Employees, poets, and other community members at the Poetry Foundation are protesting the organization’s decision, announced on December 1, to phase out all public programming, beginning in the new year with the discontinuation of its Forms & Features workshops and Library Book Club. Staff of the Chicago-based, privately endowed organization told PW that the decision would result in substantial layoffs and a loss of support for the poets who are paid to read and present at events.
On December 15, members of the poetry community also published a letter they sent to the foundation’s senior leadership team earlier this month asking for them to retain the jobs of two longtime employees, Shoshana Olidort and Maggie Queeney, who are set to be laid off on December 31. In the letter, which is now open to the public for signatures, the employees urged the foundation to reconsider its decision in light of its responsibility to “mitigate harm to poetry and to the arts and education more broadly” at a moment of “extreme political and economic turmoil.”
In its December announcement, the foundation said discontinuing its programming would free up funds for the “many literary organizations that serve their communities, and our intention to invest in their ability to deepen that work.”
Speaking to PW, several employees, who asked to remain anonymous, challenged this characterization, saying that the foundation is phasing out programming efforts to save money, rather than immediately rerouting the funds into grants. Citing recent programming staff meetings, the employees speculated that the programming team will see substantial additional layoffs in 2026.
A spokesperson for the foundation declined to answer specific questions from PW, instead issuing a statement stressing that the foundation is transitioning to a grantmaking organization. “The Poetry Foundation is committed to supporting the literary arts ecosystem through grantmaking,” the spokesperson said, “and to providing sustainable access to poetry through our digital archive and Poetry magazine. The changes announced in our November 15 update reflect the Foundation’s role as a grantmaking organization, a transition that has been in progress for several years.”
The Poetry Foundation was established in 2002 after a $200 million donation made by Ruth Lilly to Poetry magazine. In 2022, the foundation filed as a nonoperating nonprofit, establishing its primary function as a grantmaking organization. Michelle T. Boone, who holds a PhD in philanthropy, was appointed president in 2021.
This year, the foundation, whose net assets as of 2024 total $313 million, announced $1.3 million in grants to 52 nonprofit poetry-based organizations. In October, it also became a founding partner of the Literary Arts Fund, granting a total of $3 million this calendar year. Employees critical of the program cuts noted that salary and benefit expenses constituted more than a third of the foundation’s total expenses in 2024, and that Boone received a total benefits package of more than $450,000.
By U.S. law, foundations are obligated to distribute at least of 5% of the fair market value of their endowment each year for charitable purposes. Per its 2024 audit, the Poetry Foundation’s functional expenses totaled $16.5 million, putting its expenditures just above the minimum threshold.
Several employees shared the impression that the priorities of senior leadership had been shifting since the pandemic and coming in conflict with feedback from the foundation’s community. According to one staffer, program evaluations in the past two years have consistently ranked Maggie Queeney’s virtual poetry book club among the “highest performers in all metrics.” The program, which is one of the only remaining national online poetry book clubs in the U.S., is also one of the most inexpensive for the foundation to produce, the employee said.
The staffer also noted the importance of the foundation’s programming in building local community. Among the foundation’s events and other programs—which the employee said total around 130 in a typical year—are identity-based activities for veterans, seniors, and low-income Chicagoans, with the free programs in particular racking up long waitlists.
“From my perspective, it feels like this is partly because of a misalignment of values,” said another employee critical of the program cuts and the shift in nonprofit status. “I think there is this scarcity mindset of, Okay, we’re giving grants, now we have to cut all these programs and all these other ways of amplifying and uplifting poetry. And that's problematic because the endowment exists to support the magazine.”
They added that, while the employees would welcome the addition of grants, a version of the Poetry Foundation solely built around grants felt like it "maybe should be a different organization.”
