Illinois Humanities cares that public events are as inclusive as possible. Because of this, grant applicants may check the box in the application to request up to an additional $150 to fund accessibility services (e.g., American Sign Language translation or Communication Access Realtime Translation, etc), as well as other resources such as transportation to and from events for those with limited mobility. In five years since this additional stipend was added, 46% of projects that were funded have taken advantage of this resource, and we hope you’ll consider the same for your audiences. We recently added an additional optional stipend of $100 for documentation of projects (say hiring a photographer to cover a key event, etc).

Here are some basics about this new opportunity:

• Timing: The first grants cycle to feature these grants is the September 15, 2022 at 5:00 p.m. deadline. The grants decision-making process should take approximately 8 weeks. Apply here.
• Amount: $10,000
• Eligibility: These grants are for humanities organizations that are tax-exempt organizations (including nonprofits that have 501c3 status as well as those that do not) with budgets of $250,000 per year or less. Below is a list of the eight categories of humanities organization, though this list is not exhaustive. If you’d like to make the case that your organization should be eligible, though it does not fit into one of these categories, please reach out.
• Eligibility for current grantees: Organizations can receive just one Community Grant at a time. If your organization currently has a Community Grant (including Action, Vision, or General Operating), please wait to apply until you have closed that grant by completing activity and submitting a final report. However, if you have an “open” (i.e., active) Activate History, ARP Emergency Relief, or Envisioning Justice grant, you are eligible to apply.
• Decision-making: Grants decisions will be made based on whether organizations have a mission involving the humanities, organizational size, geographical balance, and whether an organization represents a historically disinvested or economically under-resourced community, such as rural or BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color) communities.

• To see a PDF version of this application, click here (You must apply online here.)
• There will be no use of fiscal agents; grants will go directly to the applying organization
• Individuals and for-profit businesses are not eligible for this funding

This Gen Ops (unrestricted) grant is specifically focused on tax-exempt humanities organizations that have budgets of $250,000 or less. These categories have been adapted from the Humanities Indicators project led by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Information on the Humanities Indicators project can be found at amacad.org.

Cultural and Ethnic Organization: This category includes organizations dedicated to the study, preservation, and/or dissemination of the history and culture of ethnic groups.

Examples of past grantees in this category include: American Indian Center, Haitian American Museum, African American Museum of Southern Illinois, Ukrainian National Museum, etc.

History Organizations: This category includes historical societies (and their support organizations), historical preservation groups (and their support organizations), historic houses, folklore/folklife organizations, place-based learning organizations, cultural sustainability organizations, and other organizations with a historical focus.

Examples of past grantees in this category include: Bronzeville Historical Society, Bishop

Humanities Education: Organizations that offer classes, seminar, and workshops in the humanities (which include but are not limited to literature, languages, history, philosophy, religious studies, art history, and interdisciplinary humanities programs – like ethnic studies, gender and sexuality studies, and American studies).

Examples of past grantees in this category include: Prison + Neighborhood Arts Project, Chicago Freedom School, Chicago Humanities Festival, etc.

Humanities Museums: This category includes organizations that acquire, preserve, research, exhibit, and provide for the educational use of works of art or objects/artifacts that are related to the study of humanities content.

Examples of past grantees in this category include: Katherine Dunham Centers for Arts and Humanities, Ray Bradbury Experience Museum, American Writers Museum, Atlanta Public Library and Museum, Alton Museum of History and Art, etc.

Libraries and Archives: These organizations include operating libraries and archives (excluding those that are purely science- and medicine-focused). Combination museum- libraries can be treated as museums or libraries.

Examples of past grantees in this category include: Lithuanian Archives Project, Rebuild Foundation, Read/Write Library, Chillicothe Public Library, etc.

Literature Organizations: This category includes organizations that promote the study or appreciation of books and/or literature and the promotion of literacy.

Examples of past grantees in this category include: Guild Literary Complex, 826CHI, Chicago Books to Women in Prison, Metro East Literacy Project, etc.

Media, Journalism, and Documentary Organizations: Organizations that are committed to covering humanities themes and/or telling the stories, happenings, and histories of communities that are informed by the members of those communities, challenge predominant narratives, and/or nurture critical analysis of media.

Examples of past grantees in this category include: 60 Inches from Center, South Side Weekly, Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center, Kartemquin Educational Films, etc.

Consortiums, alliances, collectives of above-named groups.

Examples of past grantees in this category include: Chicago Cultural Alliance, Landmarks Illinois, Illinois Association of Museums, etc.

Recurring Deadlines*: 5PM CST on September 15th 

*When deadlines fall on a weekend or holiday, the deadline will take place on the following business day.

Click here to apply.

We believe that planning plays a critical role in smaller groups’ ability to successfully carry out humanities initiatives. Especially for groups that wish to delve into more interactive public humanities programming or target new audiences, planning grants can help develop a series, explore collaborations, or look into harnessing digital technology or other tools. We believe that better planning leads to stronger programming, and that stronger programmatic initiatives can lead to stronger organizational vitality. Vision grants can also be used for succession planning.

Working with consultants to conduct research, provide training, and help develop evaluation tools is entirely acceptable. Projects can include convening scholars, bringing together or surveying audience members, traveling around the state to research an initiative, and other activities that will help groups conduct planning.

In addition, Vision grants can be used for groups to go through workshops and trainings meant to help them become more effective as anti-racist organizations, as well as more intentional in holistically addressing gender, class, sexuality, disability/ability and other issues.

Through this grant, we hope to learn more along with our grantees about the following questions:

• What is the role of planning in delivering high-quality humanities programming?
• What does this planning actually look like?
• Does effective planning help smaller humanities groups increase their sustainability?
• How can humanities, arts, and cultural organizations become more effective as anti-racist and intentionally more equitable actors in their communities?

Several examples of Vision grants include the following:

• Chicago Books to Women in Prison is an all-volunteer nonprofit dedicated to offering women behind bars the opportunities for self-empowerment, education, and entertainment that reading provides. Each woman who writes CBWP receives three books, a handwritten note, and an order form for her next request. CBWP wanted to host focus groups in order to better understand the reading interests of incarcerated women as well as to explore better delivery systems. As a result of their 2016 Vision grant, CBWP was able to talk with 80 women and to set up a more efficient delivery system and increase its capacity to deliver non-English language books. In the 9 months following their focus groups, it was profiled in pieces in DNAinfo, ABC7, WBEZ and Booklist, and filled 273 orders, delivering 819 books to women in Cook County Jail. The personal notes mean a lot to the women, CBWP said, “They feel forgotten by the outside world.”
• Read/Write Library is a volunteer-based group whose mission is to preserve, provide access to, and make visible the stories of everyone from the Chicago area. It wanted to develop a framework for evaluating its Neighborhood Pop Up Library Program that would not interfere with participants’ experiences of the program and would in fact supplement participants in some way. As a result of their 2016 Vision grant, Read/Write created tools to be potentially used at all Pop-Up Libraries, including an exercise designed to measure mindset around who controls community narratives, an observation rubric that can be used to track conversational indicators during workshops, a survey for educators and facilitators at their workshops, and a logic model to ensure future Pop Up Library partnerships are working with similar variables.
• Click here to see a successful “Vision” Letter of Intent (LOI) and Full Proposal (FP)

In 2020, 1 out of 5 applications (Letters of Intent) for Vision grant support were funded. Of the applications that went to the Full Proposal stage, 60% received funding.

Recurring Deadlines*: 5PM CST on January 15th and May 15th 

*When deadlines fall on a weekend or holiday, the deadline will take place on the following business day.

Click here to apply.

Action Grants cover projects or initiatives that explore the digital humanities, apply new techniques in audience engagement, and build new and diverse audiences. Our hope is that these grants will help spark more risk-taking and experimental and engaging public humanities work on the part of Illinois nonprofits. Project budgets can cover project expenses as well as engagement activities. Projects must utilize the humanities. Media projects such as oral history, filmmaking, journalism, story telling, and other disciplines are all a part of this field.

Through this grants area, we hope to learn more about the following questions along with grantees:

• What are models for building creative interactivity and growing audiences?
• Can creative programming help to grow audiences?
• How can this experimentation bolster organizations’ long-term viability?

Several examples of Action grants include the following:

• The Oak Park Arts League (OPAL) was founded in 1921 with the goal of promoting arts appreciation. It received an Action grant in 2016 to support its Art for Social Change initiative, a collaborative project with Sarah’s Inn and Threshold to support the emotional recovery of their clients and raise awareness of the healing power of the arts and humanities. To increase outreach for the series, OPAL co-hosted an open house with the Chicago Architecture Foundation, had ads in Chicago Gallery News, and produced 500 postcards for the series. As a result of its grant, OPAL experienced exceptional foot traffic and had 58 artists submit 140 works for the project, 2/3 of them artists outside of OPAL’s membership base.
• The Freeport Public Library has run a One Book, One Freeport event every year since 2010, bringing the larger Freeport community together around a single text. It received an Action grant for One Book 2017, which was developed around Shelton Johnson’s novel Gloryland. FPL was able to hold a successful One Book initiative, which included partnering with a local camera club to put up an exhibit on national parks and to engage with all ages – from story time in the library through programs at a Senior Resource Center.
• Click here to see a successful “Action” Letter of Intent (LOI) and Full Proposal (FP)

In 2020, 38% of applications (Letters of Intent) for Action grant support were ultimately funded. Of the Action grant requests that went to the Full Proposal stage, 57% received funding.

Recurring Deadlines*: 5PM CST on January 15th and May 15th 

*When deadlines fall on a weekend or holiday, the deadline will take place on the following business day.

Click here to apply.

The recurring deadlines for Community Grants are January 15, May 15 and September 15 at 5:00 p.m. Central. Note that when the 15th of the month falls on a weekend or holiday, the deadline will be the following business day.

We make ourselves available to review grant applications or a list of project ideas before proposals are submitted. We request that you send in drafts or a menu of ideas at least a full month before the deadline. Do so by emailing Mark Hallett at mark.hallett@ilhumanities.org.

For Vision and Action grants, apply by submitting a Letter of Intent by the deadline listed.

To apply for an Illinois Humanities Community General Operating grant, fill out a grant application on behalf of your organization by the deadline listed.

Timeline

Letters of intent are reviewed shortly after the deadline and selected applicants will be contacted to request a full proposal. If your organization is asked for a full proposal, you will have three weeks to submit. The entire grant review process typically takes 10 weeks from the deadline until groups are notified about funding. For example, applicants to the January 15th deadline would be notified in early April. Because of this, we ask that the timeline for activities seeking funding not begin until 12 weeks after the initial LOI deadline. We ask that groups submit just one grant application per cycle.

Evaluation and documentation are important to us, and we are eager to see how grant applicants define success and plan to measure progress toward it. We ask grant applicants to describe in precise terms the desired outcome of a project, how they will know if it was successful. We ask grantees to submit a Final Report within 30 days of the conclusion of a project or grant period.

We ask all Grant recipients to document their initiatives or events by taking photos, recording audio or video, and writing a brief blog post on how the project went. We want to share with others the great work that grantees are doing, and frequently feature stories of grantee partners on our blog.

Why does Illinois Humanities have a grant-making program?

Illinois Humanities has been making grants since its inception in 1973. In the past 46 years, Illinois Humanities has made nearly 2,800 grants for a total of more than $17 million. We are proud to have helped support dozens of documentary films, conferences, exhibits, training programs, oral history projects, and scores of other activities. We are firm believers in the many organizations and individuals throughout the state of Illinois that value the humanities, culture, and dialogue as community-building activities, and wish to help them to fulfill their missions, carry out high-quality programming, and grow their organizations. We are indebted to the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Illinois General Assembly for the support that allows this grantmaking program to exist.

What is your definition of the humanities?

The humanities are the examination of what it means to be human through the interpretation and discussion of all forms of thought, interest and expression.

We value traditional humanities disciplines, such as art history, literature, history, and philosophy. However, our emphasis on the public humanities means that we look at the humanities as more than an academic discipline. For us, the public humanities are a mode of inquiry and conversation that aims to engage, support, or challenge the ideals, beliefs, tensions, and prejudices of the communities in which we live. We believe that important thought can happen outside of the academy – in neighborhood institutions, schools, churches, and at kitchen tables across the country.

We are especially interested in instances of the public humanities that promote civic engagement – in raising critical issues facing everyday people and conducted with the hope of increasing their thirst for staying engaged. Rather than being defined by rigid disciplinary boundaries, it is the humanistic lens, which emphasizes curiosity, questioning, and dialogue, that matters.

Does your organization have a working definition of the public humanities? Share it with us – we’re eager to explore how others are addressing this complex question.

With are some of the things that Illinois Humanities does not fund?

Illinois Humanities supports public humanities programs, initiatives, and organizations. We do not fund:

• Activities that promote a specific political position or ideology
• Alcoholic beverages
• Businesses, for-profits
• Capital projects (i.e., renovation or purchase of buildings or land)
• Endowment contributions
• Foreign travel
• Lobbying
• Major equipment purchases (though equipment to assist a specific program is admissible)
• Out-of-state programs that have no specific relevance or thematic connection people in Illinois (though technically a grant recipient or fiscal agent can be located elsewhere in the U.S.)
• Programming that falls outside of the humanities
• Social services (though a social services agency may apply for funding of a humanities project)

Can an organization have more than one active grant with Illinois Humanities at a time?

In general, Illinois Humanities will have one open Community Grant (Vision, Action, or Gen Ops) with any single entity at a given time. However, if your organization acts as fiscal agent for another, you can still receive funding for a project grant that is funded by Illinois Humanities. Also, note that a single group can have a Community Grant (Vision, Action, or Gen Ops) and still receive an Activate History microgrant or Envisioning Justice support.

Who can apply?

Nonprofit organizations can apply for Illinois Humanities grants. This includes 501(c)3 organizations and nonprofits under state law, as well as libraries, schools, faith-based organizations and universities. We do not accept grant applications from individuals or for-profit companies. If you are unsure about whether you can apply, reach out to us.

What other resources do grantees qualify for?

Grantee partners of the Community Grants program can participate in facilitation training opportunities. Provided by the Chicago-based Covey Group, there were 8 facilitation training sessions in 2019-2020, and 4 facilitation clinics (refreshers for alums). Over this two-year period, 54 participants representing 40 distinct grantee organizations attended trainings, and 11 participants from 6 distinct grantee organizations attended clinics.