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

Reader, is there anything more painful than driving over a jagged pothole? The crunch of your spine, the desperate prayers for your car’s suspension and steering, and of course, a profound shame for not avoiding the pothole in the first place. Now imagine driving down a beat up backroad, no streetlights, with nothing to guide you and your poor steed to safety except your murky intuition. This is how a lot of us go into the grant application process — vaguely uneasy, completely lost, and proceeding valiantly into a mysterious void (i.e. the review panel). But what if you had a cheat sheet, a map, with every pitfall illuminated by bright, flashing warning signs?

In the face of uncertainty, we often turn to leaders for wisdom, guidance, and strength. I don’t know about you, but there are plenty of people in positions of authority and influence right now who don’t inspire me — people who have betrayed their most vulnerable constituents, abandoned due process, and sunk to new levels of corruption and self-serving greed. If you’re asking yourself what leadership even means in a time like this, I can assure you that I’m right there with you: angry, confused, searching.

You’re staring at the screen, your finger hovering over the submit button as you run through your application materials one last time — the artist statement you’ve rewritten seven (oh, wait…now eight) times, the project budget you’ve tweaked and retweaked, the work samples you’ve agonized over selecting. We’ve all hit submit with the same, well-worn mixture of hope and resignation.

Whether you’re new to the big wide world of arts funding or an (understandably) jaded expert, it can be hard to understand why grants exist, who funds them, what you can use them for, where to find them, and how to (hopefully) win one. It breaks our hearts when artists come to us feeling confused, lost, or misled when it comes to grant funding. Let this article be a snarky, shining lighthouse in these unnecessarily murky waters.

Imagine a scientist working on a new, cutting-edge technology. When you picture her, she’s probably working in a research lab or at a university, right? Despite all the shows and movies that suggest otherwise, scientists don’t work in their basements — they work within institutions, because it opens up funding avenues for their projects. It might shock you to hear that similar, tax-exempt funding avenues exist for artists. If a project you’re working on 1) is artistic and 2) has a public benefit, you could use fiscal sponsorship to apply for funding from corporations and foundations, collect tax-deductible donations, and access nonprofit discounts. Let’s get into it.

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.

Spring is upon us, at least where I am in Brooklyn, New York, Lenapehoking. The green buds sprouting from the trees warmly greet us after a long hibernation, and the bird songs continue to shift with the warmer weather. The sidewalks are filling up as busy humans with their own worlds move quickly to their destinations. After getting used to colder weather, the season is changing, full of new beginnings and possibilities.

As you tuck your creative practice in for the night, the moment you’ve been dreading for years finally arrives. “Where do grants come from?” it asks, wide-eyed and full of hope. “While one-time grants can come from anywhere, like a gift from Oma, the big grants that reappear year after year are usually funded by an endowment,” you say, wishing you could end the talk there. Internally, you’re debating whether to start with the bright side of endowment funds, like free tuition for medical students in the Bronx, or start in the beginning, where white folks gifted each other other people’s land (“Charles, lad, you must have this forest! You simply must!”).

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.