“This is a Big Leap.” How Are Performing Arts Funders Democratizing Grantmaking?

Mosaic Network Learning Exchange in 2019. Photo by Ralston Smith.

One of the concerning findings from IP’s recent survey of performing arts professionals was the apparently glacial pace of funders’ efforts at democratizing their grantmaking practices.

The survey asked respondents—including development officers, foundation reps, donors and consultants— to agree or disagree with the statement “Some say there is a trend toward democratization of philanthropy, exemplified by such things as more diversity among decision makers, more influence on grantmaking priorities from the field, and more instances of participatory grantmaking practices.”

While most respondents from the performing arts sector agreed with the premise, only 10% said there is “truly a growing trend toward more democratization of philanthropy with more and more examples that can be documented.” Forty percent said “there are some good examples of democratization in philanthropy, but it is likely a trend that will happen very slowly over time.” (Check out all of our coverage of IP’s recent philanthropy surveys here.)

“I am really in an existential crisis moment with all of this,” wrote one fundraiser who took the survey. “I think the whole system is broken and needs to be thrown out. I’m doubting my work in this field, actually. But I am glad that there are some areas of democratization happening.”

The respondent’s attitude captures the prevailing sentiment in the data. Performing arts professionals have legitimate gripes with the funding ecosystem as currently constructed. But they know that change doesn’t happen overnight in the world of philanthropy, so any attempt at reform gives them the strength to hang on.

Respondents may find some solace knowing that the pandemic and growing calls for racial justice have galvanized funders’ efforts to democratize the field. Some of these efforts, like ramping up support to regranting organizations, will sound familiar. Others approaches, like collaborative arts funding models, are a bit more novel. What links these initiatives is the need for funders “to listen to and trust constituents, rather than prescribing what we think they need,” said Karen Newell, Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation’s director of external communications. “This is a big leap and basic shift in the way most funders work.”

Pre-2020 democratization work

Prior to the pandemic, performing arts grantmakers admitted to unwittingly compounding many of the problems that caused so much frustration across the sector.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation revamped its performing arts grantmaking strategy after it “unintentionally limited our understanding of other important sources of artistic vitality” by focusing “on more formalized nonprofit arts organizations,” program director Emiko Ono told me. In Denver, the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation’s leadership discovered its grantmaking model, which tied grants to budget size, shut out smaller organizations serving diverse communities.

The MacArthur Foundation came to a similar conclusion after it assessed its arts grantmaking approach. In response, the foundation implemented a participatory grantmaking panel that reviewed and recommended applicants to foundation leadership. As I noted at the time, it was a rare example of an arts funder embracing a form of grantmaking that had primarily been the domain of funders focused on issues like environmental work, disability rights and community development.

This isn’t to say participatory or peer-based grantmaking strategies were a panacea for what ailed an insular pre-2020 funding community. The idea assumes that individuals not affiliated with the foundation are better equipped to assess grantees. Foundation staff who have been working in the funding and nonprofit space for decades may politely disagree with this premise.

Moreover, the mechanics of a democratized approach can be trickier in practice than in theory. Funders should “always try to avoid conflicts of interest on panels, whether real or perceived,” said Suzanne Callahan, who oversees Dance/USA’s Fellowships to Artists (DFA). But a small arts community may have few experts in a specific field, like Cambodian dance, for example. If any of these experts becomes a panelist, they will likely know most of the organizations in that field.

The challenge facing funders, Callahan told me, is to select panelists “who do not have a financial or other interest with applicants but are representative of the art form and/or community to be served. The awareness of cultures, art forms and artists that panelists bring to the decision-making process is crucial.” (DFA involves artists in the program’s design, but artists who applied for fellowships may not serve on the panel.)

“Funders can have more impact”

These pre-2020 approaches suggest that democratization of philanthropy unfolds in increments across a broader continuum. The ultimate question is: “Who has the power?”

The Hewlett, Bonfils-Stanton and MacArthur foundations revamped their grantmaking models to look beyond the “usual suspects.” MacArthur went a step further by convening a participatory grantmaking panel that—to quote IP’s survey—added “more diversity among decision makers.” But at the end of the day, the decision of who got the money ultimately remained in the hands of each funders’ leaders.

Some performing arts professionals I spoke with said that funders should go a step further and partially relinquish their core competency—determining who, exactly, gets grants—to outside organizations better dialed into diverse communities.

“The philanthropic model is predicated on the program officer having a relationship with a grantee, but no foundation will have the same connection to community as community partners do,” said Alejandra Duque Cifuentes, executive director of Dance/NYC. Suzanne Callahan of Dance/USA agrees, telling me that funders “can have more impact if they work through an intermediary or regrantor that is closer to the ground or a specific discipline.”

“We don’t know everything”

Of course, the performing arts sectors’ top funders have been giving money to regranting organizations for years. The Shelley & Donald Rubin Foundation and the New York Community Trust funds Dance/NYC’s Disability. Dance. Artistry. Dance and Social Justice Fellowship Program, while the Ford Foundation supports the Dance Advancement Fund.

The extensive list of regranting organizations that Andrew W. Mellon Foundation funds includes Alliance of Resident Theaters, Chamber Music America, and New Music USA. The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has provided support for Theatre Communication Group’s Audience (R)Evolution, which promotes successful audience engagement and community development strategies, and Dance/USA’s Fellowships to Artists, which, under Callahan’s stewardship, supports dance artists who have “substantive practice of working through dance to address social change within one or more communities.”

Then the pandemic struck. In April, Theatre Communications Group published a report that found 88% of respondents had already canceled performances of productions in all spaces. For theaters that provided a projected figure for lost revenue from ticket sales by the end of June 2020, the average projected loss was $396,594.

Performing arts funders’ No. 1 priority was getting unprecedented sums of money out the door as soon as possible. But some leaders quickly acknowledged the limits of this strategy. They either couldn’t allocate money fast enough, or they lacked the time and resources to identify and fund small and historically undercapitalized organizations that weren’t on their radar. Subsequent demands for social justice, meanwhile, compelled funders across philanthropy writ large to gather feedback from the communities they work in, explore new collaborations, and give strategies like participatory grantmaking a second look.

As Maurine Knighton, director of the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation’s (DDCF) arts program, told me upon reflecting on the transformed landscape, “Humility is the watchword. We don’t know everything.”

Ramping up support for regrantors

Performing arts funders’ soul-searching led them to a strategy they had been inching toward for years: Why not give a huge chunk of money to regranting partners and let them cut the checks?

In late March, with funding from the New York Community Trust, Howard Gilman Foundation, Ford Foundation and others, Dance/NYC created the Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund, prioritizing organizations most impacted by COVID-19 and freelance dancers.

A month later, the Surdna Foundation announced a $13 million commitment to support artists of color working to advance racial justice within communities grappling with the pandemic. The support flows through an artist regranting initiative featuring a cohort of 11 intermediary organizations—including those focused on the performing arts, like the National Performance Network—that will distribute funds to artists, artist collectives and small arts organizations.

The key component of the Surdna initiative is what it calls “learning clusters” across its cohort that attempt to “impact prevailing inequities in arts grantmaking in specific ways.” Among the clusters are organizations focused on the Southeast, cross-sector partnerships between municipal governments and local arts nonprofits, and culturally specific intermediaries serving Latinx and Indigenous communities.

“We are proud to partner with organizations that provide direct, on-the-ground support and technical assistance to artists of color,” said F. Javier Torres-Campos, program director of the foundation’s Thriving Cultures program.

Surdna’s announcement came a year after it provided support for the Center for Cultural Innovation’s AmbitioUS, a regranting fund that provides artists and cultural communities with equitable access to capital, debt reduction and asset and wealth building. That investment now looks prescient. COVID-19 showed that “our social infrastructure is not designed to support arts and culture practitioners,” Torres told me. “Reimagining all support systems for the social sector is a ripe opportunity for the field to collaborate on.”

Achieving economies of scale

The summer brought two more regranting initiatives from philanthropy’s most generous arts funder. In June, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched the United States Regional Arts Resilience Fund. The foundation provided $10 million in emergency grants to six United States Regional Arts Organizations that would, in turn, disseminate the funding to small to midsize arts organizations across the country.

Two months later, Mellon committed $5 million for a new COVID-19 Crisis Relief Grant fund in partnership with the Intercultural Leadership Institute (ILI). The ILI’s five member organizations will use the funding to regrant to small arts nonprofits, cultural producers and artists that “historically and currently have been overlooked and that might be particularly vulnerable to the financial impact of the pandemic,” according to the foundation.

A closer look at each of the numbers shows that by allocating a relatively small amount of funding to small organizations, foundations can achieve economies of scale. Dance/NYC’s Coronavirus Dance Relief Fund awarded a combined $779,000 to organizations and freelance dance workers across the March-June grant period. That money went on to support over 100 organizations and 600 freelance dancers. Surdna anticipates its $13 million regranting initiative will fund up to 87 artist-led projects and approximately 260 projects over three years.

In September, two of Mellon’s United States Regional Arts Resilience Fund grantees, Arts Midwest and the Mid-America Arts Alliance (MAAA), announced grants totaling more than $3 million to 30 organizations, including 22 led by and serving people of color and/or Indigenous peoples and 11 rural nonprofits. The MAAA also awarded grants totaling more than $1.5 million to 27 organizations thanks to additional support from the Windgate Foundation.

As for its COVID-19 Crisis Relief Grant fund, Mellon expects its $5 million investment will eventually flow to roughly 1,500 artists and organizations that receive grants ranging from $1,000 to $20,000—a game-changing figure for historically undercapitalized organizations.

“Challenge your funders”

Funders’ embrace of regranting organizations should happen concurrently with their democratizing efforts that seek to solicit—once again, quoting IP’s survey—“more influence on grantmaking priorities from the field.”

Surdna’s Torres said that performing arts funders should “pay for the expertise and wisdom of and listen to the recommendations of frontline organizations” calling for greater equity and inclusion, including National Black Theater, Axis Dance Company, Theater Offensive, Penumbra Theater, Ananya Dance, Pangea World and Cleo Parker Robinson Dance, among many others.

Torres also cited funding coalitions as a “promising grantmaking strategy” worthy of greater investment. “Since the onset of COVID-19, we have received more and more inquiries from partnerships of performing arts organizations related by demographics and by geography. This is an exciting sign of collaboration in the field as a response to changing funding strategies on the demand side and a great opportunity for the cultural funding sector.”

Two foundation reps that I spoke with cited the Mosaic Network and Fund as an innovative collaborative funding model. Housed at the New York Community Trust, the fund’s advisory committee is composed of 50% African, Latinx, Asian, Arab and Native American (ALAANA) arts practitioners and 50% representatives from participating funders, including Surdna. Since its launch two years ago, it has pooled over $6 million from 20 funders, supports 27 ALAANA arts groups, and maintains a vast learning network of over 100 arts and culture nonprofits.

Kerry McCarthy, the trust’s vice president of philanthropic initiatives and the fund’s other co-chair, told me that the leadership changed the composition of its grant program after receiving feedback from practitioners in the fund’s learning exchange, who encouraged her to increase eligibility and flexibility. “The amount of general operating support was hiked to 50% and we lowered the budget floor to $20,000,” she said. “As a result, we supported a lot of smaller groups.”

McCarthy’s commentary echoes Torres-Campos’s contention that “grantmakers’ funding coalitions have the ability to more equitably resource an ecosystem and not just siloed institutions/organizations.”

Finally, Torres-Campos had advice for nonprofit performing arts organizations on the receiving end of funders’ ongoing efforts to make grantmaking more democratized and equitable.

“COVID-19 has pushed more funders to embrace trust-based philanthropy practices like giving multi-year unrestricted grants, streamlining paperwork, and giving support beyond the check,” he said. “Challenge your funders to uphold the pledges they’ve made in perpetuity.”