In April, the National Endowment for the Humanities, a federal entity, rescinded several grants, citing concerns about the spending not inspiring “public confidence in the use of taxpayer funds.”
At the same time, the Institute of Museum and Library Services also put federal grants on hold. As a result, nonprofits and historical societies scaled back their plans and operations. Months later, Albany nonprofits are still working to bridge that funding gap.
The Ten Broeck Mansion, home to the Albany County Historical Association, was built in 1757 and does not have an adequate heating system to keep visitors and program attendees warm. As Kathryn Kosto, the executive director of the association, walks down to the basement, she notes how cold it can get this time of year.
"Definitely a sense of history with the bricks, but I think our temperature is around, 48 degrees, and you can see a very steep stairwell," said Kosto. "It's really not a space, while beautiful and historic, a basement of a historic mansion like this, it's really not set up, as you can see, for painting, for doing much at all.”
The association regularly holds free programs for children, adults, and seniors centered around local artisans, Albany history, and science. Kosto notes that during summer programs, the mansion’s ample lawn space allows for people to enjoy the grounds and learn. However, when programs move indoors in the winter, space — and heat — is limited.
“Our visitation is nearly tripled since 2018 our children's program, attendance has grown 25 fold. Practically every Saturday, essentially May through October, there's something for children as well as, of course, our tours, which run five days a week," said Kosto. "So we have a lot of programming, and there's a lot of needs for the community.”
To accommodate its needs, the association wanted to remodel an existing carriage barn into an education center that could house programs, exhibits, and office space for employees. They received half of the funding for this through a grant from the New York State Council of the Arts and an additional $481,000 through the National Endowment for the Humanities in 2024. With the federal and state funds, the association only had to fundraise for a quarter of the center.
But, as the nonprofit began fundraising for the rest of the money, they were notified that NEH would be rescinding the grant. Without federal money, Kosto said they looked to their community for support — and the community showed up.
"We've been working hard to raise back the money locally. We said, if the federal level is not going to work for us, we're going to turn to our local community," said Kosto. "And I'm very honored and humbled to share that we have raised back 67% of that rescinded grant, and our average donation is $50 to $100 so you can see the tremendous amount of work and community support that that has indicated.”
Still, that loss of federal funding from NEH — part of the Trump administration’s broader curtailing of Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives — has created a lot of uncertainty for Ten Broeck Mansion.
Similar to the Ten Broeck Mansion, the Underground Railroad Education Center had received a $33,000 Institute of Museum and Library Services grant to operate a museum studies program for teens and $250,000 from NEH for a community center. Paul Stewart, the founder of the center, said the annual IMLS grant was meant to help more minorities get into the field of museum studies.
"The museum studies teen program is important because within the museum field, there are relatively few minority people who are going into that field," said Stewart. "So, we're particularly looking at preparing teens, inner city teens, to be familiar with the museum field and have the option of being able to make that a choice as they go on to higher education.”
After the IMLS grant was rescinded in its second year, the center also leaned on the community for support and took the federal agency to court to appeal the revocation. The center won that legal battle and received funds to finish out the program for 2025, but the grant itself was not reinstated. While their NEH grant was also rescinded, Stewart says he hopes to recuperate the costs through donations and begin construction next year.
"How we've been dealing with that? Well, we're not giving up where we're continuing to work to raise the funds that we need in order to build a center," said Stewart. "And we're looking for new ways to to effectively use the money that we have to accomplish our goals.”
For the Shaker Heritage Society in Watervliet, NEH grants were meant to help the nonprofit pay for construction costs for their museum buildings. Executive Director Johanna Batman, says the grants are essential because fundraising for construction projects isn’t always easy.
"Those kinds of projects can be really difficult to fundraise for, because things like HVAC and insulation, they're just not as exciting, not as sexy, as a lot of other initiatives that a organization like ours would undertake," said Batman. "So those kinds of grants really fill a really important gap in the in the funding landscape, and really critical kind of infrastructure upgrades.”
NEH rescinded the grants while construction was already underway. The museum had to front the rest of the costs by dipping into their rainy-day fund. Batman added this, however, did not solve the problem.
"We actually had the benefit of another pool of funds that we were able to tap into. Unfortunately, this meant diverting funds that had been allocated for a separate capital project so that, you know, kind of we plugged one deficit and created another one," said Batman. "...that was really thanks to the quest that we received from a donor a few years ago. And those funds have been set aside and earmarked. And in this event, it really saved us significant amount of heartache and fiscal stress."
Even with local government support and donations from the community, Batman says nonprofits like hers cannot rely on them forever.
"There's only so much capacity that private foundations and nonprofits, you know, they can't plug the full gap of a cut in federal support. So in the long term, I don't know what that landscape is going to look like," said Batman. "I don't know really what the capacity is going to be. A lot is going to be contingent on, on what steps the federal government takes in the in the coming years.”
NEH did not respond to WAMC’s request for comment.
