants of two years in length.

Eligibility

_You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website._

• Organizations that respond to this Call for Proposals must:
  • Be located within the United States or one of its territories.
  • Have 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status or be a federally recognized Indian tribe.
  • Have an archive or an archiving initiative with an annual operating budget of at least $12,500 and no more than $1 million.
  • In-kind donations towards occupancy costs may be used to calculate the total operating budget.
  • This call is open to both standalone archives and community-based organizations with an archiving initiative.
  • Have an established and actively collecting archive that has been in operation for two or more years.

Ineligibility

• This funding cannot be used to create a new archive.
• Applications from universities will not be considered.
• The Foundation does not make grants to individuals or support K-12 initiatives.