Artist Resources, Grants for Artists, Creative Projects, Making Money for Artists

When you think about your biggest supporters, who comes to mind? It’s probably not the foundation that gave you a grant, and it’s probably not members of your online community who have given you donations in the past. While you’re absolutely grateful to all of them, they aren’t who you think of as your biggest supporters. The faces you conjure up are most likely going to be members of your family and your closest friends. The reasons are obvious: they believe in you! They’ve got your back! They’ll do anything to support your passion. So it begs the question: why haven’t you asked your biggest supporters for donations?

If you’ve been to a concert recently, you probably sacrificed your first born to get a spot in the nosebleeds and STILL had a great time. Concerts generally offer different levels of experience to accommodate different people and price points — general admission in the back, closer to the stage if you paid a little more, maybe a VIP option that came with a drink ticket and a better view, and then somewhere behind a velvet rope, the kind of access most of us only dream about. Same show. Same artist. But a whole spectrum of ways to feel connected to it.

The emotional side of fundraising is a lot like a video game. Not the fun kind where you're exploring a lush, bountiful world at your own pace — more like the kind where you round a corner and suddenly there are five seemingly unbeatable monsters standing between you and the distant, glowing treasure chest. Your instinct is to either swing wildly and hope for the best (chaos) or close the laptop entirely (also chaos, just quieter and more painful). But here's the thing: you don't have to fight them all at once. Every emotional challenge that comes up around fundraising is its own level, with its own logic, its own weak points. Clear one, then move to the next. That's how you get to the treasure chest (without losing your mind along the way).

What kind of face do you find yourself making when you hear the word "budget?" Is it the same face you make when it's time to go to the dentist? In an ideal world, artists would love if they didn't have to budget and instead create freely, indulging in unchecked amounts of chocolate and coffee along the way. But in this world, creating a budget for your artistic project, however painful it might seem at first, can actually bring you some ease – and maybe even a fresh smile – as you work toward your goal with the knowledge that you don't have any unexpected cavities that need filling.

Picture this: it's a late night in deep February and you're Gollum-hunched over your laptop, sifting through old receipts and invoices, sipping on stale coffee, and wondering if maybe — just maybe — you should have paid someone to do your complex artist taxes this year. Or perhaps you're on the equally harrowing flip side: you just dropped $800 on an energetic social media manager and now you're eating instant ramen for a month, second-guessing whether those fast-paced Instagram reels were really worth it.

Whether you’re a deductions nerd (👋) or an artist with a zest for building something in the world (❤️‍🔥), this guide offers quick, actionable information for navigating the tax implications of fiscal sponsorship with confidence and ease. With a little planning, research, and tidy documentation, tax season can (and should!) be a breeze. Begone, tax headaches!

Nobody becomes an artist because they secretly want to become their own accountant (“If I could do it all over again, I’d drop out of art school and become a CPA!”). But once you're deep into your creative practice, managing the financial realities becomes a real and undeniable part of the work. Creative success can become a double-edged sword, saddling you with budgets to manage, contracts to negotiate, and quarterly estimated taxes to calculate. To say nothing of the receipts scattered across medieval costume pockets, battered cello cases, and buried email threads.

Here's something we shouldn't have to say but will anyway: your creative work has value. Your time has value. Your expertise, your vision, your late nights and early mornings — all of it counts. And yet artists are still routinely asked to work for free, work without contracts, or get outright swindled when it's time to cut the check.

If you work in the arts, you've probably had your fair share of creeeepy bosses, ghoulish work conditions, and clients who turn into ghosts as soon as it's time to pay up. This October, Fractured Atlas is commissioning an artist of any discipline to write a 750-900 word article about their very own arts worker horror story 👹 Please review the details below, and fill out this short interest form by Thursday, September 25th for a chance to write and publish your story with a $750 stipend. We’ll be randomly selecting someone to work with, because the art world doesn't need any more competition ੈ✩‧₊˚

Giving you "required reading" isn't quite our style here at Fractured Atlas, but when it's urgent we can get pretty serious. For years, if not decades and centuries, the established economic system in the U.S. has routinely failed artists, refugees, people of color, indigenous peoples, the unhoused, people with disabilities, parents — to say nothing of its ravaging effect on the environment and disproportionate harm on the global south. The creative co-ops we're sharing with you today may not be the solution to a rapidly warming planet or an exploitative billionaire class, but artists have always been the first to dream, test, and demonstrate the viability of alternate worlds. If any part of you dreams of alternative economies, this post is for you.