Guidelines for the current fiscal year are made available approximately 90 days before the grant deadline. Until that time, guidelines from the previous year are available for your reference, but you must use the current fiscal year’s guidelines when you apply.

Access FY 2012 Grant program Guidelines Online

Read more about National Leadership Grants on the IMLS Web site.

National Leadership Grants support projects that address challenges faced by the museum, library, and/or archive fields and that have the potential to advance practice in those fields. Successful proposals will seek innovative responses to the challenge(s) identified in the proposals, and will have national impact.

The National Leadership Grant program accepts applications under four main categories:

• Advancing Digital Resources—Support the creation, use, presentation, and preservation of significant digital resources as well as the development of tools to enhance access, use, and management of digital assets.
• Research—Support research that investigates key questions that are important to museum, library, and archival practice.
• Demonstration—Support projects that produce a replicable model or practice that is usable, adaptable, or scalable by other institutions for improving services and performance.
• Library Museum Collaboration Grants— Support collaborative projects (between museums and/or libraries and other community organizations) that address the educational, economic, cultural, or social needs of a community. In 2012, a funding priority will be projects that promote early learning.

Applicants may choose to submit a Project Grant, Planning Grant, or National Forum Grant proposal in any of the above categories.

• Project Grants support fully developed projects for which needs assessments, partnership development, feasibility analyses, prototyping, and other planning activities have been completed.
• Planning Grants allow project teams to perform preliminary planning activities that could lead to a subsequent full project, such as needs and feasibility analyses, solidifying partnerships, developing project work plans, or developing prototypes or proofs of concept. Applications for Planning Grants must include at least one formal partner in addition to the lead applicant.
• National Forum Grants provide the opportunity to convene qualified groups of experts and key stakeholders to consider issues or challenges that are important to libraries, museums, and/or archives across the nation. Grant-supported meetings are expected to produce widely disseminated reports with expert recommendations for action or research that address a key challenge identified in the proposal. The expert recommendations resulting from these meetings are intended to guide future proposals to the National Leadership Grant program.

Libraries that fulfill the general criteria for libraries may apply. See program guidelines for special conditions of eligibility for this program.