Hi all,
I’ve attached the first few sections of my NEH Level I grant proposal for you to read at your leisure. I’m busy at work writing and editing the “Narrative” and “Budget” sections, but will post these as soon as I have decent drafts. Thanks in advance for any feedback! The more and more I work on this grant proposal, the more and more I see the project becoming a reality. Very exciting!
Very much enjoyed reading this draft of a grant proposal! I think there is a good chance that NEH reviewers might support funding a project around history podcasting. I’m looking forward to seeing the full draft of the proposal come together.
My main observation/suggestion would be to think about the outcomes of the project as being more broadly defined than the production of a set of episodes. That is, could the project produce some guidance about how to design and develop history podcasts? Something like a toolkit? In that vein, could producing the episodes be partly about demonstrating cost effective models for creating and sustaining a history podcast? In general, grant funding is supposed to be catalytic, so there is going to be interest in getting something like this to produce outputs that could have effects beyond the direct specific work of the project.
It might also be worth considering trying to get involvement from a scholarly society that has a vested ongoing role in dissemination of research outputs. For example, the American Historical Association produces a wide range of content for both its journals, and its magazine, and it’s blog. However, I don’t believe that they do any podcasting. You might consider reaching out to folks at the AHA, or OAH, or NCPH, or AASLH to see if any of those orgs would be interested in being involved in the project. Getting an org that has an ongoing role in scholarly communications is that there is a possibility for some sustainability in creating a podcast there. That is, you might be able to use the grant as something that could help to get a podcast off the ground and set up a model for how the organization could keep it running after the life of the grant.