New Mexico Humanities Council: Subaward Grants - Major

The New Mexico Humanities Council offers subaward grants to support nonprofits, tribal governments, and governmental institutions engaged in humanities projects. Since 1972, NMHC has strengthened communities through funding that fosters dialogue and inquiry. Projects may include educational talks, interpretive site tours, and reading discussions, but performance art is not funded. Organizations must actively manage funds and adhere to federal guidelines. Grants typically do not exceed $15,000, enhancing cultural and historical understanding across New Mexico.

NOTE: Before you get started, we encourage you to arrange a consultation with NMHC staff to make sure your proposed project aligns with grant guidelines, our mission and funding limitations. Consultations are required for both new and returning organizations before starting an application. We highly encourage interested organizations to schedule a consultation with NMHC as early in the year as possible.
Since 1972, the New Mexico Humanities Council (NMHC) has sought to engage New Mexicans with history, culture, and diverse humanities topics through Council-conducted public programs and grant funding for special projects.
NMHC Subaward Grants
While we are unable to fund performance art or the creation of other art forms, we are able to support educational talks and materials which help facilitate dialogue linked to such art forms. A few examples of the format of programs we fund include: oral history projects, interpretive site tours, panel discussions, film discussions, language preservation projects, interpretive exhibits paired with a lecture series, reading discussions and more. We work with organizations of all sizes to support humanities-based programming. Grant awards do not typically exceed $15,000.

Eligibility

Grant funds provided by the New Mexico Humanities Council (NMHC) come from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). For this reason, grants issued by the NMHC are consider subawards, and organizations that receive these grants are referred to as either subrecipients and/or non-federal entities. Therefore organizations that apply for grant funding cannot be acting as a pass-through entity (PTE), but rather must maintain an active role in project planning, project execution, money management and reporting. Subrecipients must actively manage the subaward grant funds through their organization’s bank account. Approved project expenses must be paid for using checks issued from the subrecipient’s account and must be tracked in the organization’s bookkeeping records. Because the subrecipient cannot be acting as a pass-through entity, the applicant organization cannot receive the funds, retain a fiscal sponsor fee and issue the remaining funds to an external project manager.To be considered for funding, applicants must be a nonprofit organization, a tribal government, or a governmental institution with an Unique Entity Identification (UEI) number that is actively registered through SAM.gov.Organizations must be eligible for federal funding by ensuring the organization does not have any active funding exclusions (debarments).

Ineligibility

Subaward grants will not be issued to individuals. Projects designed by creatives in the community must still be led by and orchestrated through an eligible organization.