The mission of the ACLS (American Council of Learned Societies) is to promote inclusion, equity, and diversity in the scholarly enterprise. They aim to enhance the scholarly enterprise by being broadly inclusive and welcoming of different backgrounds, cultures, and identities. This reflects in their fellowship programs which encourage applications from diverse backgrounds, recognizing the value that such diversity brings to scholarship.
The ACLS Project Grants for HBCU Faculty support early-stage project design and smaller-scale project development that can be completed within a 12 to 15-month tenure, with grants up to $10,000. These grants help complete exploratory research, push existing projects to their next development stage, and serve as foundational steps for future funding opportunities. Awardees benefit from networking and mentorship aligned with their academic goals and contexts. The program encourages a variety of project outcomes including scholarly publications, pedagogical innovations, and community-engaged projects. It is open to projects that employ digital, collaborative, publicly engaged, or community-engaged scholarship and supports a wide range of research and development activities. The initiative also provides an additional grant to awardees' institutions to support humanities programming or infrastructure, emphasizing the importance of institutional and disciplinary collaboration and community engagement.