Heritage Professional Development Stipend

Do you want to participate in a conference, workshop series, or skill-building sessions to gain information, skills, inspiration, practices, or approaches for your professional development and learning? These funds can help you participate, make connections, and learn new skills for your career path in the heritage field.

Steps to Apply

1 What Heritage Professional Development Stipend Funds

The Heritage Professional Development Stipend program provides stipends ranging from $100 to $1,000 for heritage practitioners in King County to participate in a professional development or career maintenance opportunity. This stipend can be used by individuals seeking to build skills needed to thrive in the heritage field or King County-based heritage organizations to provide a training for their staff, board members, and volunteers. These professional development opportunities must address a need due to COVID-19 pandemic or at least one of 8 Key Findings presented in the King County Heritage Report: Understanding the Field.

Criteria

We fund all of our grants through a competitive process, carefully evaluating each application.

For this grant, we’ll look to see how well your project shows the following:

Significance: how well you demonstrate the significance and immediate usefulness of skills/knowledge learned, how the opportunity is significant to your career growth or maintenance, or theinstitution’s needs or goals.
Field need: how clearly you articulate the relevance of the opportunity to an established need in the heritage field (as demonstrated in Heritage Report or other cited sources) or a need created by COVID-19.
Funding: whether you have access to additional financial support for this professional development opportunity. This program gives additional consideration to applicants without financial support from their employer for this professional development opportunity.

You can use this grant to:

Pay for the cost of registration and travel to participate in a professional development or learning opportunity related to career maintenance and growth in the heritage field. These opportunities can take many forms including, but not limited to, conferences, workshops, technical assistance programs, training opportunities, demonstrations, and healing opportunities especially for heritage workers engaged with social justice work within the field.
Pay for professional consultants, heritage specialists, or staff time if work on the project is outside their regular work duties and the payment is structured as contractor fees.Materials and consumable supplies used for your project, transportation, and documentation services to provide a professional development for organization staff, board, and volunteers.

This grant may not be used for:

Reimbursement for the expenses incurred before the award notification.
Production of interpretive or creative projects. This would include exhibits, public programs, Pre K-12 educational programming, musical and/or theatrical performances. For support of interpretive projects, please see Heritage Projects.
Major equipment purchases, construction or fabrication projects.
General operating support, including legal or finance services.
Services or events in which fundraising is the primary purpose.

Public Benefit: Why It Matters

Every time a visitor to Washington State stays in a hotel, they pay a Lodging Tax—this is where our funding comes from, and our mission is to put it back into the community. In this program, the growth of heritage professionals is a public benefit, since the King County heritage field will benefit from the work done by informed heritage professionals. In your application, tell us exactly how the opportunity addresses a fieldwide need and you will use the information and skills learned so that your fellow King County residents will be able to enjoy and learn from your professional growth.

Here are some ways you can provide public benefit:

Give a presentation on heritage in King County or a specialized skill at a conference to raise visibility of King County heritage.
Learn a new approach to document and preserve material culture in King County from a workshop.
Gain new skills to address a challenge within the heritage field or a need due to COVID-19.

Equity Investments

In order to combat inequities in our grantmaking, 4Culture is introducing Equity Investments. This practice will incorporate indicators of structural inequity into our panel process, including geographic location, income, operating budget, audiences served, and project focus. By prioritizing these factors, we intend to more equitably distribute funds to communities that have historically been excluded from cultural funding.

Each of our grant programs will implement an Equity Investment system tailored to the specific needs of its applicants; please read the After You Submit section of this page for details on how Equity Investments will function for this grant. This organization-wide change—and what we learn about its impact—is an important step towards more equitable funding at 4Culture and throughout the King County cultural sector.

2 Are You Eligible?

Please read this section carefully for eligibility information. Please contact 4Culture Heritage staff if you have questions regarding your eligibility. Before you start an application, 4Culture Heritage staff will confirm your eligibility in the initial conversation with you.

You

If you are applying as an individual, you must be a full-time King County resident over 18 years old who is, or was in March 2020, a heritage practitioner in one or more of the following ways: (1) staff member at a heritage organization in King County, (2) board member at a heritage organization in King County, (3) regular volunteer or intern at a heritage organization in King County, (4) consultant, service provider, or independent historians who primarily works with heritage in King County, or (5) student enrolled in a related academic program actively contributing to the King County heritage field in one of the above mentioned ways. “Heritage organization” is defined as nonprofit organizations—museums, archives, public agencies, community associations—whose main mission is to collect, preserve, and share tangible and/or intangible historical and cultural resources.
If you are applying as an organization, you must be a King County-based nonprofit heritage and historical organization—museums, archives, public agencies, community associations— whose main mission is to collect, preserve, and share tangible and/or intangible historical and cultural resources.
If you receive funding as an individual, you’ll need to provide us with your Social Security number to receive payment.
Organizations, community groups, and public agencies will need to provide us with a Tax ID or EIN to receive grant funds.
We do not fund K-12 schools, school districts, or religious institutions.

Your Project

Your proposed project is your participation in the identified professional development or learning opportunity.If awarded funding, you must complete participation in the proposed opportunity to receive funding.
Your project must happen within 12 months of the award date.
The opportunity should be clearly relevant to a field-wide need. You may choose a need created by COVID-19 pandemic or articulated in another field report, or at least one of the 8 Key Findings articulated in the King County Heritage Report: Understanding the Field. Let us know your sources (reports, articles, survey results, etc) in your application.

3 Helping You Succeed

We provide hands-on guidance to each Heritage Professional Development Stipend applicant as you work through your application. Please contact Megumi Nagata to begin the process.

Contact

Megumi Nagata, Heritage Support Specialist
megumi.nagata@4culture.org
(206) 263-3474

Translation and Assistance

If you anticipate a barrier to your participation due to limited English writing ability, visual impairment, or would like to request assistance to access this application, please contact us at hello@4culture.org or 206-296-7580 or TTY 711.

Si anticipa una barrera para su participación debido a la capacidad limitada de escritura en inglés, discapacidad visual, o desea solicitar asistencia para acceder a esta aplicación, contáctenos en hello@4culture.org o 206-296-7580 o TTY 711.

如果您由于英语写作能力有限，视力障碍而希望参加比赛，或者希望获得协助来访问此应用程序，请通过hello@4culture.org或206-296-7580或TTY 711与我们联系。

4 After You Submit

Timeline

The deadline for Heritage Professional Development Stipend is ongoing until October 31, 2023. Please allow at least two months between submitting your application and the start date of the professional development or learning opportunity. Urgent requests may be considered based on staff capacity. Once you have submitted your application, you will receive an email notification within three months.

Equity Investment

4Culture recognizes that where an organization or cultural worker is based or provides its services can affect access to funding and other resources. Many cultural organizations and cultural workers in greater King County have less access to public and private support than those located in Seattle. To take a step towards balancing these disparities, projects located in a 4Culture Equity Investment area will receive additional consideration during the grant evaluation and awards process.

Projects qualify as being in an Equity Investment area by meeting one of the following requirements:

The applicant is located outside of the City of Seattle.
The applicant is located Seattle but is also in a 2010 US Census tract area with a Communities of Opportunity index percentile of 60% or greater.

30% of this program budget will be reserved for applicants who are located within a 4Cutlure equity investment area. Any funds reserved for Equity Investment that are remaining after the end of the calendar year will roll over to the next year.

Contracts and Payment

If we select your project for funding, 4Culture Heritage staff will work with you to create a contract outlining the scope and a payment schedule, which is done by reimbursement.

Requirements and Appeals

Learn about what will be required if you are awarded a grant, and about the process for appeal of a 4Culture decision.

5 Apply

Contact 4Culture Heritage staff today! Applying for a Heritage Professional Stipend starts with a conversation between you and a 4Culture Heritage staff member, who will ask you some additional questions to ensure this program is right for you and give you tips on how to complete your application. Once we confirm your eligibility, we will send you a link to the application. All applicants will be notified if they were awarded funding or not.

The application asks for details about the opportunity, four Narrative Questions, and an itemized budget:

These questions are required for both individual and organization applicants:

Title, date, and location of the professional development or learning opportunity, name of the presenting entity.
Itemized budget for your participation in the opportunity.
Explain how you plan to use the 4Culture funding and indicate sources of other financial support, such as from your employer or scholarships.
Explain how this opportunity will address new thinking or solutions for one or more key findings of the Heritage Report, a need due to COVID-19 pandemic, or other established field-wide need. Relevance may be explained in terms of skills learned, session topics, qualifications and knowledge of presenter(s), etc..
How will you utilize the information, connections, and inspirations you gain from attending this opportunity for your professional goals? For example, how will you integrate knowledge into your current and/or future practice, or how will you share your learnings with your peers? For organizations, alignment with your affiliated institution’s strategic goals is beneficial but not required.

These questions are required for Individual applicants only:

Describe your career goals, and how this professional development or learning opportunity helps with your goal.sWhy did you choose this opportunity? Please include the qualifications of the presenter(s) (skill, experience, or knowledge-based), specific sessions, or topics that will be discussed at the proposed opportunity that will help you achieve your goal. Alignment with your institution’s strategic goals is beneficial but not required.
Briefly summarize your institution’s policy on funding staff’s professional development. Will your institution provide financial support for this opportunity? Please share if you were displaced from or are underemployed in the heritage field due to COVID-19.

These questions are required for Organization applicants only:

Please explain who your intended participants are,the learning objectives. and how this professional development or learning opportunity helps with the learning objectives. Why did you choose this opportunity> Please include the qualification of the presenter(s) (skill, experience, or knowledge-based), proposed curriculum, or topics that will be discussed at the proposed opportunity that will help your intended participants achieve the learning objectives. Alignment with your institution’s strategic goals is beneficial but not required.
Briefly summarize your institution’s policy on funding professional development of your intended participants. How will your institution supplement the cost of this opportunity, if the requested amount does not cover all of it?

Demographic Information

Your profile in our portal must provide demographic information for the current year, for yourself, or if you are applying as an organization, for your board and staff. We use this information to help us understand how well we are doing in our efforts to reach all communities in King County.