photo by: Shawn Valverde

The bookmobile is parked outside the Lawrence Public Library on Friday, July 26, 2024, ahead of the library's celebration of the 10th anniversary of its building.

A statewide nonprofit that brings authors, speakers, historians and others to both large and small communities across the state is now operating on a week-to-week basis after being impacted by federal funding cuts ordered by the U.S. Department of Government Efficiency.

The future existence of Humanities Kansas is at risk after the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, demanded deep cuts to staff and programs at the National Endowment for the Humanities, a leader with the statewide group told the Journal-World.

Humanities Kansas offers programs to small nonprofits, museums, libraries, and senior centers. These events, such as book discussions, speaker presentations, oral history projects, and exhibitions, aim to spark conversation and enrich Kansas communities. Over the past 30 years, Lawrence has hosted more than 8,000 events, according to Tracy Quillin, Associate Director of Humanities Kansas.

How much longer that will be the case is unclear.

“Our strategy is to be operational as long as we can,” Quillin said. “But you know, without that National Endowment for the Humanities funding, it’s just not sustainable.”

The National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH, is the only federal agency in the United States dedicated to funding the humanities, and it is the most significant contributor of funding to Humanities Kansas. According to the state nonprofit’s annual report for fiscal year 2023, it received about 84% of its income from NEH. Humanities Kansas had about $1.3 million in funding that year, with about $1.1 million coming from NEH.

Quillin said that, so far, it is business as usual and staff are working in the office everyday. However, cuts have been noticeable in the For All Grants program – which support projects that draw on history, literature, and culture to engage the public with stories that spark conversations – and the TALK Book Discussions program, encouraging Kansans to have conversations over good books.

On the Humanities Kansas website, listings for both of these resources state they have been suspended until further notice. A program that has continued despite the cuts has been the Speakers Bureau program, offering free presentations for Kansas nonprofits as funding will allow.

“We’re really looking on a week-to-week basis of what funding we have and what we can sustain,” Quillin said. “It’s an ever-changing situation as we move forward and not knowing what’s happening and if the funding situation will change . . . Until we have better answers from the federal government, we have to work with what we have in reserve to keep going.”

Quillin said a ceremony celebrating an oral history project with Vietnam War veterans was originally scheduled at the Dole Institute of Politics in Lawrence on May 9, but with the funding cuts, the event had to be cancelled. The project interviewed many veterans to preserve the stories from this time period.

“This (event) would be where we would gather all of the veterans who shared their stories and their families together, and they would symbolically hand over their stories to the Library of Congress,” Quillin said. “The Library of Congress representative was going to be in town to receive those. It’s a very moving ceremony.”

Brad Allen is the director at the Lawrence Public Library and is board chair for Humanities Kansas. Allen said it’s disheartening to see an attempt to defund these types of programs that enrich people’s lives in Kansas.

Allen said the cuts won’t impact the Lawrence Public Library as much, but smaller libraries that rely more on this funding will be hit harder, and these are found in rural communities. Humanities Kansas provides programming in state communities of all sizes, but with a majority – 62% – happening in communities of 20,000 people or less, a press release said.

“The impact you would see it in (is) a place like Baldwin City or Eudora, places that just don’t have the same staffing capacity that we do here at Lawrence Public Library,” Allen said.

But Humanities Kansas has still partnered with the Lawrence library for numerous events, like inviting Joy Harjo, a poet and musician, to Lawrence in 2022. Allen added that Humanities Kansas has always been a tremendous partner, and it inspired him to join the board.

“I really joined Humanities Kansas because I wanted to figure out ways that I could be involved in understanding and helping amplify the public humanities beyond just Lawrence and into the state,” Allen said.