What kinds of projects qualify?

HOW TO APPLY

Applicant Eligibility

This fund is specifically designed to compensate people of color for their labor, especially students, recent graduates, paraprofessionals, early professionals, contingently employed archivists, archives as a second career, and those at small institutions. Since we do not want to gate-keep or make assumptions about applicants’ identities, we are asking applicants to self-identify as a person of color. We expect all applicants to respect the intended purpose of this fund and only apply if they meet the criteria below:

• A self-identified person of color, regardless of NEA membership, who proposes a project related to archives or cultural heritage work, (for instance, a research project to be presented at a meeting or a newsletter article), or:
• A self-identified person of color, regardless of NEA membership, who proposes a project or is selected by an NEA committee to lead or advise programs or projects related to racial justice and equity.
• Submit a completed application to the fund committee before the review deadline.

Application Submission

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis via a Google form maintained by the IDC. They will be reviewed by the committee twice a year, in the spring and in the fall.

Application Review and Recipient Selection

Recipients of this award will be selected for their proposed project’s relevance to the selection criteria. Applications should be specific, well-organized, and persuasive, and will be evaluated on relevance to the mission of the fund.

The fund is still in its infancy, and at the moment does not give preference to any one particular career stage, project topic, perspective, or institution size. However, the fund committee acknowledges that in many cases, early career individuals, those at smaller institutions, and those with less institutional support may benefit more from funding than colleagues at larger institutions or later in their career. As the fund becomes more established, we will revisit the prioritization criteria used to evaluate applications based on feedback and our observations of the process.

The Racial Justice Honoraria Fund Committee will strive to maintain a balance between approving applications for NEA sponsored programs and those from individuals who independently propose projects or articles. The exact distribution will be determined by the number and diversity of applications. If other funding is available for NEA sponsored projects, priority for the RJHF should go to funding individual projects.

A simple majority vote of the Racial Justice Honoraria Fund Committee will determine the fund recipients. Discussion will take place asynchronously by committee members on the NEA Executive Board Slack or, if needed, the committee chair will call a virtual meeting. Voting will take place in the RJHF Slack channel. If the Committee does not select a recipient from the applicants, or in the absence of applications, the honoraria will not be awarded.

Proposals are considered for the Racial Justice Honoraria Fund independently from applications submitted by the same applicant(s) to other NEA awards during the same award cycle.

Distribution of Funds

The NEA Treasurer/Treasurer-Elect will send reimbursement checks to the award recipient(s) after being notified by the fund committee. In most cases, payment will be provided after the completion of the fund supported project, however, certain project categories may require advance payment in order to be completed. Applicants will be notified of the timing of payment based on their project type at the time of their proposal’s acceptance.

Awards from the RJHF are considered grants. Applicants for research and other special projects will be asked to submit a budget estimate in order to more accurately assess the need and allocate our limited funds most appropriately. Submitted budgets should use due diligence to provide reasonable figures when requesting funds, but once an award is approved, no further financial documentation is required. For awards supporting newsletter articles and honoraria for NEA-sponsored programs, a budget will not be required.