ACLS Mission and Overview Formed a century ago, the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) is a nonprofit federation of 78 scholarly organizations. As the leading representative of American scholarship in the humanities and interpretive social sciences, ACLS’s core principle is that knowledge is a public good. As such, ACLS strives to promote the circulation of humanistic knowledge throughout society. In addition to stewarding and representing its member organizations, ACLS employs its $170 million endowment and $38 million annual operating budget to support scholarship in the humanities and social sciences and to advocate for its central role in the twenty-first century.