community-based archives – Mar 12

Posted by Mellon Foundation on February 18, 2025

Mellon Foundation issues call for proposals to community-based archives

The Mellon Foundation believes that the arts and humanities are where we express our complex humanity, and that everyone deserves the beauty, transcendence, and freedom to be found there. Through grants, the foundation aims to build just communities enriched by meaning and empowered by critical thinking, where ideas and imagination can thrive.

The foundation has issued a call for proposals to community-based archives. Through the call for proposals, the foundation invites community-based archives in the United States and its territories to submit applications for general operating support. These grants may provide support in one or more of the following areas of need: operational costs, including staff, space, and utilities; collections care, including the acquisition of new materials, physical and digital storage fees, and access and preservation efforts; and programming activities, including events, exhibitions, and increased community usage.

Organizations must have an established and actively collecting archive that has been in operation for at least two years. This funding cannot be used to create a new archive.

For the purposes of this call, community-based archives are defined as organizations that gather and share materials as members of under-documented communities to preserve and celebrate their collective histories. These archives serve to affirm and uplift their community’s existence and identity, to help combat patterns of misinformation, and to provide a trusted environment for the perpetuation of community traditions, art forms, and languages, among other forms of empowerment. Formed as counter responses to a long legacy of oversight and extraction by mainstream cultural heritage institutions and by the academy, these archives are essential to the creation of a more inclusive and multivocal American story.

Awards will range from $25,000 to $100,000 for grants of two years in length. Grant periods will begin August 1, 2025, and end on July 31, 2027. The foundation plans to convene representatives from the awarded archives in person over the course of the grant term to build a cohort of organizations that would help and learn from each other.

To be eligible, organizations must be located within the United States or one of its territories, have 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status or be a federally recognized Indian tribe, and have an archive or an archiving initiative with an annual operating budget of at least $12,500 and no more than $1 million.

All interested applicants must first complete a registration request by March 12, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. ET. After foundation staff have processed the registration request, eligible applicants will gain access to the application form in the foundation’s Fluxx grantee portal. Applications will be due March 28, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. ET. All applicants will be notified of the status of their submission by Wednesday, May 7, 2025. If selected, additional information and materials will be requested in a final proposal to be reviewed by the foundation’s officers.

For complete program guidelines and application instructions, see the Mellon Foundation website.

Deadline: March 12, 2025 at 5:00 p.m. ET (Registration request)