Vermont Humanities Receives $200,000 in Emergency Funds

Vermont Humanities, still reeling after federal funding was slashed from its budget earlier this month, has learned that it will receive up to $250,000 from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

The nation’s largest private supporter of the arts and humanities announced on Tuesday that it is giving $15 million in emergency funding to the Federation of State Humanities Councils to support the nation’s 56 humanities councils — one in each state, territory and Washington, D.C. Vermont Humanities will receive $200,000 immediately. An additional $50,000 is available in a matching grant.

The money comes in response to the Department of Government Efficiency’s abrupt cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities. On April 2, Vermont Humanities, like its counterparts nationwide, received an email announcing that its NEH grant funding had been cancelled, effective April 1.
Vermont Humanities lost $729,000, nearly a third of its $2.2 million annual budget.

“We’re so grateful to the Mellon Foundation for stepping in with that really significant grant.” Vermont Humanities executive director Christopher Kaufman Ilstrup said. “But of course, you can see the math: It’s only about a third of the amount that we have lost access to, that was appropriated for us.”

The 51-year-old nonprofit provides a host of cultural and literacy programs, including the statewide community reading program Vermont Reads, book discussions for veterans and medical professionals, free public talks and a fall festival. It awards roughly $500,000 in grants each year to other organizations in each of Vermont’s 14 counties.

The DOGE cuts are illegal and unconstitutional, Kaufman Ilstrup said, and he expects a lawsuit challenging them to be filed this week. In the meantime, the humanities organization has to make do with less.

It has laid off two of its 12 employees and cut the hours of a part-time staffer. It is dipping into “rainy day funds” and trimming about $200,000 in programming, Kaufman Ilstrup said. Public reading and discussion groups are on pause for now, and the fall session of Snapshot lectures has been cancelled.

Since the DOGE cuts were announced, Vermonters have donated about $150,000 to Vermont Humanities. Their generosity will allow the organization to fulfill the grants it has promised. Fifteen minutes after director of development and communications Kathryn Tufano sent an email soliciting donations to help win the $50,000 matching grant from the Mellon Foundation, a recipient pledged $700.

While his organization is reeling from the uncertainty and difficulties imposed by the federal cuts, Kaufman Ilstrup said the most devastation falls on communities in Vermont and around the country.

“The point of the National Endowment for the Humanities is to provide opportunities for cultural activity that supports our democracy,” he said. The 1965 law that created the agency, he continued, “says democracy demands wisdom, and that’s why we are creating the cultural endowments, because we believe, as a nation, that the humanities are important to democracy.”