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Institutional Funding Opportunities

Institutional Relations works with organizations—foundations, corporations, and government grant-makers—to support broad-based institutional goals. Many of the projects we work on span multiple departments or units of the College. The following list includes funding organizations that Institutional Relations works with. If you are interested in a proposal to one of these programs, please contact David Foreman at dforema1@swarthmore.edu or 610-328-8625.

Institutional Relations also assists with proposals and reports to organizations such as the Davis United World College Scholars Program, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, the Henry Luce Foundation, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program, the Panaphil Foundation, the Japan Foundation, and the Open Society Foundations.

For a list of funding opportunities supporting individual faculty research, teaching, and other activities, please see the Office of Sponsored Programs grant opportunities website. Several searchable databases are available to faculty and staff seeking grant support; many sites provide access to institutional grant opportunities.  

Selected Institutional Funding Opportunities

The Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) 

“The Council on Library and Information Resources is an independent, nonprofit organization that forges strategies to enhance research, teaching, and learning environments in collaboration with libraries, cultural institutions, and communities of higher learning.”

NEA Our Town

"The Our Town grant program supports creative placemaking projects that help to transform communities into lively, beautiful, and resilient places – achieving these community goals through strategies that incorporate arts, culture, and/or design. Creative placemaking is when artists, arts organizations, and community development practitioners deliberately integrate arts and culture into community revitalization work - placing arts at the table with land-use, transportation, economic development, education, housing, infrastructure, and public safety strategies. This funding supports local efforts to enhance quality of life and opportunity for existing residents, increase creative activity, and create or preserve a distinct sense of place."

NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources 

"The Humanities Collections and Reference Resources (HCRR) program supports projects that provide an essential underpinning for scholarship, education, and public programming in the humanities. Thousands of libraries, archives, museums, and historical organizations across the country maintain important collections of books and manuscripts, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art and material culture, and digital objects. Funding from this program strengthens efforts to extend the life of such materials and make their intellectual content widely accessible, often through the use of digital technology. Awards are also made to create various reference resources that facilitate use of cultural materials, from works that provide basic information quickly to tools that synthesize and codify knowledge of a subject for in-depth investigation."

NEH Digital Humanities Advancement Grants

“Digital Humanities Advancement Grants (DHAG) support digital projects throughout their lifecycles, from early start-up phases through implementation and long-term sustainability. Experimentation, reuse, and extensibility are hallmarks of this grant category, leading to innovative work that can scale to enhance research, teaching, and public programming in the humanities.”

NEH Digital Projects for the Public

“Digital Projects for the Public grants support projects that cogently interpret and analyze humanities content in formats that will attract broad public audiences.”

NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes

"NEH Summer Seminars and Institutes grants broaden and deepen understanding of the humanities in supporting professional development programs, specifically designed for a national audience of K-12 educators or college and university faculty. The programs provide one- to four-week opportunities for participants (NEH Summer Scholars) to explore a variety of topics relevant to K-12 or undergraduate education in the humanities."

NSF MRI Program 

“The Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) Program serves to increase access to multi-user scientific and engineering instrumentation for research and research training in our Nation's institutions of higher education and not-for-profit scientific/engineering research organizations. An MRI award supports the acquisition or development of a multi-user research instrument that is, in general, too costly and/or not appropriate for support through other NSF programs.”

NSF S-STEM 

“The National Science Foundation (NSF) Scholarships in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (S-STEM) program addresses the need for a high quality STEM workforce in STEM disciplines supported by the program and for the increased success of low-income academically talented students with demonstrated financial need who are pursuing associate, baccalaureate, or graduate degrees in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM)”

The Pew Center for Arts and Heritage

“The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage (the Center) is a multidisciplinary grantmaker and hub for knowledge-sharing, dedicated to fostering a vibrant cultural community in Greater Philadelphia. The Center invests in ambitious, imaginative projects that showcase the region’s cultural vitality and enhance public life, and we engage in an ongoing exchange of ideas concerning artistic and interpretive practice with a broad network of cultural practitioners and leaders."