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

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.

My measuring stick for rising inflation is the cost of an iced lavender matcha latte. It used to be $5, then $6, now a harrowing $7. Every time I reach the checkout screen, a familiar, condescending voice comes blaring through my head:

To some, making art and reviewing contracts are like oil and water—they don’t mix. In reality, many working artists will at some point engage in a binding agreement with another person or party for a gig, sale, commission, fiscal sponsorship, grant award, exhibition, or collab. But I suspect I’m not the only artist who feels like an imposter when I “review” my contracts. How can I possibly protect myself or my work, without legal training or expertise?

I’ll never forget the first time I took myself on an artist date. Okay, to be honest, I forget most of the details. But I’ll never forget how it felt. The clarity! The creative freedom! The subversive undertones. It was my first taste of anti-productivity.

My measuring stick for rising inflation is the cost of an iced lavender matcha latte. It used to be $5, then $6, now a harrowing $7. Every time I reach the checkout screen, a familiar, condescending voice comes blaring through my head:

Whether you’re an individual artist or budding young arts collective, googling “artist grants” will only get you so far, friend. Most of us are aware that grants and other funding opportunities exist, but don’t know where to find them or how to cultivate a sustainable research routine. It takes quite a bit of open-minded foraging, disciplined hunting, and genuine community building to keep your application plate full of real, feasible opportunities, rather than expensive busy work. Like a grizzly bear posting up at a bend in the river in anticipation of salmon season, or filter-feeding barnacles that grab tasty stuff as it floats by, there are plenty of different tools and strategies to choose from when you’re developing your own, personal approach to discovering new funding opportunities.

When I told two of my friends that I was writing an article about artist websites, both of them sighed loudly and hid their faces behind their hands. I want to extend acknowledgement and validation to anyone who has ever felt personally victimized by their artist website, and the never-ending upkeep it requires 🙋🏾‍♀️ 🙋🏻 🙋🏿 🙋🏼

For creative people, text boxes with harsh word limits (or god forbid, character limits) are public enemy no.1. Distilling a deeply personal, evolving artistic journey into a few hundred characters can feel like an emotional and creative abyss—one that you can easily pour hours into with unsatisfying results. From our point of view (as a fiscal sponsor for artists that reviews thousands of grant applications per year), we have a few (humble) recommendations for making the writing process more fulfilling and framing your work to resonate with potential funders.

To some, making art and reviewing contracts are like oil and water—they don’t mix. In reality, many working artists will at some point engage in a binding agreement with another person or party for a gig, sale, commission, fiscal sponsorship, grant award, exhibition, or collab. But I suspect I’m not the only artist who feels like an imposter when I “review” my contracts. How can I possibly protect myself or my work, without legal training or expertise?