With New Anti-DEI Limits on NEA Grants Thanks to Trump, Cleveland Creative Nonprofits Face Financial Uncertainty

A print fair hosted by Zygote Press in an undated photo. The Midtown-based printmaker may be out tens of thousands of dollars due to recent changes at the National Endowment of the Arts. Credit: Courtesy Zygote Press

On January 14, six days before the beginning of the second Trump administration, the Biden-led National Endowment for the Arts signed off on $37 million in funding awards to 1,474 arts organizations throughout the country.

A handful of those were here in Cleveland. Awards ranging from $10,000 to $25,000 were announced to bankroll plays at Cleveland Public Theater, ballets at DANCECleveland, for performances at this year’s Tri-C JazzFest and more.

Yet, in February, the typical funding cycle from the federal government has been upended indefinitely.

On February 6, a week after the U.S. Office of Management and Budgeting halted all in-progress funding elsewhere, the NEA announced a 180-degree shift in policy stemming directly from the aversion to anything involving Diversity, Equity & Inclusion thanks to Trump’s first executive orders.

The Challenge America initiative, which gave “underserved groups and communities” $10,000 grants, was cancelled. Any organizations searching for funding now had to ensure any grants being written were philosophically in-line with those anti-DEI orders. They couldn’t “violate anti-discrimination laws” or promise to use funds “to promote gender ideology.”

Instead, they should, the NEA said, focus on arts projects that can easily fall under the theme of celebrating America’s 250th birthday.

Out, Challenge America. In, America250.

“Under the updated guidelines, the NEA continues to encourage projects that celebrate the nation’s rich artistic heritage and creativity by honoring the semiquincentennial of the United States of America,” a statement from the NEA reads. “This can include incorporating an America250-related component or focus within a larger project.”

For the dozens of Cleveland-based arts entities that routinely rely on federal funding for their concerts or exhibitions, the NEA’s sudden cultural shift leaves a kind of Catch-22 as far as whether or not to continue applying for said funding.

That includes Jackie Feldman, the executive director of Zygote Press, the Midtown-based printmaking studio that relies on roughly $20,000 to $30,000 from the federal government a year to fund its dozen-person artist-in-residency program.

“You know, there will be some organizations that pursue that path and still apply” for funding, Feldman told Scene.

“I think that there will be other organizations that don’t even bother applying,” she added, “because this ask is in such direct conflict with their missions that they may feel that it compromises their goals to such a degree that they cannot even see themselves applying for this funding.”

The same hesitation is felt by Matt Weinkam, the director of Literary Cleveland, a nonprofit that typically receives tens of thousands a year to back its annual writing conference, Inkubator.

“My main concern was that we would have to comply with those executive orders,” Weinkam said. “And that would be a betrayal of our community.”

“I mean, it comes down to choosing between sticking with our values, or losing $20,000,” he added.

If arts organizations are out a half million a year in federal support, then turning to local means of keeping printmakers making or musicians performing may have to lean more on dollars nearby.

That could mean amplifying the ask on donors or running more pressing donation drives. It could also mean banking on more money trickling down from the 40-cent-per-pack increase in the county cigarette tax, thanks to the passing of Issue 55 last year—though extra dough won’t be available until 2026.

The anti-DEI push on the federal level, which has led to the NEA’s America250, may, some fear, lead to similar policies being tested out on the state level. Last week, the Ohio Humanities Council, which funds public humanities programs, paused their grants program and adopted a “wait-and-see approach” for how they’re going to resume it. (The Ohio Arts Council, the state’s version of the NEA, hasn’t yet announced any freeze.)

“The decision is similar to actions taken during past government shutdowns,” OHC’s director Rebecca Brown Asmo wrote, “even though this situation is unprecedented.”

As it might just be on a larger scale.

Slashing federal funding means, Feldman notes, slashing what is being cut in actuality: jobs for Clevelanders.

“I mean, artists go on to become teachers, practitioners, entrepreneurs, you know, tax-paying citizens,” she said. “They learn, they acquire skills, they grow their networks and their earning potential grows.”

“They contribute back to the economy, they create things, they become homeowners, they have families, they settle here in Cleveland,” Feldman added. “And if you take that away from potentially hundreds of organizations? That’s going to have quite the economic impact.”