The Lyrasis Catalyst Fund
Investing in Our Members
The Lyrasis Catalyst Fund is an award program that provides support for new ideas and innovative projects that advance the mission and reach of Lyrasis member organizations.
The Lyrasis Catalyst Fund is now closed!
The 2025 Lyrasis Catalyst Fund application cycle closed on Wednesday, February 26, 2025. If you have any other questions or would like to discuss your application, please reach out to catalystfund@lyrasis.org. Voting will open in May with recipients announced in June. Please check back here for updates.
In the meantime, you can review the funded recipients from 2024 and their projects.
Next year, in 2026, the Lyrasis Catalyst Fund will only be available to Lyrasis institutional and Group Members (formerly Group Agents). A Lyrasis membership includes access to services like Lyrasis Learning, which provides professional development through free access to live and pre-recorded classes. Learn more about Lyrasis and how we partner with libraries, archives, and museums, how we lead in “Open” – access, technology and services. Join Lyrasis today, and make a difference for your community.
Initiated by the Lyrasis Leaders Circle, the Lyrasis Catalyst Fund expands opportunities to explore, test, refine and collaborate on innovations with potential for community-wide impact. All Lyrasis members are encouraged to propose, become a reviewer and vote for which proposals are funded each year!
Lyrasis Catalyst Fund Values
The Lyrasis Catalyst Fund values are:
- Community-driven projects and projects having community impact
- Diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility
- Open source, open access, open sharing of results and open infrastructure
- Cross-institutional collaboration
Creative Concepts
The Lyrasis Catalyst Fund supports creative concepts that
- Serve the broad interests of the Lyrasis membership
- Test-and-try new approaches to shared problems
- Advance important objectives of libraries, archives, museums and complementary research communities
Submissions
Submissions are accepted from any member of Lyrasis. The types of applications seen in previous years have addressed subjects and concepts as varied as AI, accessibility, climate change, copyright challenges, digital archiving, disaster preparedness/response, diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), metadata transformation, open educational resources, professional education, open source and community-supported software development, scholarly communication, social justice work and virtual reality, just to name a few. However, don't let this list limit your creativity.
A member may submit no more than ONE proposal and ONE idea per year.
- If submitting a proposal, you are requesting funds to pilot your own project. Funds will be awarded to your organization if the project is selected.
- If submitting an idea, you are recommending an issue, problem, service need or solution that Lyrasis could investigate, test and address. If selected, ideas will be included in Lyrasis' Research and Innovation agenda for exploration, planning, program design and piloting. Your organization may have the option, but would not be obligated, to participate in the resulting program, service, or solution.
If you wish to submit a proposal or idea to continue work on a project previously funded by the Lyrasis Catalyst Fund, you may apply. Such applications will be judged by the same criteria as others in the competition. The work on the prior Catalyst Fund project must be completed and the final report submitted for consideration of a new grant award. In addition, the new Catalyst Fund submission must include a description of the previously funded project's accomplishments and what new activities are proposed.
If you'd like the staff to review your application, or comment on your concept, reach out to us at catalystfund@lyrasis.org.
Not planning to apply this year? Consider volunteering as a reviewer.