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.
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.
This year,
in addition to our general call for proposals, the Catalyst Fund is piloting a new thematic 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 in good standing. A member may submit no more than ONE proposal and ONE idea to the Catalyst Fund in a single cycle.
A. Proposals request funding to pilot your own project. If selected, funds will be sent to your organization to implement the project.
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!
