Tens of thousands of dollars revoked in Lancaster County as Trump dismantles humanities agency

• By Sarah Nicell/LNP | LancasterOnline

The Trump administration, through the Department of Government Efficiency, sent notices last week terminating grants that fund cultural projects overseen by nonprofits, museums, libraries and colleges nationwide.

Two of those notices went to institutions in Lancaster County.

LancasterHistory, which operates a museum and manages the former home of President James Buchanan, could lose 10% of a half-million-dollar grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

LancasterHistory President Robin Sarratt shared the notice the organization received, which said, in part: “NEH has reasonable cause to terminate your grant in light of the fact that the NEH is repurposing its funding allocations in a new direction in furtherance of the President’s agenda.”

Most of LancasterHistory’s $500,000 grant was set to fund the construction of exhibition spaces at the new Thaddeus Stevens & Lydia Hamilton Smith museum in downtown Lancaster. The rest of the money, $100,000, was to pay for a new education staff person.

LancasterHistory received most ($450,000) of the grant funds last year. And because the organization requested the final $50,000 owed before the DOGE-imposed cuts were made, Sarratt said she hopes the museum will still get the remaining dollars.

Without the final 10%, the nonprofit may have to reevaluate how it will fund the education staff position, Sarratt said.

What the grants do

In describing the importance of NEH funds, Sarratt said past grants made it possible for LancasterHistory to “offer thousands of tours, hundreds of school programs and countless continuing education opportunities.” Planning for the new Stevens-Hamilton Smith museum was itself funded with NEH support, she noted.

NEH awarded 738 grants totaling $100 million across the nation last year, according to the American Alliance of Museums. NEH received $207 million from the federal government last fiscal year, amounting to just .003% of total federal spending.

Many of those grants go to nonprofit humanities councils in every U.S. state and territory that receive and distribute NEH grant funding.

PA Humanities, Pennsylvania’s council, finances educational programs and research throughout the state.

Between 2020 and 2021, PA Humanities gave $82,000 to 11 Lancaster County museums, libraries and educational groups that needed support during the COVID-19 pandemic, including the Ephrata Public Library and the Lancaster Mennonite Historical Society (now called Mennonite Life).

It is unclear whether county institutions can count on them for new grants and programs in the future. That’s because PA Humanities lost 66% of its annual NEH funding — $1.2 million — with the recent cuts, according to spokesperson Jared Valdez.

PA Humanities had begun talks to bring the Rain Poetry program — hands-on poetry lessons for elementary school students — to Lancaster city. Those plans are now on hold, Valdez said.

And the nonprofit’s new Humanities in Action grant program, which supports cultural nonprofits throughout the state, would have accepted applications from Lancaster County this fall. The grant is now paused.

The same fate applies to support the council planned to offer local libraries looking to commemorate the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence next year.

Serving county colleges

Elizabethtown College has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from NEH since 1971 to support exhibitions, book publications and staffing needs. Franklin & Marshall College has received even more NEH money: more than $2 million, not including funds the college had to match, since 1969.

Last year, Elizabethtown College received a $10,000 NEH grant to help preserve its rare book collection. The grant isn’t scheduled to end until February 2026.

College spokesperson Brad Weltmer declined to share information about the status of that grant or whether the college received a termination notice.

F&M’s most recent grant, $60,000, went to religious studies professor John Modern. The funds supported his book project, which he said will become a 600-page manuscript and serve as the basis for a new class. The NEH funded another book he authored 15 years ago.

The grant ends on the last day of April, in three weeks. Even though he already spent all the money, Modern said he received a notice, too.

“My research fund was depleted months ago,” he said in an email. “My sense is that it was a blanket termination form letter. Mine is the same as all the others I have seen posted on social media.”

Gaps in federal funding

For one local museum, NEH programming changes forced it to get creative long before DOGE existed.

Andrea Rush, CEO of North Museum of Nature and Science in Lancaster, said she has recently sat through daily meetings about new funding cuts affecting local museums.

But several years ago, Rush already made changes to museum operations based on the end of one NEH program – the “NEH on the Road” initiative. This program allowed North Museum to host three traveling exhibits about Anne Frank and Ruby Bridges, World War II and Coney Island.  They brought in more than 35,000 visitors annually to the museum, according to Rush.

North Museum can’t afford exhibitions like them on their own, as the exhibits cost $30,000 to $50,000 each.

Since then, North Museum has pivoted from NEH’s traveling displays to their own full-scale exhibits.

The museum spends $7,500 to $20,000 before labor costs to curate them, ranging from educational exhibitions on dinosaurs to marine life.

“Our goal is to help meet the industry need for exhibitions for small and mid-sized museums, due to the gap in federal funding, by making these exhibitions available to other museums,” Rush said in an email. “In terms of NEH funding and its impact on the scientific community — it is vast.”