We did it everyone! It’s 2016! We made it to the future! Congratulations all around. The year is filled with so much promise just waiting to be derailed by the mundane. When it comes to the constant battle of the urgent versus the important, no time management strategy lasts forever. It’s a series of strategies and tactics that will enable us to look back on 2016 with more pride at what we’ve accomplished than regret at what might have been. (Did you catch that? This year is only hours old and I just skipped ahead to the end. Life moves so quickly nowadays.)

Unsurprisingly, there aren’t a ton of grant deadlines in the month of December. In fact, you’re probably spending a lot of your efforts trying to gin up end-of-year giving from individual donors — and keep fighting that good fight. But now might also be the perfect opportunity to do a quick check-in on your arts practice or arts organization to evaluate your readiness for grant opportunities in the new year. For those of you who’ve never applied for a grant before (and even for many of you who have) here are five juicy tidbits to stew on about as you determine your preparedness for the upcoming grants season.

Our Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow continues the #CopyrightwithCourtney blog series with a third filmmaking-centric post. Be sure to read the previous segments, parts one and two. You can find all the Copyright with Courtney posts here. Connect with her on Twitter @cduffy90 and join the conversation using #CopyrightwithCourtney.

VR is invading every industry, but the arts in particular present an excellent opportunity for communicating personal vision. Whether you want to put someone inside a painting, send them into space, or envelop them in a music video, the sensation of ‘presence’ afforded by VR means that your audience is certain to walk away with an unforgettable experience.

As we approach the end of the calendar year, there are several ways you can and should prepare for your end-of-year donor solicitations. A thoughtful end-of-year strategy can boost your donations while building a relationship with your donors — even through a busy fundraising time. I’m here to offer four simple ways to set yourself up for a successful end-of-year strategy.

With the lazy days of summer squarely in the rearview mirror, it’s time to get serious with some back-to-school reading. And while you could pick up Pride & Prejudice or, perish the thought, an arts business book to improve your practice, I’m here with some great recommendations for blogs that specialize on the cultural sector. Pro-tip on an excellent question to ask in your next job interview as a candidate for hiring: What blogs do your company’s employees subscribe to?

by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas Last month our Arts & Technology Policy Fellow, Courtney Duffy, continued her series on copyright challenges within different artistic disciplines by publishing part one of a segment on filmmaking. Below you’ll find part two. Connect with Courtney on Twitter @cduffy90 and join the conversation using #CopyrightwithCourtney.

by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas This post is the second installment of #CopyrightwithCourtney, a series from Courtney Duffy on the copyright challenges faced by artists in various disciplines. Courtney, who is Fractured Atlas’ Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow, focused on authorship in her first post. Today she begins a three-part post for the series on filmmaking. You’ll find her on Twitter @cduffy90.

by Nathan Zebedeo, Program Specialist at Fractured Atlas Educating yourself on fundraising — best practices, groundbreaking innovations, and the like — often involves reading books, blogs, and websites that travel a lot of the same ground. Which, on the one hand, can be somewhat tedious. But on the other, hearing the same things many times, from a variety of voices, can allow the wisdom of the ages to actually penetrate a thick skull like my own. All of this is to say that it’s rare that I pick up a book on fundraising and find something that I’ve never heard before. The Little Book of Gold: Fundraising for Small (and Very Small) Nonprofits by Erik Hanberg actually does shed some new light on old problems for me, and I hope that it can be a useful resource for you too.

Every grant application is different. Depending on the priorities of a given funder, they may ask you a wide variety of questions about the work that you’re making, but there are some questions you can expect to appear (in some way, shape, or form) on all grant applications. While grantmakers usually use pretty clear language for these questions and you should answer them straightforwardly, there are always ways to delve deep in your responses, addressing important aspects of your work and how it’s a good fit for the grantmaker’s funding priorities. I’ve put together 6 questions, below, that you’ll often see in grant applications, and provided some tips for how best to answer them: