Activating Community Opportunities Using Museums/Libraries as Assets – A National Leadership Grants Special Initiative

National Leadership Grants for Libraries (NLG-Libraries) and National Leadership Grants for Museums (NLG-Museums), under which this special initiative falls, support projects that address challenges faced by the library and museum fields and that have the potential to advance practice in those fields. Successful projects will generate results such as new tools, research findings, models, services, practices, or alliances that can be widely used, adapted, scaled, or replicated to extend the benefits of federal investment.What is this special initiative? Activating Community Opportunities Using Museums/Libraries as Assets is part of a special Community Catalyst initiative under the National Leadership Grant programs. For this special initiative, the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) is interested in supportingprojects that address significant challenges and opportunities facing the library, archive, and museum (LAM) fields and that have the potential to advance theory and practice. This joint Libraries and Museums special call for proposals invites projects that will help LAMs and their communities learn together how to build upon the unique abilities of LAMs to achieve positive change. Successful projects will exemplify how LAMs can provide trusted spaces for ongoing community dialog and exploration of the intersections between individual narratives. In addition, successful projects will demonstrate the viability of using and adapting existing approaches gleaned from the collective impact, social well-being, and community development arenas. A range of approaches are currently being employed in these fields that could be helpful as potential applicants consider their proposed projects.