Website: https://www.neh.gov/program/
- Funding Opportunity Number: 20280930-CHE
- Submission Limitation per Institution: One (1)
- Notre Dame Limited Submissions Listing: https://research.nd.edu/our-
services/funding- opportunities/faculty/limited- submissions-program/ - Internal Expression of Interest Deadline: 2026-01-15
- Sponsor Application Deadline: 2026-02-10
NOTE: Please note that sponsorship of this Limited Submission call does not constitute fundraising support from the University. Applicants should plan their project budgets accordingly and should not assume institutional fundraising assistance as part of their proposal development.
Purpose: Endowments for Advancing the Humanities awards provide funds for 20-year term endowments to support long-term work in the humanities. Humanities organizations benefit from consistent funding over an extended period to maintain stability, to flourish, and to continue to offer valuable programs and preserve resources. Endowment projects will focus first on fundraising. You may propose up to three years to raise and certify non-federal gifts that will be matched one-to-one with NEH federal matching funds. Under this notice, “gifts” are defined as contributions of third-party non-federal funds or the recipient's own institutional funds. Once you have certified the required amount of non-federal gifts, you will establish a term endowment and spend its income to advance the work of the humanities at your organization.
Your proposed project must include an advisory board. The advisory board could include scholars, teachers, traditional knowledge keepers, librarians, and archivists at a variety of institutions, and the board should be involved in selecting the newspapers to be digitized. In addition to providing advice on content, the advisory board should help disseminate the project’s progress and Chronicling America more generally.
Your application should include details about the plans for endowment funds and how they would promote and sustain your organization’s humanities mission, increase its capacity, and support its humanities activities during the 20-year term. Plans for expending endowment funds should reflect careful strategic planning to strengthen and enrich an institution’s humanities activities and commitment to the preservation and advancement of knowledge and understanding of the humanities. You must also include a thorough explanation of the one- to three-year fundraising plan, and details about the fiscal health of your organization and how the endowment will be managed. Endowment-funded costs and activities may include humanities-based personnel; research; preservation of and access to collections and resources; curriculum development; symposia, lecture series, and other public programs; exhibitions; K–12 programs; and the purchase of supplies, equipment, software, and subscriptions to support this work. During the 20-year term, only the income generated by the endowment may be used for these purposes; the endowment principal must remain intact. At the conclusion of the term, recipients may choose to continue the fund, grow it, or spend down the principal, but in all cases, expenditures must remain restricted to the allowable purposes originally approved.
Required Internal Application: Upload the following information to this Google Form by the internal deadline:
- Name of the Principal Investigator (PI)
- Project Title
- Names of ND collaborators: For each ND Collaborator listed, include name, department or unit, and specific role for this project in three sentences (maximum).
- Project Summary (maximum of three (3) pages). The Project Summary should align with the Merit Review Criteria outlined on page 12 of the NOFO and address the following areas:
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- Significance to the Humanities
- Plan for Endowment Income and Likely Impact
- Fundraising Feasibility, Institutional Commitment, and Financial Health
Questions? Contact Notre Dame Research Limited Submissions at limited@nd.edu.
Unless otherwise noted, all internal applications are due by 11:59 PM Eastern Daylight Time on the internal expression of interest deadline.
Applications submitted after the deadline will not be accepted.