Grants of up to $10,000 will be available by early June to Wisconsin’s humanities and cultural organizations to help them cope with financial hardships amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The grants will come from the Wisconsin Humanities Council (WHC), which announced on Friday that it will distribute close to $540,000 through the Wisconsin Humanities CARES Relief Grant program. The funds were authorized by the federal CARES Act and came to the WHC via the National Endowment for the Humanities.
No matching funds will be required, according to information on the WHC website.
“Everyone in Wisconsin is struggling to negotiate closures. We’re so happy we can help in some small way to alleviate the pain many organizations are feeling,” said Dena Wortzel, Executive Director of the WHC.
A WHC press release noted that the COVID-19 pandemic has devastated the humanities and culture sector, since local organizations often depend on admission sales and public donations for revenue.
Many of Wisconsin’s cultural organizations are facing employee furloughs and possible closures, the WHC release added. With most local programming cancelled or postponed, the grants will provide direct assistance to eligible nonprofits for their general operations.
The application period for these grants will open by Friday (April 24). The first-round deadline for first-round grants will be 4:30 p.m. on May 15 and award decisions will be made within 15 business days.
To be eligible, applicants must be nonprofit Wisconsin organizations that provide public humanities programming as a significant part of their mission.
According to the WHC, the humanities are defined as “the ideas and knowledge about human history and culture that help make sense of [one’s] life.” Fields in the humanities include literature, cultural anthropology, ethnic studies, folklore, history, archaeology, linguistics, philosophy, religious studies, social sciences, and the history, theory, and criticism of the arts.
The grants are intended for smaller organizations with annual expenses of $500,000 or less and will support nonprofits’ general operating costs rather than specific projects or initiatives.
For more details on eligibility and for notification when the application process opens, interested organizations can go to the Humanities Council’s website.