Access to Historical Records: Major Initiatives | PRELIM 202001

Opportunity Information: Apply for PRELIM 202001

The Access to Historical Records: Major Initiatives grant is a funding opportunity from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), part of the National Archives and Records Administration, aimed at projects that meaningfully expand the public's ability to discover, access, and use major historical records collections. The program is broadly open to many formats of historical material, including paper-based documents, photographs, born-digital records, and analog audio or moving image formats. While many types of records are eligible, NHPRC highlights a particular interest in early American legal records, including colonial, territorial, county, early statehood, and tribal proceedings that help document how the nation's legal systems developed over time.

The types of projects NHPRC wants to support focus on access at scale and on real-world usability. Funded work may include digitizing significant historical records (or closely related collections) held by a single institution and putting them online for free public use. It may also include efforts to provide access to born-digital collections, which often require specialized workflows for appraisal, processing, description, and delivery. Another major emphasis is building virtual collections that pull together related materials from multiple institutions into a single freely available online resource, helping users find dispersed records without needing to know which repository holds what. NHPRC also invites proposals that create new tools, platforms, or methods that improve how users search, navigate, interpret, or reuse historical records, especially where those solutions could be adopted elsewhere.

Collaboration is strongly encouraged, particularly when it helps unite connected records that are scattered across repositories. Competitive applications tend to be those that address widely recognized access problems in the archives and records field and that produce approaches that are replicable and scalable, meaning the methods or infrastructure could be reused by other institutions or expanded beyond the initial project. NHPRC also signals that public engagement matters, and applicants are encouraged to build in ways for the public to participate in or benefit from the work beyond passive access, such as through community input, educational outreach, or other engagement strategies that fit the nature of the collections.

Awards in this category support projects lasting between one and three years, with grant amounts ranging from $100,000 to $350,000. NHPRC anticipated making up to five awards, with a total program amount of up to $1,000,000 for the competition cycle described. Grant-funded work under this opportunity was scheduled to begin no earlier than January 1, 2021. Recipients must acknowledge NHPRC support in publications and other products that result from the grant, which typically includes websites, digital collections portals, reports, finding aids, tools, and outreach materials created with grant funding.

Eligibility covers a range of organizations that commonly steward historical records. Applicants may include nonprofit organizations and institutions, colleges and universities (both public and private), state or local government agencies, and federally acknowledged or state-recognized Native American tribes or groups. The program is categorized as discretionary grant funding in the humanities/cultural affairs space (CFDA 89.003), and it is administered by the National Archives and Records Administration under the NHPRC.

A key requirement is cost sharing. NHPRC will pay no more than 50 percent of the total project costs for Major Initiatives, so applicants must supply the remaining share through their own funds or allowable contributions. The applicant's cost share can include a combination of direct costs, indirect costs contributed by the applicant, in-kind support, eligible third-party non-federal contributions, and income generated directly by the project. One important restriction is that NHPRC funds cannot be used for indirect costs under this program; if indirect costs are part of the project budget, they must be covered as part of the applicant's cost share, consistent with the cited federal regulation (2 CFR 2600.101).

There are also basic federal application compliance steps applicants must follow. The applicant organization must be registered in the System for Award Management (SAM) before applying and must keep that registration active throughout the application and award process. A valid DUNS number must be included as part of the application package (as described in the opportunity materials). For the preliminary application, NHPRC requires at minimum three components: the Application for Federal Assistance (Standard Form 424), a project narrative explaining the work and outcomes, and a budget. Applications missing any of these required elements are not considered, and proposals focused entirely on activities NHPRC deems ineligible will be removed from review. Applicants are also directed to consult NHPRC's published guidance on what it does and does not fund, and to note that a separate Access to Historical Records Archival Projects program exists with different award amounts and requirements, which may be a better fit depending on scope.

• The National Archives and Records Administration in the humanities (see cultural affairs in cfda) sector is offering a public funding opportunity titled "Access to Historical Records: Major Initiatives" and is now available to receive applicants.
• Interested and eligible applicants and submit their applications by referencing the CFDA number(s): 89.003.
• This funding opportunity was created on May 16, 2019.
• Applicants must submit their applications by Jan 16, 2020. (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 $350,000.00 in funding.
• The number of recipients for this funding is limited to 5 candidate(s).
• Eligible applicants include: State governments, County governments, City or township governments, Public and State controlled institutions of higher education, Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized), Nonprofits having a 501(c)(3) status with the IRS, other than institutions of higher education, Private institutions of higher education.

Apply for PRELIM 202001

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