NHPRC-Mellon Planning Grants for Collaborative Digital Editions in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American History and Ethnic Studies

Other Requirements

Drafts

Applicants are strongly encouraged to submit draft materials prior to making a formal application. Draft materials may be submitted anytime up to (but no later than) April 1, 2023. Draft materials should include a project narrative and budget, and may be sent via email to Darrell Meadows, Deputy Executive Director and Director for Publishing  (darrell.meadows@nara.gov).

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Application Information

You must use Grants.gov to submit your Proposal. All information necessary to apply is included in this announcement, the Application Instructions, and the forms on Grants.gov. If you need the information supplied in an alternative format, please call the NHPRC at 202-357-5010.

In the event that Grants.gov is experiencing technical difficulties that prevent submission, applicants must first attempt to resolve the issue with the Grants.gov Contact Center (800-518-4726). If Grants.gov cannot solve the problem, applicants must contact Jeff de la Concepcion (Jeff.delaconcepcion@nara.gov; 202-357-5022) no later than 3:00 Eastern Time on the day of the deadline with their valid Grants.gov Contact Center trouble-ticket number. Applications that fail to meet deadlines for reasons other than those noted will not be considered for funding.

Preparing Your Application

Using the Application Instructions, fill out the Standard Form 424 and the NHPRC Budget Form. 

You must also prepare a Project Narrative and Supplementary Materials to attach to your Application Package.

Project Narrative

The Project Narrative is a description of the proposal. It should be no more than 20 double-spaced pages in 12-pt type on 8.5 x 11 inch paper with standard margins.

Please organize your narrative in sections, as follows:

Overview (no more than 3 pages):

Provide a clear and concise description and rationale for the proposed collaborative digital edition, including its historical timeframe and subject theme(s); a brief description of the historical sources that will form its documentary corpus, and what contextualization and/or other forms of intellectual access to these sources it will provide to researchers (such as transcription, translation, and/or annotation); and how many years you anticipate will be needed to complete the fully-realized edition. In this section, you should also:

Briefly describe your collaborative team, identifying its participants, proposed activities, and expected results. 

• Describe the expected outcomes and benefits of the project for advancing research and teaching in your respective field(s) of study. 
• Outline the core opportunities and challenges for planning that you foresee in undertaking this work. 
• Provide a brief budget summary.

Project Team: 

Describe your collaborative project team in fuller detail. Project teams may include co-directors, but one Project Director lead should be identified for the purposes of this application. (At the beginning of this section, please list the Names, Titles, Institutions, Phone Numbers, and E-Mail Addresses of the Project Director and Key Personnel. 

• Please ensure that the project director listed in the Narrative is the same person listed in Section 8 (f), of the SF 424. If your institution requires a different contact person on the SF 424, please explain in one sentence.
• The team should also include a lead representative from each of the participating institutions. It is assumed that the applicant institution will serve as the project’s institutional host. 
• In addition to the Key Personnel, list the names and affiliations of all individuals who have already committed to participating in the planning process, as well as those who have been invited but have not yet committed to participating, and those who might be invited, including any individuals who will serve as advisors. Explain the respective contributions that each of the committed and potential participants would make to the planning process. 

If applicable, provide a description of legal and operational relationships with other organizations, subcontractors, consultants, administering agents, or collaborators on the project.

The Proposed Digital Edition and Its User Communities:

Describe the conceptual and documentary scope of the proposed collaborative digital edition in greater detail, including a fuller description of the historical materials that will form the core of the edition, whether and to what extent the effort will require systematic search and collection of records, and/or the virtual unification of digitized records, and the amount and type of work (if any) that has been completed to date. 

• What forms of contextualization and/or annotation do you envision for providing intellectual access to these materials? 
• Describe your project team’s anticipated user communities and how the envisioned digital edition is expected to advance the research, teaching, and/or other identified needs of the subfield(s), research area(s), and communities it is intended to support.  Letters of support from relevant individuals, institutions, and organizations should be included in the Supplementary Materials.

Planning Issues:

Outline the most pressing planning issues (selected from the list below) that your project team will address during the proposed grant period, and why. In this section, please also describe briefly the project team’s current plans or state of thinking around the remaining items on this list:

• Project conception, scope and design, including plans for providing intellectual access to the proposed edition’s corpus of historical records
• Surveying of collections and planning for document search and selection
• Establishing a trusting, respectful, and mutually-beneficial collaboration
• Staffing and collaborative project administration and management
• Training and other relevant professional development
• Identification of target audience(s)
• Student and user community input and engagement
• Establishing the project’s editorial policies and practices
• Technical architecture and digital workflow
• Virtual unification of digitized collections
• Online publication, dissemination, and discovery
• User experience and accessibility
• Digital preservation strategies
• Long-term sustainability

Planning Activities:

Outline a plan of work that includes each stage of planning activities to be undertaken during the proposed grant period, in 6-month increments, identifying participants, including which staff members are responsible for which tasks, as well as the goals and expected outcomes for each activity. If needed, you may clarify complex work plans with a more detailed plan in the supplemental materials. (Your work plan and related planning activities should be clearly aligned with the planning issues outlined in the previous section as well as your proposed budget.)

Performance Objectives:

List six to ten objectives (or more, as appropriate to and in alignment with your planning activities) by which we can measure your performance over the course of the proposed grant period, and evaluate the overall success of your planning efforts. For example: 

• Engage collaborative team and members of the targeted user community to refine and report on project conception, scope, and design.
• Identify, procure and complete staff training as needed to inform and enhance all aspects of the project team’s planning efforts.
• Develop, test, and report on an initial set of editorial policies for document collection, transcription, annotation, encoding, and digital publication.
• Establish, document, and report on the project’s long-term digital preservation strategies.

Supplementary Materials

Submit no more than 35 pages of the following Supplementary Materials:

• Résumés for all members of the project team (no more than two pages each; please use only institutional addresses and phone numbers)
• Endorsement letters and Letters of Commitment (from the applicable partner institution(s), project team members, institutional administrators, and other individuals or organizations involved in the planning process)
• Position announcement for any new positions to be paid for by grant funds
• A detailed work plan (in either quarterly or six-month increments)

If these materials are available on a web site, please provide the URL(s). Reviewers appreciate applications with fewer supplemental pages.

Project Budget

You must submit a budget on the NHPRC Budget Form available on the Application Instructions page. Note that the form itself contains additional instructions. You may include with your application a Narrative Budget Supplement for budget categories that require further detail.  

Submission Dates and Times

• Draft (optional):   April 1, 2023
• Final Deadline:   June 7, 2023

NHPRC support begins no earlier than January 1, 2024.

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Application Review Information

The NHPRC staff will acknowledge receipt of the application soon after we receive it. The following evaluation criteria and weights will be used by NHPRC staff and other reviewers to form recommendations.

Criteria for NHPRC-Mellon Planning Grants for Collaborative Digital Editions in African American, Asian American, Hispanic American, and Native American History and Ethnic Studies:

1. Quality and feasibility of the project’s conceptual scope and its potential for advancing new research and teaching. (30 percent) 
2. Quality and extent of the proposed collaboration, including its ability to enhance, build upon, and include the capacities of all participants in the planning process, and to realize the envisioned planning goals and outcomes. (30 percent) 
3. Quality and extent of community and end-user engagement and input in the development of the proposal and in the plan of work. (20 percent) 
4. Coherence, effectiveness, and reasonableness of the proposed planning goals, activities, and budget, and their likely success in preparing the project for implementation. (20 percent) 

Review Process

After submitting a proposal, do not discuss the pending application to the NHPRC with any Member of the Commission. Commission members must ensure fair and equitable treatment of all applications and do not discuss proposals with individual applicants.

• Peer Reviewers: We will ask 5 to 7 external peer reviewers to evaluate the proposal.
• Commission Staff: Approximately 3-4 months after the submission deadline, we will send to the Project Director anonymous copies of reviewers' comments along with specific questions from the Commission staff. Applicants have an opportunity to respond to any issues raised in the reviews as well as to Commission staff’s questions and comments.
• The Commission: After reviewing proposals, reviewers’ comments, the applicants' responses, and evaluations by the Commission staff, the Commission members deliberate and make funding recommendations to the Archivist of the United States, who has final statutory authority and selects award recipients. Throughout this process, all members of the Commission and its staff follow conflict-of-interest rules to assure fair and equal treatment of every application.

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Award Administration Information

Notification

Grants are contingent upon available funds. In some cases, the Commission will adjust grant amounts depending upon the number of recommended proposals and total budget. The Commission may recommend that the Archivist approve the proposal and extend an offer of a grant with applicable terms and conditions, or it may recommend rejection of the proposal. 

Grant applicants will be reviewed at the November, 2022 meeting and notified within two weeks after the Archivist's decision.

Successful applicants will receive an informal offer of award outlining the steps that must be accomplished to qualify for funding. Those steps include verification of their acceptance of general terms and conditions, completion of a survey on their Financial Capability and Accounting Systems, and finalization of performance objectives for their project. Once all requested documentation is  received, reviewed and acceptable, the NHPRC will issue an official award notice.

 

 

Administrative Requirements

In order to ensure that you can manage a grant, applicants should review the Federal grant administration rules and regulations governing grants from the NHPRC listed in the Administering an NHPRC Grant section.

Reporting

In most cases, award recipients will report on their performance in narrative reports every six months and submit financial reports once a year.