Wyoming Humanities hit with DOGE funding freeze

The six-person staff of Wyoming Humanities got word early this week that President Donald Trump and Elon Musk’s DOGE was examining the National Endowment for the Humanities — the 60-year-old federal organization that funds a network of humanities councils in every state.  

Then a strange email arrived in the inbox of Wyoming Humanities Executive Director and CEO Shawn Reese. His email service even flagged it as dangerous spam and “quarantined” the missive as a phishing attempt. 

On Friday morning, he retrieved the email out of its quarantine hold and read it. “Basically it says our federal funding is cancelled as of April 2,” Reese said.  

“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,” the letter reads.

NEH funding makes up some 80% of Wyoming Humanities budget, Reese said, and pays for operating expenses at the nonprofit, which promotes and supports humanities programs across Wyoming. These include grants for traveling theater performances, community conversations with authors on Wyoming topics or celebrations like the Teton Powwow and Native American Showcase in Jackson. 

The cut may mark the end of a five-decade affiliation Wyoming Humanities has enjoyed with the National Endowment for the Humanities. And while Reese says his organization will be able to continue awarding grants through at least June 2026, other financial headwinds related to state support are combining with this one to force the nonprofit to rethink its future.

“It’s a scenario that we’ve been thinking about even before any of these federal changes,” he said. “We’re trying to imagine, how do we as an organization continue to move forward and advance a very important mission and support this network of community organizations that are doing important work for the state of Wyoming?”

It’s still too early for all the specifics, but Reese expects Wyoming communities to feel impacts. A popular traveling exhibit program affiliated with the Smithsonian will end, he said. The cuts also will affect direct federal grants to other initiatives unrelated to Wyoming Humanities — such as a grant the Meeteetse Museums secured to install a solar array that was also just terminated. 

Reese hopes the challenge will galvanize creatives to find innovative ways to keep the arts alive. 

“We all know that arts and culture are important in our communities,” Reese said. “They’re intrinsically important. So we can’t wallow in despair. We have to harness our creativity, and that’s what this sector is about.”

Humanities organizations

The National Endowment for the Humanities was founded in 1965, under the same legislation as the more well-known National Endowment for the Arts. The Humanities Endowment is the only federal agency dedicated to funding the humanities and has awarded more than $6 billion in grants to museums, historical sites, universities, libraries and other organizations, according to its website.

A significant piece of its overall funding, 40%, goes to state humanities councils like Wyoming’s. Those councils act as umbrellas, partnering with other organizations to support cultural events or awarding grants to projects. 

Those federal funds cover the staff expenses, travel, marketing and other operational costs for Wyoming Humanities. Since 2012, the nonprofit also has secured about 10% of its funding from the state. 

That source is how Wyoming Humanities funds grants. These include the “Community Culture” grant, which awards up to $10,000 for oral histories, publications and community initiatives aimed at shedding light on histories or ideas that bring a community together. 

Wyoming Humanities also awards smaller “Spark Grants” of up to $2,000 for short-term cultural projects such a storytelling circle at the Big Horn Folk Festival or a panel discussion with tribal members and Wyoming lawyers to discuss the Apsaalooke religious connection to Heart Mountain near Cody. 

Grants won’t be impacted in the short term, Reese said, because the organization has secured state funding through June 2026, and it has socked away enough reserve funds and has enough additional revenue from other supporters to be able to pay for administration and staffing for now. 

What will be affected by federal funding changes, Reese said, are events that Wyoming Humanities co-sponsors and things like a partnership with the Smithsonian Institute to bring traveling exhibits through the state. “We’re going to have to discontinue that,” Reese said.

When Wyoming Humanities received the notification, Reese said, he quickly submitted a drawdown for March expenses, though he isn’t sure it will be honored. 

“I’m not sure who is left at NEH to process those requests,” he said. Agency staff were notified late Thursday that they were being placed on paid administrative leave effective immediately, NPR reported.

In addition, Reese isn’t confident Wyoming lawmakers will continue state support. Had the 2025 supplemental budget been approved, Wyoming Humanities would have become part of the regular state budget, he said. But it didn’t pass, meaning the group will need to ask the Legislature for future support.

“Based on the budget discussions during this general session, I don’t expect that funding would continue in future,” he said. 

With all the uncertainties, it’s time to huddle together with other humanities organizations, he said. “How do we reimagine the collaboration and the vision for Wyoming’s cultural sector? More than 14,000 people are employed in the sector. It’s significant, and it serves an important purpose for Wyoming. So yeah, we have [a] lot of soul searching going on.”

Direct impacts 

Meeteetse Museums, which runs three museums in a historic building in the small town of 314 people, is among the organizations that lost direct NEH funds this week. 

The Meeteetse Museum District received a $101,000 grant from NEH in 2024 to replace its roof and install solar panels. The museum raised a match to the NEH funds to replace its leaking roof and save its collections, according to the museum. But the solar installation part has yet to happen, said Executive Director Alexandra Deselms.

“We are currently in the middle of arranging to install solar panels to cut our utility costs so that we can have more financial resources to do other things,” she said Friday. She found out in a Wednesday email that the grant has been terminated. 

The museum had planned to spend about $9,000 on the final payment for the solar installation, she said, and had already submitted a downpayment and signed the contracts. Now staff is mulling a plan B.

“We do have a little bit of time to get a little more funding and approach a few donors to help save the project,” Deselms said. “But we’re kind of in limbo at the moment trying to figure out how all this is going to work.”

There’s a lot of uncertainty in the humanities sphere right now, Deselms said.

“I think we’re all really nervous,” she said. The NEH along with the Institute of Museum and Library Services  — one of the federal agencies slated to be dismantled under a Trump executive order — are the primary federal funding agencies for a number of museums and libraries across the country, including in Wyoming.

The two agencies “support arts and culture and humanities and just our communities in general,” Deselms said. “So it’s really scary to think about how that’s going to continue to impact us.”

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to reflect the correct grand amount for Meeteetse Museums. -Ed.