Deadline: 16-Apr-2025
The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Office of Data and Evaluation is accepting applications for the State and Impact of the Humanities program to support datagrounded research studies that investigate the state, impact, and value of the humanities in the United States.
For the purposes of this program, the humanities are broadly defined as activities associated with exploring, interpreting, and preserving the diversity of human cultures, ideas, practices and experiences, past and present.
Topics
- NEH welcomes applications that address topics such as:
- trends in humanities research, teaching, and practice;
- economic, civic, and social impact of the humanities;
- labor and careers in the humanities;
- public perceptions of the humanities;
- humanities infrastructure and funding;
- the humanities and individual or collective well-being;
- broadening participation in the humanities;
- digital technology and the humanities; and
- the coronavirus pandemic and the humanities.
Research Categories
- Proposed studies must seek to understand the state, impact, or value of the humanities in one or more of the following research categories. Note that projects should not primarily be conducting work within these categories, but rather about them. This program does not fund evaluation of a single humanities program, product, or event, such as an educational initiative, podcast, or exhibition.
- Humanities Education: Elementary (K-5), middle (6-8), and secondary (9-12) education; post-secondary education (associates, undergraduate, and graduate programs); and educational programming outside of degree-granting learning environments.
- Humanities Research: Scholarship (for academics, general audiences, or both) conducted within and across humanities disciplines, as well as interdisciplinary research involving humanities questions in the sciences, medicine, law, and other fields.
- Public Humanities: Humanities work intended to engage with large and diverse public audiences through a broad range of public-facing and publicly accessible formats such as interpretive museum exhibitions, historic site interpretation, public dialogues, publicfacing projects led by educational or cultural organizations, and co-creative community collaborations.
- Preservation and Access: Preserving and providing access to humanities collections, including community and grassroots preservation initiatives.
- Humanities Infrastructure: Buildings, institutions, and communities and the financial and other resources that support them.
Funding Information
- Level 1: Level 1 awards (up to $75,000 and up to 12 months) are intended to support projects that have clearly defined research questions, data, and scopes, but that are in the planning or testing stages. Level 1 activities might include cataloging and assessing humanities-relevant data sets; preliminary assessment, planning, and relationship building; preliminary analysis of pre-existing data sets; and pilot studies. Outputs might include meeting proceedings, documentation, and release of preliminary data or results.
- Level 2: Level 2 awards (up to $150,000 and up to 24 months) are intended to support projects that are at the implementation stage. Activities might include data collection, data analysis, and the development of outreach materials. Outputs for Level 2 might include meeting and convening proceedings, publication of data sets and scholarly research, and documentation. A Level 1 award is not a prerequisite for applying for Level 2 funding.
Period of Performance
- You may request a period of performance up to 12 months for a Level 1 project and up to 24 months for a Level 2 with a start date between February 1, 2026, and April 1, 2026.
Eligible Activities
- Activities supported through this program may include, but are not limited to:
- Planning: meetings, convenings, and community events
- Data collection: archival research, interviews, focus groups, web scraping, and surveys
- Digitization: scanning, metadata, storing, and publication of digital materials
- Data analysis: cleaning, coding, visualization, and statistical analysis
- Communication: writing, publication, social media, podcasts, and conferences
- Dissemination: workshops, seminars, forums, and public lectures
Eligibility Criteria
- To be eligible to apply, your organization must be established in the United States or its jurisdictions as one of the following:
- a nonprofit organization recognized as tax-exempt under section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code
- an accredited institution of higher education (public or nonprofit)
- a state or local government or one of their agencies
- a federally recognized Native American Tribal government
- Individuals and other organizations, including foreign and for-profit entities, are ineligible.
For more information, visit Grants.gov.