21st Century Museum Professionals Grant Program 2025 (up to $500,000) Deadline: 15 November, 2024

Applications are open for the 21st Century Museum Professionals Program 2025. The 21st Century Museum Professional (21MP) grant program supports projects that offer professional development to the current museum workforce, train and recruit future museum professionals, and identify and share effective practices in museum workforce education and training.

Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) recognizes the important role of strong local and regional networks in providing peer-to-peer learning, training, and mentoring opportunities for the museum workforce. Partnerships among museums, museum-serving organizations, and institutions of higher education are vital to expanding career pathways for broad groups of museum professionals throughout a city, county, state, region, or the nation. The 21MP Program encourages applications from museum associations, museum studies programs at institutions of higher education, and museums that serve as essential parts of the professional learning and training environment.

They expect successful 21MP projects to:

• reflect a thorough understanding of relevant theory and effective practice in workforce training and professional development for the museum field;
• involve partnerships that build career pathways and strengthen professional networks beyond a single institution;
• employ inclusive and equitable recruitment and selection strategies to reach target audiences; and
• engage museum staff, leadership, or volunteers at any stage of career development.

Grant Amount

• The grant amount is between $100,000–$500,000.

Eligibility

To be eligible as a museum, you must:

• Be either a unit of State or local government or a private nonprofit organization that has tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code;
• Be located in one of the 50 States of the United States of America, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the Virgin Islands, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, or the Republic of Palau; and
• Qualify as one of the following:
  • a museum that, using a professional staff, is organized on a permanent basis for essentially educational or aesthetic purposes; owns or uses tangible objects, either animate or inanimate; cares for these objects; and exhibits these objects to the general public on a regular basis through facilities that it owns or operates.
  • a public or private nonprofit agency which is responsible for the operation of a museum may apply on behalf of the museum.

Application

To apply, ensure to read the 2025 Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO).

For more information, visit 21st Century Museum Professionals Program.