I. Program Description II. Endowment-Wide Programs and Initiatives III. Award Information IV. Eligibility V. Application and Submission Information VI. Application Review VII. Award Administration Information VIII. Points of Contact IX. Other Information • Budget instructions (5-page PDF) • Budget form (14-page PDF) • Definitions of types of funding • Frequently asked questions • Sample narratives: o  Emory University (29-page PDF) o  Folger Shakespeare Library (25-page PDF) o  Historical Society of Pennsylvania (17-page PDF) o  Indiana University (31-page PDF) o  New York Public Library (23-page PDF) o  Tufts University (28-page PDF) o  University of California, Los Angeles (25-page PDF) o  University of California, Santa Barbara (28-page PDF) • DUNS Number Requirement • Registration Checklist • Download the current version of Adobe Reader • How to convert documents into PDFs • Tips for Creating PDF Files in Grants.gov Applications • Grants.gov FAQs • Grants.gov customer support To obtain a printed version of these guidelines, call 202-606-8446, send an e-mail to info@neh.gov, or write to NEH, Office of Communications 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20506.

• digitizing collections;
• arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections;
• cataloging collections of printed works, photographs, recorded sound, moving image, art, and material culture;
• preservation reformatting;
• deacidification of collections; and
• preserving and improving access to humanities resources in “born digital” form.

• databases and electronic archives that codify or integrate humanities materials or provide bibliographic control of a subject or field;
• encyclopedias about various fields in the humanities or about a particular area or subject;
• historical, etymological, and bilingual dictionaries for undocumented languages, as well as reference grammars and other linguistic tools, with separate funding available for endangered language projects in partnership with the National Science Foundation;
• descriptive catalogs that provide detailed information about humanities materials;
• tools for spatial analysis and representation of humanities data such as atlases and geographical information systems (GIS); and
• digital tools specifically designed to develop or use humanities resources.

• acquisition of collections;
• restoration of historic structures, the preservation of the built environment, or the stabilization of archaeological sites;
• preservation, organization, or description of materials that are the responsibility of an agency of the federal government;
• preservation, organization, or description of materials that are not regularly accessible for research, education, or public programming;
• retrospective conversion of a library's general card catalog or the basic inventory of a museum’s collections;
• digitization of United States newspapers (applicants interested in such projects should consult the National Digital Newspaper Program);
• creation of software or the purchase of computer systems for records management;
• maintenance or upgrading of computer systems;
• oral history projects that are not an integral part of an existing collection;
• item-level conservation treatment, except as part of a larger project to preserve and provide access to materials;
• tools and reference works designed exclusively for classroom instruction (applicants interested in developing teaching materials should consult Grants for Teaching and Learning Resources and Curriculum Development);
• print publication costs that should be the responsibility of the publisher;
• scholarly editions, including digital compilations of texts and documents with critical commentary and textual apparatus, e.g., contextual introductions and annotations as well as textual variants and links to related resources (a separate NEH grant program supports Scholarly Editions);
• projects to document endangered languages (applicants interested in such projects should consult Documenting Endangered Languages); or
• GIS projects for resource management.

1. Description of the project and its significance
   Provide a one-page abstract written for a non-specialist audience, clearly explaining the project's importance to the humanities, its principal activities, and its expected results.
2. Table of contents
   List all parts of the application and, beginning with the narrative, number all pages consecutively.
3. Narrative
   Limit the narrative to twenty-five single-spaced pages. All pages should have one-inch margins and the font size should be no smaller than eleven point. Use appendices to provide supplementary material.
   Individuals with a variety of professional backgrounds will read these applications and advise NEH on their merits. Project narratives should, therefore, be written so that they can be understood by persons who may not have the same technical awareness as the applicant.
   Keep the application review criteria (see below) in mind when writing the narrative, which consists of the following sections:
   • Significance
     Justify the importance of the project on the basis of its long-term benefits to research, education, or public programming in the humanities.
     For projects involving humanities collections, describe the nature, size, and intellectual content of the selected collections; explain how they relate to similar collections, both within and external to your institution; discuss the rationale for focusing on these particular sources; and describe the selection criteria. Provide information about the collections’ current and past use or potential future use, their present level of intellectual description, the physical condition of the materials, and their storage conditions.
     For proposed reference works and research tools, discuss the selection criteria and how your project relates to existing resources. Demonstrate what this work or tool will provide that other resources cannot and define the probable audiences.
     For research and development activities, give a clear account of the history of the issue or problem this research will address and the reasons why the project proposed is a high, national priority. The research should address a problem whose solution is critical to making progress in a field or would be broadly applicable to the humanities.
   • History, scope, and duration
     Provide a concise history of the project, including information about preliminary research or planning, financial support already received, and resources or research facilities available. If a project requires more than two years to complete, describe the scope and duration of the entire project, but show clearly the specific accomplishments or products intended in the period for which funding is requested.
     If the project has been previously supported by NEH, compare the accomplishments in the current or past grant period with the intended goals. List any products or publications in print or electronic form. When appropriate, indicate print runs, sales, and royalties relating to publications. In the case of online projects, include the URL and provide use statistics and other relevant information.
   • Methodology and standards
     Project activities should conform to appropriate national standards and accepted professional practices. If your project's methodology departs from usual standards and procedures, explain why the project's goals require this approach and how the results would be interoperable with other relevant resources that follow existing standards. All applicants employing digital technology should follow standards and best practices that ensure longevity of digital products and facilitate interoperability with other resources and related materials.
     All applications should include sample materials or reports that show the final or anticipated form of the project or illustrate the experience of the project's staff in doing comparable work, e.g., bibliographic records, catalog entries, finding aids, entries for encyclopedias or biographical dictionaries, results of specific queries to databases, instructions to contributors, audio files and images, and conservators’ reports.
     Discuss any intellectual property or privacy issues that might affect the availability of the materials and whether permissions and proof of informed consent have been obtained. Provide any pertinent documentation in an appendix.
     Include the following as relevant:
     • For projects that focus on preserving and making accessible humanities collections:
       Discuss the manner in which the materials will be organized and the ways users will discover and access them. Also, describe the storage and environmental conditions under which collections will be held and the provisions for their use. (NEH expects that any materials organized or preserved with its support will be housed in an environment that meets standards for preservation.) Additionally:
       • For archival processing efforts, discuss the rationale for how collections will be arranged and the level of description that will be provided (support is generally limited to the preparation of folder-level finding aids);
       • For cataloging, describe the level of detail of the records to be created, the record formats, vocabularies and systems to be used, and the extent to which the records will involve original, enhanced, or copy cataloging;
       • For preservation reformatting, describe the amount and types of material to be preserved and the reasons for choosing a particular reformatting approach, and indicate what will be done with the original items;
       • For the deacidification of bound volumes and other paper-based items, discuss the procedures and quality controls and indicate how information about materials will be included in national catalog systems;
       • For projects incorporating conservation treatment, provide in the appendices detailed condition reports and treatment proposals with cost estimates prepared by qualified conservators and include images of the items or a representative selection; and
       • For projects including oral history, describe how the sources relate to an archival base, fill gaps in existing collections, or supplement other evidence documenting a topic.
     • For projects to create reference works or research tools:
       Indicate the content, form, and length of entries or citations and describe the editorial procedures for writing entries and verifying information. Include in an appendix a preliminary list of entries, organized by subject areas or topics, and the instructions provided to contributors.
       Describe the lexicographical principles to be employed for a language dictionary.
       Explain how the project will meet federal geospatial data requirements for Geographical Information Systems (GIS). (See the Federal Geographic Data Committee Web site at http://www.fgdc.gov and the Geospatial One-Stop portal at http://www.geodata.gov.)
     • For research and development projects:
       Explain how the project will test the potential applicability of innovative techniques and procedures and how the results of the project will be evaluated.
       If the project proposes to develop best practices or national standards, discuss how the relevant professional community will be involved and how the grant products will reflect the collective knowledge and judgment of experts in the field.
     • For projects employing digital technology:
       Identify the hardware and software to be employed. Describe how the material will be prepared for processing and how it will be processed, e.g., digital capture, keyboarding, optical character recognition, or conversion from another electronic format. Discuss the methods for formatting the material and ensuring quality control. Where appropriate, indicate the levels of resolution, compression, image enhancement, and accuracy of textual conversion or transcription required to achieve the project's goals. For text with markup, justify the choice of tagging scheme and the level of the markup.
       Explain the organization of the digitized material or database, including file structure, system capabilities, user access, and documentation. Identify the metadata schemes that will be used to describe the materials and explain the rationale for these choices. Provide information about metadata creation and controlled vocabularies (if applicable), and use an appendix to display sample data entry sheets, records, and screen displays. When appropriate, discuss the compatibility of the proposed technical framework with the practices of the user community. Discuss provisions for ensuring that your resource can be discovered by a search engine or become part of an aggregated resource such as a digital library, cooperative portal, or clearinghouse, or become integrated with other related resources.
       Describe the institution’s plans for storing, maintaining, and protecting the data, and, where applicable, for the preservation or other disposition of the original source material. Explain how the data will be archived (independent of the processing or delivery software and interface) to migrate them to future media and formats.
       Applicants may find it useful to consult A Framework of Guidance for Building Good Digital Collections (100-page PDF), which contains links to other useful resources and is supported by the National Information Standards Organization.
   • Work Plan
     Describe the work plan in detail and include a schedule indicating benchmarks of accomplishment during each stage of the project.
   • Staff
     Identify the project's staff, including consultants, and describe their duties and relevant qualifications for the tasks assigned. Be specific about the tasks they will perform and the aspects of the project they will oversee. Indicate the amount of time that the principal members of the project's staff will devote to the project. If the project has an advisory board, explain its function. Provide two-page résumés for major project staff and all consultants in the appendices.
   • Dissemination
     Explain how the results of the project will be disseminated and why these means are appropriate to the subject matter and intended audience. If relevant, discuss publishing arrangements, publicity plans, estimated prices, and user costs. Describe plans to bring the project to the attention of the relevant communities of users through, for example, conference presentations and demonstrations.
     The Endowment expects grantees to provide broad access to all grant products through the Internet, on-site use, interlibrary loan, or duplication of materials at cost, insofar as the conditions of the materials and intellectual property rights allow. NEH strongly encourages projects that offer free public access to online resources. All other considerations being equal, NEH will give preference to projects that provide free, online access to digital materials produced with grant funds.
   • Sustainability
     As relevant, discuss how the project’s results will be maintained and supported beyond the period of the grant. If applicable, indicate how editorial revision will be conducted, including addition of new material or updating of current content. Describe the institution’s plans and capability for ensuring on-going access to any electronic resources. Consortial projects should indicate how governance structure contributes to sustainability. For projects that have received past NEH funding, discuss strategies for broadening and strengthening the base of financial support.
     If you are requesting funds to develop a sustainability plan, describe the proposed planning process, making clear what you and the proposed consultant would each contribute. Provide the name of the consultant, a timeline for the planning process, and an estimate of costs (in an appendix).
4. Budget
   Using the instructions, complete the budget form (PDF). While all items should be justified by the narrative, further explanation may be included in brief budget notes. For any outsourced work, third-party contractor costs should be included in the budget category "Services." Attach a complete itemization of these costs to the budget form. If there is more than one contractor, each one must be listed on the budget form and the costs itemized separately.
   To the maximum extent practical, all procurement contracts must be made through an open and free competition. They are to be awarded to the bidder or offeror whose bid or offer is most advantageous, considering price, quality and other factors. Applicants must justify procurement contracts in excess of $100,000 that are not awarded by competitive bids or offers.
   Permanent equipment may be purchased for a project if an analysis demonstrates that it is the most economical and practical alternative to leasing. Permanent equipment is defined as nonexpendable personal property costing $5,000 or more and having a useful life of more than one year.
   Consistent with the Buy American Act (41 U.S.C. 10a-c and Public Law 105-277), grantees and subrecipients who purchase equipment and products with grant funds should purchase only American-made equipment and products.
5. List of participants
   On a separate page, list in alphabetical order, surnames first, all project participants and collaborators and their institutional affiliations. This list should include as relevant advisory board members, consultants, and authors of letters of commitment and letters of support. Because these individuals may not participate in the review process, this list is used to ensure that prospective evaluators have no conflict of interest with the projects that they will be assessing.
6. History of grants
   If the project has received previous support from any federal or nonfederal sources, including NEH, list on one page the sources, dates, and amounts of these funds. If the project has a long history of support, the sources and contributions may be grouped and summarized.
7. Appendices
   Use appendices to provide:
   • sample materials and reports;
   • brief résumés (no longer than two pages) for staff with major responsibilities for the project's implementation and for consultants to the project;
   • job descriptions for any additional staff who will be hired specifically to work on the project;
   • letters of commitment from outside participants and cooperating institutions;
   • letters of support (preferably no more than three) from experts in the project's subject area, the proposed methodology, or the technical plan; and
   • as relevant, documentation for sustainability planning.

1. Application for Federal Domestic Assistance - Short Organizational (SF-424 Short)—this form asks for basic information about the project, the project director, and the institution.
2. Supplementary Cover Sheet for NEH Grant Programs—this form asks for additional information about the project director, the institution, and the budget.
3. NEH Attachment Form—this form allows you to attach your narrative, budget, and the other parts of your application.

1. Name of Federal Agency: This will be filled in automatically with "National Endowment for the Humanities."
2. Catalog of Federal Domestic Assistance Number: This will be filled in automatically with the CFDA number and title of the NEH program to which you are applying.
3. Date Received: Please leave blank.
4. Funding Opportunity Number: This will be filled in automatically.
5. Applicant Information: In this section, please supply the name, address, employer/taxpayer identification number (EIN/TIN), DUNS number, Web site address, and congressional district of the institution. Also choose the "type" that best describes your institution (you only need to select one).
   If your institution is located, for example, in the 5th Congressional District of your state, put a "5." If your institution doesn't have a congressional district (e.g. it is in a state or U.S. territory that doesn't have districts or is in a foreign country), put a "0" (zero).
   All institutions applying to federal grant programs are required to provide a DUNS number, issued by Dun & Bradstreet, as part of their application. Project directors should contact their institution’s grant administrator or chief financial officer to obtain their institution’s DUNS number. Federal grant applicants can obtain a DUNS number free of charge by calling 1-866-705-5711. (Learn more about the requirement.)
6. Project Information: Provide the title of your project. Your title should be brief, descriptive, and substantive. It should also be informative to a non-specialist audience. Provide a brief description of your project. The description should be written for a non-specialist audience and clearly state the importance of the proposed work and its relation to larger issues in the humanities. List the starting and ending dates for your project.
7. Project Director: Provide the Social Security Number, name, title, mailing address, e-mail address, and telephone and fax numbers for the project director.
   Disclosure of Social Security Numbers is optional. NEH uses them for internal application processing only.
8. Primary Contact/Grants Administrator: Provide the contact information for the official responsible for the administration of the grant (i.e., negotiating the project budget and ensuring compliance with the terms and conditions of the award). This person is often a grants or research officer, or a sponsored programs official. Normally, the Institutional Grants Administrator is not the same person as the Project Director. If the project director and the grants administrator are the same person, skip to Item 9.
9. Authorized Representative: Provide the contact information for the Authorized Organization Representative (AOR) who is submitting the application on behalf of the institution. This person, often called an "Authorizing Official," is typically the president, vice president, executive director, provost, or chancellor. In order to become an AOR, the person must be designated by the institution's E-Business Point of Contact. For more information, please consult the Grants.gov user guide, which is available at: www07.grants.gov/applicants/app_help_reso.jsp.

1. Project Director: Use the pull-down menu to select the major field of study for the project director
2. Institution Information: Use the pull-down menu to select your type of institution.
3. Project Funding: Enter your project funding information. Note that applicants for Challenge Grants should use the right column only; applicants to all other programs should use the left column only.
4. Application Information: Indicate whether the proposal will be submitted to other NEH grant programs, government agencies, or private entities for funding. If so, please indicate where and when. NEH frequently cosponsors projects with other funding sources. Providing this information will not prejudice the review of your application.
   For Type of Application, check “new” if the application requests a new period of funding, whether for a new project or the next phase of a project previously funded by NEH. Check "supplement" if the application requests additional funding for a current NEH grant. If requesting a supplement, provide the current grant number (applicants should discuss their request with a NEH program officer before submitting such an application).
   For Project Field Code, use the pull-down menu to select the humanities field of the project. If the project is multidisciplinary, choose the field that corresponds to the project's predominant discipline.

• the project’s significance, including how it will increase the understanding of the humanities;
• the soundness of the proposed methodology, including the selection criteria where applicable and the project’s adherence to accepted national standards and professional practices, especially those that would contribute to making grant products interoperable with related resources and facilitate their discovery;
• the viability, efficiency, and productivity of the work plan;
• the qualifications of the project’s staff;
• the quality of the project’s plans for disseminating information about and providing access to grant products;
• the quality and scope of the proposed considerations for sustaining the products and work of the project beyond the grant period; and
• the appropriateness of the project's budget.