Advocating for Maritime Heritage Funding—An Update
W
hen we learned about significant changes to the administration of the National Maritime Heritage Grants Program this summer, NMHS Senior Staff Writer Shelley Reid wrote about it in the 14 July installment of our biweekly online feature Sea History Today. Here is that piece, updated; NMHS Trustee and National Maritime Alliance Chair Timothy Runyan has expanded on the ways in which the program ought to be improved, and how interested persons can lend their voices to the call for change.
New changes to the Maritime Heritage Grants Program might limit access to funding. A bureaucratic change in the way the federal grant program is administered this coming fiscal year will have a serious impact on organizations that had been planning on applying for these funds. Instead of accepting applications for individual grants from museums, historic ships, lighthouses, or similar maritime nonprofits, the National Park Service will only accept applications from State Historic Preservation Officers (SHPOs) and Tribal Historic Preservation Officers (THPOs). There are 59 State Historic Preservation Offices; one in each of the 50 states, the five territories, the District of Columbia, and the three Freely Associated States of Micronesia. A separate application will have to be submitted under the umbrellas of Education and of Preservation. The NPS expects to award five grants with a ceiling of $750,000
for Education and five for Preservation—a maximum of ten, and perhaps fewer. The recipient SHPOs/THPOs, called prime grantees, are then responsible for awarding that funding to applicant programs in their states and administering those subgrants through completion. The SHPOs/THPOs may also fund eligible in-house projects. This was not permitted in the previous five rounds of grants. Organizations planning on applying for Maritime Heritage Grant funds are advised to familiarize themselves with the new process and consult with their SHPO or THPO immediately about procedures and possible necessary pre-application measures. The deadline for State Historic Preservation Officers to submit proposals to NPS is 20 September 2022.
courtesy uss constitution museum
courtesy soundwaters
National Maritime Heritage grants provide funding not just for vital historic ship preservation, but also for educational programs that connect people with their maritime heritage as well as their contemporary coastal culture. (right) The organization SoundWaters received a grant in 2016 to support maritime history-themed day sails aboard their schooner on Long Island Sound. These excursions seek to deepen understanding of the role of Long Island Sound in the area’s history, the significance of oyster fisheries, and the role of the sharpie schooner on the Sound. (www.soundwaters.org)
(left) An educator at the USS Constitution Museum guides school children through an exhibit. The museum developed the interactive online program, “A Sailor’s Life for Me,” through funding from a Maritime Heritage Grant. (www.asailorslifeforme.org)
What will be the practical result of this change? In a best-case scenario, all 59 SHPOs would apply for both Education and Preservation grant funds, and grants would be awarded to 10 of those entities, leaving 49 states/territories automatically ineligible for Maritime Heritage Grant monies for this fiscal year. Some SHPOs probably won’t even apply, however, because they don’t have the staffing to field the competitive bidding process and administer the grant through to completion. Programs in those states will have been excluded from the grant money entirely; some programs have already approached their SHPOs, only to learn that their state will not be applying to the program, and they are 16
frustrated to learn that the pathway to such a valuable funding resource has been cut off. A representative from one such maritime heritage organization, when told that their state would likely pass on the application process, said that “… it will leave those of us who worked so hard to get the money reinstated without a chance to compete. It’s a scandal.” One SHPO expressed concern that “small organizations, particularly those in states that do not have an extensive history tied to maritime contexts, seem to have new obstacles to overcome in both convincing overburdened SHPO staffs to apply to NPS (if the SHPO is not inclined to do so), and SEA HISTORY 180, AUTUMN 2022