Close to Home

What's Happening?

Our prized $341,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities was abruptly terminated by the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). 

On April 2, 2025, shortly after midnight, DOGE sent a letter and terminated over 1,000 grant projects, writing, “Your grant no longer effectuates the agency’s needs and priorities. Your grant’s immediate termination is necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities. The termination of your grant represents an urgent priority for the administration, and due to exceptional circumstances, adherence to the traditional notification process is not possible.  Therefore, the NEH hereby terminates your grant in its entirety effective April 2, 2025.”

 The result is a $104,000 hole in NHF’s budget. We believe the project had merit and it will be a shame if we cannot complete it. It was the largest grant the NEH gave to an organization in Maine that year. The purpose of the grant was to catalog, digitize and publish the material NHF has collected from 8 Maine television collections over the last 35 years. This project, when completed, will publish 7,822 videotapes and 306,800 feet of 16mm film from 1953 to 2008. National issues are documented in our TV collections, but so are matters of community and local interest. Local television news stories are invaluable documents of American life during the second half of the 20th century, a time of profound change.

A setback of this magnitude threatens all the activities of NHF, by destabilizing the staff.  All seven of the archives staff members had a role in this large project and the termination yanks out a piece of every paycheck. 

Please help us overcome this disaster by making a special gift to NHF. Your support at this time will allow us to avoid laying off staff and help us move closer to completing the project.

Sincerely,

David

David S. Weiss

Executive Director

Northeast Historic Film

PO Box 900, Bucksport, ME 04416

207 469-0924, ext. 101

Gifts to NHF are tax deductible to the fullest extent of the law.