Grant Resources
The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, established in 1987, primarily supports the study of New York State history. Robert David Lion Gardiner was, until his death in August 2004, the 16th Lord of the Manor of Gardiner's Island, NY. The Gardiner family and their descendants have owned Gardiner's Island since 1639, obtained as part of a royal grant from King Charles I of England. The Foundation is inspired by Robert David Lion Gardiner's personal passion for New York history.
The next Robert D.L.Gardiner Foundation grant deadline is August 12, 2022. A site visit is required prior to that date. Please call the office (631-594-3990) to make arrangements.
Funding Examples
Does your community have a great piece of folklore that should be shared? Legends & Lore is designed to promote cultural tourism and commemorate legends and folklore as part of our heritage.
Generally speaking, folklore is the stories, customs, traditions, and expressive arts and crafts that are passed on from one person to another, often from generation to generation. Folklore is the knowledge that people share as members of a group or community. Our shared identities and sense of belonging are the result of shared traditions, stories, customs, and activities.
Choosing a Funding Opportunity for FY 2023
Learn basic information to decide which FY 2023 IMLS museum funding program may fit your project idea and your organization.https://www.imls.gov/grants
Funding Examples
We invite you to join the Museum Association of New York, the only statewide service organization that represents all of New York State's museums, historical societies, zoos, botanical gardens, and aquariums.
The Museum Association of New York helps shape a better future for museums and museum professionals by uplifting best practices and building organizational capacity through advocacy, training, and networking opportunities.
Funding Examples
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency created in 1965. It is one of the largest funders of humanities programs in the United States.
Because democracy demands wisdom, NEH serves and strengthens our republic by promoting excellence in the humanities and conveying the lessons of history to all Americans. The Endowment accomplishes this mission by awarding grants for top-rated proposals examined by panels of independent, external reviewers.
NEH grants typically go to cultural institutions, such as museums, archives, libraries, colleges, universities, public television, and radio stations, and to individual scholars. The grants:
- strengthen teaching and learning in schools and colleges
- facilitate research and original scholarship
- provide opportunities for lifelong learning
- preserve and provide access to cultural and educational resources
- strengthen the institutional base of the humanities
Learn about notable NEH-funded projects, past and present.
Funding Examples
In November 2017, the National Trust for Historic Preservation launched its African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund, a preservation campaign to preserve and protect places that have been overlooked in American history and represent centuries of African American activism, achievement, and resilience. Since launching the program, the Action Fund has raised $80 million and supported more than 200 preservation projects nationally.
Through this preservation effort—the largest ever undertaken in support of African American historic sites—we partner with and empower Black and diverse communities to expand the American story.
Why the Action Fund, and Why Now
Black history is American history, and it is our responsibility to cultivate spaces to engage with it. We must ensure that everyone has the opportunity to draw inspiration and wisdom from African American historic places.
We must tell stories that reflect our complex and difficult past—and help us shape a better collective future. Though America may be rich in diverse history, our society has often been poor in representing that history and in funding its protection, conservation, and recognition. That’s why we actively invest in and restore cultural assets that hold exceptional cultural value.
The African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund is about making room—within our understanding of history, preservation, and social justice—for a movement that uses preservation as a force for enacting positive social change. In modeling this approach and in partnering with other organizations around the country, we challenge ourselves to realize equity-driven outcomes that benefit all Americans.
As the oldest institutions created and controlled by African Americans, Black churches are a living testament to the achievements and resiliency of generations in the face of a racialized and inequitable society.
To preserve and uplift America’s historic places, the Lilly Endowment Inc. and the African American Cultural Heritage Action Fund are investing in a $20 million initiative to help historic Black churches and congregations reimagine, redesign, and redeploy historic preservation to address the institutions’ needs and the cultural assets and stories they steward.
Grants from Preserving Black Churches are intended to preserve historic Black houses of worship (with either active or non-active congregations) and advance ongoing preservation activities. With grants ranging from $50,000 to $200,000, the funding will strengthen capacity for historic congregations, preservation organizations, and community groups to better steward, manage, and use their historic structures.
The New York Landmarks Conservancy’s Sacred Sites Program provides congregations with matching grants for planning and implementing exterior restoration projects, technical assistance, and workshops. Since 1986, the program has pledged over 1,500 grants totaling almost $15 million to more than 800 religious institutions statewide, helping fund over $828 million in repair and restoration projects. Grants are awarded to assist with projects such as conditions surveys, architectural and engineering fees, roof replacements, masonry restoration, stained-glass restoration, and structural repairs. Priority will be given to essential repairs to the primary worship building. Grants are not available for pipe organ restoration, interior renovation, mechanical upgrades, or routine maintenance, including repainting.
The NYLC has been awarded a second three-year grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation, providing $50,000 per year to underwrite Sacred Sites Grants on Long Island through 2023. Since partnering with the Foundation in 2018, our grants to Long Island Sacred Sites have more than tripled.
Funding Examples
NYSCA/GHHN
CONSERVATION TREATMENT GRANT PROGRAM
A partnership of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and Greater Hudson Heritage Network (GHHN) that provides support for treatment procedures by professional conservators
to aid in stabilizing and preserving objects in collections of museums, historical, and cultural organizations in New York State. The Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation has provided additional dedicated support for conservation treatment projects on Long Island and New York City.
NYSCA will offer five opportunities this year: Support for Organizations, Support for Artists, Support for Special Opportunities, Support for Partnerships, and Regrowth and Capacity Enhancement. Please note that NYSCA will launch an additional Capital Projects Opportunity this fall.
Funding Examples
In-Person DHPSNY Services Return, Summer Planning & Assessment Deadline Extended to July 29
DHPSNY is excited to announce the return of in-person Planning & Assessment Services! Starting this application round, accepted sites will have the option of choosing in-person services, including Archival Needs Assessments, Strategic Planning Assistance, Preservation Surveys, and Condition Surveys. Sites can elect to receive virtual services if preferred.
In light of this announcement, we will be accepting application materials for our summer 2022 Planning & Assessment Services round until midnight EST on Friday, July 29, 2022. All sites that apply in this application round will have in-person services available.
Start an Application Today
To help you get started, we've outlined each of our services below with links to application materials. Our website also features helpful tools for navigating the application process, including frequently asked questions, sample applications, and our recent webinar DHPSNY's Planning & Assessments: A Crash Course.
DHPSNY staff is here to help you every step of the way! For assistance, questions about eligibility, or additional information, contact us at info@dhpsny.org or (215) 545-0613 extension 338.
One application covers all three program areas (Parks, Historic Preservation, Heritage Areas). The Historic Preservation program is to improve, protect, preserve, rehabilitate, restore or acquire properties listed on the State or National Registers of Historic Places and for structural assessments and/or planning for such projects. Properties not currently listed, but scheduled for nomination review at the State Board for Historic Preservation meeting of either June 9, 2022, or September 8, 2022, are eligible to apply. Questions about or proposals for listing on the State or National Register should be directed to the OPRHP National Register Unit at (518) 268-2213, or contact the National Register representative for your county as listed at: https://parks.ny.gov/shpo/contact/.
“History Fights Back”
Call for Proposals
New York State History and Education Conference (NYSHEC)
SUNY Oneonta, October 28-30, 2022
Innovative, accessible, and inclusive history research and education have never been more relevant than in our current moment. History has a critical role to play in leadership, decision-making, policy, civics education, justice work, and community life. Yet, historians and educators face an increasingly challenging landscape in which politicians and pundits seek to limit open discourse and critical interrogation of many aspects of the past. The conference theme— “History Fights Back”—tackles this situation head on, creating spaces for lively discussion and dialogue on the ways in which historians and educators of all backgrounds can make their voices heard and stand up for well-researched and inclusive historical narratives.
The New York State History and Education Conference has five guiding objectives:
- Encourage collaboration across the history community (and beyond)
- Connect K-12 educators and history professionals and provide resources for teaching the complex history of New York State, the nation, and the world
- Imagine a more diverse and inclusive history of New York State
- Deliberately amplify Indigenous voices
- Challenge traditional conference structures to be livelier and more welcoming
We welcome proposals from all history practitioners and educators that address the diverse history of New York State. We especially welcome proposals that feature Indigenous histories and voices.
We strongly urge participants not to read papers. Instead, sessions that adopt a variety of formats—such as roundtable discussions, workshops, performances, and interactive activities—are encouraged. An important objective is to generate dialogue and authentic engagement among conference participants. We invite substantive exchanges and creative re-imaginings of the standard conference formats.
We are particularly interested in proposals that connect K-12 educators with historians working in a variety of settings, such as museums, historic sites, and colleges and universities. Proposals that highlight primary resources and digital projects are encouraged.
Finally, we welcome full session proposals that include a theme and slate of presenters. Our preference is for full session proposals; however, individual presentation proposals will be accepted, and we will make an effort to group them around common themes.
Submit a Proposal – The New York State History and Education Conference (nystate-history.com)
Funding Examples
Round XII includes core capital grant and tax-credit funding to be combined with a wide range of programs from 10 state agencies that will provide funding for prospective projects.
Funding Examples
Pomeroy Fund for NYS History (nysmuseums.org)
This round of funding will offer grants in amounts up to and including $5,000 for salary support/hourly wages to bring back or hire museum educators who will plan and deliver interpretative educational programs. These may include school programs, teen programs, early childhood programs, family days, festivals, programs for older adults, programs for new Americans, or targeted, audience-specific programs identified in the grant application.
Funding should not be used as a substitute for existing (budgeted) staff salaries and hours, but can be used to increase staff hours for the aforementioned purposes.
Funds will be granted to museums for education staff who will offer in-person programming, but programs may include a virtual component.
Open to eligible 501c3 history-related organizations in New York State with budgets up to $250,000. Town historians and municipally owned historical societies are ineligible. Applicants do not need to be members of MANY to apply.
Grants must be used within one year of disbursement; all funds must be expended before October 31, 2023.
Important Dates
Application portal opens July 18 and closes September 23
Successful applicants will be notified on or before October 21
Proposed projects cannot begin before November 1
The foundation has made a grant of $50,000 to the Preservation League to provide technical guidance and grants to nonprofit cultural institutions who own historic buildings in Nassau and Suffolk Counties. This new program is a special fund of the Preserve New York Program, a signature grant program of the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) and the Preservation League of New York State, made possible with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
THE NEW YORK STATE COUNCIL ON THE ARTS (NYSCA) AND THE PRESERVATION LEAGUE ARE PLEASED TO OFFER TECHNICAL ASSISTANCE GRANTS, WITH ADDITIONAL SUPPORT FROM THE HUDSON RIVER VALLEY NATIONAL HERITAGE AREA
Pre-Applications are now open for the 2022 Technical Assistance Grants!
Technical Assistance Grants are available to eligible NYS nonprofits and municipalities. This program provides support for consulting projects that preserve New York State’s cultural and historic resources. The grants will support professional services of architects, engineers, and other design and preservation professionals working with nonprofit groups and municipalities to preserve their buildings, structures, and other resources that serve an arts and/or cultural function.
One of the William G. Pomeroy Foundation's core initiatives is to help people celebrate their community's history. The Foundation strongly believes that historic markers play an important role in local historic preservation by serving a dual purpose. They educate the public and foster historic tourism, which in turn can provide much needed economic benefits to the towns and villages where the markers are placed. The program also fills a gap, as New York State stopped funding their roadside markers in 1939. The New York State Historic Marker Grant Program commemorates historic people, places, things or events within the time frame of 1740-1920.
Funding Examples