National Endowment for the Arts

Read information about NEA Stimulus plans at: http://www.arts.gov/grants/apply/recovery/.

Grant Program Description (as of 3/3/09)

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Public Law 111-5 ("Recovery Act") recognizes that the nonprofit arts industry is an important sector of the economy. The National Endowment for the Arts is uniquely positioned to fund arts projects and activities that preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn. As part of this important investment, the Arts Endowment has designed a plan to expedite distribution of critical funds for the national, regional, state, and local levels for projects that focus on the preservation of jobs in the arts.

This program will be carried out through one-time grants to eligible nonprofit organizations including arts organizations, local arts agencies, statewide assemblies of local arts agencies, arts service organizations, units of state or local government, and a wide range of other organizations that can help advance the goals of the Arts Endowment and this program. Grants will be made either to organizations for their own job preservation projects, or to designated local arts agencies, eligible to subgrant, for subgranting programs to eligible nonprofit organizations (see "Subgranting Funds" below).

All applicants must be previous NEA award recipients from the past four years (see "Applicant Eligibility" for more information). In addition, organizations are limited to receiving NEA American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funds through only one source - from the Arts Endowment directly, or directly through an entity eligible to subgrant NEA funds including a state arts agency, a regional arts organization of state arts agencies, or a designated local arts agency that is eligible to subgrant or regrant funds.

Projects are limited to:

Salary support, full or partial, for one or more positions that are critical to an organization's artistic mission and that are in jeopardy or have been eliminated as a result of the current economic climate.

And/or



Fees for previously engaged artists and/or contractual personnel to maintain or expand the period during which such persons would be engaged.

Update:

The National Endowment for the Arts is in the process of reviewing the applications that were received for Recovery Act funds. In early April NEA received approximately 2,400 applications requesting support for projects that focus on the preservation of jobs in the arts; those applications are currently being reviewed by panels of experts. The amount of money requested by applicants far exceeds the nearly $30 million available for grants and NEA indicates that it will be able to provide grants to only a small portion of the applicant pool. (5/26/09)