As discussed in Indicator IV-1, National Endowment for the Humanities Funding Levels, the NEH is a grant-making agency that through its various programs distributes the bulk of its annual appropriation from Congress to states, localities, and individuals for a variety of humanities activities (the NEH’s program funding also includes monies it receives via interagency agreements and private donations, but these represent a small proportion of the agency’s total programmatic budget). Some of these program monies are distributed by NEH according to a legislatively mandated formula. (For a more detailed description of this formula, see Indicator IV-3, State Humanities Council Revenues.) The remainder of NEH program monies is distributed at the discretion of the agency within its programmatic divisions, each of which receives a set appropriation from the Congress. Most of these discretionary funds are made available to individuals and organizations through a competitive process involving peer review. This indicator describes how NEH program funds, both formula and discretionary, were divided among different activity types in FY 2006.

The NEH has six major divisions, which appear in boldface on Figure IV-2 along with the percentage of total NEH program monies distributed by each division. The figure also shows the types of activities that are funded by each division and the percentage of total program funding dedicated to each activity. For the precise amounts of funding awarded under each of the NEH’s 2006 grant programs, see also Supporting Table IV-2. (At the request of the Humanities Indicators project, the NHA compiled the data on which this indicator is based from documentation supplied by the NEH’s Office of Strategic Planning.)

Figure IV-2, Full Size Supporting Data

As Figure IV-2 shows, just under a third of all NEH program monies was distributed by the state programs division, which directed the vast majority of these funds to state humanities councils to support their administrative and programmatic operations. Approximately 15% of state program monies (5% of all program monies) went to the councils for the implementation of projects associated with We the People,a special NEH initiative that directs funds to activities that explore significant themes or events in American history. (Additional We the People monies are distributed to the various NEH divisions, which in turn support other competitive grant projects with this emphasis.) A small proportion of state program monies went to humanities councils and other not-for- profit organizations in Gulf Coast states to assist them in redressing the destruction wrought by Hurricane Katrina.

The next largest proportion of 2006 program monies, approximately 21%, was disbursed by the preservation and access division. This division of the NEH funds a wide variety of activities, ranging from efforts to preserve Iraqi cultural heritage to projects involving the documenting of endangered languages. While it also supports the production of reference materials and resources, the division has lately placed a strong emphasis on the digitization of documents, such as historically significant newspapers.

The research division was responsible for distributing approximately 13% of all program monies. Most of these funds took the form of fellowships and stipends to individual college and university faculty, as well as to independent scholars. While the NEH briefly provided support for dissertation completion during the 1990s, the agency has not traditionally made awards to graduate students (for data describing graduate students’ sources of financial support, please see Indicator II-16, Paying for Graduate School). And unlike such federal science agencies as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health, the NEH has never made awards to postdoctoral students.

The NEH’s education and public programs divisions received 12% and 12.9% of the agency’s program funding. In the education area, the vast majority of funds was directed toward the support of the professional development of humanities educators. The bulk of public program monies went to media projects and activities based at historical sites and museums. A smaller share supported activities based in libraries and archives.

The agency disbursed 8.7% of its program funding in the form of challenge grants. Such grants are intended to enhance existing state and local humanities programs and institutions. The remainder of NEH’s program funding (the 0.1% included under “Miscellaneous” on Figure IV-2) went for lectures, an essay contest (both the lecture and contest were funded with private donations), and summer internship opportunities at the agency for students from around the country.