The Arts Work Fund is pleased to announce Thrive Grant Program to provide three-year general operating grants to arts and culture organizations that intentionally reflect and serve the priorities of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), LGBTQ+ people, women, and people with disabilities, and those at the intersection of these identities.
Donor Name: The Arts Work Fund
State: Illinois
County:
Type of Grant: Grant
Deadline: 03/19/2023
Details:
The program aims to create opportunities for advancement, sustainability, or visibility by providing support and a runway for stability to community-rooted arts organizations. It is also an opportunity for AWF to learn and share new ways of looking at arts organization vitality beyond the traditional measures of audience size or numbers and critical reviews typically used by funders.
The program prioritizes organizations that practice and promote the following:
- Artistic & Cultural Focus
- The organization’s core mission promotes artistic and cultural practices that resonate with their communities and advance artistic and cultural life in Chicago.
- Community Rootedness & Relevance
- The organization is rooted in its community, actively reflecting and responding to its community’s cultural needs and wants. As such, the organization has a vision for using the grant funding in meaningful and impactful ways that further embed it into the community’s cultural fabric. The definition of “impact” will differ from organization to organization, community to community.
- Interconnectedness
- The organization enhances and contributes to the arts ecosystem via connection, collaboration, and exchange with organizations, groups, and individuals serving the same community and/or addressing complementary community needs.
- Self-determination and Leadership
- Organizational leadership represents the community it seeks to serve, and decision-making reflects community needs. The organization enables people and communities to participate in cultural life through a lens of choice, empowerment, and freedom.
Eligibility Criteria
To be eligible for the Thrive grant program, organizations must:
- Have a mission and primary purpose that supports artists and the production and presentation of art.
- Be based in and serving Chicago or Cook County.
- Be a 501(C)(3) or have a formal relationship with a fiscal sponsor. Organizations with fiscal sponsors should have an independent budget and a board of directors or other formal, organized oversight team that serves a governance function and otherwise complements staff leadership.
- Based on the most recently completed fiscal year, annual operating expenses are under $2 million.
Restrictions
The Thrive grant program does not support:
- Universities, schools (private, public, charter), and religious entities.
- Organizations whose primary purpose is arts learning (i.e., more than 50% of its programming, staff time, and/or budget is for arts education activities),
- Arts service organizations.
- Organizations with a mission and primary purpose that fall outside supporting artists and producing and presenting artmaking.
Note: If an organization receives a Thrive grant, it will be ineligible to apply to any future AWF grants during the three-year Thrive grant period. Once the grant period ends, organizations can apply for other AWF grants.
For more information, visit Thrive Grant.
