Industrial Heritage Preservation Grants

The Eric DeLony Industrial Heritage Preservation Grant Fund

The Society for Industrial Archeology offers Industrial Heritage Preservation Grants (DeLony Grants) from $1000 to $3000 for the study, documentation, recordation, and/or preservation of significant historic industrial sites, structures, and objects. Awards are made to nonprofit organizations and qualified individuals. Contributions of in-kind services, as well as cash resources from the sponsoring and cosponsoring agencies may qualify for matching purposes. Funds may be used for a range of projects including, but not limited to: increasing public awareness of preservation efforts, photography, videography, preparing inventories and developing measured drawings of extant significant industrial sites, structures, maritime facilities and industrial artifacts. Grant recipients must agree to prepare a written summary of their project suitable for publication in either the SIA Newsletter and/or for Industrial Archeology, the Society’s scholarly journal.

Grants are open to qualified individuals, independent scholars, nonprofit organizations and academic institutions. Organizations are preferred over individuals. Substantial participation from state, county, or local history organizations is encouraged, although such groups do not necessarily need to be a sponsoring agency.

Awards are limited and grants may not be awarded in some years.

  • The decision to award grants are made once a year at the SIA Annual Meeting (usually held in late May or early June).
  • Applications must be received by March 1 to be considered for that year.
  • Please contact one of the members of the Industrial Heritage Preservation Grants Committee if you are planning to apply.
  • Funds from any SIA grant may not be used to pay overhead or administration costs of the grant.
  • Please email the complete application to sia@siahq.org (send saved completed PDF cover sheet plus all required attachments as a PDF-by the deadline date) to the SIA Headquarters office and not to a member of the Grants Committee. Please do not send the application by mail or by any express courier.

Be sure to include in the email a PDF copy of the Grant Application Cover Sheet with approval signature of the Principal Researcher and the approval signature of the Sponsoring Organization Official.

Note: We no longer have a fax machine or fax number, please scan the cover sheet with signatures and send as a pdf via email.

The SIA will email back an acknowledgement of all Grant applications received via email to sia@siahq.org.


Grant Application Information PDF

Grant Application Cover Sheet PDF

Past Grant Awards