Sparks! Ignition Grants for Museums | SPARKS MUSEUM FY16

Opportunity Information: Apply for SPARKS MUSEUM FY16

Sparks! Ignition Grants for Museums is a small-grants funding opportunity offered by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) under its larger National Leadership Grants for Museums program. The purpose of Sparks grants is to help museums try out, prototype, and evaluate clearly defined innovations in how they operate or in the services they provide to the public. A central expectation is learning that can be shared: projects are meant to generate practical takeaways for the broader museum field, and IMLS explicitly values results even when the experiment does not fully succeed. In other words, a strong Sparks project is one that tests an idea in a focused way, documents what happened, and produces insights that other museums can use to improve how they serve their communities.

Funding is provided through a discretionary federal grant. The opportunity referenced here (SPARKS MUSEUM FY16; CFDA 45.312) listed an award ceiling of $25,000, with an anticipated six awards. The original application deadline shown for this cycle was December 1, 2015, and the opportunity was posted on September 15, 2015. While those dates apply to that specific funding cycle, the summary points to the typical scale and intent of the program: modest awards designed to quickly test and assess innovative approaches rather than fund large, multi-year implementations.

Eligibility is structured around three required conditions. First, the applicant must be either a unit of state or local government or a private nonprofit organization with tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code. Second, the organization must be located in an eligible U.S. jurisdiction, which includes all 50 states, Washington, DC, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Northern Mariana Islands, and certain Freely Associated States (the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, and the Republic of Palau). Third, the applicant must fit into one of several eligible institution types: a qualifying museum, a museum-serving organization or association, an institution of higher education (public or nonprofit), or a public or private nonprofit agency that operates a qualifying museum and applies on that museum's behalf.

The program provides a detailed definition of what counts as a museum for eligibility purposes. A qualifying museum is a permanent, professionally staffed institution organized for essentially educational or aesthetic purposes that owns or uses tangible objects (animate or inanimate), cares for those objects, and exhibits them to the general public on a regular basis through facilities it owns or operates. The guidance also clarifies what "professional staff" means: at least one staff member (or full-time equivalent), paid or unpaid, must be primarily engaged in acquiring, caring for, or exhibiting the institution's objects. It also clarifies what it means to exhibit to the general public on a regular basis, noting that exhibiting for at least 120 days per year is generally considered meeting the standard. Institutions that do not meet the 120-day threshold or do not have exhibition as a primary purpose may still be deemed eligible in certain circumstances, with further detail referenced in 45 CFR 1180.2(d).

IMLS also lists a wide range of institution types that can qualify as museums if they meet the core museum criteria. These include aquariums, arboretums, art museums, botanical gardens, children's or youth museums, general museums spanning multiple disciplines, historic houses and sites, history museums, natural history and anthropology museums, nature centers, planetariums, science and technology centers, specialized museums focused on a single subject, and zoological parks. Beyond museums themselves, eligibility extends to organizations or associations that advance the well-being of museums and the museum profession, as well as higher education institutions and nonprofit or public agencies responsible for operating a museum.

Finally, applicants are reminded that receiving an IMLS award requires compliance with all applicable federal requirements and being in good standing on any active IMLS awards. This means organizations with existing IMLS grants must be current on reporting and other award conditions before they can receive new funding under the Sparks program.

• The Institute of Museum and Library Services in the arts, humanities sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Sparks! Ignition Grants for Museums" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 45.312.
• This funding opportunity was created on 2015-09-15.
• Applicants must submit their applications by 2015-12-01. (Agency may still review applications by suitable applicants for the remaining/unused allocated funding in 2026.)
• Each selected applicant is eligible to receive up to $25,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 6 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: Others.

Apply for SPARKS MUSEUM FY16

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