To Our Community,
Just as we were beginning to get a sense of how profoundly COVID-19 would disrupt our lives, we wrote to you. We said, “This is a time for foundations to listen, to remove barriers, to increase support, and to act quickly.” We said we were accountable to you. We made commitments to you.
A month has passed. What have we done to honor our commitments?
- We committed to a higher total grant payout in 2020 than ever before.
- As of April 30, 2020, we’ve mailed $658,200 in grant checks (vs $93,500 at this time, 2019.)
- We committed to granting roughly $500,000 to support COVID-19 response, outside of our two normal grant cycles, and sourcing a significant portion of those funds from our endowment.
- We created a $500,000 COVID-19 Response Fund, of which 40% was sourced from our endowment. As of April 30th, 2020, we have awarded $463,200 from this fund. Click here to see a current list of recipients.
- The fund prioritizes providing (1) general operating support for small and mid-sized arts organizations and (2) flexible funds for grassroots entities organizing toward social/economic justice and emergency response.
- We applied a lens of racial justice to our decisions. To date, 43% of COVID-19 Response funds went to Black-led organizations, 35% to white-led organizations, and 23% went to organizations with Latino or multi-racial team leadership.
- We will distribute the remaining funds during this calendar year. We are not accepting applications or solicitations for these funds.
- We committed to continuing our two normal grant cycles, with a slightly reduced budget.
- We are continuing our two normal grant cycles. We made the tough decision to reduce our overall grant cycle budget by 20% — and are confident that our community panels, advisors, and board will help us to make strong grant decisions.
- Already, we have awarded $115,000 as part of our regular grant cycles. Grantees will be officially announced later in the year.
- We committed to loosening restrictions for active and future grantees.
- We offered current applicants—all of whom submitted their proposals pre-COVID-19—the opportunity to easily make significant changes to their requests before our panels and board reviewed them.
- We offered current grantees the opportunity to extend timelines, convert project-based grants into general operating grants, submit oral reports instead of written reports, and accept multi-year grant installments earlier than planned.
- We anticipate that future grantees will enjoy some of these innovations – and more.
- We committed to listen to you. To read your emails. To reach out to ask how you are, what you’re doing, what you see, what you need.
- This is the best part of our job. We work toward this goal every day. We treasure our relationships, and thank you for helping us to become more strategic at this time.
- More, we thank you for the work so many of you are doing now. It is life-saving and life-giving.
We made one last commitment to you: to walk the tightrope between being responsive to the urgency we are all experiencing in the moment, and to remaining nimble and flexible over the duration of this crisis. It is far too early to assess whether or not we are still “walking the tightrope,” as it were. Whether we can is a question that stares us in the face. We aim to honor this commitment.
In solidarity,
