Funded Projects Query Form
Frequently Asked Questions
How many grants has the NEH made since its inception, and for how much money?
Number of awards and accepted offers to date: 65,699
Approved total (outright + match) to date: $5,907,977,387.52
Awarded total (outright + match) to date: $5,614,915,170.56
(When the NEH makes awards, the approved amount is
the amount approved by the National Council on the Humanities and the NEH Chairman;
it repesents the maximum amount of the award. For many grants, all of the approved
funds are awarded, in which case the awarded amount
equals the appoved amount. In some cases, however, not all the approved funds are
awarded. In these cases the awarded amounts will be lower than the approved amounts.)
Are all of your grants included in this query form?
Yes. Information about NEH grants made in the years prior to the agency's first
electronic storage system was stored on
edge-notched "McBee" cards, and data from those cards was added to the NEH's
electronic grants management system database (eGMS) in 2015. So information about
all NEH grants, from fiscal year 1966 onward, is accessible using this form. In
most cases the available metadata for older grants is sparser than for more recent
grants.
There is a 30-day waiting period after a grant is made before it is visible to the
public via this form.
To prevent errors, no query will return more than 5000 records.
Are the results of these queries accurate?
Information about NEH grants is stored in the electronic Grants Management System
database (eGMS) used by the NEH staff. That data is updated regularly as
the NEH receives new applications and makes new offers and awards. The categories
you can use here to construct queries about funded projects are used in the day-to-day
work of the NEH, so the results are quite accurate. Any large database will contain
errors and anomalies, but we work to ensure the quality and accuracy of eGMS data.
One goal is to improve the descriptive metadata (that is, the fields on the form
that you can search, such as project director's last name, key words, field of project,
etc.) about each grant to support better searching. If you find any errors or have
any comments, please contact us. See the questions or suggestions section below.
What is the difference between grants to individuals and grants to institutions?
A small number of NEH programs award grants to individuals: the fellowships and
summer stipends programs, the Public Scholars program, and the Awards to Faculty
program. Many of the recipients of these grants are affiliated with institutions,
but the award is made to the individual. For most NEH grants, however, the recipient
is an institution, and the individuals associated with the award are affiliated
with the institution. The query form allows you to specify whether you want to see
awards to individuals, to institutions, or to either. (The latter is the default.)
How is the field of project selected?
Applicants for NEH grants select fields of project from lists of humanities-related
fields and subfields (e.g. Philosophy, British Literature, History of Science, etc.).
By including this field in your queries, you can search for projects using the humanities
fields provided by the applicants. Keep in mind that many projects fit into more
than one field; you may therefore wish to conduct more than one search, using related
project fields. In addition, over the years the names of some fields have changed.
Project fields are hierarchical: there are parent fields (e.g. history
or philosophy
or literature), and there are children that belong to those parents (as
diplomatic-
or military history belong to history; or aesthetics and metaphysics to philosophy;
or British- and German literature to literature). You can search by either child
or parent. For the former, select one of the child categories from the
Field of project list; for the latter, select 'History: All' or 'Philosophy:
All' or 'Literature: All'.
In the drop-down lists, why are some programs and divisions/offices marked with
an asterisk?
Over the years, some NEH programs and divisions/offices have been supplanted by
others. The programs and divisions/offices that are currently active are marked
with an asterisk. So if an NEH program's name has changed over the years and you
want to see all of the grants funded by that program over time, you must search
using each of those names. For example, the currently-active Humanities Collections
and Reference Resources program used to be known as Preservation/Access Projects.
If you have questions about current and former program names, please let us know.
(See the questions or suggestions section below.)
Can I save my my queries and share them with others?
Yes. Once you submit a query and get the list of funded projects matching your criteria,
you will see a link near the top of the screen to Save query.
If you click or tap there you will see a link to the results on that page.
You can copy that link for later use, or share the query with others by sending
the link to them.
In addition, you can save the results of your query as an Excel table. There is
a link to Export results to Excel above the list of
grants returned by your query. If you click or tap that link, your results will
be converted to an Excel table which you can save to your device.
Is there a way for me to do a bulk download of your grant data for research purposes?
Yes. All of our public grant- and evaluator data can be downloaded in bulk in XML
format or as comma-separated-value (CSV) files. See our
datasets page
where you can download the files and all documentation.
In addition, you can construct querystrings and send them to the query form; see
the Using the NEH Funded Project Query Web API
documentation elsewhere on this site. Those queries can be saved and shared as well.
Can I search on multiple fields at the same time?
Yes. This form allows you to search in any number of fields simultaneously. For
example, if you want to know what grants were made in the field of History of
Science by the Division of Research Programs to Wisconsin applicants in the years
from 1970 to 1990, here is how you would find that information:
- Select History and Philosophy of Science, Technology, and
Medicine from the drop-down list of project fields;
- Select Research Programs from the drop-down list of
divisions;
- Select Wisconsin from the drop-down list of states;
- Select 1970 and 1990 from
the drop-down lists of years; and
- Click or tap the Show results button.
What advice do you have for using the Key Words section of the query form?
If you select Key Words and supply some words (for
example, "Charlie Parker" or "Plato's Republic"), the software will search the project
title supplied by the grantee, as well as the grantee's project description and
the brief "to support" statement that NEH staff adds to describe a project, if they
are available.
You can use the radio buttons to tell the software to look for
any of the words that you supply (either "Plato's" OR "Republic"),
all of the words (both "Plato's" AND "Republic"), or the
exact phrase ("Plato's Republic"). The first option will obviously
yield the most matches, and the third the fewest.
Unless you select the This phrase option, the software
will ignore "noise" words like a, an, of, in,
or, and, not, and the. So if you enter "the
ancient city of Atlantis" and specify ALL of these words
or ANY of these words, you'll get the same results
as if you'd searched only for the three words "ancient," "city," and "Atlantis."
But if you choose This phrase, the software
will search for the whole string of words that you've supplied.
The ANY of these words option can be useful when a
word takes multiple forms. For example, to find grants related to Argentina, you
should also search for Argentine and
Argentinian.
If you check the Whole words only box, the software
will ignore grants where your search words appear as substrings of longer words.
If you provide Asia as one of your key words, you might
be surprised to find that your results include grants having to do with the translation
of Anastasian sermons or with ethical aspects
of euthanasia.
To exclude such unexpected results, simply check the Whole words
only box on the form. If you'd like to find grants on Plato
but not on Platonism or Neoplatonism,
check the box and enter Plato as a key word. To include
grants on Platonism, etc., leave the box unchecked.
When you do a key word search, the software looks in fields that may not be included
in the results you see. Most NEH programs expose the applicants' project descriptions;
some do not. Some programs provide short one- or two-sentence grant summaries
("to support" statements); others do not. For some programs, only the project titles
are exposed. Since key word searches limited only to project titles would omit many
relevant results, the software looks in all of the aforementioned fields, even if
they are not displayed in the results returned by your queries.
Finally, all key word searches, regardless of the options you specify, are case-insensitive.
What advice do you have for using the Date Range section of the query form?
If you specify a Date Range, the years are inclusive:
the software will look for grants that were made beginning at the start of the Date range beginning year and ending at the conclusion
of the Date range ending year. So, to see only one
year's worth of grants, make both years the same. (For example, to search only for
grants made in 2017, you should select 2017 from both the Date
range beginning and Date range ending drop-down
lists.) To find grants made in more than one year, make sure that the ending year,
specified in the Date range ending field, is later
than the beginning year, specified in the Date range beginning
column -- if the ending year is earlier than the beginning year, you won't get any
matches. Also, bear in mind that the years in this form correspond to federal fiscal
years (which begin on October 1 and end on September 30), not to calendar years.
For that reason, a grant made in December 2010 will show up on the form as a 2011
grant, not as a 2010 grant.
Note also that the year in which a grant was made is reflected in its grant number.
The last two digits refer to the fiscal year in which the award was made. So, for
example, grant number CH-20976-98 was made during fiscal year 1998.
Note: If you provide no search criteria besides Date range beginning
and
Date range ending, the form will not accept ranges
of more than six years. This is to prevent timeout errors. If you provide other
criteria, the form allows for longer date ranges.
In the grid displaying the results of my query, what is the difference between
"approved" amounts and "awarded" amounts?
When a grant is made, an amount is specified, the approved amount.
This is the maximum amount of the grant, and it usually does not change during the
life of the grant. The awarded amount represents the
amount actually awarded to date, which often does change during the life of the
grant, e.g. if the grant is funded over multiple years. In most cases when a grant
is finished or closed out, the awarded amount equals the approved amount; but in
some cases the awarded amount is less than the approved amount.
What's the purpose of those options to search for grants with products, coverage,
prizes, and white papers?
Several years ago the NEH began gathering data from grantees about "products" resulting
from their grants -- books, articles, films, exhibitions, courses, conferences,
blog posts, etc. In addition, we ask grantees to provide information about
"coverage" their grants may receive -- media coverage, book- and article reviews,
etc. -- and prizes their products may win. Any grants for which we have information
about products, coverage, or prizes will include links to that information. And
when you do key word searches, the software will look for your key words in product,
coverage, and prize data as well as the other fields mentioned in the answer to
the previous question.
The various checkboxes enable you to limit your queries to grants with products,
coverage, or prizes. For example, if you leave the Products
box unchecked, the results will include all grants that satisfy your criteria, whether
or not they have products; if you check the box, the results returned will include
only grants having products associated with them. Likewise for the other options.
If you would like to see lists of products or coverage, try the Browse NEH Grant Products and Coverage form on this site.
Select a product- or coverage type from one of the lists and the form will return
details about items of that type.
Several grant programs in the Division of Preservation and Access and the Office
of Digital Humanities require grantees to submit "white papers" describing technical
issues encountered and solutions developed during the course of their grants. These
white papers are solicited with the understanding that they will be made available
to the public. As with products, coverage, and prizes, you can limit your search
to only grants for which we have white papers. White papers (most often PDF files)
can be viewed via links in the search results.
What other advice do you have for understanding the results of a query?
Records matching your criteria will appear in a table listing the grantee, the project
title, the application number and year, and other details. If there are no matches,
you will receive a message to that effect.
You can determine the way in which your results are sorted by selecting one of the
options from the Sort results by... drop-down list.
The default option sorts the results chronologically, with the most recent grants
listed first.
You will receive an error message if you do not supply any search criteria. You
must either provide some text in one of the textboxes or make a selection from one
of the drop-down lists.
What if I have questions or suggestions?
We welcome your feedback. If you spot errors in the software or in the data returned,
or if you simply have questions or comments, please contact the NEH Chief Information
Officer at cio@neh.gov.
If you are working on a report examining NEH grants and would like assistance in
compiling data, please contact the NEH Office of Planning and Budget at
opb@neh.gov.