# Grants and fundraising/Grant applications

"All applicants to National Endowment for the Humanities are required to use Grants.gov."
For any organization that is unable to submit a grant application via Grants.gov, "[c]ontact the program for directions on how to apply. Contact details are listed in the guidelines."

## Grants.gov

"Grants.gov is the [U. S.] federal government’s online application system. It provides one central portal where organizations and individuals can electronically find and apply for grants throughout the federal government. Grants.gov is THE single access point for over 1,000 grant programs offered by the 26 federal agencies that make grants."
Note, the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) uses its own system.

### Applicants

"An individual is an applicant who submits grant applications on their own behalf, not representing an organization, institution or government. Individual applicants may only apply for grant opportunities on Grants.gov that indicate individual eligibility within the Synopsis and Full Announcement."
An individual may also represent an organization, institution or government.

### NEH funding opportunities

Funding Number 20130627-AB Humanities Initiatives, Open Date 4/16/2013 to 6/27/2013.
Funding Number 20130912-AQ Enduring Questions, Open Date 05/29/2013 to 09/12/2013.

### NEH Enduring Questions

"The NEH Enduring Questions grant program supports faculty members in the teaching and development of a new course that will foster intellectual community through the study of an enduring question. This question-driven course will encourage undergraduates and teachers to grapple with a fundamental concern of human life addressed by the humanities, and to join together in a deep and sustained program of reading in order to encounter influential thinkers over the centuries and into the present day. What is an enduring question? The following list is neither prescriptive nor exhaustive but serves to illustrate.
* What is good government?
* Can war be just?
* What is friendship?
* What is evil?
* Are there universals in human nature?
* What are the origins of the universe?
Enduring questions are questions to which no discipline, field, or profession can lay an exclusive claim. In many cases they predate the formation of the academic disciplines themselves. Enduring questions can be tackled by reflective individuals regardless of their chosen vocations, areas of expertise, or personal backgrounds. They are questions that have more than one plausible or compelling answer. They have long held interest for young people, and they allow for a special, intense dialogue across generations. The Enduring Questions grant program will help promote such dialogue in today’s undergraduate environment. The course is to be developed by one or more (up to four) faculty members at a single institution, but not team taught. Enduring Questions courses must be taught from a common syllabus and must be offered during the grant period at least twice by each faculty member involved in developing the course. The grant supports the work of faculty members in designing, preparing, and assessing the new course. It may also be used for ancillary activities that enhance faculty-student intellectual community, such as visits to museums and artistic or cultural events. An Enduring Questions course may be taught by faculty from any department or discipline in the humanities or by faculty outside the humanities (for example, astronomy, biology, economics, law, mathematics, medicine, or psychology), so long as humanities sources are central to the course."
An enduring question: "What are dominant group and the concepts behind it?"
An enduring question: "What is a dominant group and what are the forces behind it?"

### Grants.gov process

As an individual one may register with Grants.gov. Once registered, one may also register an organization that may be represented.
An organization, whether not-for-profit or for-profit, usually is required to have a DUNS number which can be obtained from Dunn and Bradstreet and updated as needed using Update Home.
With a DUNS number at hand, one needs to register as an individual and/or organization with the U.S. System for Award Management (SAM) at SAM. In addition to the DUNS number, four other numbers may be needed or will be supplied:
* an MPIN - user composed,
* a TIN - U.S. taxpayer identification number, verified with the U.S. Internal Revenue Service,
* a PoC - point of contact, usually you,
* CAGE - a Department of Defense (DoD) contractor number, in case you desire a grant from the U.S. DoD or wish to bid on contracts, supplied by DoD.
When registering your organization with SAM be sure to describe your organization name, address, and other information, exactly as listed with dnb.

### Application process

Once successfully registered with Grants.gov, dnb if needed, and SAM, you can successfully download a grant application from grants.gov for the specific funding opportunity, which is specified first, e.g., Funding Number 20130912-AQ Enduring Questions.
The application arrives in pdf format which usually requires a more recent version of Adobe Acrobat Reader, e.g., Adobe Reader 9 works on my system.
Completion of the Grants Application Package (seven pages approximately) involves supplying relevant information. Page 1: Opportunity Title: Enduring Questions Offering Agency: National Endowment for the Humanities CFDA Number: 45.163 CFDA Description: Promotion of the Humanities_Professional Development Opportunity Number: 20130912-AQ Competition ID: blank as not applicable (N/A) Opportunity Open Date: 05/29/2013 Opportunity Close Date: 09/12/2013 Agency Contact:
          Enduring Questions
          Division of Endowment for the Humanities
          Room 302
          1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
          Washington, DC 20506
          202-606-8380
_____________________________________________________________________________
Application Filing Name: Dominant group
Attachments to the application must be pdfs. These can be produced by using Adobe PDF creator online which is not free! for example. This Web-based converter can be used by PC or Mac. Vendor e-mails PDF back to you. Wikiversity also allows downloads of resources as pdf files which works. They appear in a book page or section format that is inflexible when the Project narrative is required to be double spaced for reviewer comments. Any misconformity to the Guidelines may be grounds for rejection.
Grant application successfully submitted to Grants.gov (help line 1-800-518-4726) and the grant application package has been retrieved by the Grantor agency and is currently being reviewed. As 9/12/2013 11:59 pm US EST is the deadline, the grant application has successfully been received in time by NEH. You will need the Agency Tracking Number when corresponding with the Grantor agency about your application. Use the Grants.gov Tracking Number at Grants.gov to check your application's status and to obtain your Agency Tracking Number.
Grants.gov assigns a tracking number, the Grantor agency (NEH) assigns an application number and an Agency Tracking Number. Once the review of the application is complete, NEH will contact the Project Director with the results.

## NEH Enduring Questions Guidelines

Def.
* a "non-specific rule or principle that provides direction to action or behaviour", for example, "He considered the Ten Commandments more a guideline than a requirement."
* a "plan or explanation to guide one in setting standards or determining a course of action"
is called a guideline, where a synonym is "rule of thumb".
"As a taxpayer-supported federal agency, NEH endeavors to make the products of its awards available to the broadest possible audience. Our goal is for scholars, educators, students, and the American public to have ready and easy access to the wide range of NEH award products. For the Enduring Questions grant program, such products may include online course materials. For projects that involve the development of Web-based resources, all other considerations being equal, NEH gives preference to those that provide free access to the public."
"Any U.S. nonprofit two- or four-year college or university with IRS tax-exempt status is eligible." While Wikiversity may be considered a two- or four-year college or university, it is much more, and all WMF projects have IRS tax-exempt status.
"Independent scholars are not eligible to serve as project directors. Only tenured, tenure-track, non-tenure-track, and adjunct faculty members (at U.S. nonprofit two- or four-year colleges or universities with IRS tax-exempt status) are eligible to serve as project directors. When more than one faculty member is involved in designing the course, one and only one of them must be listed in the application as the official project director of record."
There are at least three options here
* someone from Wikiversity, perhaps a Bureaucrat or Custodian, could serve as Project Director and Primary Contact,
* as these restrictions are only guidelines, an exception may be possible that would permit User:Marshallsumter to serve as Applicant, Project Director and Primary Contact, or
* as Wikiversity does not have tenured or adjunct faculty members who can be Applicant, Project Director, and Primary Contact all at once, this seems discriminatory in preference for brick-and-mortar institutions, which may deserve a question sent to enduringquestions@neh.gov.

## NEH Enduring Questions application sections

"An NEH Enduring Questions course
    * must explore an explicitly stated question that lends itself to sustained and open inquiry;
    * must engage the course faculty in extensive study of scholarly literature that expands their intellectual range;
    * must emphasize extensive reading, drawing on works from a range of historical periods;
    * must reflect intellectual pluralism and balance, anticipating more than one plausible answer to the question at hand;
    * may draw solely from Western or non-Western traditions, or combine various traditions;
    * may draw on artworks (for example, music, plays, films, paintings, and sculpture);
    * must be open to students regardless of major or concentration; and
    * must have institutional support, as evidenced by a letter from the president, provost, dean, program chair, or department chair, attesting 1) that the college or university supports the course, 2) that the course is new, and 3) that it will be offered at least twice during the grant period by each faculty member involved in developing it."
"Enduring Questions grants may not be used for
    * team-taught courses;
    * redevelopment of previously offered courses;
    * improvement of multiple courses;
    * development of curricular or pedagogical methods or theories;
    * preparation of courses for graduate students;
    * textbook research or revision;
    * projects that seek to promote a particular political, religious, or ideological point of view;
    * projects that advocate a particular program of social action;
    * works in the creative and performing arts (for example, painting, writing fiction or poetry, dance performance, etc.); or
    * doctoral dissertations, theses, or any other research pertaining to a graduate degree program."
"The Enduring Questions program welcomes projects that respond to the theme of Bridging Cultures. This agency-wide initiative encourages exploration of the ways in which cultures from around the globe, as well as the myriad subcultures within America’s borders, have influenced American society. With the aim of revitalizing intellectual and civic life through the humanities, NEH welcomes projects that enhance understanding of diverse countries, peoples, and cultural and intellectual traditions worldwide. Applications might also investigate how Americans have approached and attempted to surmount seemingly unbridgeable cultural divides, or examine the ideals of civility and civic discourse that have informed this quest. In connection with a focus on civic discourse, projects might explore the role of women in America’s civic life as well as the civic role of women in other cultures and regions of the world."
"All applications will be given equal consideration in accordance with the program’s evaluation criteria, whether or not they respond to the Bridging Cultures initiative."
"As a taxpayer-supported federal agency, NEH endeavors to make the products of its awards available to the broadest possible audience. Our goal is for scholars, educators, students, and the American public to have ready and easy access to the wide range of NEH award products. For the Enduring Questions grant program, such products may include online course materials. For projects that involve the development of Web-based resources, all other considerations being equal, NEH gives preference to those that provide free access to the public."

### Project narratives

The course is to be centered on the question: "What is a dominant group and what are the forces behind it?"
Obviously, it is a two-word phrase, but is it more than this?
"Are dominant group and the concepts behind it a part of human nature?"
A number of enduring-question courses have been created to learn about possibly answering "What is human nature?". Those enduring-question courses focusing on human nature that are accessible on-line may be included under external links for students to try.
To explore the dominant-group question, a series of lectures are to be created that address topics associated with arriving at an answer. A university-style course modeled after principles of radiation astronomy at Wikiversity may be dynamic and should suffice. Each component resource may have a level of completion icon based, e.g., on up to ~ 100 kilobytes or more of total information. Forty-eight such lectures constitute the heart of the course. These are supplemented by mini-quiz section lectures on key concepts. A laboratory setting may concentrate on a particular reading resource such as Livy, Ab urbe condita, to determine text applicable to the question, or a synonym such as patrician class.
Lessons will be included that promote individual effort seeking answers to a subsidiary question:
* What is the origin of dominant group, and the concepts behind it?
* Where did dominant group, or the concepts behind it, come from?
* How did dominant group come to be used in so many different fields and languages?
* Through its synonyms, why does dominant group exist?
* When did the concepts behind dominant group occur?
Problem sets will emphasize differentiating topics associated with the main question.
For the students to test their understanding, there are to be quizzes, hourlies, a mid term and a final exam. Usually, these are also learning aids as they can be retaken indefinitely so that students may increase their score, their understanding of the information, and their test-taking skills, useful in other college-level courses.
Alternate examinations that may be used by a student's brick and mortar college or university for credit in this course will be available from Wikiversity by courier for closed-session testing of proficiency.
Lectures already exist and are under continuing development for this course. For example:
* Classes of meaning,
* Classical planets,
* Classics,
* Control group,
* Mythology,
* Religion, and
* Synonyms of dominant group.
The course is organized around a series of subsidiary questions such as:
* What are the concepts behind dominant group and synonyms like patrician class?
* What is the field of dominant group?
A portion of the course and a likely lecture focuses on dominance:
* Is dominance a human endeavor?
More in-depth questions to be explored include
* What is the nature of the relationship between dominant group and each article, field, and currently available definition(s)?
* What is the difference between articles regarding usage, if any?
* What is the effect of dominant group on the article?
* Are there fields that do not use the 'term'?
* Are the two words found together in any additional dictionaries or glossaries, or in any common language dictionaries?
* What is the origin and first use of the term or its primordial concept and usage?
* Is the origin of dominant group, and the primordial concepts behind it, external to human nature?

### Core reading list

* Alexis de Tocqueville (September 2001). Francois Furet and Francoise Melonio. ed. The Old Regime and the Revolution: Notes on the French Revolution and Napoleon, prepared between 1853 and 1857. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. pp. 257. http://books.google.com/books?lr=&id=ctAqVkbNCkIC#v=onepage&q&f=false. Retrieved 2011-11-20.
* Charles Robert Darwin (1859). On the origin of the species by means of natural selection: or, The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London: John Murray. pp. 516. http://books.google.com/books?id=_cvGifvlQiIC&dq=Darwin+1859&source=gbs_navlinks_s.
* Charles Robert Darwin (October 1902). Francis Darwin and A. C. Seward. ed. More Letters of Charles Darwin A Record of his Work in a Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters Volume I.. Cambridge. http://www.writersmugs.com/books/books.php?book=17&name=Charles_Darwin&title=MORE_LETTERS_OF_CHARLES_DARWIN. Retrieved 2011-11-18.
* George Gaylord Simpson (1944). Tempo and Mode in Evolution. New York: Columbia University Press. pp. 237.
* Stephen Jay Gould (2002). The Structure of Evolutionary Theory. Boston, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. pp. 1433. ISBN 0-674-00613-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=nhIl7e61WOUC&printsec=frontcover&hl=en. Retrieved 2012-02-12.
* Janet L. Travis (September 1971). "A Criticism of the Use of the Concept of "Dominant Group" in Arguments for Evolutionary Progressivism". Philosophy of Science 38 (3): 369-75. http://www.jstor.org/pss/186010. Retrieved 2011-07-27.
* Ernst Mayr (2001). What Evolution Is. New York: Basic Books. pp. 336. ISBN 0-465-04425-5. http://books.google.com/books?id=i8jx-ZyRRkkC&printsec=frontcover&hl=en#v=onepage&f=false. Retrieved 2012-02-12.