Your support saved us when we needed it most in 2025. Keep it coming. You can help Alabama Humanities thrive in 2026, and beyond.
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On April 2, 2025, the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency disrupted AHA’s 50-year partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities – and, with it, two-thirds of our annual budget. For more than half a century prior, AHA had used federal dollars appropriated by a bipartisan Congress to support annual grantmaking across the state. Since 1974, in fact, AHA has contributed $13 million to local communities statewide, making humanities-rich public programming available to hundreds of thousands of Alabamians.
Now, we need your help. How?
Our NEH partnership sustained AHA’s operational costs, as well as our statewide grantmaking, which supports nonprofits that put on local storytelling festivals, oral history projects, book clubs, art talks, community conversations, and more. In 2024 alone, we awarded $380,000 that helped more than 200,000 Alabamians experience local history, culture, art, and more in their hometowns.
Alabamians rely on us for these grants. When we surveyed our 2024 grant recipients, 90% of them noted their programming would not have been possible without AHA’s support. These are every community’s cultural cornerstones – libraries, museums, historical societies and historic sites, literary organizations, art centers, educational and literacy nonprofits, universities, towns, and chambers of commerce.
Unfortunately, we have had to suspend our grantmaking and our Road Scholars Speakers Bureau. We are also pausing other initiatives as we look for new funding and partners to sustain our work. Other cancellations include our 2025 Alabama Colloquium and our 2025 issue of Mosaic magazine.
UPDATE: Thanks to your support – and the support of hundreds of individuals and philanthropic organizations – AHA has been able to restore a portion of its grantmaking, with our Mini Grants once again available statewide. We have also revived our Road Scholars Speakers Bureau once again!
No. 1: DONATE TO ALABAMA HUMANITIES
Your donations can help us sustain our scheduled programming and restore suspended offerings – from our grants and teacher programming to our Road Scholars Speakers Bureau, Smithsonian traveling exhibits, and more.
Your support will also help AHA deliver a robust slate of “America at 250” programming in 2026, as we aim to help Alabamians celebrate America’s Semiquincentennial. Learn more about what your donations will fund in the year ahead!
No. 2: CONTACT YOUR REPRESENTATIVE
AHA is thankful for the support and guidance of Alabama’s Congressional delegation. It’s helpful for them to hear from you, too!
Let your Congressional member know you value what the humanities bring to our state — and specifically to your community. Have you attended an AHA-funded event? Partnered with us on a project? Seen the impact of our mission in your hometown? Those are the stories to share.
You can also write op-ed letters for your local newspapers to share about AHA’s work among your neighbors.
UPDATE: As of late summer 2025, bipartisan U.S. House and Senate Appropriations Committees proposed 2026 funding for the National Endowment for the Humanities (and the Arts) in the summer. However, that potential funding was delayed through the federal shutdown and, as 2025 ends, the FY26 federal budget still has a long road ahead of it within Congress and the Administration.
AHA has always worked tirelessly to leverage our federal funding into local giving that allows us to bring the humanities to more Alabamians. Thanks to the support of philanthropic organizations, the state of Alabama, and individual donors like you, we have programs that are funded independently of our federal partnership with the NEH. Programs such as Alabama History Day, which we celebrated this spring with students and teachers from across the state!
But we need significant and urgent assistance to keep our other programming viable — and give us time to, once again, secure sustainable, long-term funding for our organization and our grantmaking capacity.
We appreciate you. And we’ll keep you informed as we move forward, together.
Click and read the stories here to learn more about what’s on the line right now.
“Ultimately, what these cuts threaten is our ability to inspire a lifelong love of learning here in Alabama,” says Chuck Holmes, AHA’s executive director.
“When we lose that, we lose much more than funding. We lose our ability to understand each other. We miss opportunities to strengthen our communities, as well as our economy. And we fail to make Alabama an ever more vibrant place to live.”
Alabama impact of NEH cuts (4/2/25)
‘Deeply painful’: Alabama storytelling festivals, history projects at risk by DOGE cuts (al.com)
Cultural groups across U.S. told that federal humanities grants are terminated (NPR)
Culverhouse extends $250,000 donation to AHA (4/28/25)
AHA receives emergency Mellon funding (4/29/25)
AHA grants are back (5/19/25)
Our mission remains the same today as it did 50-plus years ago: We’re here to connect Alabamians. To tell stories and to listen. To share ideas and to learn. To link the past to the present. And to seek a deeper understanding of our shared humanity.
Since April 2, 2025, hundreds of Alabamians have donated to help save AHA, and keep public humanities offerings alive across our state.
Your gifts have helped us preserve programming, bring back suspended grant offerings, and given us the gift of time to seek the restoration of sustainable, year-over-year funding.
We appreciate you all.