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Grants

This guide provides information on grant opportunities in Pennsylvania.

Each grant application will be reviewed by a team of evaluators.  Review teams consist of staff from the Office of Commonwealth Libraries and may include other Commonwealth agency employees as well as individuals from the Pennsylvania library field.

Grant award decision-making priorities are as follows:

Within each program category, applicants with the highest score are eligible to receive the grant award.

  1. In the event of tied scores for a grant program category, the qualified applicant with the lowest indirect cost may be awarded the contract.
  2. If an applicant is awarded more than one grant, it may choose to decline acceptance of all or just one or two of the grant awards.
  3. If any grant is declined, it will be awarded to the next highest qualified applicant in that program category.

Using the recommendations, OCL’s Bureau of Library Development will make funding recommendations for awards to the Deputy Secretary and Commissioner for Libraries. The Pennsylvania Secretary of Education makes the final decision of awards.

Keystone Award Decisions

Keystone applications are competitively ranked based on the results of a scoring rubric. In addition, the Keystone program prioritizes applicants who meet certain metrics identified in the program regulations.

Keystone Regulations prioritize economically distressed communities in awarding grants meeting 50% of costs. The program reserves the right to award grants meeting a smaller percentage of project costs to municipalities whose local economies better enable local support of the project.

The Keystone Regulations state, for purposes of this grant program, that deciding whether a community is considered economically distressed will be guided by one or more of the following criteria:

(1) The public library to benefit from the grant received equalization aid in the year of the grant application or will be eligible to receive equalization aid in the year following the grant application under section 303(b)(6) of the Library Code (24 P. S. § 4303(b)(6)).

(2) The municipality is a city, borough, incorporated town or township having a market value per capita below the twentieth percentile of all like cities, boroughs, incorporated town and townships, as certified annually by the State Tax Equalization Board.

(3) The municipality is a county or is located in a county having a personal income per capita below the twentieth percentile of all counties, as certified annually by the Department of Revenue.

(4) The municipality is a county or is located in a county or is a minor civil division with a population of 25,000 or higher having an average annual unemployment rate above the eightieth percentile of all counties or all minor civil divisions, as determined annually by the Department of Labor and Industry.

Other factors that may be considered in the decision-making process include:

  • Equitable geographic distribution of awards.
  • Whether applicants have received a past Keystone award.
  • How applicants managed past Keystone and LSTA awards.

Awards cannot be made to applicants who have not provided all required supporting documentation and shown the ability to fund and complete the project work described in the application.

Using the recommendations, OCL’s Bureau of Library Development will make funding recommendations for awards to the Deputy Secretary and Commissioner for Libraries. The Pennsylvania Secretary of Education makes the final decision of awards.