Update March 25, 2019: As of Monday, March 25 at 10 am, there are 151 signers on the NEH Dear Colleague Letter. That's 22 up from Friday morning, thank you for all of your advocacy! We are just 16 signers away from surpassing last year's total of 166 signers. Check the list to see if your Member has signed on. If they haven't, there is still time for them to do so.

Last Monday, the Trump administration released the broad outlines of its FY 2020 budget request. Today, the administration released more detailed budget documents.

For the first time since 2015, the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies requested public witness testimonies on the impact of NEH and NEA funding. We were pleased to see this request for testimony and also to advance Jessica Unger, emergency programs coordinator at the Foundation for Advancement in Conservation, as a public witness to testify on behalf of the National Endowment for the Humanities. She was accepted, and this morning had the opportunity to testify on the many ways the NEH has supported efforts to save cultural heritage in the face of disaster.

“I can see how important this work is to our communities.”
- Representative Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. 

Time and again, Members of Congress have told us that they need to better understand the impact of the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) on their districts so that they can prioritize the humanities among other needs. In order to foster this understanding, we have begun collaborating on a series of district-based conversations aimed at providing a forum for NEH grantees to share their stories.

Last week, more than 200 humanists gathered for the NHA Annual Meeting and Humanities Advocacy Day in Washington, D.C. This event brings together humanities faculty, administrators, and professionals from scholarly societies, museums, and libraries to explore best practices in humanities advocacy and to advocate on Capitol Hill for federally funded humanities programs.

What a week! We spent Tuesday and Wednesday on the Hill with Lin-Manuel Miranda, who came to town to receive the US Capitol Historical Society’s Freedom Award and stayed to advocate for the National Endowment for the Humanities and the National Endowment for the Arts.

Click here to send a message to your Members of Congress and the President to let them know that you value the National Endowment for the Humanities.

News broke this morning that the in-coming Trump Administration has a budget blueprint that proposes the elimination of NEH, along with other cultural agencies, and a major downsizing of others.

This week, October 3^rd through October 7^th, is Humanities Check-In Week. We are joining forces with the Association of American Universities and the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities on this nation-wide campaign to “check in” with Members of Congress to remind them that federal funding for the humanities is essential.  

It is March and the appropriations process on Capitol Hill is gaining steam. In early February, President Obama released his budget request, which outlined how his administration hoped to allocate $4.2 trillion in FY 2017. On March 23rd, the House Budget Committee issued its non-binding budget recommendations. Now the House and Senate Appropriations Committees are at work to allocate funds across the government, and Members of Congress are communicating their top funding priorities to those committees.