Center for the Humanities and the Public Sphere

This experimental masterclass will answer the question: Can we create a sense of community for those actively seeking grants and fellowships? We plan to explore topics of grants and fellowships often hidden from public view. Those who are engaged in the pursuit of grant funding are often disconnected from others who travel the same journeys but lack a safe place to share their experiences or ask questions. After 30 years of working in this field, the discussion facilitator will lead conversations aimed at exposing challenges, strategies, confusions, best practices, interpretations, stories of partnerships, successes, failures and everything in the middle. If successful, these masterclasses will continue to be convened throughout the Fall of 2019 and Spring of 2020.

Who should attend:

Anyone who wants to learn more about seeking grants and fellowships, especially those:

• who have applied and have been successful;
• who have applied and have been declined;
• planning a proposal;
• curious about a specific funding opportunity; and,
• just getting started.

This masterclass emerges from the Smathers Libraries Grants Management Program and the Digital Partnerships Training Series, Fall 2019. The training series is informed by ongoing work in research libraries with digital scholarship serving as a nexus point for research libraries as provider, partner, and pioneer/pilgrim (as in one who wanders and wonders). This masterclass will support the content/community work, and provides an example of the masterclass format for adoption/adaptation, and for building complex community/capacity.

Presenter: Bess de Farber has been the Grants Manager at the University of Florida Libraries since 2008, and previously served in the same position at the University of Arizona Libraries. She has provided grantsmanship instruction throughout the past 30 years for audiences including graduate-level library and information students, arts, museum, and social service agency professionals, and has led efforts to secure millions in grant funding for nonprofits and academic libraries. Her research interest is asset-based collaboration development. As a Certified Professional Facilitator since 2003 through the International Association of Facilitators, she invented Collaborating with Strangers Workshops, under the umbrella of CoLAB Planning Series®, which are large group facilitated processes for individuals and organizations seeking new collaborative partnerships. This process has served more than 600 organizations and 3,300 individuals since 2002. Bess is the author of Collaborative Grant-Seeking: A practical guide for librarians (2016); and coauthor with April Hines and Barbara Hood of Collaborating with Strangers: Facilitating workshops in libraries, classes, and nonprofits (2017). Her latest book, Grant Partnerships: Stories, proposals, and funding to catalyze creativity is scheduled for release in 2020.