Guidelines for AMICAL Small Grant Awards - 2009

Overview

Thanks to support provided by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, AMICAL is able to offer Small Grant Awards to allow staff members at AMICAL institutions to take advantage of professional development opportunities. The Small Grant Awards can also be used to facilitate contact with colleagues from other institutions who may have critical expertise in an area of need at an AMICAL institution. Grant support is being made available in primarily three areas:

• General scholarship funds for training opportunities
• Support for conference participation
• Support for staff exchanges: sending local staff to learn from expertise at other institutions, or bringing individuals with relevant expertise to AMICAL institutions

Eligibility

Grants can be used to support:

• staff members from AMICAL institutions for professional development opportunities that will contribute to the development of library and information services or curricular resources
• visits by experts from outside the AMICAL institution to help develop some aspects of local library services, IT services, or curricular resources. It is expected that such visits will also add to the professional development of staff locally, through the transference of expertise.

Scope & Criteria

The following guidelines indicate the expected scope for grants, as well as some of the criteria that will be used in selecting grant proposals:

• Requests should generally fallbetween 500 and 4000 euros. In exceptional cases, requests outside this range may be considered.
• Grants should be used to help cover travel expenses or fees directly related to training, conferences, or other professional development opportunities. Grants may be used to support professional contact through visiting institutions with expertise needed by the AMICAL member institution. Expenses that can be covered include:
  • Flights, trains or other ticketed travel to and from the destination
  • Ground transportation for arrivals and departures
  • Hotel accommodation for the duration of the grant-supported activity
  • Conference/training fees

Daily subsistence and local travel costs are not covered by the AMICAL grant. These are expected to be covered either by the applicant's employer or by the applicant his/herself.

The professional development opportunity should have some kind of real expected impact not just on the applicant's own professional development but on the development of their institution's library and information services or curricular resources.

Priority will be given to professional development or exchange opportunities that fall into one or more of the following categories:

• develop long-term professional capacities of local staff
• are not accessible locally (e.g. requiring travel to, or requiring bringing a consultant/trainer from, another country)
• are exceptional local opportunities that budgetary constraints make it impossible to take advantage of
• bring exceptional expertise to the campus that is unavailable locally, in a way that will have a lasting impact on the development of local library services, IT services, or curricular resources
• promote collaboration between library staff, IT staff and faculty members

Activity supported should be completed before 31 December 2009.

How to Apply

Applications for an AMICAL Small Grant Award should be sent by the deadline indicated below to Nigel Butterwick (nbutterwick@fc.edu), Grant Committee Chair. Applications should be brief (1-2 pages max.), preferably in Word format (.doc or .rtf -- NOT .docx), and should include at least the following:

• brief description of the activity to be supported
• background and need - the relevance of this training to the grant applicant and/or their institution should be stated explicitly
• expected impact
• amount being requested, in Euro (preferred) or US$ equivalent; please respect the scope guidelines above concerning what can be funded
• any special requests or circumstances

Calendar

Applications will be formally reviewed in accordance with schedule below. However, applications can be submitted at any time, and when a response is needed in advance of the formal notification date this is normally possible.

Disbursement Procedures

The grant recipient institution will need to pay initially for the covered expenses and submit an institutional invoice to AMICAL for the reimbursement, which will be in euros. Advances or other reimbursement options may be possible in exceptional cases, but this will delay processing and should be avoided if at all possible. Detailed instructions on grant disbursement will be made available to recipients.

Reporting

Grant recipients must be willing to submit a brief (approx. 1-page) report, no later than 31 December 2009, preferably in Word format (.doc or .rtf -- NOT .docx), describing

• what was accomplished
• the impact of the supported activity on local professional development and/or on the quality of local library and information services or curricular resources