Week Ten: Contacting the Potential Project Team

After getting positive responses from a handful of scholars, I scheduled phone conversations to chat with each of them at greater length the following week. That Monday I had four phone calls lined up. After my first conversation, the other three went very smoothly, without any hiccups. I had perfected my sales pitch and had a rhythm and ready-made response for any of their questions or reservations. The only one of any interest to this blog was my first conversation – the one before I perfected my talking points.

 

The conversation was with Dr. Clarence Mohr, the department chair of the History Department at the University of South Alabama. Admittedly, I was a little intimidated. Stammering along, I managed to make my pitch. At first, he sounded unimpressed and uninterested. “What is the name of grant?” he asked. Amazingly, shockingly, I couldn’t remember! I knew the essence of the grant, I could say things like “it’s an NEH Planning Grant,” but I had forgotten the full name (if I ever actually knew it anyway). I had gone outside into the park opposite of the PHC’s entrance to make the phone call. I figured it would be a nice, quiet spot to make a few phone calls, giving me an opportunity to stretch my legs a little in the process. I brought the draft of the grant narrative, should he ask specifics of the humanities themes we wanted him to interpret. I brought his CV, should I need to reference something he had done in the past. But I didn’t think to bring the application! And suddenly, I found myself far away from my desk and serving up a jumbled collection of possible names. I’m sure the first few minutes of our conversation inspired confidence in Dr. Mohr regarding the project. How good our grant will be when the grant-writer can’t even remember the name of the grant he’s been working on! Strike one. (Just to set the record straight, it is the America’s Historical and Cultural Organizations: Planning Grants with the National Endowment for the Humanities Division of Public Programs).

Next came discussion of what types of stipends or honorariums we were planning to pay our humanities consultants. The number Dr. Beiler and I had discussed, and which was recommended to me by Laura Keim per our earlier conversation on the matter, was $1,500 per scholar, not counting travel, housing, and meals. And that’s what I told him. After I conveyed the number we had in mind he informed me that he had done legal consulting in the past, sometimes at $150 dollars per hour. So, in essence, our offer was peanuts by comparison. Strike two. But that’s the humanities, there wasn’t much we could do about the size of our stipends.

After a rough start, I rebounded. I dove into the tenets of our plan and the uniqueness of our historic site. Mohr seemed interested by the way we sought to use education as an interpretive theme with which to contextualize other aspects of history. I told him that not many museums made education central to their interpretations of American history. He agreed. The first five minutes were rough, but the next twenty-five minutes of the conversation went smoothly. His biggest concern after the initial reservations was committing to a project that was still about a year away. As chair of his department, he was reluctant to make a hard-and-fast commitment, not knowing what else might come up before then. He asked me to contact the NEH and ask how firm the “letters of commitment” had to be this early.

I contacted the NEH and, again, like the time before, they answered promptly and were extremely helpful. The person I spoke to said that the letters did not need to be very “committed” but instead just needed to convey that 1.) the project was worthwhile and 2.) that they would be interested in participating. That was all. I relayed the information to Dr. Mohr and he agreed to be tentatively on board. And so the project team began to take shape. 

Week Nine: The First Attempt to Contact our Potential Project Team

Though much of my time was spent making further strides on the grant narrative portion of the application, the most important piece of the week was making the initial contacts to our potential project team. The groundwork for these initial contacts was laid weeks ago. Following the group tour, I had a clear sense of what type of consultants we should try to find. I also had a better sense of exactly what we would need consulting for. So the search began. Some of the names came from recommendations from Dr. Beiler and Laura Keim, the curator at the Stenton House Museum in Philadelphia. I met with relevant UCF faculty to figure out other recommendations as well. In this effort, Dr. Lester proved especially useful. Lastly, my own (extremely limited) knowledge of scholars in Southern history came in handy. The extent of my exposure came from my copyediting experience during my tenure at the Florida Historical Quarterly in Spring Semester. During my time there, I had the opportunity to copyedit book review sections for two issues of the Quarterly. From there, I encountered names of scholars in both Florida history (no surprises there) as well as historians of Southern history topics more broadly.

From there I was able to compile a list of potential humanities scholars who would be ideal consultants for our project. The list was by no means extensive, and with more time I would have liked to come up with a lengthier group of names. But I did not have the luxury of time, given how quickly this semester is flying by, and though not extremely long, the list did have a number of well-known and qualified scholars. I promptly submitted the list to Dr. Beiler for review, and the following week she returned with the consultants she found most appropriate.

I composed the politest email I could, explaining in one long breath the purpose of the PHC, the NEH grant, our goals for the future, and where they fit into the picture. Concision and succinctness are not my two greatest strengths and, frankly, the email was a bit verbose considering these scholars were being contacted by a complete stranger. But it’s hard to say everything briefly! I sent the email out to a number of scholars, the ones Dr. Beiler wanted most, and crossed my fingers for a positive reply.

Quickly enough, responses started filtering in. To my relief, most replied. There was one who never replied, and another scholar replied with reluctance, stating that she was too busy to consider such a project. The others, though, they were receptive and proceeding to set up times to set up phone meetings. The other consultant, the one that was too busy, offered recommendations that would provide acceptable substitutes for her presence. So, on the whole, everything worked out well. All of this happened very quickly, and by Friday afternoon I had scheduled three phone meetings for the following Monday.

Week Eight: Connection in High Places (well, not really)

Week eight was mostly a short and uneventful week. Week eight just so happened to fall on the week of July Fourth. So, that meant that only one day was spent at the Public History Center. Most of the day, as with most days at the PHC, was devoted to working on the grant narrative, adding and removing sections, tweaking sentences, and obsessing over word choice. At around noon, I decided to take a short respite from the endless gazing into the computer screen. I left the PHC to buy lunch and then (so I thought) promptly return. While I was out, I figured I would take the opportunity to call the National Endowment for the Humanities to speak to a representative regarding the planning grant. Pulling into a parking spot alongside Sanford’s Main Street, I called the NEH with a brief list of questions about the grant.

I was pleasantly surprised to be immediately put through to a representative (who says government bureaucracy is slow and inefficient?). Her name was Barbara Bays, and she was as helpful as I could have asked for. What was supposed to be 5-10 minutes of questions and answers turned into just under one hour of conversation. As my car idled in the Florida heat, struggling to blow cold air into the cabin, I sat and discussed our project at great length with Barbara.

The conversation yielded both good news and bad news. The good news was reassuring. The NEH representative sounded genuinely interested in the PHC and its goals, the historic building it was housed in, and even the quirks of Sanford I so eagerly described. She told me that our project sounded truly worthwhile and that we had all of the requisite components to craft a (potentially) persuasive grant application. Our conversation also clarified many other aspects of the project for me. For an entire hour, I received an inside perspective on what makes a grant stand out. The exercise was invaluable, and it became immediately clear to me that it was useful to have a representative at the NEH who was familiar with our project. Of course, I guarantee that any grant-writer worth their salt contact the funding organization well in advance of the due date. What I did was certainly not unique. But this is the first grant application I have ever drafted, and as I stumble through it, encountering new and unexpected hurdles, it is enlightening to have that initial conversation with the funding agency.

But there was bad news too. The bad news was that our original goal – to have consultants come in to develop an institutional interpretive plan for us – was not the best use for NEH money. Sure, we could submit the application. But she warned that it would not be a very competitive application in that form. Why? Because it lent the impression that we really had made no progress at the museum and had no clear sense of our future goals. The reviewers, she noted, wanted to get the impression that organizations and museums had a clear sense of what they wanted to do with the museum. So, she advised me to change the phrasing to “interpretive strategies” instead of “interpretive planning.” The humanities themes were already in place, we just need scholars to help us come up with strategies to effectively interpret them. It was clear that, even with our vocabulary slight-of-hand, we would be walking a very fine line regarding appropriate usage for NEH funds. Even now, it is cause for unease.

But I won’t dwell on the negativities. No, it was a useful exercise to talk with the NEH representative. Her advice has since lent a much clearer and confident focus to my grant writing.          

Week Seven: Taking Tours

For week seven of my internship, Dr. Beiler and I visited several local museums. I wanted to see how these museums interpreted local history. What were their interpretive strategies? How did they communicate their narratives to their audience? What lingering ideas or questions were visitors expected to leave with? It was important for me to understand the goals and focus of the other local museums. For one thing, I needed to know how these museums positioned themselves within the community. It was imperative that we find ways to differentiate the Public History Center from other area museums. Why? Well, because – and though this is just a hunch, of course – I cannot see reviewers for the NEH roundly proclaiming “Hey, let’s give money to this museum, the one that wants to create something that already exists in the same city.” Indeed, for the purpose of writing a persuasive grant application, it will be vital for me to demonstrate how we are something new, how there is a need in the community, and how we will offer something different from other museums in central Florida.

Dr. Beiler and I ended up going to two museums on Friday afternoon. The first was the Sanford Museum, located in downtown Sanford looking out onto Lake Monroe. The museum was small – we were only there for fifteen of twenty minutes – but it had many intriguing artifacts. The museum touted Sanford businesses of yesteryear quite well. It also highlighted the entrepreneurs of Sanford as well as all of the pro athletes who emanated from there. Perhaps most interesting though, the museum had a room that recreated the personal library of Henry Sanford, founder of the city and U.S. ambassador to Belgium. The room was striking, and the thought of a nineteenth-century diplomat, back from Washington, Europe or perhaps even sub-Saharan Africa (the Belgian Congo), retiring to his reading room to perusing his collection (in seven languages, no less) is enough to capture the imagination.



Our first stop, the Sanford Museum

The second museum we visited was the Museum of Seminole County History. The museum was bigger, and we spent about thirty or forty minutes there (on a self-guided tour that was supposed to take about an hour and twenty minutes). The museum had many interesting exhibits. The room devoted to the “three lakes and three forts of Seminole County” conjured images of early American settlement in the region. There was a room that explored education – fortunately not too close to what we are envisioning for the PHC. There was also a large facility in the rear of the museum that explored Seminole County’s agricultural heritage. Altogether, the museum was a worthy visit, though I did not leave with a clear sense of their intended message. To be sure, the museum highlighted the development of the county, but there could have been more cohesion between the exhibits.

Altogether, it was an excellent exercise. I am confident that our museum will not simply repeat the narratives of other local museums but instead compliment them by offering a fresh perspective.