NEH/ALA American Rescue Plan: Humanities Grants for Libraries

Deadline: December 2, 2021

With funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) through the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, the American Library Association (ALA) will distribute $2 million in American Rescue Plan (ARP) funding to help anchor libraries as strong humanities institutions as they emerge and rebuild from the coronavirus pandemic. The purpose of this emergency relief program is to assist libraries that have been adversely affected by the pandemic and require support to restore and sustain their core activities.

ALA will distribute up to 200 ARP grants of $10,000 each to libraries, with an emphasis on reaching libraries in historically underserved and/or rural communities. Libraries will be selected through a competitive, peer-reviewed application process. To qualify for this grant, the applying institution must be a library of any type (e.g., public, tribal, K-12, academic, special, prison) located in the United States or a U.S. territory. Note: Libraries that received funding through NEH’s American Rescue Plan: Humanities Organization program are not eligible to receive funding through this offering.

ARP: Humanities Grants for Libraries funding is designed to provide libraries with flexible funding to reaffirm and strengthen their roles, post-pandemic, as vibrant centers of humanities learning, conversation, and connection. Every day, libraries engage people in reading and discussing literature; host authors and speakers; lead important, and often challenging, conversations that stretch their patrons’ understanding of the world around them; and record and archive their communities’ stories through oral history collections and digitization projects. The general goals of this ARP funding opportunity include:

• To assist with creating or preserving jobs
• To support or maintain general operations
• To create or sustain humanities programs
• To implement new humanities activities or sustain existing activities

Below are several examples of eligible expenses; note that this list is not exhaustive:

• Salary and benefit support for library workers engaged in humanities activities
• Costs related to humanities programming (in-person or virtual), such as book clubs, guest lectures, exhibition development, oral history collection, digitization projects, or heritage festivals
• Purchases of books, e-books, or technology for use in humanities programming
• Marketing and advertising to support library humanities efforts

To apply for ARP: Humanities Grants for Libraries, or any grant from the ALA Public Programs Office, you must first create an account in their grant administration platform. For more information and to apply, visit the website: https://www.ala.org/tools/programming/ARPhumanities