No. Only one application from any applicant may be entered in a challenge grant competition in a calendar year.

No. An institution may receive only one challenge grant at a time, and there is a three-year waiting period between the close of a challenge grant and an application for another.

The matching requirement for subsequent challenge grants is three-to-one (that is, three nonfederal dollars for every federal dollar). (NEH has suspended the requirement that holders of previous challenge grants must raise four times the federal amount.) HBCUs, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and two-year colleges must raise only two nonfederal dollars for every federal dollar offered.

While it is not mandatory to submit a draft, applicants are encouraged to do so at least four to six weeks before the application deadline, if not earlier. Time constraints may prevent staff from reviewing draft proposals submitted after that date. We prefer that you submit draft proposals by e-mail attachment to challenge@neh.gov. Applicants may also submit a draft by fax (202-606-8579) or commercial delivery service (Office of Challenge Grants, National Endowment for the Humanities, Room 420, 1100 Pennsylvania Avenue, N.W., Washington, D.C. 20506, 202-606-8309).

Include letters of support or commitment with the application, in an appendix, as one of the PDF attachments to the Grants.gov application.

Yes, subject to the limitation that the total of such donations may not exceed the federal portion of the grant (normally 25 percent of the total grant). In-kind gifts or donated services are eligible only if the material or service provided is appropriate to the approved purposes of the challenge grant and is approved in advance by NEH.

Yes, subject to two limitations: 1) the total of unrestricted donations may not exceed the federal portion of the grant (normally 25 percent of the total grant); and 2) like restricted gifts, unrestricted challenge gifts must be donated and expended during the grant period.

The grant period is important because all nonfederal donations must be given during the grant period in order to be counted toward the required match. The grant period begins five months before the application deadline, and in most cases it ends sixty-three months after the deadline. For example, the grant period for applications submitted by the May 2011 deadline begins December 1, 2010; the grant period ends July 31, 2016. HBCUs, Tribal Colleges, and two-year colleges have grant periods one year longer; a challenge grant held by one of these institutions would end July 31, 2017. Another exception to the regular grant period is made for applicants who, unsuccessful at one deadline, revise and resubmit their applications, for substantially the same purposes, one year later. Such applicants may use the same starting date in the resubmission as in the original submission. This extension enables the applicant to keep faith with donors whose gifts have been solicited in anticipation of a challenge grant. (If the resubmitted application is not successful, however, this extension is not available for subsequent submissions.)

Yes, a single challenge grant may be used to support more than one project. Program experience, however, strongly suggests that an application requesting support for unrelated projects does not fare well in the grant competition.

The financial summary form is a suggested format only, and you may create your own form or use an existing institutional form, so long as it provides the same kind of information—that is, a summary snapshot of income and expenditures over the last three years. Full audited accounts or reports are not useful for the program’s purpose. Rather than sending the full records, applicants should extract and submit information of the kind that is requested on the NEH financial summary form.

Yes. Should the application be funded, though, the SHPO letter will be required before any federal funds can be released. The grantee should consult SHPO before construction or renovation begins.

Endowments created with NEH Challenge Grants after 2009 are permanent and restricted to the uses defined in the challenge grant application. Grantees may change the purpose of the endowment only in consultation with NEH.

It could. Whether an annual Office of Management and Budget Circular A-133 audit is required depends on the amount of federal funds involved, and on the use to which the federal money is put. The basic rule is that receipt or possession of $500,000 or more in federal grant funds in any year may result in an A-133 audit requirement that year. If your challenge grant supports direct expenditures (such as for a construction project), an A-133 audit would be required only in the year(s) in which the grantee expends $500,000 or more in federal funds. If, however, the challenge grant creates an endowment fund, the government counts the federal portion of the endowment as an expenditure of federal funds that triggers an A-133 audit requirement each year. That is, an endowment that includes $500,000 or more in federal funds will trigger an A-133 audit requirement in every year of the endowment’s existence. An applicant that does not want to be required to conduct an annual A-133 audit should consider requesting an award of less than $500,000, so that the funds will not trigger the A-133 audit requirement.

Approximately seven months after the application deadline.