Grant Workshop Update - First Grant

If you read the blog from Wednesday you would see that we described completed a grant budget during the three hour workshop session. Well, participants who thought that was a long time did not see how much work actually goes into just the budget. This budget had to be written, justified with the great text, rewritten, revised, rewritten. We started the process of writing the budget at 10:00am. We were still working on it at 11:00pm. This was a long day, but the grant was due on December 1.

During the six weeks of the grant workshop at the museum we have a goal of writing nine grants. The first grant was submitted on December 1 at 2:00pm. It was an electronic submission through www.grants.gov and the grant was for conservation planning. A lot of work has gone into this grant over the last two weeks. A portion of the abstract is below:

"This project will result in a strategy for sustainable long-term storage in the unique desert environment of the Imperial Valley. It will bring together specialists in environmental control, architecture, and artifact and archives conservation to create a plan that both works for the museum and can be disseminated to all the other museums in our area who are in a similar environment. We are perfectly positioned, and have the opportunity, to complete a nationally significant and achievable sustainability assessment at our new museum. Over the next two years, the Imperial Valley will become the leading provider of clean energy in the state of California. It is in this environment and with this support that the Planning Team will develop solutions to the storage concerns and climate systems; designate appropriate environmental targets; and develop a plan for adequate long-term storage. The feasibility study will analyze the rationale and prepare the team to develop an informed long-term preservation strategy. The priority recommendations will be implemented and monitored for twelve months to evaluate the project’s value as a benchmark for similar institutions in our unique desert environment."