Grant Purpose

• Promote awareness and enjoyment of Arkansas’s heritage
• Increase community-based and non-profit groups’ abilities to create Arkansas heritage related programs
• Make heritage related programs possible where they would otherwise not occur
• Foster cooperative efforts among organizations, businesses and government to increase the size or scope of events 
• Create ongoing components to heritage related celebrations: a curriculum or teaching tool, exhibits, displays, a lively event or festival that can recur, a photographic essay, a roadside exhibit, etc.

Application Basics

An Arkansas Heritage Grant proposal should show familiarity with the mission of the Division of Arkansas Heritage, which is to identify Arkansas Heritage and enhance the quality of life by the discovery, preservation, and presentation of the state’s cultural, historic and natural resources; grant guidelines; and the goals of the Arkansas Heritage Grant Program.

The grants will be evaluated against the goals of the Arkansas Heritage Grant Program criteria. Requests for funding will include completing the following sections of the online application:

• Project Overview
• Project Description and Justification
• Heritage Grant Budget Sheet
• Agreement and Authorization

Answers may be brief. Please use the space provided as directed in the application process.

Evaluation Criteria

Arkansas Heritage Grants come from a limited funding source, so not every applicant can be funded. Since that is the case, certain criteria have been established for making Arkansas Heritage Grants to include:

• Your organization’s relationship to your local community
• The local or statewide impact of the project
• Whether the program results in an ongoing or lasting component
• The degree to which the project shows collaboration and cooperation among community organizations
• The degree to which the project will foster heritage tourism development
• Your organization’s mission and sources of income

Arkansas Heritage Grants Will Not

• Exceed $5,000
• Fund academic research unless the research results in an ongoing component that can be shared by the community
• Be made to for-profit organizations or events, or directly to agencies of local, county, federal or state government (though collaborative efforts, i.e., friends groups, involving state government agencies are acceptable)
• Fund infrastructure (bricks and mortar) construction, staff salaries (although contracted personnel may be paid with grant funds), travel by paid staff members (although travel for contracted personnel is allowed)
• Fund ongoing operating costs of the organization
  

Deadline

• Applications will open in January 2025
• Deadline will be in March 2025