Assistance program
21st Century Museum Professional Program
$4.5 Million committed in FY2024–FY2026
- Agency
- The Institute of Museum and Library Services, the Institute of Museum and Library Services
- Assistance
- Not Applicable
- CFDA number
- 45.032
- What it does
- The 21st Century Museum Professional (21MP) program has two goals with two or three objectives associated with each goal: GOAL 1, Support the professional development of the museum workforce. Obj 1.1: Develop new or enhanced professional development and training programs for the museum workforce. Obj 1.2: Support assessment and evaluation of training and professional development programs to identify and share effective practices. GOAL 2, Recruit and train future museum professionals. Obj 2.1: Expand pathways into the museum field by adapting higher education programs to be more responsive to the needs of the 21st century museum workforce. Obj 2.2: Recruit future museum professionals from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds through paid internships, mentoring, and fellowship opportunities. Obj 2.3: Support assessment and evaluation of recruitment, training, and higher education programs to identify and share effective practices.
- Who benefits
- Not Applicable
- Who applies
- Museums, museum consortia and associations, institutions of higher education (as defined in 20 U.S.C. 9165(b)), and other entities that the IMLS Director determines appropriate.
- Authorized by
- The Act authorizes the Director of the Institute of Museum and Library Services to establish and carry out a program to enhance the quality of library and museum services nationwide.
- Program site
- https://www.imls.gov/grants/grant-programs ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments