Participants & topics

The primary target audience must be from AMICAL member institutions, and events should in principle be open to any interested member. Direct grant support for participation, however, can only be provided for Full or Affiliate members.

Topics for funded events should help AMICAL members advance in some way the strategic priority areas targeted by our current Mellon grant:

• library and technology leadership
• information and digital literacies
• digital liberal arts

In the interest of supporting collaboration across campus roles, events should target colleagues from as many of the following roles as may be appropriate: librarians, faculty (disciplinary or with a faculty development role), instructional designers, instructional technologists, IT directors and other relevant technology staff.

Face-to-face or online

Two broad proposal categories may be submitted: for a face-to-face event, or for an online event. The guidelines below differ in some ways according to the category.

Budgets

See the proposal form for additional guidance regarding the budget, in particular for events organized jointly with the AMICAL Conference.

What goes in the grant budget? (expenses that can be covered)

The following non-exhaustive list indicates expenses that may be included in the grant budget:

• Support for participants from member institutions
  • Essential transportation costs to and from the event
  • Hotel accommodations
• Local organizational costs
  • Catering
  • Daily ground transportation for event (hotel ↔ campus)
  • Print services (program, signage, etc.)
  • Facilities and other essential local organizing costs
• Speaker/trainer travel and fees

To the extent possible, grant funds should be directed primarily toward enabling participation in the event by AMICAL members.

Budget limits

Normal budget limits (maximum):

• Face-to-face events: €14,000
• Online events: €1,000

In exceptional cases, budgets of up to the following limits may be accepted:

• Face-to-face events: €28,000
• Online events: €2,000

In these over-limit cases, the proposal must provide:

• a compelling case for the event’s ability to reach a broad range of AMICAL institutions
• concrete plans for encouraging and framing follow-up activity of benefit to the broader consortium, beyond the individuals and institutions represented at the event itself

The applicant should discuss their idea with the Review Committee before submitting the proposal, for authorization to propose an over-limit budget. An over-limit budget may result in fewer workshops being offered in the same year. For 2019-2020, it is highly unlikely that any proposal for an over-limit budget will be accepted, because of pre-existing plans for a workshop supporting AMICAL’s Digital Liberal Arts programs.

Cost sharing

Events that are organized with the financial or in-kind support of member institutions are strongly encouraged. Major cost-sharing elements covered by member institutions should be indicated in the proposal.

Conditions for events with non-AMICAL members

In cases where an event will have participants beyond AMICAL members:

• All costs related to this participation, including the relevant fraction of local organizational costs, must be covered by sources other than the AMICAL grant.
• The fraction of non-AMICAL participants should not exceed ⅓ of the total participants.