Long Island Children's Museum

Long Island Children's Museum, a tax-exempt nonprofit organization headquartered in Garden City, New York, receives federal grant funding as a prime recipient from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the National Endowment for the Arts, and the National Science Foundation. The museum does not hold federal contracts or contract vehicles; its federal footprint consists entirely of project grants supporting museum operations, exhibit development, and STEM education programming.

The museum's grant work centers on three capability areas. First, it develops permanent and temporary museum exhibitions with community engagement and educational alignment; a $503,655 Museums for America grant (CFDA 45.301) awarded in September 2023 supported the "Saltwater Stories: The Sea and Me" exhibition exploring Long Island's maritime history and culture for family and school audiences, with particular reach to underserved and recently immigrated coastal communities. Second, it operates school-museum partnerships delivering STEM instruction to underresourced K-12 districts; a $403,248 Museums for America grant from September 2022 funded "STEM4ALL," an expansion of its Westbury School District partnership to all third-grade and special education classes, combining curriculum-aligned STEM experiences with teacher professional development and family engagement. Third, it conducts organizational capacity planning and interpretive strategy work; its most recent award, a $670,820 Museums for America grant from September 2026, funds development of an interpretive master plan analyzing existing exhibits and creating a multi-year action plan for visitor experience, operations alignment, and facility growth, with an external evaluator tracking progress and peer advisors from other children's museums providing virtual training and ongoing consultation through August 2028.

The Institute of Museum and Library Services dominates the funding relationship, accounting for eight of twenty-five total awards. The National Endowment for the Arts has funded two project grants supporting outdoor murals and artist residency workshops. The National Science Foundation supported one partnership development and planning project titled "Escuchen Ecoutez: Listening and Learning Together," which began in November 2024 and extends through May 2025, integrating equitable collaboration frameworks and cultural-historical activity theory to shift the Westbury partnership from institution-driven to family-driven STEM experiences in a community where many students are newcomers and Spanish and Haitian Creole speakers. The National Commission on Libraries and Information Science provided ten earlier awards spanning 2007 to 2018. Combined dollars obligated across all twenty-five awards total $7.4 million over the museum's grant history. One award reaches ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months.