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The National Book Foundation (NBF) announced today that it will award $350,000 in capacity-building grants to 49 nonprofit literary arts organizations across the United States. Recipients will receive grants of $5,000 or $10,000 to support projects that build organizational capacity and ensure greater sustainability. The Capacity-Building Grant Program is made possible with funding from Hawthornden Foundation, originally founded in 1983 by the late Drue Heinz.
“We are delighted to support the National Book Foundation in its essential capacity-building program for literary organizations,” said Ellyn Toscano, Executive Director of Hawthornden Foundation. “The contributions of the National Book Foundation to the literary arts are incalculable.”
Through its Capacity-Building Grant Program, NBF will support projects that aim to create a sustainable and effective organization in the areas of fundraising, finance, or marketing; skill-building opportunities for staff and/or Board members; strategic planning consultants; diversity and equity initiatives; leadership development and management training; sabbaticals for long-term staff members and leaders; and succession planning.
“The National Book Foundation’s Capacity-Building grantees represent organizations based in 22 states and Washington, DC, and with annual budgets that range from under $20,000 to over $4,000,000,” said Ruth Dickey, Executive Director of the National Book Foundation. “We look forward to witnessing all of the ways these 49 diverse nonprofit literary arts organizations continue to serve readers and writers nationwide, and are so grateful to Hawthornden Foundation for their tremendous support of our sector and their investment in the capacity of these critical organizations.”
Applications were reviewed by an independent grantmaking panel composed of Lilly Gonzalez, Executive Director of the San Antonio Book Festival; Michael Holtmann, Executive Director & Publisher at the Center for the Art of Translation; and Lisa Willis, Executive Director of Cave Canem. Final grant decisions were made by the National Book Foundation and approved by a committee of the NBF Board of Directors.
The grant recipients, listed alphabetically, are:
826DC, $10,000
Adirondack Center for Writing, $5,000
Afghan American Artists and Writers Association (AAAWA), $5,000
Cambodian American Literary Arts Association, $5,000
Chicago Humanities, $5,000
Children’s Book Project, $5,000
City Arts and Lectures, $10,000
CityLit Project, $5,000
Cleveland Kids’ Book Bank, $10,000
Elk River Arts & Lectures, $5,000
Everybody Wins DC, $10,000
Gemini Ink, $10,000
Girls Write Now, $10,000
Inprint, $10,000
Kimbilio, $5,000
Kiwanis Literacy Club Foundation, $5,000
Lighthouse Writers Workshop, $10,000
LitArts RI, $5,000
Literary Cleveland, $10,000
Madison Reading Project, $5,000
MAKE Literary Productions, NFP, $5,000
Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop, $10,000
Mississippi Book Festival, $10,000
Nathaniel Gadsden’s Writers Wordshop, $5,000
Nebraska Writers Collective (NWC), $10,000
Northern Arizona Book Festival, $5,000
Pen Parentis, $5,000
Planting People Growing Justice Leadership Institute, $5,000
Podium RVA, $5,000
Poetry Society of New York, $5,000
Rhode Island Center for the Book, $5,000
Short Run Seattle, $5,000
Small Press Traffic Literary Arts Center, $5,000
Speculative Literature Foundation, $5,000
Teachers and Writers Collaborative, $10,000
Tennessee Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival, $5,000
Texas Book Festival, $10,000
The Flow Chart Foundation, $5,000
The Muse Writers Center, $10,000
The PEN/Faulkner Foundation, $10,000
The Porch Writers’ Collective, $10,000
The Word, A Storytelling Sanctuary, $5,000
The Writer’s Center, $10,000
Torch Literary Arts, $5,000
Tuleburg Press, $5,000
Tulsa Literary Coalition, $10,000
Woodland Pattern, $10,000
Writers & Books, $10,000
Writers in Baltimore Schools, $5,000
The Community of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP) will also be awarding capacity-building grants to 46 nonprofit literary magazines and presses across the US through a similar program. To learn more about CLMP’s grantees, please visit their website.
