With NEH funding in question, Georgia Humanities forges ahead

The nonprofit humanities council needs community support to keep invaluable programming afloat despite cuts.

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At the beginning of April, Georgia Humanities, the state’s official nonprofit humanities council, received notice that its National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) funding had been canceled, effective immediately. The announcement, which affected an estimated 1,200 grants nationwide, threw small, local nonprofits across the country into uncertainty.  

Despite the upheaval, Georgia Humanities President Mary Wearn is intent on continuing Georgia Humanities’ work as long as possible. That means going ahead with already-funded programming, making strategic budget cuts and shoring up community support. “We are pivoting and doing everything we can to stay alive,” she says.

Federal Funding for Local Community Building

In 2024, Congress funded NEH with $207 million, which Executive Director of the National Humanities Alliance Stephen Kidd has called “decimal dust” in the scale of the federal budget. About 40% of NEH money goes to state humanities organizations like Georgia Humanities, which depend on those funds to pay for operating costs, grants and community-centered humanities programming throughout their state. Kidd told Slate that many small nonprofits depend on grants to fund activities such as historic preservation, which help communities to make sense of their past.

About 40% of Georgia Humanities’ overall budget comes from the NEH, including all of its operational costs, meaning the NEH cuts are devastating. “Just in terms of what we need tomorrow,” Wearn says, “we don’t have access to it.” Though she’s working on solutions and staying optimistic, she acknowledges: “If we continued operations as they are today, the runway would be very, very short. Very short. You know, maybe we could get to fall.”

If Georgia Humanities doesn’t survive, its loss will ripple throughout the state. The organization sponsors programming in all 14 congressional districts and all 159 counties in Georgia. In Atlanta alone, it has awarded grants to the Historic Oakland Foundation, the Michael C. Carlos Museum, We Love Buford Highway and the Sweet Auburn Research Center, along with libraries and universities across the city. Georgia Humanities is especially impactful in the literary community, often working with public libraries, book festivals and local writers on literacy programs like Prime Time; research tools like the New Georgia Encyclopedia; and publication partnerships with the Mercer University and University of Georgia presses.

As is often the case with NEH-funded programming, some of Georgia Humanities’ biggest impacts are on rural communities, where historical, cultural and arts programming is often neglected. Due to NEH’s mandate to make the humanities accessible nationwide, Kidd told Inside Higher Ed, NEH grants tend to be “prestige-blind,” meaning  “it’s more likely to give grants to people at smaller and public institutions.” 

The Programs Continue

Wearn sees events like this week’s Ocmulgee Rising and National History Day — potentially some of the organization’s last — as chances to show people what they gain from Georgia Humanities and the federal funding it depends on. “It would be great,” she says, “if they see the value of the program and then really process the loss.”

Ocmulgee Rising takes place April 24 at Middle Georgia State University in observation of the Ocmulgee Mounds’ new status as a national historic park. It will include a reading by Muscogee poet and former U.S. Poet Laureate Joy Harjo, followed by a historical tour of Ocmulgee Mounds National Historical Park. 

Wearn looks at the event as a perfect example of Georgia Humanities’ strength. After Harjo accepted Georgia Humanities’ invitation to participate, Wearn and her staff got to work recruiting co-sponsor Georgia Council for the Arts and partners Middle Georgia State University and the Ocmulgee Mounds Association. The NEH funds “multiplied,” Wearn says, adding, “Of the entities involved in it, none of them could have done it on their own.” 

National History Day showcases different strengths. Scheduled for April 26 and managed in partnership with LaGrange College, the annual event involves more than 11,000 students who create research projects related to a specific theme — this year’s is Rights & Responsibilities in History. But National History Day benefits teachers, too. Georgia Humanities provides much-needed teacher training on archival research, using Georgia’s GALILEO database and taking advantage of local historical resources.

“That professional development is all on our dime,” Wearn says. “And the impact — when you think about teaching teachers — across the state is just absolutely tremendous.”

Stretching the Budget

To buy time, Georgia Humanities is cutting costs and looking for strategic money-saving measures, including working to get out of its downtown Atlanta lease. Wearn says she’s happy to trim the fat where she finds it, and Georgia Humanities has plenty of experience stretching dollars. 

Still, she’s clear that the longer NEH funds remain unavailable, the more inevitable drastic measures like staff cuts become. The state has been supportive, she explains, but it’s not in a position to fill Georgia Humanities’ funding gaps. Likewise, though philanthropists and small donors have shown interest in contributing to the organization’s survival, they can’t make up the lost NEH money. 

Ultimately, Wearn says, “if we were to not get federal funding back, I don’t see what the pathway is. I just don’t see it.”

Counting on Community Support

Now, more than ever, Wearn says communities need the kind of programming Georgia Humanities facilitates. “At this moment, post-Covid, people don’t get out; they don’t connect. There’s political divides,” she says. But Wearn sees Georgia Humanities as part of a solution to current divides. “We are about facilitating conversation that elevates voices but is also fundamentally about our shared humanity. That is really what we’re about.” 

She’s hoping that the communities that benefit from humanities programming will come to their defense. She says she’d like to see Georgians urging their elected representatives to push for NEH funding restoration. In particular, she says, voices from rural and conservative communities would make a huge difference. “I don’t think that this is a partisan issue,” she says. “I mean, everybody loves history; everybody loves literature; everyone loves building community.”

The straits are dire, and the stakes are huge. “Fundamentally,” Wearn says, “the connection, the community, the building of community takes work. Georgia Humanities does the work of building communities. And that’s going to be a great loss.”

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Rachel Wright has a Ph.D. from Georgia State University and an MA from the University College Dublin, both in creative writing. Her work has appeared in The Stinging Fly and elsewhere. She is currently at work on a novel.