Monday, July 21, 2008

How to get an NEH Grant

Humanities, the magazine of the National Endowment for the Humanities, has an article by Meredith Hindley on How to Get a Grant from NEH. Hat tip. The essay begins:
In 2007, NEH received 4,498 applications for projects ranging from documentary filmmaking to the preservation of artifacts to institutes for schoolteachers to scholarly research. Most of these applications were turned down. Is it so hard to get a grant from NEH? In a word, yes. We can fund only a small portion of the applications we receive, and the competition is stiff.

Given the odds, some applicants have wondered if there is a secret to getting a grant. A magic formula or maybe a special handshake? Well, actually, no.

One of the tips:

Does my project have a strong humanities component? That’s the first question you should ask yourself if you’re thinking about applying for an NEH grant. We hate to belabor the obvious, but if a major portion of your project is not devoted to some area or topic in the humanities, it won’t be funded.

Read the rest here. Many of the suggestions are good advice when applying for funding from any source.