National Endowment for the Humanities federal obligations

Why 1,440 awards matter more than the round million figure

Many independent agencies in this size band show a few hundred awards. NEH shows 1,440. That volume is what you expect when an agency’s core product is competitive grants to museums, libraries, colleges, scholars, and state humanities councils rather than a handful of operations contracts. $383,304,565.26 divided by 1,440 is about $266,184 per award—well below the seven-figure means of some peer commissions, and still an average, not a typical grant size.

The USAspending table does not grade the humanities. It does not say whether a documentary, a digital archive, or a teacher institute was funded. It says an award exists, with an obligation amount, tagged to CGAC 418. Cultural value is outside this file. Award geography and award dollars are inside it.

What $383.3 million does and does not include

The $383,304,565.26 is an awarding-agency obligation stock through FY2026. It includes instruments NEH awarded that remain in the USAspending warehouse. It excludes staff salaries that never become awards. It excludes matching funds that grantees raise from private donors; those dollars are not federal obligations. A university that reports a $50,000 NEH grant plus $50,000 of its own match will show only the federal side here, and only if that federal side is in the extract.

Obligations are legal commitments. Outlays can trail as grantees draw down over a multi-year period of performance. This packet has no outlay total, so this page does not claim that $383.3 million has already been paid. De-obligations on unused grant balances would lower a future extract without any public “cut” headline in this dataset.

FY2026 as a warehouse vintage

Fiscal year 2026 is the latest year on the packet. NEH grant cycles often span more than one fiscal year. A challenge grant obligated in an earlier year can still sit in the $383,304,565.26 if the award remains open in USAspending. Readers comparing this total to a single NEH appropriations table for FY2026 are comparing different objects: a cumulative award ledger versus an annual funding law.

Modifications in FY2026—supplements, reductions, closeouts—move the running total. SpendingVault does not forecast the next closeout wave. Refresh the agency page for the current extract rather than treating this prose as a frozen appropriation.

CGAC 418 versus other cultural agencies

NEH’s awarding-agency code is 418. The National Endowment for the Arts uses a different CGAC and is totaled separately; combining the two by hand would mix distinct award books. SpendingVault keeps /agencies/418/ on NEH only. If a Smithsonian unit or a Library of Congress office awarded related work, those rows would not be in the 1,440.

State humanities maps from federal award data

The state table for agency 418 is one of the more useful geographic views in this size class because 1,440 awards are numerous enough to populate many jurisdictions. A large share in one state can reflect a major university system, a state humanities council, or a cluster of museums—USAspending location fields do not spell out which. Open individual awards for recipient names.

Use the NEH agency page for the live $383,304,565.26 and 1,440-award filters. Use the all-agencies directory only as a finding aid. Rank by dollars will put grant-making endowments beside procurement-heavy regulators; that ranking is arithmetic, not a statement about which mission is larger in American life.

Challenge grants, closeouts, and the 1,440-row warehouse

NEH instruments can run for several years. A challenge grant obligated before FY2026 can still sit inside the $383,304,565.26 if USAspending still carries the award as open. Closeouts in FY2026 can remove unused balances. The 1,440-award count can therefore rise or fall without any change in the humanities calendar. Treat the count as a warehouse inventory, not as the number of projects started this year.

State humanities councils often appear as recipients on federal awards and then regrant locally. The state table for agency 418 will show the council’s state, not every downstream library or museum. That pass-through pattern is why a single state’s share can look large. Open award-level records for recipient names; this roll-up does not list them. Matching funds those councils raise stay off the $383.3 million federal total.

Researchers comparing this endowment to other cultural awarding agencies should keep the books separate. CGAC 418 is this endowment only. Combining codes by hand invents an agency USAspending does not publish. Use the NEH agency page for the live $383,304,565.26 and 1,440-award filters, then the state subdirectory for geography. The all-agencies index is a finding aid, not a ranking of American cultural life.

Questions

How much has NEH obligated on USAspending?

The National Endowment for the Humanities shows $383,304,565.26 in obligations through FY2026 across 1,440 awards. Awarding-agency CGAC 418 is the filter. The total is federal obligations, not private matching funds and not an outlay sum. USAspending.gov records this as awarding-agency obligations through FY2026, not cash outlays. The live table for CGAC 418 is the source for the current 1440-award book.

Why does NEH have 1,440 awards?

The extract counts 1,440 instruments for CGAC 418. That volume fits a competitive grant program better than a small operations-contract shop. Average obligation is about $266,184. The packet does not publish how many awards are grants versus contracts. That figure uses only the packet totals. The extract has no median and no contract-versus-assistance split. FY2026 is the warehouse cutoff, not a single-year appropriation.

What does agency code 418 mean?

418 is the USAspending awarding-agency CGAC identifier for the National Endowment for the Humanities. SpendingVault’s /agencies/418/ path uses that code. It is not an Arts Endowment code and not a Smithsonian identifier. 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 NEH grants by state?

Yes. The state breakdown for agency 418 attributes the 1,440 awards using USAspending geography fields. Place of performance and recipient location can differ. The table reports the source file, not a hand-coded map of every humanities council. 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.