Wednesday, March 18, 2020

During this unprecedented time of crisis in our nation’s cultural, educational, economic and healthy well-being, Americans for the Arts calls on our nation’s public and private sector grantmakers and individual philanthropists in the arts to help respond to the impact of COVID-19 on the infrastructure of our nonprofit cultural organizations and artists.

Americans for the Arts encourages grantmakers of all types to consider taking the following actions to support your community as quickly as possible. For our part, Americans for the Arts will also immediately make these recommendations to Congress to modify existing regulations within the federal cultural grantmaking agencies and include support for cultural organizations and artists with the economic stimulus package.

  • Convert current project-specific grants into general operating grants
  • Remove any matching grant requirements on existing grants
  • Extend deadlines for interim and final reports by six months
  • Extend deadlines for new applications of existing guidelines by two months
  • Re-distribute more of your grantmaking funds to general operating support
  • Create new fast-track COVID-19 impact stimulus grant programs on a rolling basis
  • Remove any restrictions on the number of grants a cultural organization can have with your institution this year

Taking time to connect with your funding peers and community organization to work in concert together, will be important to ensure efforts are generative.

We have pulled together some articles and blogs on the matter that might be helpful as you support your community during this time: