NEH Creates New Grant Program to Support Humanities Infrastructure

The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) today announced a new grant program designed to create and sustain humanities infrastructure. Cultural institutions are eligible to receive up to $750,000 grants.

NEH’s new Infrastructure and Capacity-Building Challenge Grants program seeks to strengthen the institutional base of the humanities in the United States through matching grants to libraries, museums, archives, colleges and universities, historic sites, scholarly associations, and other cultural institutions for efforts that build institutional capacity or infrastructure for long-term sustainability.

These challenge grants, which require a match of nonfederal funds, may be used toward capital expenditures such as construction and renovation projects, purchase of equipment and software, sharing of humanities collections between institutions, documentation of lost or imperiled cultural heritage, sustaining digital scholarly infrastructure, and preservation and conservation of humanities collections.

“For decades NEH has played a vital role in helping build the humanities infrastructure of the United States,” said NEH Senior Deputy Chairman Jon Parrish Peede. “These new grants expand that role by leveraging federal dollars to spur increased private investment in our nation’s libraries, museums, and cultural centers to ensure the long-term health and growth of these institutions. The result will be greater access to historical, cultural, and educational resources for all Americans.”

The new grant program includes a special encouragement to Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Tribal Colleges and Universities, and two-year colleges.  

The application deadline for the first NEH Infrastructure and Capacity-Building Challenge Grants is March 15, 2018. Interested applicants should direct questions about grant proposals to challenge@neh.gov or 202-606-8309.