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Museums Empowered (2025)

Federal funding opportunity ME-FY25 from Institute of Museum and Library Services.

Posted
August 15, 2024
Closed
November 15, 2024
Award ceiling
$250,000
Award floor
$5,000
Program funding
$4,299,000
Expected awards
20
Cost sharing
Yes
Instrument
Grant
Assistance listing
45.301
Category
Arts, Humanities

Program funding history

Awards made under Assistance Listing 45.301 across FY2025–FY2027, from public federal spending records.

FY2025 obligated
$14.6M
FY2026 obligated
$26.6M
FY2027 (to date) obligated
$0
Awards in window
586

Top recipients: Friends of the North Carolina State Museum of Natural Sciences, Holocaust Memorial Center, Town of Normal Children's Discovery Museum Foundation, Florida Holocaust Museum, Inc, Center for Holocaust and Humanity Education

Source: USAspending.gov · refreshed October 2026 · Program page: awards, recipients and the opportunities under this listing →

This opportunity is closed. Applications are no longer accepted. Similar grants are listed below, and the free Tuesday digest carries the next ones like it.

Synopsis

Museums Empowered (ME) is a special initiative of the Museums for America grant program. It supports projects that use the transformative power of professional development and training to generate systemic change within museums of all types and sizes. IMLS recognizes the many challenges facing individual museums and the need to invest resources, time, and energy towards nurturing the professional development of staff and strengthening museum operations. The Museums Empowered grant program identifies four areas of museum operations to focus for professional development. Digital Technology focused projects that will support the work of museum staff in using digital technology to enhance audience engagement, collections access, or general museum operations. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion focused projects that will increase cultural competency among museum staff and support relevancy of museum programs through learning activities that strengthen their ability to connect with the communities they serve. Evaluation focused projects that will enhance the ability of museum staff to understand a broad spectrum of evaluation methods and techniques as well as better use evaluation reports, data, and metrics to improve the design and delivery of programs. Organizational Management focused projects that will help museum staff develop and implement effective practices in organizational management, human resources, and strategic planning in response to emerging internal or external priorities.

Who can apply

See the Notice of Funding Opportunity for program eligibility criteria. IMLS is extending the deadline for Museums Empowered from November 15, 2024, to December 13, 2024, for institutions located in Federally declared emergency and/or major disaster areas who have not been able to meet the current November 15, 2024, deadline because they have been adversely impacted by such emergencies and/or disasters. An affected organization must, by December 13 at 11:59pm EST, submit its completed application with a written statement from its Authorizing Official that: • Specifies the applicable Emergency Declaration and/or Major Disaster Declaration for the area in which the applicant organization is located (see FEMA’s listing of Declared Disasters https://www.fema.gov/disaster/declarations) and • Confirms that the applicant organization was unable to meet the original application deadline of November 15, 2024, due to the emergency or disaster. This statement should be prepared as a Supporting Document and uploaded as part of the application submitted through Grants.gov. For those applicants who have not been adversely affected by such emergencies and/or disasters, the deadline remains November 15, 2024, at 11:59pm EST.

The official record

Grants.gov published the official terms and dates of this opportunity; this page keeps them as they were listed.

View on Grants.gov   Full announcement

Agency contact: Institute of Museum and Library Services · [email protected] · 202-653-4634

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