The Anchor Institutions Task Force (AITF) is an action-oriented learning community of nearly 1000 individual members in the U.S. and abroad. Founded in 2009, AITF emerged out of a national task force that was convened to advise the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) on how it could increase its impact and strategically leverage anchor institutions, particularly higher education and medical institutions (“eds and meds”), to improve the economic, social and civic health needs of communities.

The Libraries Transform Communities Engagement Grant is an annual grant to recognize, promote, and support innovative and meaningful community engagement efforts in libraries. Community engagement is the process of working collaboratively with community members – be they library patrons, residents, faculty, students, or local organizations – to address issues for the betterment of the community. Each year, the grant will focus on supporting a community engagement project with a specific theme.

The National Historical Publications and Records Commission seeks projects that encourage public engagement with historical records, including the development of new tools that enable people to engage online. The NHPRC is looking for collaborative projects that create models and technologies that other institutions can freely adopt. In general, collaborations between archivists, documentary editors, historians, educators, and/or community-based individuals are more likely to create a competitive proposal. Projects that focus on innovative methods to introduce primary source materials and how to use them in multiple locations also are more likely to create a competitive proposal.

Established in 2006, the W. K. Kellogg Foundation Community Engagement Scholarship Awards* and C. Peter Magrath Community Engagement Scholarship AwardExternal link - opens in new window recognize four-year public universities that have made exemplary strides to become more closely and productively engaged with communities through their teaching/learning, discovery, and service activities.