…It’s our obligation to coach the next generation and ensure the future sustainability of well-trained professionals.”
Funded Grants
Advancing Women in Business Events
The extensive research conducted provides compelling evidence of disproportionate gender disparities in the BE industry. The insights and suggested actions offer a roadmap toward rectifying this imbalance with recommendation at the personal, company, and industry level. This research project was done in partnership with BE Sydney, with survey in collaboration with PwC.
Learn more here
Guiding Principles in Experience Design
The PCMA Foundation partnered with Marriott International and CEMA, with contributions from Google Xi, on a third-edition report shaping the future of event design. The research was conducted and analyzed by creative agency Storycraft Lab. Its valuable data is the result of strategic testing, case studies, and carefully curated one-on-one interviews with more than 60 of the top experts and change makers across various industries.
Learn more here
CEMA Customer Event Research
In association with PwC and in partnership with Hilton Worldwide, this research provides corporate event marketers and their stakeholders with deep insights, best practices, and actionable intelligence for one of the most prolific event types (user group conferences), enabling them to assess and evaluate the performance of these user group events to improve their design and demonstrate ROI.
Coming Soon:
How We Make Investments
The PCMA Foundation funds programs that inspire the meetings and business events community through senior level education; ground-breaking research; and individual scholarships which help to create new generations of event strategists throughout the world.
Apply for A Grant
Our grant process requires that you submit a Letter of Inquiry first prior to a full proposal.
All Letters of Inquiry must include:
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Information about you/your organization
This should be brief and include the name and history of your organization/projects and how what you currently do will help accomplish the project’s goals with the funding requested.
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Topic & brief summary
1-2 sentences about the project or topic.
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How your project connects with our goals
1-2 sentences that show how the project links to the Foundation’s Strategic Plan
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Milestones
A brief timeline of key milestones and overview of methodology.
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Outputs
The reports, products, tools, etc. that you hope to accomplish with funding.
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Funding amount requested in USD
The median grant amount for projects funded in recent years is $20,155 falling into a complete bell curve range of approximately $5,000-$50,000 and a normal range of approximately $10,000-$25,000.
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15% or less of overhead
Overhead, indirect costs, and facilities and equipment expenses shall not exceed fifteen percent (15%) of the grant amount.
Letters of Inquiry can either be sent using the form below or by email to JoAnn Bedrosian Ryan at [email protected], indicating “Letter of Inquiry” in the subject line. Proposals will be reviewed by the Foundation Team within 14 days to determine if a full proposal is requested. Full proposals will be reviewed by the Foundation Grants Committee within 30 days of submission.
What We Do Not Fund
The PCMA Foundation does not fund projects that benefit an individual’s personal matters, any commercial and/or financial interests, venture capital proposals, capital improvements, business equipment or supplies, endowments or other projects/initiatives that do not align with PCMA’s Strategic Plan.
Proposals are accepted from the U.S. and internationally, however all proposals must be submitted in English and budgets must be proposed in U.S. Dollars.