OVERVIEW: The Whiting Foundation supports grants for ambitious creative fiction projects in a wide variety of subject areas. These grants are awarded to emerging writers so they can fully devote themselves to their literary work. It also supports efforts to engage the public with humanities research and to preserve and disseminate cultural heritage internationally.
IP TAKE: The Whiting Foundation is a funder that, according to a recent IP deep-dive, plays “a critical jack-of–all-trades role in a literary arts ecosystem” through its support for those working at all levels and across most genres of writing. However, grant seekers should take note of this funder’s other significant focus area: cultural preservation, which makes grants to ensure humanity’s heritage is not lost to threats, whether man-made or natural.
Grant seekers cannot apply directly for the Whiting Award or preservation grants, but knowing someone influential in the industry may provide an opportunity. The application window for Whiting’s nonfiction grants and magazine awards opens and closes quickly, so grantseekers will want to keep an eye on the foundation’s website. Contact this approachable foundation with general questions.
Given that certain available programs run on biennial or triennial cycles, check back with Whiting for the latest updates on opportunities.
PROFILE: Based in Brooklyn, New York, the Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation was created by Flora Ettlinger Whiting, a supporter of the arts and culture, upon her death in 1971. The foundation’s current mission is to provide “support for writers, editors, educators, and the librarians and archivists who preserve our shared cultural heritage.” This funder’s two focus areas are Literature and the Humanities, and its ongoing programs include the Whiting Award, Nonfiction Grants and Magazine Prizes. It also currently offers Cultural Heritage and High School Humanities programs.
Grants for Writing and Journalism
The Whiting Foundation makes grants for Literature through its Whiting Award, Nonfiction Grant for Works-in-Progress and Literary Magazine Prize programs:
- The Whiting Award is given to ten emerging writers each year and consists of a $50,000 prize.
- Awards have gone to writers working in fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama and aim to recognize “early accomplishment and the promise of great work to come.”
- The foundation does not accept applications for these awards. Instead, it invites an pool of nominators from various literary professions to nominate candidates.
- The foundation’s Nonfiction Grant for Works-in-Progress program supports writers working on “intensely researched nonfiction books, written with an artful sensitivity to complexity and nuance.”
- Grants are awarded in the amount of $40,000 to as many as ten writers each year with the goal of providing support for research and writing.
- The foundation accepts applications for this program with a due date in late May, but grant seekers must provide evidence of a project in progress that is “under contract with a publisher in Canada, the UK, or the US.”
- Additional guidelines are available on the program’s webpage, linked above, and the foundation encourages applications from writers of color who “often face additional structural hurdles to securing institutional resources to support such projects.”
- Nonfiction Grant payments cannot go to fiscal sponsors or organizations.
- Whiting’s Literary Magazine Prize offers significant support to “magazines that publish extraordinary writing, support talented writers on the page and in the world, connect with readers, and advance the literary community.”
- Recent prizes have gone to small- to medium-sized literary journals with budgets of under $500,000. This budget ceiling may be removed going forward.
- The triennial prize consists of “an outright gift,” followed by smaller matching grants and capacity building support in subsequent years.
- Recent recipients of the Magazine Prize include Guernica, Oxford American, The Paris Review, Mizna, and Los Angeles Review of Books.
- The next application cycle should be due sometime in 2026-2027; stay tuned for updates from Whiting.
Grants for Arts and Culture, Humanities Research and K-12 Education
The Whiting Foundation, through its Humanities focus area, currently awards grants for the preservation of cultural heritage and for programs and projects that facilitate high school students’ engagement in the humanities.
- The Cultural Heritage program makes a select few grants each year for heritage preservation around the world.
- Grants stemming from this program have prioritized projects that involve “local stewards” in areas of the world where there is a dearth of funding for preservation projects.
- Past grantees include Cultural Emergency Response, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Qatar National Library and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library for its work support of manuscript preservation in Syria.
- The foundation does not run an open application program for this program.
- The High School Humanities program seeks to foster “deep engagement with rich works of history, philosophy, literature, and the arts so students graduate equipped with the beginnings of a mental map of human history and cultural achievement across time and geography.”
- Grants help to create and promote the use of learning materials that give high school students access to primary sources and a humanities education beyond what is typically included in literature and history classes.
- This program accepts applications by invitation only.
- Look over the foundation’s Past Programs page to see what it has previously funded.
Other Opportunities
Whiting’s ongoing co-funded initiative with Cultural Emergency Response makes modest “first aid” grants directly to collections in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean facing conflict or disaster.
- This is a legitimately indirect route for heritage practitioners who cannot approach Whiting directly.
- CER itself welcomes applications from heritage and cultural practitioners in eligible countries for emergency support.
- It provides quick, flexible crisis-response funding in cooperation with local actors.
Important Grant Details:
Grants range between $1,000 and $300,000, but $20,000 represents the median. In a recent year, this funder gave about $2.27 million in total grants.
- Most of Whiting’s grants are awarded in specific amounts that are set by each program.
- Information about past grantees is available at each program page.
- This funder accepts applications for its Magazine Prize and Creative Nonfiction grants, but grantseekers may wish to keep tabs on other program pages for updates on new grantmaking opportunities.
- General inquiries can be submitted to the foundation via email at info@whiting.org. The foundation’s phone number is listed as (718) 841-7205.
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