Collections Stewardship
Funding Opportunity for Organizations
Maximum award amount: One organization: up to $350,000; Consortium: up to $500,000
Expected Output: assessments and plans for collections stewardship; conserved or preserved collections; catalog records, finding aids, and metadata; digital surrogates, transcriptions, and indexes; education and training for students and professionals in collections stewardship
Period of performance: up to three years
Application available: July 27, 2026
Deadline: December 15, 2026
This notice of funding opportunity has two application deadlines: May 11, 2026, and December 15, 2026.
The Collections Stewardship program funds projects to preserve and make available physical and digital collections important for research, teaching, and public engagement in the humanities. Awards support the work of libraries, archives, and museums; colleges and universities working on collections access; and organizations that provide preservation services or educate and train students and professionals in collections stewardship.
Applications may be submitted for projects that address one or more of the following activities:
- conducting assessments for physical or digital preservation, and creating plans and policies for collections stewardship
- conducting conservation assessments and implementing treatment plans
- purchasing storage and preservation supplies to rehouse collections (see funding restriction on high density storage systems)
- managing collection storage environments and other preventive care strategies (see funding restriction on building systems)
- arranging and describing archival and manuscript collections
- cataloging collections of rare books, maps, photographs, sound recordings and moving images, archaeological and ethnographic artifacts, art and material culture, and digital objects
- digitizing or reformatting collections and making them available for public use through websites or digital repositories
- transcribing, translating, or indexing primary source materials (see funding restriction on preparing scholarly editions)
- enhancing long-standing digital resources that are widely used in the humanities in order to preserve the information and improve access
- providing preservation services or educating and training undergraduate and graduate students and professionals who preserve and provide access to humanities collections (financial support for students and participants is allowed, including stipends and travel costs but not tuition remission).
Application Instructions
Contact Division of Collections & Infrastructure 202-606-8570 collections@neh.gov If you are deaf, hard of hearing, or have a speech disability, please dial 7-1-1 to access telecommunications relay services.
Review your application package Read the Notice of Funding Opportunity to ensure you understand all the expectations and restrictions for projects delivered under this program and are prepared to write the most effective application.
Application Materials Notice of Funding Opportunity, 2026 (PDF) General Application Guide for Awards to Organizations (PDF) Grants.gov application package Policy on the Use of Artificial Intelligence for NEH Grant Proposals (PDF)
Register for a SAM number and an account on Grants.gov When you are ready to apply, register for an account with SAM.gov and Grants.gov; both are required. If you already have completed the registrations, make sure they are current.
- Register with Grants.gov
- Grants.gov Applicant Registration Guidance
- Download Adobe Reader
- Tips for making PDFs
Complete your application package Follow the instructions outlined in the Notice of Funding Opportunity.
Submit your application package on Grants.gov You will receive a confirmation from Grants.gov when you’ve successfully submitted your application. Subsequently, you will receive up to five more notices confirming different stages in the application process. Verify that you have received all confirmations. Note that email filters may send these messages to your spam or junk folder.