National Endowment for the Arts federal obligations

2,853 awards on $239.8 million

Few independent commissions post 2,853 awards on a total of this size. NEA’s $239,764,678.57 divided by 2,853 is about $84,039 per award. That low mean is what a high-volume arts-grant program looks like in USAspending: many discrete awards to organizations, state arts agencies, and related recipients rather than a few campus-scale contracts. The Humanities Endowment is a sibling institution with a different CGAC and a separate award book.

The table does not review the art. It does not say whether a grant supported a symphony, a literary magazine, or an after-school program. It says an award exists, tagged to CGAC 417, with an obligation amount. Aesthetic judgment is outside this file. Award counts and award dollars are inside it.

What the obligation stock leaves out

The $239,764,678.57 is federal obligations NEA awarded through the FY2026 cutoff. Grantee matching funds, ticket revenue, and private philanthropy that never become federal awards are absent. A theater that lists a $20,000 NEA grant and $80,000 of local support will show only the federal side here, and only if that federal side is in the extract.

Outlays can trail as organizations draw down over a period of performance. This packet has no outlay total. De-obligations on unused balances would lower a later extract. Staff salaries at the Endowment generally never appear among the 2,853 awards.

FY2026 as extract vintage, not a single grant year

Fiscal year 2026 is the latest year on the packet. NEA grant years and USAspending fiscal years are not always the same slice. Awards obligated in earlier years can remain in the $239.8 million if they are still open in the warehouse. Comparing this cumulative total to one year’s NEA appropriation compares a stock to a flow.

Because 2,853 is a large count, the state table is densely populated relative to micro-agencies with a handful of awards. That density is useful for geography and useless as a quality ranking of state arts scenes.

CGAC 417 is not CGAC 418

The Arts Endowment’s awarding-agency code is 417. The Humanities Endowment uses 418. SpendingVault does not merge them. /agencies/417/ is NEA only. A Smithsonian unit or a Kennedy Center award uses still other codes. Combining cultural CGACs by hand invents an agency USAspending does not publish.

Reading the NEA agency and state pages

Start on the National Endowment for the Arts agency page for the live $239,764,678.57 and 2,853-award filters. The state subdirectory shows where USAspending placed those awards. A large state share can reflect a state arts agency pass-through, a cluster of organizations, or a national recipient that listed that state—the location fields do not explain which.

The all-agencies index lists CGAC 417 beside procurement-heavy commissions. Dollar rank will understate NEA relative to agencies with fewer, larger contracts; award-count rank will overstate it. Both ranks are arithmetic on this extract, not a verdict on the arts.

State arts agencies, regrants, and the 2,853-row geography

Many NEA dollars reach local organizations through state arts agencies. The state table for agency 417 will often show the state agency’s location, not every dance company or literary magazine downstream. That is why 2,853 awards can still produce lumpy state shares. Open award-level records for recipient names. This roll-up does not list them, and the packet has no recipient field.

Partnership agreements and direct grants can both sit inside the $239,764,678.57. The packet does not split them. A reader who wants only direct grants to organizations must filter the award-level file. Treating every one of the 2,853 rows as a single theater grant will overstate how many end recipients USAspending is showing.

Closeouts of unused grant balances can lower a later extract without any public cut in the arts calendar. FY2026 is the vintage of this stock, not the year every project started. Use the NEA agency page for the live $239.8 million and 2,853-award filters. Keep CGAC 417 unmerged with other cultural awarding agencies. Outlays remain unpublished in the packet.

Discipline breakouts—music, theater, literature, visual arts—are NEA program categories. They are not columns in this packet. The 2,853 awards and $239,764,678.57 are unsplit. A reader who wants only literature fellowships must filter the award-level file, if the field exists there. This prose will not invent a discipline table. FY2026 is the cutoff. Use the NEA agency page for live CGAC 417 totals and the state subdirectory for geography.

Questions

How much has the National Endowment for the Arts obligated?

USAspending.gov shows $239,764,678.57 in NEA obligations through FY2026 across 2,853 awards. Awarding-agency CGAC 417 is the filter. The total excludes most matching funds and does not include an outlay sum. USAspending.gov records this as awarding-agency obligations through FY2026, not cash outlays. The live table for CGAC 417 is the source for the current 2853-award book.

Why does NEA have 2,853 awards?

The extract counts 2,853 instruments for CGAC 417. Dividing $239.8 million by that count yields about $84,039 per award. High volume and a modest mean fit a competitive grant program. The packet does not classify each award as a grant versus a contract.

What is agency code 417?

417 is the USAspending awarding-agency CGAC identifier for the National Endowment for the Arts. SpendingVault’s /agencies/417/ path uses that code. The Humanities Endowment is 418 and is totaled separately. SpendingVault URLs under the agency path filter to that CGAC identifier. It is an accounting tag, not a quality score. Totals on this page are obligations through FY2026.

Can I see NEA grants by state?

The state table for agency 417 attributes the 2,853 awards using USAspending geography fields. Recipient location and place of performance can differ. Open individual awards for organization names; this roll-up does not list them. Outlays are unpublished in this packet, so this page does not estimate cash already paid. Refresh the agency page after USAspending updates rather than treating the current stock as frozen.