Activate History Microgrants

Eligibility

• Any individual, nonprofit organization, or public institution (e.g., school, government institution, library, museum, or church) can apply.
• The applicant, the history you are engaging with, or the audience engaged should be focused in Illinois. 
• Priority is given to organizations with annual budgets of less than $400,000.

Questions about your eligibility? View our Frequently Asked Questions or contact us.

Guidelines

Funding

1. Grants awards are $750.
2. Optional Accessibility Fund: An additional stipend of up to $150 for services such as American Sign Language interpretation or captioning to help make events more accessible to everyone.
3. Optional Media Fund: An additional stipend of up to $100 for services such as documentation, photography, videography, etc.

General

1. The event or activity must happen within six months of the application deadline.
2. Programs can be held virtually, in person, or in a hybrid format.
3. Funds should support interpretation, dialogue, and attracting attention to local collections, texts, and stories of regional significance.
4. Funds can be used for research and digitization provided they are part of an engagement strategy.

Requirements

1. Help us to promote your event by sharing details and materials.
2. Document your funded activity with photography and written reflection.
3. Complete a final grant report form about their funded activity and its outcome.

Evaluation and documentation are important to us, and we are eager to see how grant applicants define success and plan to measure progress toward it. We ask grant applicants to describe in precise terms the project's desired outcome, and how they will know if it was successful. Within 30 days of the conclusion of a project or grant period, grantees must complete a final grant report.

We ask all Grant recipients to document their initiatives or events by taking photos, recording audio or video, and sharing their experience with us. We want to share with others the great work that grantees are doing and frequently feature stories of grantee partners in our news and on social media @ILHumanities.

Additional Funding

1. Optional Accessibility Fund: An additional stipend of up to $150 for services such as American Sign Language interpretation or captioning to help make events more accessible to everyone.
2. Optional Media Fund: An additional stipend of up to $100 for services such as documentation, photography, videography, etc.

1. Complete your final report via our grantee portal.
2. Official IH Logo (August 2021 version "Illinois Humanities" is bolded)
3. Grant Acknowledgement Language: This program was made possible in part by a grant from Illinois Humanities.
4. Resources for grantee partners and grant seekers.

Below are brief descriptions of funded projects.

1. Black and Pink Chicago developed the first interactive digital archive and community-based research project on civil commitment in Illinois by compiling hundreds of pages of written testimonials, filed grievances, drawings of prison cells, self-published pamphlets, and more. The archive included the surveys of 200 people detained at Rushville Treatment and Detention Center that were conducted to better understand civil commitment and the experiences of those committed. “The practice of civil commitment keeps people incarcerated indefinitely after they’ve served their sentences under the guise of treatment,” says Rebecca Valeriano-Flores, a researcher and archivist with the organization. With these grant funds, for more than 30 attendees, the group did a presentation on civil commitment, shared access to the digital archive itself, and facilitated a Q&A session with a member currently incarcerated at Rushville.
2. The Viking Ship, located in Good Templar Park in Geneva, Ill., is a 78-foot historical and cultural mega-artifact, the largest surviving display from the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition. The exposition put Chicago on the international map, says David Nordin, vice president, Friends of the Viking Ship. “This is the first Viking-style ship built since the ancient Viking age, and its successful non-stop voyage across the North Atlantic riveted the world’s attention." The group used funds to host meetings of public school, private school, and homeschool teachers on how to interpret the ship to meet their current curriculum needs.
3. Rose Blouin is a veteran photographer with a particular interest in documenting the African American experience in community, arts, and culture. This project was a presentation and discussion of photographs that document activities held in Chicago’s Washington Park during the summer of 1987. These photos were juxtaposed with other work that Blouin created during trips to South Africa and Havana, Cuba. The intended audience was senior members of Mather, a non-denominational senior center in Chatham, as well as community residents of all ages.