November 21, 2017
BY: EMILY WELSH
Yesterday's lecture was everything grants! The latter portion of the class was dedicated to having the group split into two sections, one as grant advisors and one as grant applicants, and allowing us the opportunity to practice applying to an imaginary museum innovation foundation.
Although we had some great lessons from the practice session, here I will provide a brief summary of the grant presentation provided by our guest speaker, and the reading insight.
Class Learning
Our guest lecturer focused on the basics of grant writing, the types of grants common for museums in Ontario, and resources for finding grants.
The majority of grants in Ontario come from the levels of government or agencies of the government. Unlike the United States, Canada does not have a large pot of foundations to draw upon for funds. This was staked up to the size of our population which does not support a large number of wealthy individuals who are able to form foundations to distribute their charitable funds.
Types of Grants:
The main two types of grants discussed were operating grants and project grants. Operating grants provide funds for ongoing maintenance of the activities of your museum. Arts and cultural organizations that are agencies of the government of Ontario (e.g. Ontario Science Centre, Royal Ontario Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario) receive a large pool of operating grants from the Ontario Government. However despite being quite large, these funds do not cover the large operating expenses of these organizations and they too must undertake fundraisers and other fundraising initiatives (e.g. earned income). For other museums in Ontario, the Community Museum Operating Grant is a good source, however this grant is now frozen and only accepts applications from museums (who meet the parameters of a 'museum' as set in Regulation 877) that received its funding in the last year.
Project grants are, as the title alludes to, are for projects. To reiterate, projects are temporary endeavors that have start and end dates, objectives, and interrelated tasks that require resources! Often for project grants your institution will have to supply some of its own funds or at the minimum staff time. A subcategory of this type of grant is infrastructure or capital grants, an example of which is the Canada Cultural Spaces Fund offered by the Federal Government's Department of Canadian Heritage.
Grant Resources:
A searchable database of grants offered by the Government of Ontario can be found here. You can search alphabetically, by sector or by ministry.
For the Government of Canada, you can search the financing programs of the Canada Business Program and refine your search by selecting the grants tick box on the left of your screen. More specifically for museums, a list of funding opportunities is provided by the Department of Canadian Heritage here.
Instead of searching databases you may look up specific grants by name, such as those you have heard of from colleagues. Here are a few of interest:
-Canada Council for the Arts
-Museum Assistance Program
-Ontario Art Council
-Ontario Cultural Attractions Fund
-Ontario Heritage Organization Development Grant
-Ontario Media Development Corporation
-Ontario Tourism Development Fund
-Ontario Trillium Foundation
-Toronto Arts Council
-Toronto Heritage Grant Program
Foundations and Other Non-governmental Sources:
In addition to grants there are a limited amount of foundations you can approach for funding. If you search, you may also find corporate entities with charitable agencies. Examples of foundations you may approach are Historica Dominion Institute and METCALF Foundation. The National Trust for Canada also has a searchable database of information relating to foundations, corporations, and government departments that support cultural organizations.
Successful Grants - Performance Measures:
All granting agencies will ask you to have performance measures (or outcomes) and indicators in place. These will address questions such as:
-who and how many benefited?
-how well did you do what you said you would?
-how will it affect people in the future?
You will have to create performance measures for your grant application, and upon successful grant approval, you will have to submit a final report at the end of your project or grant period using your indicators to illustrate how efficient you were at meeting your measures. For the Community Museum Operating Grant, you will have to illustrate that your museum has policies and procedures in place to meet ten standards.
Reading Insight
Chapter seven, "Grantsmanship", of Cilella Jr.'s Fundraising for Small Museums: In Good Times and Bad gives advice, tips, suggestions and things to avoid when writing grants to foundations. These comments fall under several sections including:
-do your research
-contact
-writing the proposal
-follow-up
-acceptance and rejection
The advice is quite useful and could be applied to grant applications other than those going to foundations. Additionally the chapter includes an excellent section with 20 grant writing tips from the Arcus Foundation, again for grants to foundations.
Finding the right donor for your project or activity is key. You have to make sure your project fits what they invest in and matches their interests. As we saw in our workshop, you also need to make sure your project fits the granting agency's priorities and stipulations. The author provides the following typical characteristics for corporations, foundations and individuals:
Corporations - typically donate to non-controversial and high profile projects, such as exhibitions, with wide audiences; they are for-profit entities and thus are looking for a return on their investment.
Foundations - typically donate to research and public programs; they are more interested in outcomes and the social benefit of activities; they do not typically fund operating funds or endowments but prefer projects and capital campaigns.
Individuals - could donate to all projects or activities.
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| The author likens the process of finding the right donor to prospecting; our job is to find the donor that best fits our project. Source. |
Happy Planning!
Resources:
Cilella, S. G. (2011). Grantsmanship. In Fundraising for small museums: In good times and bad (pp. 153-177). Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press.
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