KC libraries, museums in ‘scary’ moment as Trump targets agency providing vital funds
Cass County Historical Society director Jennifer Reed hopes to eventually open a museum to showcase the area’s past. But first she needs to sort through the society’s stuff.
The society’s headquarters – a small office suite inside a Harrisonville building that also houses the local public library – is crammed full with community donations: old newspapers, paintings, furniture. All of it needs to be processed.
For half a year, two interns working 15 to 20 hours a week have waded through piles of items. A $25,000 federal grant pays for the interns, a massive amount for an organization that operates on about $69,000 a year.
Reed told the interns this week she doesn’t know what’s happening to the funding to pay them.
“We’re a very, very small organization and to feel that some decision made in the Oval Office can trickle down and affect us so direly, it’s scary,” Reed said.
President Donald Trump last Friday issued an executive order targeting the Institute of Museum and Library Services and several other small federal agencies. The institute, or IMLS, oversees federal grant funding to libraries and museums, including several organizations across the Kansas City region.
Trump has ordered IMLS to end its operations as much as legally possible – potentially endangering hundreds of thousands in current grants to Kansas City groups. If Trump effectively eliminates or dramatically diminishes the agency, as the order appears intended to do, local cultural touchstones could lose out on millions in potential future funding.
For years, Kansas City-area libraries and museums have viewed IMLS as an ally and a vital resource. The agency, operating in Washington, D.C., with just a few dozen employees, distributes millions to Missouri and Kansas every year. Missouri received nearly $5 million in IMLS awards in 2024, while Kansas received just over $2 million.
A significant portion of IMLS funds come in the form of library block grants to the states, which are then awarded to numerous local libraries. For example, the Kansas City Public Library recently received $11,200 for environmental literacy and $22,396 for teen interns, according to data from the 2023 fiscal year, the latest year available. Mid-Continent Public Library obtained $22,000 for Chromebook “to go” kits.
The Star spoke with the leaders or high-ranking employees of several Kansas City cultural institutions that have received IMLS funding, including the Kansas City Public Library, the World War I Museum, Powell Gardens and the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures. All expressed immense appreciation for the resources the agency has provided and voiced disappointment at the prospect of its diminishment.
In the past year alone, IMLS awarded a $250,000 grant to the World War I Museum and $217,000 to Powell Gardens. The Toy Museum secured a nearly $201,000 grant in 2023. The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art and the American Jazz Museum were collectively awarded about $250,000 in 2022.
“We’ve been in this community for 151 years now, this year, and just looking at all the things we have really tried to fill community needs related to education, literacy, technology, workforce development,” Kansas City Public Library executive director Abby Yellman said. “When you start thinking about that on a national scale with more than 17,000 libraries across the country … yeah, it’s concerning.”
Kansas City’s cultural community is also especially attuned to the fate of the IMLS because of a major local connection. R. Crosby Kemper III, a previous CEO of UMB Bank and director of the Kansas City Public Library, was named by Trump in 2019 to lead the agency and served a four-year term that ended last year.
In an interview, Kemper stressed the importance of libraries and the agency’s role in aiding them. “It would be a problem for the library world if the IMLS were to go away completely,” Kemper said, adding that he doesn’t think that will happen.
Kemper said he believes the federal Office of Management and Budget wants to cut back and make the agency smaller. The agency can operate as a smaller institution with lower overhead, he said, though “it is a very low overhead operation right now.” The agency has about 70 employees, he said.
When Trump nominated Kemper, the president had released three annual budgets that sought to close the agency. Kemper said the first Trump administration knew – and the current administration will discover – that the IMLS enjoys a lot of bipartisan support.
“The IMLS has always been a beacon of the importance of learning, the importance of culture, the importance of our institutions of culture in that larger culture of America, larger civilization of the United States,” Kemper said. “And it would be a shame if that institution goes away.”
Missouri state Rep. Wick Thomas, a Kansas City Democrat who worked as a librarian, said libraries already provide a range of services on a shoestring budget and called the institutions a “last stand for democracy.”
“I just think this is devastating,” Wick said.
Trump’s executive order, “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy,” requires the IMLS within a week to submit a report to OMB “confirming full compliance with this order” and explaining which components of the agency, if any, are required by law. It requires non-statutory functions of the IMLS to be eliminated “to the maximum extent consistent with applicable law.”
“This order continues the reduction in the elements of the Federal bureaucracy that the President has determined are unnecessary,” the order says.
The IMLS didn’t respond to questions on Thursday.
Executive order spurs uncertain moment
The executive order comes as the Cass County Historical Society is about seven months into its year-long grant.
The society’s interns, college students from the area, have been sifting through donated items since September. The work is critical to developing the society’s collection – an arduous and meticulous effort that will pay dividends if and when the society eventually opens a museum.
Reed, the society’s only full-time employee, hopes that could be achievable within a few years. While the society owns its own building, the Cass County Public Library currently occupies much of the space. But the library may eventually move to a new location, creating an opportunity for a museum.
For now, the society’s modest office space remains stuffed full of papers and items. The organization also cares for the county’s archives, which are kept in the same building and contain books of local records dating back to the Civil War.
A 3D model of the nearby 1861 Battle of Morristown sits among the archives. It used to be on display but was moved as unprocessed donations began to take over the society’s space.
“We wouldn’t be able to hire people to come in and do this processing work without this grant. We would not have been able to afford proper archival material were it not for this grant,” Reed said.
The society draws down grant funds once a month and has a little over $11,000 left.
Reed has moved quickly to raise awareness and mobilize support for the IMLS. Trump’s executive order first caught her attention over the weekend and on Monday she began talking to the society’s board members. She posted to the society’s Facebook page and sent a message to the society’s members.
IMLS hasn’t given Reed any guidance yet about whether the grant will be canceled. She believes the executive order will eventually be challenged in a lawsuit.
“It would break my heart to let our two interns go,” Reed said.
Federal grants ‘essential’
At Powell Gardens, grant funding from IMLS has offered the botanical garden east of Kansas City a major boost.
Powell Gardens hired a human resources director and has been able to train workers on using defibrillators. New grant funding will potentially also help pay to train the staff on CPR, CEO Cody Jolliff said, adding that the instruction is especially important because of the garden’s location in rural Johnson County, Missouri.
“It’s been huge for us,” Jolliff said.
In interviews, leaders of Kansas City cultural institutions emphasized that IMLS plays a crucial role in funding projects and needs that can sometimes be challenging to fundraise privately.
At the National Museum of Toys and Miniatures, located near the University of Missouri-Kansas City campus, a $75,000 grant six years ago helped the museum install compact shelving, which allowed the organization to store more objects on-site in better conditions.
The museum’s current grant, valued at over $200,000, aims at allowing the institution to work with educators to identify over 1,200 objects from the museum’s collection to place on its website. The three-year project has involved hiring graduate and undergraduate students who are researching the objects. About $80,000 has been spent so far.
The Toy Museum has also submitted a grant request for about $132,000 to help catalog some 10,000 dollhouse pieces and furnishings. Amy McKune, the museum’s curator and senior manager of collections, isn’t holding her breath given the executive order.
“These are projects that are so important but they’re not projects that are very visible,” McKune said. “Federal grant funding is really essential in that type of work.”
Still, some IMLS funding does go toward projects that will have very visible results.
The World War I Museum’s $250,000 grant is helping the organization digitize documents and photographs with the aim of making them available online. The digitization can be especially sensitive, involving documents that are more than 100 years old and fragile.
Matthew Naylor, the museum’s president and CEO, said the funding from the IMLS is the “American public’s money” and that the organization is grateful to the public for its support. The museum isn’t reliant on federal funding, but federal grants, especially when partnered with private contributions, can prove valuable.
“I would hope as we go through the fog of the changes that are taking place that there are still opportunities for important cultural institutions to be able to be doing the work of preserving America’s history and we’re one of those,” Naylor said.
In Cass County, the historical society is moving forward with its grant-funded work for now.
Every 30 days, Reed must report to the IMLS how it spent its grant money. Reed, speaking on Thursday, said she had just sent her monthly report that morning to her contact at the agency.
“He just responded back ‘thank you and keep up the good work’ or something along those lines,” Reed said.
The Star’s Kacen Bayless contributed reporting
This story was originally published March 21, 2025 at 5:30 AM.
