Assistance program
Promotion of the Humanities Challenge Grants
$91.4 Million committed in FY2018–FY2026
- Agency
- National Endowment for the Humanities, National Endowment for the Humanities
- Assistance
- Project Grants
- CFDA number
- 45.130
- What it does
- To strengthen institutional base and organizational capacity for work in the humanities by providing funds that are matched with cash contributions from nonfederal third parties. Successful applicants receive awards in federal matching funds intended to stimulate additional private, state, and local support for humanities organizations. The Climate Smart Humanities Organizations program supports comprehensive organizational assessments that lead to strategic climate action and adaptation plans.
- Who benefits
- Applicant organizations and users of their humanities resources, programs, or activities; humanities scholars; and the general public.
- Who applies
- Eligible applicants include U.S. nonprofit organizations with 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, public and 501(c)(3) accredited institutions of higher education, state and local governmental agencies, and federally recognized Native American Tribal governments. The following eligible entities may request a one-to-one matching ratio: federally recognized Native American Tribal governments; Native Hawaiian organizations; public and 501(c)(3) nonprofit community colleges and post-secondary two-year institutions of higher education; public and nonprofit 501(c)(3) U.S. Historically Black Colleges and Universities, as defined by Executive Order 13532; public and nonprofit 501(c)(3) Hispanic-Serving Institutions; and U.S. Tribal College and Universities, as defined by Executive Order 13270.
- Authorized by
- National Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965, as amended, Public Law 89-209, 20 U.S.C. §956, et seq.
- Program site
- http://www.neh.gov ↗
Committed by fiscal year
* FY2026 is year-to-date — the fiscal year is still in progress, so its total is still filling in. The striped band and dashed line mark that provisional stretch.
Top recipients
By dollars committed.
How to read these numbers
- Committed through this program
Money committed under this assistance listing (its CFDA program), counted in the year each action happened.
- How it's paid
Most programs pay out one way — a grant, or a direct payment to individuals; the flow bar only appears when a program genuinely mixes types.
- Some recipients aren't itemized
For entitlement programs like Social Security and Medicare, the government reports one aggregate instead of naming tens of millions of people, so the recipient roster isn't part of the public record.
- Awards, counted once
An award count is the number of distinct awards with at least one action that year — each counted once, however many times it was amended.
- The colored bars
Every bar on this page splits by how the money moves:
Direct payments