The Catalyst Fund is an award program that
provides support for new ideas and innovative projects that advance the mission
and reach of LYRASIS member organizations. Led by the LYRASIS Leaders Circle,
the Fund expands opportunities to explore, test, refine and collaborate on
innovations with potential for community-wide impact.
Catalyst Fund Values
Cross institutional collaboration
Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility
Open source, open access, open sharing of results, and open infrastructure
Community-driven projects and projects having community impact
Subject Specific
Tracks or Themes
The Catalyst Fund supports creative concepts that:
Advance important objectives of libraries,
archives, museums, and complementary research communities;
Test-and-try new approaches to shared
problems; and
Serve the broad interests of the LYRASIS
membership.
The Leaders Circle is especially interested
in projects that cross boundaries and engage diverse types of organizations in
partnerships to expand the impact of innovative solutions to shared challenges.
The types of applications seen in previous years have addressed subjects and
concepts as varied as AI, accessibility, climate change, copyright challenges,
digital archiving, disaster preparedness/response, diversity, equity and
inclusion (DEI), metadata transformation, open educational resources,
professional education, open source and community-supported software
development, scholarly communication, social justice work and virtual reality,
just to name a few.
For the second year in a row, in
addition to our general call for proposals, the
Catalyst Fund will be accepting proposals on athematic track and welcoming
applications focused specifically in the area of Open-Source Software (OSS).
Applications in this track will apply the values and creative concepts of the
Fund, as listed above, to the advancement, evolution, expansion, and/or application
of OSS to provide innovation solutions for the LYRASIS community. Applications
do not need to address this theme, but funds have been reserved specifically
for those that do.
All applications will be evaluated on the
strength of needs/case statements and how well results can be adapted and used
in initiatives serving cultural and scientific heritage organizations.
Regardless of subject, two types
of submissions – proposals and ideas – can be made by any member of LYRASIS. A
member may submit no more than ONE proposal and ONE idea to the Catalyst Fund
in a single cycle.
See More Information for
details on review criteria and answers to frequently asked questions.
Funding decisions for the Catalyst Fund are
announced in early June. Recipients will have one year to implement their
projects (July - June).
Not planning to apply this year? Consider
volunteering as a reviewer, for more information, see the Reviewing and
Selecting Proposals and Ideas here.
More questions? Email us at catalystfund@lyrasis.org.
How to Apply
Applications for the Catalyst Fund will be accepted through midnight EST on February 18, 2022. Members are asked to complete a brief online application form and provide a two-page PDF describing their proposal or idea.
Please review MORE INFORMATION before submitting.
For Proposals:
- Review the Instructions for Proposals.
- Create your proposal. Use this template (MS Word format) to create your application. Your final proposal needs to be formatted as a PDF.
For Ideas:- Review the Instructions for Ideas.
- Describe your idea. Use this template (MS Word format) to create your own document using the same outline. Your final proposal needs to be formatted as a PDF.
