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Strengthening Tennessee’s Cultural Fabric: Capital Improvement Grants for Museums

In Fiscal Year 2023-2024, the State of Tennessee entrusted the Tennessee State Museum with $5 million to distribute as capital improvement grants to museums across the state. According to Tammi Edwards, Tennessee State Museum’s Director of Special Projects and member of the grants team, 107 museums out of the 170 who applied last year received funding. The legislature made the same direct appropriation this fiscal year to continue to provide assistance to the state’s museums. 

Grant Process 

Unlike the majority of grant programs, which fund programs or exhibits, this grant aims “to help with things like getting a new roof or new flooring – things that museums, particularly small museums [and] museums in rural areas are not able to get funding for,” Edwards says. 

From the beginning, the grants team has aimed to have a streamlined application. Staffing is often one of the main challenges smaller museums face, which is why the team wanted to make an application “simple enough that a museum that is maybe run by all volunteers or just has one or two people working there…would have the time to actually do the application and do the project,” Edwards notes. 

The awards are disbursement based, so awarded organizations do not need to spend their own money and then get reimbursed, which would be a barrier to many. For the same reason, the grants do not require a fiscal match. The team changed the deadlines this year to give people more time to get paperwork turned in so they could start their projects and finish them by the end of June 2025. Another change is strongly encouraging people to get estimates for project costs and length. Edwards says that a challenge in the first year has been projects taking longer to complete than expected as well as museums having leftover funds because they overestimated the costs. However, these estimates are not required because it can be an issue in smaller towns to find contractors who can do the project.

Robertson County History Museum

The Robertson County History Museum in Springfield, Tennessee, received one of the 2023 capital improvement grants to replace the windows in the first-floor exhibit hall as well as two upstairs. Museum staff has long known that they needed to do the project, but they did not have the funds to cover the cost. According to Janet Palmore, the Museum’s Director, the replaced windows were original to the 1915 building, which was initially the town’s post office. Once the panes were out, the contractors found rotten wood. A local company partnered with the glass company to customize new woodwork to match the original. The final step in the project are new blinds to cut down on direct sunlight in the gallery.

Palmore recalls one older gentleman who “walked in and it was so bright he thought he was in the wrong museum” because the whole gallery felt different. Beyond the impact on visitors, Palmore says the capital grant has helped tremendously because the efficient windows have already lowered the museum’s utility bill and keep the gallery cooler, which also improves their ability to care for artifacts.

Capital Improvements are Investments in the Future

For some organizations, receiving state funding has allowed them to leverage other funding in their communities to raise more money to do their work. On a practical level, Edwards notes, “You can’t do your work well if the building is falling apart. Although this grant supported all museums – even museums with large budgets – most of the funding, about 75%, went to organizations that can barely keep the lights on.” Removing the need to find funding for deferred maintenance has already improved the ability of museums to fulfill their missions.

Several of the grants improved accessibility, which will impact organizations for years to come. Some museums put in chair lifts, others added accessible parking places and added accessible bathroom stalls. At one museum, Edwards met a museum worker who shared a story about needing to carry a person in their wheelchair to their museum’s second floor because of their lack of elevator. By improving accessibility, museums are changing who feels welcome and can use these community spaces.

Much of our communities’ and state’s cultural heritage is held in local museums. According to the Institute of Museum and Library Services, 96% of the nation’s collecting institutions are classified as small and 56% of small historical societies rely solely on volunteers for conservation

Joe Pagetta, the Tennessee State Museum’s Director of Communications, observes that the capital improvement grants are an investment in Tennessee’s “aging historical preservation infrastructure…which lays the road for the future.” He continues, “While these grants are not about exhibitions or programming, they create the foundation to grow for those exhibitions and for those programs in the future. We start repairing all these places throughout the state where these humanities discussions are happening…and it really creates an opportunity in the future…for everyone to be involved in these discussions and to access these exhibitions. There’s a lot of stories that have never been told that we now need to tell moving forward in America and in Tennessee and this creates those places where that can happen.”

Applications are Open

Grant applications for FY 24-25 Capital Improvement grants for museums are open through August 26, 2024. The Tennessee State Museum’s grant team is offering Zoom office hours for anyone with questions about the grant process. Additionally, there is a recorded webinar available here. Any Tennessee museum with a capital improvement need is encouraged to apply.