When schools were going remote and the live theater world came to a sudden halt, it felt like the end of the world. But it was also the catalyst for new ways to imagine theater art and arts education.

When you’re fundraising, you’re trying to accomplish something. You might be trying to pay your theater’s rent for the upcoming year, cover pre-production costs on your documentary, or get enough money coming in regularly that you can count on paying your bills through recurring donations. These are all different kinds of goals that you can make for your fundraising campaigns.

Nobody becomes an artist because they secretly want to become their own accountant. However, once you’re in your creative practice it’s inevitable that you’ll have to deal with your own finances. As a creative, you need to manage your budget, create and sign contracts with studio spaces or freelancers, sock away funds into your savings, and then make it all legible to the IRS come tax season.

Every month, Fractured Atlas provides a list of upcoming grants and opportunities for artists and arts-based projects so that you can discover more opportunities to get financial support and other resources for your work. As a fiscal sponsor of over 3,500 artistic projects, we provide access to grants for artists in every discipline.

When Andre Joseph was one of the few students of color at his private high school in Staten Island, he experienced bullying from other students and witnessed the way that administrators chose to protect the school’s reputation rather than its students. The experience stuck with him. With his short film “Dismissal Time,” he is telling a story based loosely on his own, in the hopes that it will resonate with people who are dealing with similar issues.

The life of a freelancer is a precarious one. There are periods of feast and famine, confusing taxes, and the chasing down of vendors to pay on time (or at all). There is the constant hunt for gigs, which could cancel at a moment’s notice. This is to say nothing about how freelancers in the U.S. pay for healthcare or save for retirement.

For an entire category of workers (but certainly not the whole workforce) the expectation of a 40-hour, 9-5 Monday through Friday workweek seems like an inevitability; an expectation so deeply ingrained that it’s hard to remember it wasn’t always this way. And it’s even harder to remember that it might not have to be this way in the future.

Every month, Fractured Atlas provides a list of upcoming grants and opportunities for artists and arts-based projects so that you can discover more opportunities to get financial support and other resources for your work. As a fiscal sponsor of over 3,500 artistic projects, we provide access to grants for artists in every discipline.

Since I came to Fractured Atlas almost two years ago, I’ve been sharing information about how artists and creatives can run successful fundraisers. I’ve written articles about picking perks and shooting videos for crowdfunding campaigns, the importance of donation tiers, and running raffles.

Elaine Del Valle has been telling her own Brooklyn coming-of-age story, “Brownsville Bred” for theater-goers and young readers. Now she’s ready to tell it on the big screen as a feature film.