A recent announcement on Grants.gov describes a grant opportunity to, among other entities:

• County governments
• City or township governments
• Special district governments
• Independent school districts
• Public and State controlled institutions of higher education
• Native American tribal governments (Federally recognized)
• Private institutions of higher education

All applicants must be previous NEA award recipients from the past four years (see "Applicant Eligibility" for more information). The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, Public Law 111-5 ("Recovery Act") recognizes that the nonprofit arts industry is an important sector of the economy. The National Endowment for the Arts is uniquely positioned to fund arts projects and activities that preserve jobs in the nonprofit arts sector threatened by declines in philanthropic and other support during the current economic downturn. As part of this important investment, the Arts Endowment has designed a plan to expedite distribution of critical funds for the national, regional, state, and local levels for projects that focus on the preservation of jobs in the arts. Grants will be made either to organizations for their own job preservation projects, or to designated local arts agencies, eligible to subgrant, for subgranting programs to eligible nonprofit organizations. Projects are limited to: * Salary support, full or partial, for one or more positions that are critical to an organization's artistic mission and that are in jeopardy or have been eliminated as a result of the current economic climate. And/or * Fees for previously engaged artists and/or contractual personnel to maintain or expand the period during which such persons would be engaged.