Museums Empowered (2025)

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Museums Empowered (ME) is a special initiative of the Museums for America grant program. It supports projects that use the transformative power of professional development and training to generate systemic change within museums of all types and sizes. IMLS recognizes the many challenges facing individual museums and the need to invest resources, time, and energy towards nurturing the professional development of staff and strengthening museum operations. The Museums Empowered grant program identifies four areas of museum operations to focus for professional development. Digital Technology focused projects that will support the work of museum staff in using digital technology to enhance audience engagement, collections access, or general museum operations. Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion focused projects that will increase cultural competency among museum staff and support relevancy of museum programs through learning activities that strengthen their ability to connect with the communities they serve. Evaluation focused projects that will enhance the ability of museum staff to understand a broad spectrum of evaluation methods and techniques as well as better use evaluation reports, data, and metrics to improve the design and delivery of programs. Organizational Management focused projects that will help museum staff develop and implement effective practices in organizational management, human resources, and strategic planning in response to emerging internal or external priorities.