The Anschutz Foundation has awarded the Georgia Historical Society $200,000 toward the Society’s Next Century Initiative, helping to propel the organization forward in anticipation of the next 100 years. The Anschutz Foundation gift is a response to a challenge grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to help complete the capital campaign for renovation and expansion of the GHS Research Center in Savannah.

The Next Century Initiative Campaign, launched in 2015, is a $15 million campaign that includes the renovation and expansion of the GHS Research Center. This Campaign will have an enormous impact on GHS’s mission to collect, examine, and teach Georgia history by providing more space for storage and processing of archival materials; ensuring the conservation, usefulness, and accessibility of GHS’s extraordinary archival and library collections; and by maintaining the historically significant structure, one of the oldest purpose-built library buildings in the United States, in which these collections are housed and used by the public. Support for this campaign has also been provided by Lettie Pate Evans Foundation, The Delta Air Lines Foundation, Frances and Beverly DuBose Foundation, Mr. and Mrs. John F. McMullan, Mr. and Mrs. Thomas M. Holder, and the Williams Family Foundation of Georgia.

GHS received a $500,000 challenge grant in 2018 from the National Endowment for the Humanities—one of the first awards made under the NEH’s new Infrastructure and Capacity-Building Challenge Grant program. The NEH grant requires GHS to raise matching funds totaling $1.5 million (three non-federal dollars for every dollar of federal funding) in order to receive the full value of the award from the NEH.

“We are grateful to Philip Anschutz and the Anschutz Foundation for their belief in the future of our state and their investment in history education,” said Dr. W. Todd Groce, President and CEO of the Georgia Historical Society. “Because of their generosity, GHS is well on its way to realizing the goal of renovating our Research Center and expanding our statewide educational mission.”