Grants and fundraising/Grant applications

"All applicants to National Endowment for the Humanities are required to use Grants.gov."

For any organization that is unable to submit a grant application via Grants.gov, "[c]ontact the program for directions on how to apply. Contact details are listed in the guidelines."

Grants.gov
"Grants.gov is the [U. S.] federal government’s online application system. It provides one central portal where organizations and individuals can electronically find and apply for grants throughout the federal government. Grants.gov is THE single access point for over 1,000 grant programs offered by the 26 federal agencies that make grants."

Note, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) uses its own system.

Applicants
"An individual is an applicant who submits grant applications on their own behalf, not representing an organization, institution or government. Individual applicants may only apply for grant opportunities on Grants.gov that indicate individual eligibility within the Synopsis and Full Announcement."

An individual may also represent an organization, institution or government.

NEH funding opportunities
Funding Number 20130627-AB Humanities Initiatives, Open Date 4/16/2013 to 6/27/2013.

Funding Number 20130912-AQ Enduring Questions, Open Date 05/29/2013 to 09/12/2013.

NEH Enduring Questions
"The NEH Enduring Questions grant program supports faculty members in the teaching and development of a new course that will foster intellectual community through the study of an enduring question. This question-driven course will encourage undergraduates and teachers to grapple with a fundamental concern of human life addressed by the humanities, and to join together in a deep and sustained program of reading in order to encounter influential thinkers over the centuries and into the present day. What is an enduring question? The following list is neither prescriptive nor exhaustive but serves to illustrate.

• What is good government?

•	Can war be just?

•	What is friendship?

•	What is evil?

•	Are there universals in human nature?

•	What are the origins of the universe?

Enduring questions are questions to which no discipline, field, or profession can lay an exclusive claim. In many cases they predate the formation of the academic disciplines themselves. Enduring questions can be tackled by reflective individuals regardless of their chosen vocations, areas of expertise, or personal backgrounds. They are questions that have more than one plausible or compelling answer. They have long held interest for young people, and they allow for a special, intense dialogue across generations. The Enduring Questions grant program will help promote such dialogue in today’s undergraduate environment. The course is to be developed by one or more (up to four) faculty members at a single institution, but not team taught. Enduring Questions courses must be taught from a common syllabus and must be offered during the grant period at least twice by each faculty member involved in developing the course. The grant supports the work of faculty members in designing, preparing, and assessing the new course. It may also be used for ancillary activities that enhance faculty-student intellectual community, such as visits to museums and artistic or cultural events. An Enduring Questions course may be taught by faculty from any department or discipline in the humanities or by faculty outside the humanities (for example, astronomy, biology, economics, law, mathematics, medicine, or psychology), so long as humanities sources are central to the course."

An enduring question: "What are dominant group and the concepts behind it?"

An enduring question: "What is a dominant group and what are the forces behind it?"

Grants.gov process
As an individual one may register with Grants.gov. Once registered, one may also register an organization that may be represented.

An organization, whether not-for-profit or for-profit, usually is required to have a DUNS number which can be obtained from Dunn and Bradstreet and updated as needed using Update Home.

With a DUNS number at hand, one needs to register as an individual and/or organization with the U.S. System for Award Management (SAM) at SAM. In addition to the DUNS number, four other numbers may be needed or will be supplied:
 * 1) an MPIN - user composed,
 * 2) a TIN - U.S. taxpayer identification number, verified with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service,
 * 3) a PoC - point of contact, usually you,
 * 4) CAGE - a Department of Defense (DoD) contractor number, in case you desire a grant from the U.S. DoD or wish to bid on contracts, supplied by DoD.

When registering your organization with SAM be sure to describe your organization name, address, and other information, exactly as listed with dnb.

Application process
Once successfully registered with Grants.gov, dnb if needed, and SAM, you can successfully download a grant application from grants.gov for the specific funding opportunity, which is specified first, e.g., Funding Number 20130912-AQ Enduring Questions.

The application arrives in pdf format which usually requires a more recent version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, e.g., Adobe Reader 9 works on my system.

Completion of the Grants Application Package (seven pages approximately) involves supplying relevant information. Page 1: Opportunity Title: Enduring Questions Offering Agency: National Endowment for the Humanities CFDA Number: 45.163 CFDA Description: Promotion of the Humanities_Professional Development Opportunity Number: 20130912-AQ Competition ID: blank as not applicable (N/A) Opportunity Open Date: 05/29/2013 Opportunity Close Date: 09/12/2013 Agency Contact:
 * Enduring Questions
 * Division of Endowment for the Humanities
 * Room 302
 * 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
 * Washington, DC 20506
 * 202-606-8380

_____________________________________________________________________________

Application Filing Name: Dominant group

Attachments to the application must be pdfs. These can be produced by using Adobe PDF creator online which is not free! for example. This Web-based converter can be used by PC or Mac. Vendor e-mails PDF back to you. Wikiversity also allows downloads of resources as pdf files which works. They appear in a book page or section format that is inflexible when the Project narrative is required to be double spaced for reviewer comments. Any misconformity to the Guidelines may be grounds for rejection.

Grant application successfully submitted to Grants.gov (help line 1-800-518-4726) and the grant application package has been retrieved by the Grantor agency and is currently being reviewed. As 9/12/2013 11:59 pm US EST is the deadline, the grant application has successfully been received in time by NEH. You will need the Agency Tracking Number when corresponding with the Grantor agency about your application. Use the Grants.gov Tracking Number at Grants.gov to check your application's status and to obtain your Agency Tracking Number.

Grants.gov assigns a tracking number, the Grantor agency (NEH) assigns an application number and an Agency Tracking Number. Once the review of the application is complete, NEH will contact the Project Director with the results.

NEH Enduring Questions Guidelines
Def.


 * 1) a "non-specific rule or principle that provides direction to action or behaviour", for example, "He considered the Ten Commandments more a guideline than a requirement."
 * 2) a "plan or explanation to guide one in setting standards or determining a course of action"

is called a guideline, where a synonym is "rule of thumb".

"As a taxpayer-supported federal agency, NEH endeavors to make the products of its awards available to the broadest possible audience. Our goal is for scholars, educators, students, and the American public to have ready and easy access to the wide range of NEH award products. For the Enduring Questions grant program, such products may include online course materials. For projects that involve the development of Web-based resources, all other considerations being equal, NEH gives preference to those that provide free access to the public."

"Any U.S. nonprofit two- or four-year college or university with IRS tax-exempt status is eligible." While Wikiversity may be considered a two- or four-year college or university, it is much more, and all WMF projects have IRS tax-exempt status.

"Independent scholars are not eligible to serve as project directors. Only tenured, tenure-track, non-tenure-track, and adjunct faculty members (at U.S. nonprofit two- or four-year colleges or universities with IRS tax-exempt status) are eligible to serve as project directors. When more than one faculty member is involved in designing the course, one and only one of them must be listed in the application as the official project director of record."

There are at least three options here
 * 1) someone from Wikiversity, perhaps a Bureaucrat or Custodian, could serve as Project Director and Primary Contact,
 * 2) as these restrictions are only guidelines, an exception may be possible that would permit User:Marshallsumter to serve as Applicant, Project Director and Primary Contact, or
 * 3) as Wikiversity does not have tenured or adjunct faculty members who can be Applicant, Project Director, and Primary Contact all at once, this seems discriminatory in preference for brick-and-mortar institutions, which may deserve a question sent to enduringquestions@neh.gov.

NEH Enduring Questions application sections
"An NEH Enduring Questions course
 * * must explore an explicitly stated question that lends itself to sustained and open inquiry;
 * * must engage the course faculty in extensive study of scholarly literature that expands their intellectual range;
 * * must emphasize extensive reading, drawing on works from a range of historical periods;
 * * must reflect intellectual pluralism and balance, anticipating more than one plausible answer to the question at hand;
 * * may draw solely from Western or non-Western traditions, or combine various traditions;
 * * may draw on artworks (for example, music, plays, films, paintings, and sculpture);
 * * must be open to students regardless of major or concentration; and
 * * must have institutional support, as evidenced by a letter from the president, provost, dean, program chair, or department chair, attesting 1) that the college or university supports the course, 2) that the course is new, and 3) that it will be offered at least twice during the grant period by each faculty member involved in developing it."

"Enduring Questions grants may not be used for
 * * team-taught courses;
 * * redevelopment of previously offered courses;
 * * improvement of multiple courses;
 * * development of curricular or pedagogical methods or theories;
 * * preparation of courses for graduate students;
 * * textbook research or revision;
 * * projects that seek to promote a particular political, religious, or ideological point of view;
 * * projects that advocate a particular program of social action;
 * * works in the creative and performing arts (for example, painting, writing fiction or poetry, dance performance, etc.); or
 * * doctoral dissertations, theses, or any other research pertaining to a graduate degree program."

"The Enduring Questions program welcomes projects that respond to the theme of Bridging Cultures. This agency-wide initiative encourages exploration of the ways in which cultures from around the globe, as well as the myriad subcultures within America’s borders, have influenced American society. With the aim of revitalizing intellectual and civic life through the humanities, NEH welcomes projects that enhance understanding of diverse countries, peoples, and cultural and intellectual traditions worldwide. Applications might also investigate how Americans have approached and attempted to surmount seemingly unbridgeable cultural divides, or examine the ideals of civility and civic discourse that have informed this quest. In connection with a focus on civic discourse, projects might explore the role of women in America’s civic life as well as the civic role of women in other cultures and regions of the world."

"All applications will be given equal consideration in accordance with the program’s evaluation criteria, whether or not they respond to the Bridging Cultures initiative."

"As a taxpayer-supported federal agency, NEH endeavors to make the products of its awards available to the broadest possible audience. Our goal is for scholars, educators, students, and the American public to have ready and easy access to the wide range of NEH award products. For the Enduring Questions grant program, such products may include online course materials. For projects that involve the development of Web-based resources, all other considerations being equal, NEH gives preference to those that provide free access to the public."

Project narratives
The course is to be centered on the question: "What is a dominant group and what are the forces behind it?"

Obviously, it is a two-word phrase, but is it more than this?

"Are dominant group and the concepts behind it a part of human nature?"

A number of enduring-question courses have been created to learn about possibly answering "What is human nature?". Those enduring-question courses focusing on human nature that are accessible on-line may be included under external links for students to try.

To explore the dominant-group question, a series of lectures are to be created that address topics associated with arriving at an answer. A university-style course modeled after principles of radiation astronomy at Wikiversity may be dynamic and should suffice. Each component resource may have a level of completion icon based, e.g., on up to ~ 100 kilobytes or more of total information. Forty-eight such lectures constitute the heart of the course. These are supplemented by mini-quiz section lectures on key concepts. A laboratory setting may concentrate on a particular reading resource such as Livy, Ab urbe condita, to determine text applicable to the question, or a synonym such as patrician class.

Lessons will be included that promote individual effort seeking answers to a subsidiary question:
 * 1) What is the origin of dominant group, and the concepts behind it?
 * 2) Where did dominant group, or the concepts behind it, come from?
 * 3) How did dominant group come to be used in so many different fields and languages?
 * 4) Through its synonyms, why does dominant group exist?
 * 5) When did the concepts behind dominant group occur?

Problem sets will emphasize differentiating topics associated with the main question.

For the students to test their understanding, there are to be quizzes, hourlies, a mid term and a final exam. Usually, these are also learning aids as they can be retaken indefinitely so that students may increase their score, their understanding of the information, and their test-taking skills, useful in other college-level courses.

Alternate examinations that may be used by a student's brick and mortar college or university for credit in this course will be available from Wikiversity by courier for closed-session testing of proficiency.

Lectures already exist and are under continuing development for this course. For example:
 * 1) Classes of meaning,
 * 2) Classical planets,
 * 3) Classics,
 * 4) Control group,
 * 5) Mythology,
 * 6) Religion, and
 * 7) Synonyms of dominant group.

The course is organized around a series of subsidiary questions such as:
 * 1) What are the concepts behind dominant group and synonyms like patrician class?
 * 2) What is the field of dominant group?

A portion of the course and a likely lecture focuses on dominance:
 * 1) Is dominance a human endeavor?

More in-depth questions to be explored include
 * 1) What is the nature of the relationship between dominant group and each article, field, and currently available definition(s)?
 * 2) What is the difference between articles regarding usage, if any?
 * 3) What is the effect of dominant group on the article?
 * 4) Are there fields that do not use the 'term'?
 * 5) Are the two words found together in any additional dictionaries or glossaries, or in any common language dictionaries?
 * 6) What is the origin and first use of the term or its primordial concept and usage?
 * 7) Is the origin of dominant group, and the primordial concepts behind it, external to human nature?

Budgets
"The maximum award amounts, stipend levels for project directors [one Project Director, stipend $12,500], and the limits for other project costs [may not exceed $9,500] have all changed. ... Stipends typically cover salaries, wages, and fringe benefits (institutional policies are applicable) and may not be decreased to increase other costs. Other costs include the following items: books and other materials necessary for course development; funding for ancillary student activities (for example, attending plays, concerts, or museum exhibitions); expert advice for the development of the course’s content; consulting services to develop a digital humanities component, such as a project website; costs incurred in publicizing and disseminating the course; indirect costs; and fringe benefits (institutional policies are applicable)."

Résumés
The résumé includes current and past positions that are mentioned on the user:Marshallsumter page and the current exploratory organization, the education also on my user page, some honors and awards as Guest Editor on an issue of the Journal of Electronic Materials and Symposium Chairperson.

Recent courses listed included principles of radiation astronomy which is in its second full year (2016). A total number of publications is currently at 70, including the most recent first authorship (mostly experimental), most recent theoretical paper, a patent, and my most recent modeling paper. I forgot to include a book chapter or most frequently cited work. I have no publications as yet directly applicable to the humanities or dominant group.

Letter of institutional commitment
The proposed activity is ongoing at Wikiversity in that the original research effort continues. The question of "What is dominant group and the concepts behind?" continues to endure at Wikiversity.

"Wikiversity is a Wikimedia Foundation project devoted to learning resources, learning projects, and research for use in all levels, types, and styles of education from pre-school to university, including professional training and informal learning. We invite teachers, students, and researchers to join us in creating open educational resources and collaborative learning communities. To learn more about Wikiversity, try a guided tour or start editing now."[Wikiversity:Main Page at http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Main_Page]

"The Wikimedia Foundation is part of a broad global network of individuals, organizations, chapters, clubs and communities who together work to create Wikipedia and many other freely used, freely edited, freely copied and freely redistributed projects; the most powerful example of volunteer collaboration and open content sharing in the world today." [Sue Gardner, Executive Director of the Wikimedia Foundation].

Wikiversity is the premier online research and education database, facility, network and partnership of the WMF. That the proposed activity is ongoing and will have an enduring question course, subject to funding, at Wikiversity makes the information generated available through access and sharing.

"Just as an FYI, Wikiversity has been placed among the 'top picks' for this Google+ education list. It has been shared over 2000 times since its original posting."[Wikiversity user: Jade Knight in the Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/March 2012 to be found at http://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Wikiversity:Colloquium/archives/March_2012].

The proposed activity would partner NEH with Wikiversity to enhance the infrastructure for research and education, and networks within Wikiversity and between Wikiversity and NEH.

Portable document format
Comparison of Wikiversity pdf download to resource page:
 * 1) on the resource page at Wikiveresity, using Jupiter as a test, the image of Jupiter, "Cloud bands are clearly visible on Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL/USGS." is at left,
 * 2) the column of status boxes starting with Completion status are centered on the first page rather than right margin defined,
 * 3) ToC does not appear,
 * 4) introductory paragraph is all that is included on page 1,
 * 5) page 2 begins with Physical Features and end with Satellites of Jupiter sections,
 * 6) page 3 starts with Entity astronomy and ends with Meteor astronomy,
 * 7) page 4 starts with Electron astronomy and ends with X-ray astronomy but last image is on next page, recommend using one on right and second on left to balance page,
 * 8) page 5 contains Ultraviolet astronomy but last figure also on next page,
 * 9) page 6 contains Visual astronomy and a portion of Violet astronomy,
 * 10) page 7 has the rest and half of Blue astronomy,
 * 11) page 8 has the rest through Red astronomy,
 * 12) pages 9 & 10 have Infrared astronomy,
 * 13) page 11 contains Submillimeter astronomy through Sun-Jupiter binary,
 * 14) page 12 has Coronal cloud through Planetary science (half),
 * 15) page 13 has the rest plus part of Classical planets,
 * 16) page 14 has the rest of page but without accurate list of references or templates,
 * 17) page 15 has Article Sources and Contributors with Image Sources, Licenses and Contributors, and Creative Commons License at the bottom.

This is considered book format.

NASA grant applications
"NSPIRES is the NASA Solicitation and Proposal Integrated Review and Evaluation System. This web-based system supports the entire lifecycle of NASA research solicitation and selection, from the release of solicitation announcements through NOI and proposal submission, the peer review and the decision process."

"NSPIRES is a NASA system designed to support the entire solicitation process [...]. Grants.gov is a federal government wide system designed solely to receive proposals and transfer them to the receiving agency. Proposals submitted to NASA via Grants.gov must be transferred into NSPIRES in order for the solicitation process to be completed and proposers using Grants.gov must be registered in NSPIRES in order for this proposal transfer to take place. An NSPIRES proposal is created by a combination of web-based entry of cover page data and upload of permitted PDF document(s). A Grants.gov proposal is created by the offline completion of a series of PDF forms, attachment of several proposal document parts, and upload of the entire package back to Grants.gov."

Grant application results
The following e-mail was received on March 26, 2014:

Dear Enduring Questions Applicant: Thank you for your application to the Enduring Questions grant program and for your interest in the National Endowment for the Humanities. I regret to inform you that your application for a grant has not been approved for funding. The number of applicants for NEH funding is invariably beyond the resources available to support proposed projects. In 2014, for example, 20 of the 187 applications received in the Enduring Questions program were awarded funding. The list of grants awarded in the recent cycle will be posted on the NEH website later this week. If you wish to receive a copy of the panelists' comments on your application, please contact our division by email (enduringquestions@neh.gov). Please note that the next deadline for Enduring Questions applications will be September 11, 2014. Guidelines will be posted at least 60 days before the deadline at www.neh.gov/grants, where you may find information about all NEH grant programs. Thank you for taking part in the competition for the Enduring Questions grant program. Sincerely, William Craig Rice Director NEH Division of Education Programs CC: Institutional Grant Administrator

Grant application evaluation
The following evaluation was received on or about April 25, 2014:

Thank you for your inquiry about the assessment of your application to the Enduring Questions grant program. Let me begin by explaining the overall results of the competition and the review process.

The program received 187 proposals by the September 12, 2013, deadline, of which 20 were funded. The review process in this competition followed Endowment practice. Knowledgeable persons outside NEH read each application and advise the agency about its merits. NEH staff comments on matters of fact or on significant issues that otherwise would be missing from these reviews, and then makes recommendations to the National Council on the Humanities. The National Council meets regularly during the year and advises the NEH Chairman on grants. The Chairman takes into account the advice provided by the review process and, by law, makes all funding decisions.

This e-mail includes the panelists' 2019 comments with the identity of the panelists and references to other applications omitted. A word about the panelist ratings: E = Excellent, VG = Very Good, G = Good, SM = Some Merit, NC = Not Competitive, REC = Recusal.

I hope this information is helpful. Please feel free to contact the Division of Education Programs if we can be of further assistance.

Sincerely,

Rasmi Simhan Program Analyst, Education Division National Endowment for the Humanities

Panelist 1

Please enter your comments here:

This proposal seems to be for an online course offered by "Wikiversity." I'm not sure that the Enduring Questions program can fund such courses. But, in any case, I could not make sense of the narrative. The applicant seems to be self-employed and not affiliated with any college or university.

Rating: NC: Not Competitive

Panelist 2

Please enter your comments here:

It is difficult to evaluate this proposal. The range of topics, readings and analyses is so diffused as to leave it unclear as to what the course will accomplish, or to whom it will be of interest. It is not clear if it is a course in the normal sense of the word.

Rating: NC: Not Competitive

Panelist 3

Please enter your comments here:

This proposal is not adequately tailored to the application requirements.

Rating: NC: Not Competitive

Panelist 4

Please enter your comments here:

The prospect that the course could live on beyond the end of the "semester" and be available to people from many walks of life makes it an attractive idea. The goal to foster an intellectual community learning experience where people refrain from assuming that they have to have a definitive answer right at the start is also laudable. I also think that the course clearly meets the "enduring" criteria via its historical and interdisciplinary breadth.

But the proposal is less clear about the overall purpose of investigating this enduring question, especially in terms of what tangible benefits students would attain by taking the course. It seems in some parts of the proposal that the goal is to work towards a taxonomy or typology of possible meanings of the phrase "dominant group" (for example, the fourth subsidiary question listed on p.3 of the narrative). How does this help students? Does this part of the course stem from the instructor's own ongoing research project? If so, maybe a broader set of pedagogical goals or possible applications to prospective students lives (i.e. "real world" connections) needs to be emphasized.

Rating: G: Good

Hypotheses

 * 1) "Not Competitive" (NC) may mean not from a brick-and-mortar small college or university department.

As about 10% or less of grant applications are funded, a control group may be expected to be one that meets all application requirements but fails to receive funding.