Guidelines for Evaluating Occasional Funding or Sponsorship Requests

In order to create a more diverse, cohesive, and vibrant community for digital humanists and to help advance digital humanities research and practice, ACH provides financial, publicity and intellectual support to conferences and other events.

Types of Support

In general, ACH offers three kinds of support for conferences and other events:

Financial Sponsorship

Through financial sponsorship, ACH provides modest monetary support (up to $750) to conferences and other events that promise to make a significant impact on the digital humanities community.

Endorsement (Non-Financial Sponsorship)

By endorsing an event, ACH allows its logo to be used on event materials and assists with publicity, but does not provide funding. Requests for endorsement should follow the principles articulated below, but would not need to include a budget or an account of the use to which ACH funds would be put.

Co-Sponsorship

As a co-sponsor, ACH not only contributes modest funding to an event (if requested), but also helps to shape the program. At least one member of the ACH Executive Council should serve on the organizing committee. To be eligible for co-sponsorship, a conference must offer a registration discount to ACH members and advertise the conference as being co-sponsored by ACH.

Evaluation Principles

The ACH Executive Council will evaluate requests for occasional funding or sponsorship of events and programs based on the following principles:

Relevance and Impact

To qualify for ACH funding, supported events should:

• be of relevance to the digital humanities community (either by serving its members or building ties among the digital humanities and other disciplines);
• show promise of clear intellectual impact; and
• reach a substantial audience, of at least workshop-size.

At its discretion, the EC may elect to support social or other events that do not meet all of the above criteria, but are to be held as part of a larger, qualifying program.

Visibility and Results

Requests for funding must include:

• a 1-2 page description of the event or program, its intended audience and anticipated impact;
• a budget for the entire event (including non-ACH support); and
• an account of the specific use to which ACH funds would be put.

Any event or program funded by ACH must provide:

• acknowledgement of ACH support in all print and online materials;
• an announcement for inclusion on the ACH website (even if the event is not open to the public); and
• a written report describing the event or program, suitable for
  posting online.

Flexibility and Fairness

A limited amount of funding will be established to support events that do not originate with ACH. The allocation for requests of this type will be determined or reconfirmed annually at the summer meeting of the EC.

Requests will be evaluated on a rolling basis, but with the yearly funding allocation divided into three parts to ensure that ACH is able to meet requests at the point of need. One third of the funding will be available for awards requested in each season (Fall: September–December; Spring: January–May; and Summer: June–August).

Requests for funding may come to any member of the EC, who will then act as guide for the request and be responsible for communication with the EC and applicants.

Evaluation of requests will be done by “lazy consensus.” Once required application materials have been shared with the EC, members will have 3 days in which to lodge a concern or open debate. If 3 days have passed with no expression of concern or further discussion, and funds remain in the seasonal allocation, the request will be granted.

Ratified by the ACH Exec at annual meeting, 2009. Last edited, November 2014 JKB.