This announcement was shared broadly by our university Federal Affairs director
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) just announced two new funding opportunities to rapidly distribute American Rescue Plan (ARP) Act funding to cultural organizations and educational institutions adversely affected by the coronavirus pandemic. These funding opportunities will provide direct grants to individual humanities institutions and grantmaking organizations to distribute as competitive subawards to affected organizations and individuals. These two grant programs aim to help the humanities community recover from the economic burdens of the pandemic, enable the reopening of humanities institutions and programs, and support the retention of the humanities workforce.
Below are details of the two new American Rescue Plan funding opportunities:
- American Rescue Plan: Humanities Organizations emergency relief grants provide up to $500,000 to cultural organizations and educational institutions to support humanities projects across the fields of education, preservation and access, public programming, digital humanities, and scholarly research for one year. Applicants may propose new humanities projects or focus on sustaining core humanities programs and activities. Relief funding may be used for activities that emphasize retaining or hiring humanities staff at cultural organizations across the country. Applicants may propose new humanities projects or focus on sustaining core humanities programs and activities. The deadline to apply is May 14, 2021. The Notice of Funding Opportunity for the American Rescue Plan: Humanities Organizations program is available on the NEH website. Questions about this grant program should be directed to ARPorganizations@neh.gov.
- American Rescue Plan: Humanities Grantmaking is directed at experienced grantmaking organizations to administer competitive grantmaking programs to support humanities activities undertaken by organizations or individuals. Applicants proposing grantmaking programs for organizations may request up to $5 million; those aimed at individual humanities professionals may request up to $2 million. Funding may be used to establish new grantmaking programs or expand or adapt existing programs to support recovery within the humanities sector. The deadline to apply is May 13, 2021. The Notice of Funding Opportunity for the American Rescue Plan: Humanities Grantmaking is available on the NEH website. Questions about this program should be directed to ARPgrantmaking@neh.gov.
These two new funding opportunities are supported by $135 million in supplemental funding allocated to NEH by the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. NEH will distribute $54 million of ARP funding to 56 state and jurisdictional humanities councils and interim partners to support local cultural groups and public and educational humanities programming.
These new ARP funding opportunities build upon NEH’s distribution of CARES Act funding in 2020, when NEH awarded direct grants to 317 humanities organizations across all 50 states, and distributed awards to the state and jurisdictional humanities councils that serve the needs of states and local communities. NEH CARES grants allowed museums, historic sites, archives, and colleges and universities to retain humanities jobs, continue operations, and shift programs and resources online at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
