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How did shifts in the A.R.E.’s funding, leadership, or partnerships affect Cayce scholarship in the 2010s and 2020s?
Executive summary
Coverage in the provided sources does not directly document internal funding, leadership, or partnership changes at Edgar Cayce’s Association for Research and Enlightenment (A.R.E.) or tie those changes to shifts in Cayce scholarship in the 2010s–2020s; available sources mention A.R.E. local scholarship programs in 2016 and 2018 but not broader institutional financial or leadership shifts [1] [2]. Broader patterns in U.S. research funding show federal R&D funding rose after the 2009 stimulus and shifted between funders in the 2010s, which could provide contextual parallels but do not specifically reference A.R.E. or Cayce scholarship [3] [4] [5].
1. No direct reporting on A.R.E. institutional shifts — what the records say
Public A.R.E. items in the dataset describe community-facing scholarship grants (a $1,000 award in 2016 and a local program with over $25,000 awarded by 2018) but do not disclose broader changes in A.R.E. funding streams, leadership turnover, or national partnerships that would alter Cayce scholarship priorities or scale [1] [2]. In short, available sources do not mention internal A.R.E. budget reallocations, major leadership changes, or new research partnerships in the 2010s–2020s.
2. What A.R.E.’s scholarship activity in the 2010s shows — limited but concrete
The A.R.E.’s public announcements document sustained, small-scale community scholarship activity: a single $1,000 Edgar Cayce Scholarship in 2016 aimed at Virginia Beach students and an ongoing program (11th year by 2018) funded by members and the George Clark Foundation that had delivered more than $25,000 locally [1] [2]. Those items demonstrate organizational continuity in local outreach and donor-supported scholarships but do not by themselves indicate a change in scholarly priorities or research funding for Cayce studies [1] [2].
3. National R&D funding trends that may provide context — stimulus and shifting funder roles
Separate, national-level sources show that federal R&D obligations rose in the early 2010s because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and that the early 2010s saw temporary expansions in federal investment programs [3] [4]. National analyses also document shifting roles among funders and performers of basic research between 2010 and 2017 [5]. These macro shifts may have altered the wider ecosystem for humanities and fringe-spirituality research funding, but the supplied material does not connect those federal trends to A.R.E.’s operations or Cayce scholarship specifically [3] [4] [5].
4. Leadership and organizational change literature — general lessons, not A.R.E.-specific
Academic and practitioner literature in the dataset emphasizes that leadership style and organizational change can reshape institutions’ priorities and external partnerships, but those sources are general and do not provide evidence that A.R.E.’s leadership choices in the 2010s–2020s produced measurable changes in Cayce scholarship output or direction [6] [7]. Therefore, while leadership can matter, available reporting does not show how it affected Cayce studies at A.R.E. [6] [7].
5. Two plausible hypotheses — consistent with the record but not proven here
Given the data: (a) A.R.E. continued member-funded local scholarship activity in the 2010s [1] [2]; (b) national R&D funding experienced stimulus-driven increases and shifting funder roles in the early 2010s [3] [4] [5]. It is plausible that A.R.E.’s scholarship and research activity was shaped more by private-member giving and programming priorities than by federal R&D cycles, but this inference is not verified by the provided sources — available sources do not mention this linkage [1] [2] [3].
6. What a reporter would need to establish causation
To tie funding, leadership, or partnership shifts at A.R.E. to measurable changes in Cayce scholarship across the 2010s–2020s would require primary documents or reporting not in the current set: A.R.E. budgets, board minutes, leadership biographies and tenure dates, grant or partnership announcements, and measures of scholarly output (publications, conferences, funded research). The dataset contains none of these A.R.E.-internal records; therefore, claims about causation cannot be supported by the supplied material (not found in current reporting).
7. Takeaway for readers and researchers
From the materials provided, one can say only that A.R.E. maintained small, member-donor-supported scholarship programs in the mid-2010s [1] [2] and that the wider U.S. research funding landscape experienced stimulus-driven shifts and changing funder roles in the early-to-mid 2010s [3] [4] [5]. Any stronger assertion about how A.R.E.’s funding, leadership, or partnerships altered Cayce scholarship in the 2010s–2020s requires reporting or documents beyond the sources offered here (not found in current reporting).