Guidelines for AMICAL Small Grant Awards

UPDATED 17 MAY 2013

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 through 31 July 2015. 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

Please note that the Small Grant program does not support attendance at the AMICAL annual conference; information about support for AMICAL conference attendance is distributed with conference announcements.

Scope & Selection Criteria

Grants can be used to support:

development of staff expertise through professional exchange, consultation, training, conference participation, certificate or degree programs, or other means that the recipient can demonstrate will be applied to improvement of library and information services at their AMICAL institution
- staff members from AMICAL member 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.
faculty development related to information literacy instruction or collaboration with librarians or instructional technologists
small but potentially transformative developments in local library and information services

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

Professional development opportunities 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.

Budget Guidelines for Small Grants

Requests should generally fall between a minimum of 500 and a maximum of 4000 euros. Only in exceptional cases will requests outside this range be considered.

What types of expense can be covered?

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
Fees for conference or workshop registration, training, consulting, certificate/degree program enrollment, or other fees that directly support professional development or improvement of local library and information services

NOTE: 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.

How to Apply

Applications for an AMICAL Small Grant Award should be sent to the institution's AMICAL representative. By forwarding the application to the Small Grant Committee, the AMICAL representative confirms institutional approval of the application. Applications should be sent to Nigel Butterwick (nbutterwick@fc.edu), Grant Committee Chair. Applications should be brief (1-2 pages max.), in PDF or Word format, and should include at least the following:

brief description of the activity to be supported
background and need - the relevance of this activity 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 budget guidelines above concerning what can be funded
any special requests or circumstances

Calendar

Applications may be submitted at any time for review by the Small Grant Committee. The Small Grant Committee may group applications received in any month in order to review them together, and a response can be expected within 4-6 weeks after submitting an application. If your application requires urgent attention, please explain the urgency when submitting it, including any specific deadlines that need to be met.

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.

Small Grant awards cannot be transferred to support individuals or activities other than those indicated in the application without approval from the Small Grant Committee.

Reporting

Grant recipients must be willing to submit a brief (approx. 1-page) report, no later than 31 July following the funded activity, preferably in PDF format, 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

AMICAL members can view reports from previous Small Grant recipients.