Times Union: Local cultural organizations brace for uncertainty amid federal grant cuts

By Katherine Kiessling, Times Union Staff Writer
May 5, 2025

The letters all began similarly: “Dear IMLS Grantee” and “Dear NEH Grantee.” Over the next few paragraphs, the same story unfolded. Grants were being rescinded. Despite the impersonal nature of the emails — some sent late at night — the impact has been anything but impersonal for these cultural organizations.

As part of the downsizing of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute of Museum and Library Services — the major conduits of federal funding for cultural and historical nonprofits — the two institutions have canceled significant grants across the region (and in at least one whiplash decision, suddenly reinstated canceled funds).

Because of the uncertainty created by these actions, organizations — including the Shaker Heritage Society in Watervliet, Iroquois Museum in Howes Cave, Museum Association of New York headquartered in Troy, Historic Cherry Hill and the Underground Railroad Education Center in Albany — are forced to navigate financial uncertainty.

Grants explained

The grant terminations are the result of changes imposed by a federal executive order to reduce “ federal redundancies.” This led to the laying off 65% of the NEH’s staff and the termination of at least 1,200 grants, as reported by the Washington Post. These grants had largely been awarded to universities, historic sites, state-level regranting sites and museums.

On its website, the NEH defended the cuts as taking “several internal operational steps to improve efficiency, eliminate offices that are not essential to fulfilling its statutory requirements, and to return to being a responsible steward of taxpayer funds.”

Among the terminated NEH grants was one for preservation of Shaker Heritage Society’s Meeting House in Colonie. The $98,273 grant was for work to stabilize temperature extremes, including adding insulation, to protect the nonprofit’s collections. Shaker Heritage spent and had been reimbursed for $6,500 of that grant, said Johanna Batman, executive director. The society recently received an update that reimbursement for expenses incurred before April 2 could be submitted, but since Shaker Heritage had only secured signed contracts for the remaining $90,000 before that deadline, it is possible the organization will not see any of those funds since they weren’t technically spent.

The Museum Association of New York also lost a major grant for $493,284. This covered multiyear programming at museums statewide, some of which have already occurred, said Sarah Van Anden, executive director.

It is “unclear how much money will be saved by any of this,” Van Anden said. “Most of these are projects are far enough underway that, like many of the federal cuts that are coming down, the financial efficacy of (these cuts) is not apparent.”

Some of the NEH grants are being rerouted to help fund President Donald Trump’s proposed “National Garden of American Heroes,” a sculpture garden of notable figures, according to the New York Times.

Over at the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS), 85% of its staff were placed on administrative leave and expected to be fully terminated by Monday, May 4. However, on Friday, a district court judge in the District of Columbia filed a temporary order blocking the executive order gutting the institute. Like with NEH, grants also had been rescinded. The grants were deemed “no longer consistent with the agency’s priorities and no longer serves the interest of the United States and the IMLS Program,” per notices acquired by the Times Union.

This has affected the Underground Railroad Education Center, which received $33,000 to develop a two-year teen museums studies program; the Iroquois Museum, which was regranted funds through Greater Hudson Heritage Network to restore two pieces in its collection; Historic Cherry Hill, which yo-yoed between losing and regaining a $20,000 grant for an exhibit of local art inspired by musician, butler and influential Black community leader James Knapp; and the State Library.

Breaking down the cuts

For the nonprofits, these funding setbacks are critical blows to their work.

When it comes to infrastructure projects at Shaker Heritage over the past five years, including roof replacements and building stabilization, funding was “largely through capital project grants from state and federal funders” including a past NEH grant, Batman said.

“We don’t have the deep pockets in our donor community to be able to go to someone and ask them to just sponsor this,” Batman said. “These grants are how we get preservation work done.”

The Iroquois Museum, run by a fully part-time staff, depends on grants for its programming, said Stephanie Shultes, director. This year, programming is decreasing in response to the federal cuts, which have started to impact state regranting organizations the museum previously relied on. The museum is pivoting to workshops with a “modest fee.”

“It’s trying to come up with creative things like that, where you still get the artist here, the visitors still get to meet and talk to the person, but you’re recouping some of that money that would have originally been covered with a grant,” Schultes said.

At the Underground Railroad Education Center, the rescinded IMLS grant partly supported the salary of Lacey Wilson, who was developing the museum studies after-school program. Her hiring was a historic moment for the organization: for the first time in years, the full-time staff was more than just co-founders Mary Liz and Paul Stewart. The Stewarts are determined to keep Wilson aboard and support the education program by seeking out alternative grants and donations.

“As challenging as the current circumstances are, for those of us who are willing to dig in our heels and say, ‘We’re not going down, we’re staying here, and we’re going to keep going, and we are going to continue doing what what we set ourselves out to do,’ it has motivated us to think creatively and to be innovative in how we deal with this so that we can keep going,” Mary Liz Stewart said.

Similarly, the Museum Association of New York — as well as many of its members — is facing the possibility of layoffs because of the NEH grant it lost, Van Anden said. The board is working to avoid an immediate layoff of an employee whose salary was funded entirely through the terminated grant.

And for Historic Cherry Hill — which relies on federal, state, county and city grants for 67% of its budget — the last few weeks have felt like “whiplash,” said Deborah Emmons-Andarawis, executive director of the site. On April 8, the nonprofit received the grant termination notice, but by then, most of the work on “The World of James Knapp” had been completed ahead of its May 4 opening. The canceled IMLS grant would have meant Historic Cherry Hill would have been out about $20,000 (the grant operates through reimbursements), but on April 30, Emmons-Andarawis received a new, brief notice reinstating the grant. It is unclear if another IMLS grant for a project relating to Dinah Jackson is still alive.

“I am hoping that our existing grants are honored,” Emmons-Andarawis said. “It seems very unlikely that we will, going forward, have the same opportunities with IMLS and NEH if they are gutted as has been proposed.”

With Historic Cherry Hill’s grant being reinstated, other organizations are wondering if that’s what may await them.

Or, as Paul Stewart said, it raises the question: “Can we trust it?”

Planned uncertainty

The back-and-forth has forced nonprofits to operate “moment to moment,” Emmons-Andarawis said, but that approach is antithetical to how programming at these organizations work. Exhibits such as “The World of James Knapp” take months, if not years, of research and outreach. Historic preservation, like the work at Shaker Heritage’s Meeting House, takes careful planning. At the Underground Railroad Education Center, Wilson has been researching and developing the teen program for almost two years.

Navigating the current federal granting landscape has also amplified another ongoing struggle for nonprofits. Private donorship and philanthropy — a crucial financing arm for these organizations — is down, making it an unreliable substitution for the lost grant funds.

“As the grants landscape is shifting rapidly under our feet, it’s really important for museums and cultural organizations to continue to diversify (funding), just to build more resiliency,” Batman said.

But that kind of diversification also comes at a cost. Over at Shaker Heritage, the loss of its NEH grant has forced the historical society to reallocate a $100,000 bequest to the Meeting House preservation. The money was initially for adding restrooms to the site’s barn and transforming it into a rental facility to create another source of revenue. That project is now in jeopardy.

In response to the federal grant cuts, the Mellon Foundation announced $15 million “to specifically support local arts, local humanities councils and statewide humanities councils,” Van Anden said, which has sparked hope that other private foundations will step up. But it is likely the need will outpace the funds.

The full scope of how the federal cuts will trickle down to state grant associations is unknown, but it is already happening. Humanities New York, which regrants NEH funds and has been a major source of support for the Iroquois Museum, paused all grant opportunities “due to uncertainties relating to federal funding” on March 27.

“It’s a waiting game at the moment and trying to figure out how you plan your season in advance knowing that you may not have that extra funding,” Schultes said.

This will also impact general economies at the local levels, Van Anden said, citing the Americans for the Arts statistic that every dollar invested in the arts puts $7 back into the economy.

“The reinvestment of cultural dollars and cultural fundraising into communities is significantly more clear and cycles through the economy more than other industries,” Van Anden said. “That will decrease, particularly in small local communities, which is, frankly, who will be hurt most by these cuts.”

‘A plucky group’

The uncertainty hasn’t deterred the nonprofits’ leaders, though.

“We’re a plucky group over here,” Schultes said. “We’re used to not having money, so we’ll do what can we do and do the most with what we have and keep people coming.”

There is “a lot of intentional optimism” when looking to the future, Wilson said, and that the community needs to meet the moment by supporting the work these organizations do, be it through monetary donations, advocacy work or contacting local and state representatives.

Leaders of Historic Cherry Hill, Shaker Heritage Society and the Iroquois Museum echoed the need for community support, emphasizing the important cultural and community roles their organizations fill.

“We feel that the work we’re doing is really important, particularly our efforts to tell the whole history,” Emmons-Andarawis said. “Ultimately, we want to also be a community anchor in the South End and a place for conversations about difficult history. That’s our goal, and I feel like it’s more important than ever when the focus seems to be reverting to things like patriotism and American exceptionalism.”