Museums of all kinds may apply for a CAP assessment. These include: aquariums, arboretums, art museums, botanical gardens, children’s/youth museums, general museums, historic houses/sites, history museums, natural history/anthropology museums, nature centers, planetariums, science/technology museums, specialized museums, and zoological parks.
To be eligible for CAP, institutions must meet ALL of the eligibility criteria below.
- It must be either a unit of state, local, or tribal government or be a private nonprofit organization with tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code.
- It must be located in one of the 50 States of the United States of America, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, American Samoa, the Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Federated States of Micronesia, or the Republic of Palau.
- It must be organized on a permanent basis for educational or aesthetic purposes.
- It must own tangible objects (animate or inanimate) and make them available to the general public through exhibition and/or research on a regular basis.
- It must employ at least one full-time person (or the full-time equivalent of one or more staff members), whether paid or unpaid, whose responsibilities relate to the institution’s governance, administration, programming, and collections management.
- It must be possible for assessors to review all of its collections and facilities in a two-day site visit.
Qualifying institutions must be able to have all of their collections and exhibition spaces (including any off-site storage) assessed within a two-day period.
