How do you go from an idea to a successful project within an academic library where resources are limited and competing priorities make certain projects unattainable? Do you know any library employees who are eager to acquire grant funds to support creative projects that otherwise could not happen without external funds? Are there questions about where and how to get started, and what steps can prevent folks from reinventing the wheel? Do you think there are enough interested library employees who want to start a coordinated grantseeking effort?

 

Building on 16 years of developing workflows and systems for managing all aspects of library grantseeking at the University of Arizona and University of Florida, this grant webinar series shares best practices including checklist examples for guidelines and workflows, funding alerts describing funding opportunities for libraries, and templates for sharing submitted and pending proposals with library employees. Behind the scenes stories will divulge unusual ways ideas were generated for fundable projects, and how ideas developed through engagement with a diverse array of experts and assets. Stories share details of what happened after project teams received their awards, and ways by which teams managed to complete projects successfully. Featured projects highlight a variety of grant-funded activities including outreach, digitization, training, acquisition of materials, planning and collaborations with diverse partners and for diverse materials.

 

Outcomes:

 

1) knowledge of where to find funding opportunities for library-related grantseeking;

 

2) greater understanding of the steps involved to create successful grantseeking efforts;

 

3) visualizations of how grant projects originated and how they developed into fundable grant proposals

 

Presenter: Bess de Farber serves as the grants manager for the George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida Libraries and held the same position at the University of Arizona Libraries. She has provided grantsmanship instruction to hundreds of library staff, nonprofit and academic professionals, artists, and university students in the past 30 years, and has led efforts to secure millions in grant funding for nonprofits and academic libraries. She is the author of Creating Fundable Grant Proposals: Profiles of Innovative Partnerships (2021), Collaborative Grant-Seeking: A Practical Guide for Librarians (2016), and co-author of Collaborating with Strangers: Facilitating Workshops in Libraries, Classes, and Nonprofits (2017).