Abrupt Loss Of Federal Funds Forces Cuts To Humanities Programs Statewide

A collection of note-worthy musicians were inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame Saturday night – in a musical gala held despite a massive, eleventh hour setback. 

The sudden chaos was caused by the loss of promised federal funds expected to affect cultural events across the state. Saturday night’s star-studded ceremony recognized four new inductees into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. 

Daniel Johnston, Cameron LaVelle Mullins, Jeff Stevens and The Valentinos join a list of honorees that dates back to 2005 when the nonprofit was founded. And since that time, it has received significant grant funding from the West Virginia Humanities Council, said founder and director Michael Lipton. 

“We do a lot of fundraising ourselves, and we sell tickets, so we’re not solely dependent on them,” Lipton said. “But when you put together a budget, you know, that was definitely part of it and figured into it.”

This year the Humanities grant totaled roughly $13,000 – about one-third of the total cost of putting on the ceremony. But most of those grant funds are paid after the ceremony, when receipts are available.

Lipton received notice just a few days ahead of time that the remaining funds won’t be coming – for the hall of fame or any other grantees funded through the council.

“We got the email saying that, you know, I guess it was to all the grantees, that, ‘Do you have any outstanding grants? They are basically zeroed out.’”

Plane tickets had already been purchased, hotels reserved. contracts signed, performers scheduled. The eleventh-hour options are limited, Lipton said, when we spoke to him before the ceremony. 

“One of the options is to not do your project and return any money that you have been given, or scale down your project. We’re in a little bit of a more prickly situation, since we’re days away from the ceremony and we can’t not do it,” he said. 

Eric Waggoner is the executive director of the West Virginia Humanities Council, which gets its funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities, or NEH. 

“There is an organization like ours in all 50 states and a half dozen territories worldwide. And through our partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities, we receive congressionally appropriated funding that we put towards grants and programs in all 55 counties,” he said.

Even though the funds have already been appropriated, the money is not coming. Waggoner was notified just a few days before the Hall of Fame event.

“I received my email at about 1:30 in the morning. It was on letterhead for the National Endowment for the Humanities, but it was a result of the Department Of Government Efficiency’s recommended cuts to the National Endowment for the Humanities,” he said. 

“The email said, and I received this email, and so did all the rest of the state humanities councils in every state, saying that our grant from the NEH was terminated effective immediately. So, no more funding that had been congressionally appropriated for us as part of the regular congressional budgeting cycle would be forthcoming.”

Waggoner says stormy weather woke him up in the middle of the night. 

“SoI decided to check my email, and that’s what I found. I also found that my email inbox had blown up with all of the other Humanities Council directors in every other state saying, ‘I got my termination notice.’ ‘Yeah, we got cut off.’ ‘We got cut off.’”

The notice, said Waggoner, was hard to receive.

“It’s very distressing. Ordinarily, the federal government, Congress, makes its official appropriations as part of the budgeting process, and then that money is available to us for the current fiscal year,” Waggoner said. 

“So that predictability is what really has allowed us to serve West Virginia for the last 50 years in a way that’s stable and allows for accountability in work that is very exciting,” he added. “This is unprecedented.”

Waggoner said that as a result of the continuing resolution agreement reached by Congress earlier this year, he and other council officials thought the funding boat had been appropriated was secure, that there would be time to deal with any potential disruptions that might come down the road. 

The council, he said, has other funding sources – donors, other grants and corporate sponsors. But most of those sources rely on dollar-for-dollar matches met by the NEH grant.  

“So we do have other sources of income, but this cut impacts immediately our operations and our grant making. In particular, we use the federal funds to make to give grants to organizations all around the state. And unfortunately, you know, as as predicted, the impact of these cuts will start immediately. We had to announce yesterday to all of our grantees that no more grant money will be forthcoming,” Waggoner said.

The NEH grant in West Virginia is $965,000, with few options for recouping those funds.

“There’s absolutely no way that the private sector or the donor base can make up for the loss of nearly a million dollars, not in West Virginia,” Waggoner said.

From its inception the council mission has been to support programs that celebrate the culture, history and traditions of West Virginia – local and regional museums, schools, libraries, festivals, theatrical productions, art exhibits and individual programs that impact communities in all 55 counties of the state.

The council has provided grant funding to the West Virginia Mine War Museum in Matewan, the Oil and Gas Museum in Parkersburg, the Arthurdale Heritage Center, the West Virginia Encyclopedia, and the History Alive program which brings historical presentations to senior centers and K-12 classrooms statewide. 

Michael Lipton, with the Hall of Fame, is scrambling to find the funds that were cancelled, and cringing at the idea of asking for more money from already-generous donors. It’s hard, he said, to put a dollar figure on the value of the program.

“You know what the Rolling Stones say, that it’s only rock and roll, and if it all went away tomorrow, everybody still carries on,” Lipton said. 

“But I think that when you have people, especially in nonprofits, working for a cause and a goal that they really believe in and put their heart into, you can’t hire those kinds of people. You couldn’t afford it. I mean, people put their whole being into it and the result is something pretty special,” he said. 

The real value of funding the arts, Lipton said, is that they add to the quality of life, both as a means of celebration in the good times, and a source of comfort and strength during times of struggle.