2012 Worldwide Grant Program Frequently Asked QuestionsPOLICY QUESTIONS Q1: What may the Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant funds be used for? A1: The Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant funds may be used for brick-and-mortar capital improvements that help conserve, preserve or restore the structures or its contents at the cultural, historic or natural tourism-related site, such as replacing windows or doors; or heating, venting, and air conditioning (HVAC), plumbing or electrical upgrades, or educational programs that will enhance the way the site is interpreted, such as those relating to cultural, heritage, or sustainable tourism, or those demonstrating innovative approaches or best practices. The programs should engage members of local host communities and the travelers to the site in the educational process, for example, responsible guiding. Q2: What criteria are used by Tourism Cares to select the Worldwide Grantees? A2: The Tourism Cares Worldwide Grantees are selected per their relevance to the Worldwide Grant making mission, Required Eligibility Criteria, Preferred Eligibility Criteria, and timeline compatibility. Important consideration is given as well to: 1) proposed successful and measurable project outcomes, 2) impact of the project on tourism visitation to the site, 3) ability for project to maximize existing and available resources, 4) ability for organization and staff to implement the project, 5) expected impact of the grant on the project, and 6) financial sustainability of project. Q3: How are the Worldwide Grantees selected from the organizations who have applied? A3: The Tourism Cares Blue Ribbon Panel, composed of U.S. experts in the fields of conservation, preservation, restoration, and tourism, make up the selection committee. The role of the committee members is to evaluate suitable Worldwide Grant applications provided by eligible nonprofit, tax-exempt public charities after staff review and make final recommendations to the Tourism Cares Board of Directors Executive Committee for approval. The Executive Committee’s decisions are reported to the Tourism Cares Board of Directors. Grantmaking eligibility criteria are set annually by the Blue Ribbon Panel with staff input and approved by the Board of Directors. The Eligibility Criteria are subject to change. Q4: Will our organization be advised if we are not selected to receive a Worldwide Grant? A4: Yes, Tourism Cares will notify eligible applicants by e-mail to advise them if they are not selected. Q5: Does Tourism Cares offer any multi-year Worldwide Grants? A5: No, currently Tourism Cares does not give any multi-year Worldwide Grants. Tourism Cares also has a Special Grants Program, whose grantees may receive multi-year grants. Q6: Can the same non-profit organization apply for Worldwide Grant funding for two different projects for a particular application deadline? A6: Yes, Tourism Cares does allow the same organization to apply for Worldwide Grant funding for two different projects for a particular application deadline. In this case, the organization would need to fill out two on-line applications, and note that they are applying for two different projects. Q7: Our organization has received Worldwide Grant funding for a project in the past from Tourism Cares (or the Travelers Conservation Foundation, one of Tourism Cares' predecessors). May our organization apply for additional funding for the same project? A7: Regrettably no. Due to the volume of grant applications Tourism Cares receives, we feel the fairest approach to all applicants is to fund a particular organization's specific project only once. Q8: Our organization has received Worldwide Grant funding for one project in the past from Tourism Cares (or the Travelers Conservation Foundation). May the same organization apply for grant funding for adifferentproject? A8: Yes, an organization that is a past Tourism Cares (or Travelers Conservation Foundation) grant recipient may apply for grant funding for a different project. However, the likelihood of receiving grant funding would be limited. ELIGIBILITY CRITERIA QUESTIONS Q9: Are non-U.S.-based tax-exempt, nonprofit organizations eligible to apply for a Worldwide Grant? If so, do they have to be classified as an official tax-exempt, nonprofit public charity by its country’s official taxing authority to be eligible to apply? A9: Yes, a non-U.S.-based tax-exempt, nonprofit organization is eligible to apply for a Worldwide Grant, as long as it can prove it is classified as an official tax-exempt, nonprofit public charity by its country’s official taxing authority. Applications from organizations working with, or in, developing countries are welcome. Note: Tourism Cares needs any non-U.S.-based tax-exempt, nonprofit public charity who is applying for a Worldwide Grant to provide an explanatory cover letter that explains your country’s official taxing authority and the terminology it uses, along with the official letter in the Required Attachment section of the on-line application. If this document is not in English, we require a notarized English translation. Q10: Does a U.S.-based organization have to be classified by the United States Internal Revenue Service as a 501 (c)(3) public charity to apply? A10: Yes, a U.S.-based organization has to be classified by the United States Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(3) public charity to apply. However, federally recognized American Indian or Alaska Native tribes within the United States are also eligible to apply. Q11: Can our organization apply for grant funding from Tourism Cares if our 501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax-exempt public charity status is pending with the United States Internal Revenue Service? A11: No, your organization must wait until it receives the initial 501(c)(3) determination letter from the United States Internal Revenue Service to apply for grant funding. Q12: If our organization is classified by the United States Internal Revenue Service as a 501(c)(4) or a 501(c)(6), and not a 501(c)(3) public charity, would we be eligible to apply for a Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant? A12: No. Q13: Our organization is a U.S.-federally-recognized Native American tribe, which does not fall under the United States Internal Revenue Service 501(c)(3) classification. Are we eligible to apply? A13: Federally recognized American Indian or Alaskan Native tribes within the United States are eligible to apply, and will need to submit a copy of the most recently published Federal Register with the list of federally-recognized American Indian or Alaska Native tribes in the Required Attachments section of the on-line application. Q14: Is a government entity, such as a municipality (city or town), eligible to apply for grant funding through Tourism Cares? A14: No, a government entity, such as a municipality, would not be eligible to apply as it does not have a nonprofit, tax-exempt status. However, if a municipality partners with an organization that is recognized by the U.S. Internal Revenue Service as having 501(c)(3) nonprofit, tax-exempt public charity status, that organization may request grant funding for the project on behalf of the municipality. Q15: May a commercial, for profit organization that is also combined with historic, cultural, or environmental use apply for grant funding with Tourism Cares (such as a bed-and-breakfast in an historic building)? A15: No. Q16: How do matching funds or challenge funds work? A16: Tourism Cares gives preference to projects from nonprofits with secured matching or challenge grant funding from a source external to your organization, such as another foundation or corporation, or private donor(s), prior to applying for a Worldwide Grant. The likelihood of receiving a Worldwide Grant from Tourism Cares is greater when proof of increased economic impact of the philanthropic support is presented at the time of Step One - Letter of Inquiry initial phase of the application process. Q17: Is there a specific match amount, such as dollar-for-dollar, that Tourism Cares requires? A17: Tourism Cares does not require matching funds, but it does give preference to projects with them. The most common matching funds are a one-to-one match, but again that is not a requirement, but rather a preference. Q18: Will Tourism Cares consider in-kind donations, such as for materials or labor, as matching funds? A18: No, Tourism Cares only considers matching funds that are cash contributions, from external organization(s) or private donor(s). Q19: Our nonprofit organization can provide our own matching funds for our proposed project. Will Tourism Cares consider that match? A19: No, Tourism Cares will only consider matching funds that are external to the non-profit organization seeking Worldwide Grant funding. Q20: Will Tourism Cares fund a brick-and-mortar capital improvement project to help conserve, preserve or restore the structures or contents of a cultural, historic or natural site? A20: Yes, Tourism Cares funds either or both types of project. Examples of restoring the structure include replacing windows or doors; or heating, venting, and air conditioning (HVAC), plumbing or electrical upgrades. Examples of restoring the contents include refurbishing a historically-significant artifact. Q21: Our organization has a brick-and-mortar capital improvement project that is for new construction rather than for restoration of a historic structure. Are we eligible to apply? A21: No, Tourism Cares will not consider requests for new construction. Please refer to the Worldwide Grant Program Eligibility Criteria on the Tourism Cares website. Q22: Our organization has components of a brick-and-mortar capital improvement project that may include administrative overhead, planning, events, marketing, public relations, advertising, or web projects. Do any of these project components fit the Tourism Cares Eligibility Criteria? A22: No, Tourism Cares will not consider requests that include any of the project components mentioned above. Please refer to the Worldwide Grant Program Eligibility Criteria on the Tourism Cares website. Q23: Our organization has components of an educational program to enhance the way the site is interpreted, which include staffing costs, benefits, or travel costs. Do any of these program components fit the Tourism Cares Eligibility Criteria? A23: No, Tourism Cares will not consider requests that include any of the program components mentioned above. Please refer to the Worldwide Grant Program Eligibility Criteria on the Tourism Cares website. Q24: Are there any other Eligibility Criteria that are not required by Tourism Cares but would increase an organization’s chances of receiving Worldwide Grant funding? A24: Yes, if an organization’s project meets any of the following “Preferred Eligibility Criteria,” the organization would have a stronger chance of receiving Worldwide Grant funding from Tourism Cares: 1) secured external matching funds at the time of the Step One – Letter of Inquiry, 2) tourism office recommendation(s) of project, 3) strong support from the local community, 4) a site offering universal accessibility,or 5) a site that demonstrates sustainability. GENERAL ON-LINE APPLICATION QUESTIONS Q25: How many 2012 application deadlines are there for the Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant Program; and when are they? A25: There are two application deadlines period for the 2012 Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant Program: the first application opens Tuesday, November 1, 2011, and has an application deadline of Thursday, March 1, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time; the second application period opens Monday, April 2, 2012, and has an application deadline of Monday, July 2, 2012 at 5:00 p.m. Eastern time. Q26: Oops, we missed the deadline, may we still apply? A26: No. Q27: When will our organization be notified by Tourism Cares if we are selected to receive a Worldwide Grant? Also, if our organization were selected to be a Tourism Cares Worldwide Grantee, when could we expect the disbursement of the grant funds to take place? A27: The likely timing for notification, disbursements, and press announcements of the Worldwide Grant funding would be approximately five months after the specific initial application deadline you applied for: August for the first application deadline of March 1, 2012, and December for the second application deadline on July 2, 2012. Q28: Our organization does not find a request for a separate Letter of Inquiry in the Step One – Letter of Inquiry phase. Why is this? A28: In order to streamline the application process in 2012, Tourism Cares has taken the questions that were previously required in a separate Letter of Inquiry Required Attachment and incorporated them into the body of the on-line application. Q29: Our organization is trying to submit our completed application. But when we click on the “Submit” button at the top right of the dashboard, we are told our application is not complete. Why we are getting this message? A29: Please review your applicant dashboard to see which of the sections of your on-line application is not showing 100% complete. Please review that section carefully to verify which Required Fields have not been answered. Note: If you are unable to provide a response for a Required Field, please fill in “n/a”. Once you have done this, you should be able to verify that the applicable section(s) now show 100% enabling you to submit. Q30: What are the various steps of the Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant application process? A30: The first step of the application process is the Letter of Inquiry phase; this is when a bona fide nonprofit, tax-exempt public charity fills out the Letter of Inquiry in the on-line application and includes the Required Attachments. Once Tourism Cares has verified and reviewed the applications submitted at the Step One - Initial Letter of Inquiry Phase for a particular deadline, some organizations are invited to submit a Step Two - Full Proposal, which is the next step of the application process. If the organization is invited by Tourism Cares to continue to the second step of the application process - the Full Proposal phase - it will be sent a link to access that section only of the on-line application. Tourism Cares includes the following Required Attachments at the Step Two - Full Proposal phase: 1) Tourism Cares Full Proposal Summary Document Questions; 2) List of your organization’s Board of Directors, 3) Letter of support from tourism authorities, 4) Evidence of support from the local community, 5) List of breakdown of philanthropic support for your organization and project, 6) Operating budgets and audited or reviewed financial statements, 7) Internal Revenue Service Form 990 for U.S.- based organizations, or the equivalent for non-U.S.-based organizations, 8) Organization’s annual report, 9) Overall Organization Brochure, 10) Press Articles about Project, and 11) Images of site, project, and people interacting with your site. The organization may be contacted by Tourism Cares at any time during the application process to provide clarification or complementary information to the on-line application. If the organization is notified by Tourism Cares that it has been selected to receive a Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant, various items will be requested for PR and Marketing purpose, such as a media permission form, a quote, etc. QUESTIONS ABOUT REQUIRED ATTACHMENTS IN THE ON-LINE APPLICATION Q31: Our organization is not able to provide the specific document Tourism Cares is requiring for Phase One - Letter of Inquiry or Phase Two - Full Proposal in the on-line application. How do you recommend we proceed? A31: If you are not able to provide a specific document Tourism Cares is requiring, please be sure to upload an explanatory note in place of the document. Q32: May our organization submit our Required Attachments by paper copy via snail mail or fax, or as scanned documents as e-mail attachments? A32: No, Tourism Cares only accepts on-line applications for the Worldwide Grant Program. Q33: Our organization has support letters from local, regional, and national tourism offices that recommend our project. May we submit these as a part of the Step One - Letter of Inquiry phase? A33: No. Tourism Cares prefers you only list these organizations in your Letter of Inquiry. If your organization is invited to submit a Step Two - Full Proposal, the support letters should be submitted only at that phase of the application. Q34: We are a non-U. S. organization, so the United States Internal Revenue Service is not our official tax collecting agency. Therefore, we cannot provide a 501(c)(3) determination letter from the United States Internal Revenue Service as proof of our nonprofit and tax exempt public charity status required at the Step One – Letter of Inquiry phase. What can we provide instead? A34: We accept the equivalent proof of your organization's nonprofit, tax-exempt public charity status from your country's official tax collecting agency. If this document is not in English, we require a notarized English translation. Q35: We have a Required Attachment that is not in English. May we submit it in a foreign language? A35: All Required Attachments must be submitted in English with any financial figures expressed in U.S. dollars. If your document is not in English, please submit an official notarized translation in English along with the original language item. Q36: What format should we scan all our Required Attachments into before we upload them into the On-line Application? Once our documents are ready, how should we title them? A36: Please scan all Required Attachments to black and white (not in color as it takes up too much file space), and saved in electronic version as a PDF (maximim file size is 3 megabytes). PDF is the only file format Tourism Cares will accept. Since the on-line application does not accept PDF files with any special characters in the name, please do not include special characters when you are naming each item you are uploading. Q37: We have multiple PDFs to upload for one of the Required Attachments. How do we upload multiple documents when only one attachment box appears for the Required Attachment? A37: You are unable to upload multiple, separate documents for one document upload box. Please follow these instructions using Adobe Reader 10 in order to merge the PDFs into one document for upload. If you have both documents already on your computer as two separate documents, you can open each document separately. If they are both word documents, you can select the “Save As” option and click “Save As PDF” for each document. Once each document is saved as a PDF, right click on one of the documents and select “Combine supported files in Acrobat.” A new window will open with the document that you right clicked on listed. At the top left of that window, click “Add Files…” and select “Add Files” from the drop down menu. Continue adding files until all the files you wish to combine into one PDF are listed. Then click “Combine Files.” Once the merging of the multiple PDFs is complete, the new document will open. Save that new document to your computer. It is now ready for upload into the online application system. APPLICANTS INVITED TO SUBMIT STEP TWO - FULL PROPOSAL REQUIRED ATTACHMENTS ONLY Q38: When our organization submitted our Step Two - Full Proposal Required Attachments in the on-line application, we did not receive a confirmation e-mail. How do we know the application was submitted successfully? A38: Once you click submit in the on-line application, a pop-up message should appear telling you “Thank you for submitting your Worldwide Grant application to Tourism Cares. Your application is now considered complete in our on-line system. We will be in touch if clarification or further information is needed. This message is considered confirmation of your submission by the deadline.” TECHNICAL QUESTIONS ABOUT ON-LINE WORLDWIDE GRANT APPLICATION Q39: What web browser can we use to access the On-line Application? A39. Internet Explorer version 6.0 or higher is the preferred browser for accessing the Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant on-line application. If you are a MAC user and you do not have access to Internet Explorer version 6.0 or higher, please avoid using Safari and use Mozilla Firefox instead. Q40: What should we do if we are experiencing technical difficulties with the on-line application? A40: Be sure to enable cookies and allow pop ups on your browser setting. If this does not solve your problem, please e-mail your request for technical assistance to: This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. Be sure to include your first and last name and e-mail as you entered it into the on-line application and please clearly explain the problem encountered. Q41: We are a having difficulties viewing pages in the On-line Application System. What do you suggest? A41: You need JavaScript enabled to view it. Q42: How do we update our application information in the On-line Application? A42: Sign in with your user name and password, go to the applicable section and field (i.e. name, e-mail, password, address, phone, etc.), make the updates, and be sure to save. OTHER QUESTIONS Q43: What is the most common reason an organization does not receive a Worldwide Grant? A43: The most common reason is the organization did not follow the instructions carefully and as a result they submitted an incomplete application so were not eligible for consideration to receive a Worldwide Grant. Q44: I am a student interested in receiving grant funding for my studies. Am I eligible to apply for Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant funding? A44: No, the Tourism Cares Worldwide Grant funding goes to nonprofit organizations, but you may be eligible to apply for one of the scholarships we offer. Please visit: www.tourismcares.org/student-resources to learn more about the Tourism Cares Scholarship Programs. Q45: What if we have a question that is not answered in these Frequently Asked Questions? A45: If you still have a question after carefully reading over these FAQs, please e-mail the Tourism Cares Grant Department at
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
. This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. Please do not phone Tourism Cares if you have a question. We will call you if your question cannot be answered by an e-mail. *** |
