Established by the federal government in 1965, the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) currently
has the explicit goal of providing support for the humanities
through grants for education, preservation, research, and public programs. While the
federal government also contributes to the humanities through its many other library, museum,
and education initiatives, the NEH is the largest source of federal funding for humanities activities
and is thus the focus of this section. The first indicator describes trends in NEH funding levels and also
reports the amount of funding directed by the agency to each state in the form of grants and contracts in fiscal year
(FY) 2006. The second indicator considers the agency's recent funding priorities by detailing the distribution
of program funds by activity for FY2006.
Although the emphasis in this edition of the Humanities Indicators prototype is on the
NEH, any subsequent editions will also include data on other federal sources of direct
and indirect support to the humanities through such agencies and programs as:
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Agencies and Programs within Cabinet-Level Agencies
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international education and foreign language studies programs at the Department of Education
(including the Fulbright-Hays Program);
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Jacob K. Javits Fellowship Program;
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libraries and history offices of various federal agencies and the armed services;
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National Park Service (historical sites);
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Teaching American History Program;
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Independent Agencies
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Institute of Museum and Library Services;
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James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation;
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National Archives and Records Administration;
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National Commission on Libraries and Information Science;
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pertinent programs of the National Endowment for the Arts;
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National Science Foundation (through its Antarctic Writers and Artists program, the
Documenting Endangered Languages program [in partnership with NEH], and other programs
that provide direct funding to humanists, as well as data collection on humanities degree
holders);
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United States Institute of Peace;
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Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars;
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Other Federal Entities
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Library of Congress (the John W. Kluge Center, in particular);
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the President’s Committee on the Arts and the Humanities; and
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pertinent departments of the Smithsonian Institution.
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As this substantial list makes apparent, federal funding for the humanities extends well
beyond the NEH. In fact, the federal funding picture is quite complex, and future work
for the Humanities Indicators Project will include developing a more comprehensive view
of the nature and extent of federal support for research, education, and public
engagement in the humanities. As a first step toward such an analysis, Humanities
Indicators staff have assembled: 1) data on fiscal year 2008 and 2009 funding levels for
selected federal entities that support humanities-related activities; and 2) a roster of the
larger Federal government history offices ( 
Federal Funding Roundup).
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Indicator IV-1
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National Endowment for the Humanities Funding Levels
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At the request of the Humanities Indicator project, the National Humanities Alliance
(NHA) compiled data from publicly available reports and documentation supplied by the
NEH’s Office of Strategic Planning. These data, which have been adjusted for inflation
(all funding figures are given in 2006 dollars; for the nominal figures, see
Supporting Table IV-1a),
permit an examination of trends in NEH funding levels over the last several
decades, and, as such, reveal that the period between the late 1960s and 1979 was one of
substantial, virtually uninterrupted growth in NEH funding, with appropriations for the
agency increasing from approximately $27 million to over $400 million (Figure IV-1a).
Funding, however, quickly dropped from this historic high, and after three years of
marked reductions appropriations were down 32%. Thereafter, funding declined
incrementally until 1996, when another major contraction occurred. At that time, total
appropriations to the agency were cut 38%, from $228 million to $141 million.
Subsequently, funding remained near this lower level through FY 2007.
As the figure also indicates, the president’s budget request has tended to exceed the
eventual appropriation received by the agency. The 1980s, however, were a notable
exception to this general rule, particularly in the early years of the decade when the
Reagan administration’s request was well below the amount of funding Congress
ultimately directed to the NEH.
The NEH is a grant-making agency that distributes the bulk of its appropriations to states,
organizations, and individuals through various programs, and reserves a small, but, as the
data reveal, growing proportion of funding for administration. Although the absolute
amounts of agency funding directed toward administrative purposes have been quite
stable since the late 1970s, shrinking program budgets meant that between 1979 (the peak
year of NEH funding) and 2007, the administrative share of the NEH budget more than
doubled, increasing from 7% to 17% of the total agency appropriation (Figure IV-1b).
The NEH distributes program dollars in two forms: 1) as grants to state humanities
councils according to a legislatively mandated formula (for more on council revenues and
the details of the formula by which monies are distributed among the councils, see
Indicator IV-3, State Humanities Council Revenues.; and 2) as discretionary awards made
to individuals and organizations, including state humanities councils, mainly through
national grant competitions (see Indicator IV-2, Distribution of NEH
Program Funding among Activity Types,
which inventories the major types of grant programs and the
amount of funding allocated to each one). Figure IV-1c reveals that the amount of
money distributed by formula to the councils has remained relatively constant since 1987.
Meanwhile, the substantial 1996 reduction in the agency’s budget described above had its
impact on discretionary funds, which dropped from approximately $163 million in FY
1995 to just under $85.6 million in FY 1996. Funding remained near this lower level
through FY 2007.
Figure IV-1d lists the amounts of funding directed by the NEH to the 50 states, the
District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico through the agency’s formula and discretionary
programs in FY 2006. While the nature of the funding formula keeps the amounts of
nondiscretionary funding received by each state within fairly narrow bounds, the range in
the amounts of discretionary funding flowing to individual states (in the form of grants to
its residents and institutions) is considerable. For example, whereas New York’s formula-
based grant was 2.3 times that of New Mexico for FY 2006, the amount of discretionary
grant monies flowing to New York was approximately 10 times the amount awarded to
New Mexico. Because such discretionary monies are awarded, for the most part, on a
competitive basis, the distribution of these funds among states (i.e., both the amounts
awarded to states and the variation among states in the total amounts garnered by its
residents and institutions) varies from year to year.
The final column of Figure IV-1d adjusts for population size, indicating the per capita
obligation for each state. These per capita obligations ranged from a low of 14 cents for
the states of Alabama, Florida, and Texas to a high of $7.26 for the District of Columbia.
The district’s obligation was uncommonly large, however. Apart from this exceptional
case, the states receiving the largest allocations were Vermont ($1.77), Alaska, Delaware,
Massachusetts, and Wyoming (approximately $1.30). The national per capita obligation
for FY 2006 was 39 cents.
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Indicator IV-2
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Distribution of NEH Program Funding among Activity Types
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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.)
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.
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