Assignment #7: Preservation Funding Trends

For better or worse, it seems as though much of the cultural preservation work undertaken in the USA is funded by various granting-agencies. There are some obvious pitfalls with this arrangement: organizations and institutions may be forced to tailor their projects to the (often quixotic) desires of the funding agencies rather than its own needs, the difficulty of assuring continuity or perpetuity for projects meant to survive beyond the grant-funded period, copious amounts of paperwork, and intra- and inter-institutional competition which can preclude cooperation.

Greater triangulation between funding agencies, institutions, and the public (users) could likely minimize the first problem, but the latter three constitute systemic flaws in the system, pointing to the deeper issue of cultural heritage institutions being chronically underfunded. The situation is analogous to malnourished children who are occasionally awarded dessert: the treat is pleasant while it lasts, but it heightens awareness the profound lack of food once consumed. The needy children instinctively presume causal relationships between their behavior and the receipt of the dessert, and do their best to earn one again, only to discover the capricious nature of the dessert-dispensing entity. At the risk of overburdening this cliche metaphor, just as this pattern fails to nurture the childrens' growth, institutions dependent on the succor of granting agencies cannot thrive as well as if sustenance was constant and predictable.

Recognizing the reality of the situation entails that institutions hoping to secure funding for their preservation efforts keep abreast of trends--what types of grants being offered, and what types of projects are winning them--in order to increase the odds of getting money. Prominent funders of cultural heritage preservation include: IMLS, Heritage Preservation, National Park Service, NHPRC (National Archives), Getty Conservation Institute, and the Andrew Mellon Foundation. Most of these have extensive information available through their websites. Reading through them all is as overwhelming as it is informative. Broadly speaking, agencies are concerned with certain key imperatives: increased responsiveness and interactivity between users and institutions; researching and implementing new technologies for providing access or for preservation methodology; promoting environmentally sound practices, and for preserving the significant cultural heritage material produced underrepresented but vitally important groups, especially Native American Tribes.

In addition to proposing projects that fall under these broad goals, grant-seekers must be keenly attuned to methods for asserting the merits of their collections, and the ability to integrate the project into their overall mission. Finally, we cannot help but observe several paradoxes at play: striking a balance between emphasizing a collections uniqueness (and therefore important to preserve) while simultaneously positing the project as extensible to other collections (reproducible); trying to embrace the cutting-edge while assuring the timelessness and sustainability of the project, just to name a couple.