Public Impact Projects Celebrating America's 250th Anniversary

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2026 marks the 250^th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In recognition of this milestone NEH will award grants to assist cultural organizations in expanding the scope, reach, and excellence of public programs that examine the founding of the nation and the significance of the Declaration of Independence. Public Impact Projects Celebrating America’s 250^th Anniversary support projects that focus on public interpretation of the Founding Era and the lasting impact of the people and events that propelled the Revolution. Supported activities must be designed to connect audiences to the ideas of the American Revolution through the synthesis of scholarship from fields in the humanities and may include:

• Collaborating with scholars and interpretive consultants to develop new interpretive plans
• Implementing tours, exhibitions, or other public-facing interpretive programs
• Assessing the opportunities presented by your collections and other resources to tell compelling stories of the legacy of the Declaration of Independence
• Training staff and volunteers in new methods and best practices for public interpretation

NEH encourages proposals from first-time applicants and those who have not received NEH funding.

Tips for successfully submitting your application:

1. Start working on your application early and don’t wait until the deadline day to submit the final proposal!
2. If you apply to more than one NEH program, remember that each proposal must be distinct, with completely different project scopes and budgets. Multiple proposals with identical or overlapping budgets will be declared ineligible.
3. Applications will be declared ineligible if you do not observe the requirements stated in the Notice of Funding Opportunity:
   • Comply with all listed required page limits;
   • Include all required and conditionally required information and attachments;
   • Remember that projects involving federal agencies (for example, National Parks, Smithsonian Museums, Library of Congress, etc.) are ineligible if the project takes on characteristics of that federal entity’s own authorized activities.
4. After you submit your application, check your email and spam folder frequently for a series of messages from Grants.gov tracking your application through the process of validation and transmission to the NEH. At each stage in the process Grants.gov will send you either a confirmation message that your application has successfully advanced to the next step or an error, incomplete, or ineligible message. Applications will not be accepted if you do not correct the error before the deadline, so allow time to fix them. If your application is successfully submitted, you will receive a total of five messages from Grants.gov.