NEH Grants

The National Endowment for the Humanities is the federal counterpart to the NEA, but for the humanities — history, literature, philosophy, languages, archaeology, ethics, and the cultural meaning of science and technology. NEH's annual budget is about $200 million, distributed across roughly 2,500 grants per year.

NEH grants are organized into six divisions and offices:

• Public Programs — museum exhibitions, documentary films, podcasts, historic site interpretation, public history projects (Public Humanities Projects, Media Projects)
• Research — Fellowships ($60K) for individual scholars, Collaborative Research grants for teams, Summer Stipends ($8K)
• Education — K–12 and higher-ed humanities curriculum development, Humanities Initiatives, Landmarks of American History workshops for teachers
• Preservation and Access — Cataloging collections, digitization, preservation of rare materials, Humanities Collections and Reference Resources
• Digital Humanities — Digital projects, advancement grants, institutes for advanced topics in the digital humanities
• Challenge Grants — Capital and infrastructure for cultural institutions (matched 4:1 by non-federal funds)

About 40% of every NEH appropriation is passed through to State Humanities Councils, which run their own re-grant programs at the state level. If your project is small or local, the state council may be a better fit than NEH itself.

1. Find your program at neh.gov/grants. Each program has a separate Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO) with its own deadline.
2. Read the NOFO completely. Page limits, required attachments, and review criteria differ by program. Skipping this step is the #1 reason applications get returned without review.
3. Register on Grants.gov, SAM.gov, and Login.gov. Allow 4–6 weeks for first-time SAM.gov registration.
4. Draft the narrative. Most NEH applications include: project overview, intellectual merit / significance, content and methodology, work plan, project team and qualifications, audiences (for public programs) or final products (for research), and a detailed budget with budget narrative.
5. Submit through Grants.gov Workspace by the deadline.
6. Peer review by humanities scholars and field experts takes about 6 months. NEH staff make funding recommendations to the National Council on the Humanities, and the chair makes final decisions.
7. Awards are typically issued 8–10 months after submission.