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About the Program Project Eligibility

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Project Eligibility

MEAP supports projects to organize, collect, convert and describe archival materials, existing digital assets or born-digital materials. Materials must fit within the following scope.

ENDANGERMENT: Archival content must be imminently at-risk due to environmental conditions, political uncertainty, inherently unsustainable media, inappropriate storage, and/or communal or social change.

AGE OF MATERIAL: From the early 20th century to the present, preferably with a majority of the material dating from the 1940s or later.

CONTENT: Materials should document aspects of history, society, culture, and politics, preferably with an emphasis on social justice, human rights, and under-documented communities.

GEOGRAPHIC FOCUS: Collections must be held outside North America, the UK, and European Union countries. We encourage applications from Africa, the Caribbean, Central America, Latin America, the Middle East, Central Asia, South and Southeast Asia, and Oceania.

FORMAT: We welcome materials in a variety of formats, including print, audio, video, film, photographs, ephemera, and born-digital files (including but not limited to blogs, cell phone videos, website pages, 3D images, magnetic tape, and social media content).


Additional Eligibility

Projects must have one single principal applicant who takes responsibility for the planning and execution of the project. The principal applicant will also be responsible for the financial management of the grant. Individual applicants must be associated with an institution and cannot apply for independent funding. If the grant applicant is not affiliated with the owning repository of the materials, there must be a letter of support from the owning repository.

ELIGIBLE APPLICANTS: Individual applicants must be associated with an institution and cannot apply for independent funding. Applicants may be:

  • Any accredited member of teaching or research faculty at a university or similar higher education institution.
  • Archivists and librarians with responsibilities for special collections in archives, a national or research library or a similar institution.
  • Affiliated leaders of not-for-profit organizations or community organizations that hold at-risk cultural heritage materials.

ELIGIBLE INSTITUTIONS: Grants must be administered through host institutions (not individuals) in contract with UCLA. Host institutions should be a community organization, university, archive, library, research or cultural institution.

  • Applications from state institutions requesting support for the preservation of their own holdings should demonstrate some contribution in kind, such as the provision of staff time, training or workspace.
  • Each project must have an administrative contact who has financial and signatory authority (this may be the principal applicant or another individual at the funded institution.

Regional Grant Eligibility

Regional Grants are held by one organizing Host Institution and must be managed by someone with previous experience completing a MEAP grant. Regional Grant Applicants should be a previous MEAP grant holder or affiliated with an institution that has managed a previous MEAP grant.

Related Projects

MEAP and EAP (Endangered Archives Programme) will not fund overlapping projects in the same funding year and applicants may apply to only one program per funding round. This includes:

  • Projects with the same Principal Applicant or Co-applicants

  • Projects digitizing materials from the same collection

  • Projects from the same institution that would rely on the same project team.

Applicants with collections including substantial material from before and after the mid-twentieth century can apply to both EAP and MEAP for projects to work on the same collection, but not in the same application year. Applicants may therefore choose to create related project plans for their applications to each program. Funding from one program must have started before an application to the other program will be considered. Applicants with these types of projects should contact the staff of EAP or MEAP to discuss.

Institutional administrators who manage funds or training may be part of more than one team per year.

Additional Questions?

Not sure if your project fits within MEAP's scope? Consider alternative funding from these affiliated programs. Now sure where to start? Check out these application resources.

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    Affiliated Programs

    MEAP is part of a family of cultural heritage programs funded by Arcadia. All programs fund projects that preserve and make accessible endangered materials.
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    Program Guidelines

    These guidelines define the scope and eligibility requirements for the MEAP grant program.
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    MEAP Applicant Handbook 2024-25

    The updated MEAP Applicant Handbook includes details about the MEAP application process and shares resources for drafting a strong application.
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    How to Apply

    Interested in applying for a grant? Read more for information about our application process and evaluation criteria.