Grant cuts that have loomed over Broward County arts organizations for months are now a reality.
The Stonewall National Museum in Fort Lauderdale learned Thursday it would not receive its general support grant. Island SPACE Caribbean Museum in Plantation confirmed to WLRN that Broward County rejected its proposal the same week.
This comes after Gov. Ron DeSantis in April signed a law that bans local governments from funding diversity, equity and inclusion-related programs. It goes into effect Jan. 1. The law largely targets advocacy work around LGBTQ+ issues, as well as gender and race equality.
READ MORE: Broward arts groups ‘rethinking our entire existence’ as state DEI funding ban looms
“The impact means that we will close out the year losing money, rather than maintaining money in the bank,” said Stonewall CEO and president Robert Kesten. “And it will make it more difficult for us to do our jobs and keep the doors open.”
The Broward County Cultural Division approved 167 grants, doling out about $6.4 million in total funding, last fiscal year. The majority of that funding went to general operating support grants — like one to Stonewall Museum for about $70,000.
As the oldest national LGBTQ+ history museum, Stonewall has received over $1 million in county funding since 2014. But this year, the county wrote in a message to Director of Advancement Monque Setlock that the museum’s grant application would not move forward for the upcoming fiscal year.
The cultural division wrote the decision reflected a review of current program requirements and funding, as well as “applicable administrative and policy requirements.”
Calibe Thompson, the executive director of Island SPACE Museum, learned last week her Caribbean-focused organization will officially lose its county funding. She’s already lost grants at the state and national level.
The museum describes itself as the first and only pan-Caribbean heritage museum in the world.
“We’re literally having to reimagine how we sustain ourselves,” she said.
Proposals
It’s unclear how many applications were submitted, rejected and advanced this cycle, or whether the distribution will be handled differently than in previous years. Broward County commissioners budgeted about the same amount in funding for cultural grants for the upcoming fiscal year as it did in 2026.
The Broward County Cultural Division did not respond for comment in time for publication.
A county official called Stonewall CEO Kesten when the law first passed, he said, urging him to redo his proposal. He went in, rewrote the grant application to remove specific references to the LGBTQ+ community, and resubmitted it. It got rejected regardless.
“When they come back and say, ‘We're just upholding the law, we know it's a bad law’ — that's an excuse,” Kesten said. “If George Washington would have said, ‘No, we can't have a revolution. We have to obey the law,’ where would we be today?”
The only county commissioner who has consistently voted against DEI cuts related to the law is Commissioner Beam Furr, who leaves office in November. Commissioner Nan Rich joined him in voting against the repeal of the Commission on the Status of Women and Racial Equity Task Force last week.
But most commissioners have voted to eliminate these groups, saying they don’t want to curb diversity efforts but feel their hands are tied. As leaders of a predominantly blue county, some say they fear scrutiny and removal from office for not complying.
