The Poetry Foundation’s 2024 Annual Report presents a broad picture of poetry support in the United States, from grantmaking and small-press relief to online archives, education, awards, and public programming. The figures below keep the report’s measurement periods and geography explicit.
Contents
- Grantmaking at a glance
- Who and where grants reached
- The digital poetry archive
- Education and classroom participation
- Newsletters, podcasts, and public content
- Awards and poetry recognition
- Named grantee awards
Grantmaking at a glance
The Poetry Foundation distributed $3 million in grants in 2024, according to the Poetry Foundation 2024 Annual Report. A separate figure in the report records $3,150,000 awarded to nonprofit organizations during the same year. These amounts are retained as reported rather than combined, because the report presents them as separate measures.
The Foundation made 166 grants to 155 organizations in 2024. General operating support represented 63% of the 2024 funds. The report also states that 23 grantee-partner profiles were published during the year, documenting some of the organizations connected to this work.
The longer grantmaking view begins in 2022. Since that year, the Foundation awarded 445 grants totaling more than $9 million. Those grants reached 277 nonprofit organizations, presses, and publications. The supported partners served more than 10 million people and were enabled to pay more than 13,000 poets, according to the Poetry Foundation 2024 Annual Report.
The report identifies the scale and operating context of many recipients. In the period covered by its cumulative grant figures, 127 organizations receiving grants had annual operating budgets under $500,000. General operating support made up 60% of grants in that broader view, compared with 63% of 2024 funds. The two percentages describe different report measures and periods, so they should not be treated as a single trend line.
Selected grant measures
| Measure | Reported figure | Period or scope |
|---|---|---|
| Grants distributed | $3 million | 2024 |
| Awards to nonprofit organizations | $3,150,000 | 2024 |
| Grants made | 166 | 2024 |
| Organizations receiving 2024 grants | 155 | 2024 |
| Grants awarded | 445 | Since 2022 |
| Total value of those grants | More than $9 million | Since 2022 |
| People served by grantee-partners | More than 10 million | Since 2022 grantmaking view |
| Poets enabled to receive payment | More than 13,000 | Since 2022 grantmaking view |
The Small Press Bridge Fund provided $150,000 in emergency funding to 37 small, nonprofit poetry presses. That targeted fund is one example of how the Foundation’s reported support included direct assistance for organizations operating in the poetry publishing ecosystem.
Who and where grants reached
The cumulative grantmaking covered 42 US states, plus the District of Columbia, Guam, and Puerto Rico. This geography describes the reach stated in the Poetry Foundation 2024 Annual Report; it does not mean that every grant program had the same geographic distribution.
Illinois-based organizations accounted for 22% of grants. The report’s separate budget measure shows that 127 grant recipients had annual operating budgets below $500,000. Together, these figures place the Foundation’s funding in a landscape that includes both geographically distributed partners and many organizations with relatively small annual operating budgets.
The 2024 grant list also shows a range of award sizes among named recipients. Atelos received a $10,000 Equity in Verse grant. Alegria Bilingual Bookstores & Arts Collective received $25,000, while American Poetry Museum received $30,000. Artes de México En Utah received $20,000, and Bamboo Ridge Press received $35,000.
Other named recipients received larger awards. Cave Canem Foundation received $55,000, Community Literature Initiative received $50,000, and ConTextos received $30,000. Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University received $40,000, as did Guild Literary Complex and Kuumba Lynx. In-Na-Po, Indigenous Nations Poets received $50,000, while InsideOut Literary Arts received $30,000.
The same reported awards included $20,000 for John Walt Foundation and $35,000 for Letras Latinas at University of Notre Dame. These named amounts are individual awards and should not be added to the Foundation’s total 2024 grant figures without a complete accounting of all recipients and award categories.
The digital poetry archive
PoetryFoundation.org had 48,841 poems in its archive in 2024, according to the Poetry Foundation 2024 Annual Report. The site added 830 poems during the year. Those figures describe the archive’s reported size and annual additions, not a claim that every poem was newly written in 2024.
The website had 48.7 million active users and averaged 4.1 million monthly website visits. Active users and website visits are different measures: one describes the reported user audience, while the other is a monthly visit average. The annual report does not provide a basis here for converting either measure into unique annual visitors.
Poet biographical coverage also expanded. The Foundation added or updated 364 poet bios in 2024. Alongside the poem archive, these biographies provide another way the site organizes access to poetry and poets.
The report records several additional editorial outputs. The Foundation published 3 Remembrances essays by 3 authors and 35 web features written by 32 authors. It also released 306 new audio poems. These formats represent separate publication or audio-release counts, so they measure activity rather than a combined number of unique works or contributors.
Education and classroom participation
Poetry Out Loud engaged 160,739 students during the 2023–2024 school year. The program involved 1,498 schools and organizations, according to the Poetry Foundation 2024 Annual Report. The school-year label matters: these figures refer to the 2023–2024 academic period rather than the calendar year 2024.
The program awarded $44,500 to competitors and their schools. It also awarded $60,500 to the top 12 finalists. These are separate reported award categories. The finalist figure covers twelve people, but the available facts do not state how the amount was divided among finalists, so no per-person calculation is supplied here.
The Summer Poetry Teachers Institute lasted 4.5 days and included 115 educators. Its program contained 42 breakout sessions, seminars, workshops, and readings, and featured 18 presenters. The combination of duration, participants, sessions, and presenters describes the scale of the institute without assuming that every educator attended every session.
The participation figures show two distinct educational models. Poetry Out Loud reached students through 1,498 schools and organizations during an academic year, while the Summer Poetry Teachers Institute convened 115 educators in a 4.5-day professional learning program. The annual report gives both measures, but they should not be treated as equivalent counts of learners.
Newsletters, podcasts, and public content
The Poem of the Day newsletter had 65,767 subscribers. The combined Poetry Foundation Newsletter had 46,051 subscribers. Because the report names these as separate newsletters, the figures should not be added to estimate a total subscriber base; some readers could subscribe to both, and the supplied figures do not identify overlap.
The Foundation hosted 26 Poetry Off the Shelf podcast guests. It also published the 3 Remembrances essays and 35 web features described in the archive and editorial figures above. In total, those reported formats show a public-facing program that combines recurring newsletter distribution, podcast participation, written features, essays, poems, biographies, and audio releases.
The 306 new audio poems are distinct from the 26 podcast guests. The report does not state how many episodes, recordings, or individual contributors corresponded to those audio poems, so the figures are kept separate. Similarly, 32 authors wrote 35 web features, but the supplied information does not identify whether any author wrote more than one feature.
Awards and poetry recognition
The 20th annual Pegasus Awards were held on October 24, 2024. More than 300 guests attended the ceremony. The Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize carried a $100,000 award, while the Pegasus Award for Service in Poetry carried a $25,000 cash prize.
Five Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Fellows received a total of $135,000. The report supplies the combined amount and the number of fellows, but not an allocation for each fellow. The total therefore remains the appropriate reported measure.
The award figures show several scales of recognition in the 2024 program: a $100,000 poetry prize, a $25,000 service prize, and $135,000 distributed among five fellows. The $44,500 awarded to Poetry Out Loud competitors and their schools and the $60,500 awarded to its top 12 finalists belong to the education program and are reported separately from the Pegasus and fellowship awards.
Named grantee awards
The Poetry Foundation 2024 Annual Report lists individual awards to organizations working across poetry, literature, arts, and community programming. The supplied named awards include the following:
| Recipient | Reported award |
|---|---|
| Atelos | $10,000 |
| Alegria Bilingual Bookstores & Arts Collective | $25,000 |
| American Poetry Museum | $30,000 |
| Artes de México En Utah | $20,000 |
| Bamboo Ridge Press | $35,000 |
| Cave Canem Foundation | $55,000 |
| Community Literature Initiative | $50,000 |
| ConTextos | $30,000 |
| Furious Flower Poetry Center at James Madison University | $40,000 |
| Guild Literary Complex | $40,000 |
| In-Na-Po, Indigenous Nations Poets | $50,000 |
| InsideOut Literary Arts | $30,000 |
| John Walt Foundation | $20,000 |
| Kuumba Lynx | $40,000 |
| Letras Latinas at University of Notre Dame | $35,000 |
These awards illustrate the variety of named partners in the report, from presses and museums to literary centers, bookstores, arts collectives, and university-based programs. They are not a complete list of every 2024 grant, and the annual report’s broader totals remain the appropriate figures for describing the Foundation’s overall grantmaking.