GIA Blog

The Academy of American Poets, Community of Literary Magazine and Presses (CLMP), and the National Book Foundation announced they established The Literary Arts Emergency Fund, which will provide $3.5 million to the literary arts, a field that, as the press release states, has been disastrously impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.

The Open Society Foundations announced it was investing $220 million "to build power in Black communities, promote bold new anti-racist policies in U.S. cities, and help first-time activists stay engaged," according to its website.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and Yale Law School’s Justice Collaboratory announced recently an initiative to distribute a curated 500-book collection to 1,000 medium and maximum security prisons, including at least one juvenile detention center, across the United States over the next three and a half years, explains the press release.

In a recent piece, Gary Stewart reflects on Forbes on Black Lives Matters and the importance impact investment and foundations operating within the scope of program related investments can have in this moment.

By Sharnita C. Johnson and Randy Engstrom

When the novel coronavirus pandemic hit, like most people – and especially in my role as co-chair of the GIA Racial Equity Committee, with colleague Randy Engstrom, director at the City of Seattle Office of Arts and Culture – we agreed we wanted to say something to address the loss of life, ways of life, and the devastation the arts community was experiencing. While we literally work on opposite sides of the country, and in very different environments – Randy a public funder and me at a private foundation – we like most of our funding colleagues, sprang into action to get much needed resources to our grantee partners.

The coronavirus pandemic and the uprisings over police brutality and systemic racism have had a clear impact in communications in the philanthropic field, as a recent survey conducted by the Communications Network and Atlantic 57 has revealed.

Jasmine Wahi, the Holly Block Social Justice Curator at the Bronx Museum, addressed recently in artnet the importance of the role of social justice in museums, specially in the wake of recent Black Lives Matter protests, and why every art institution should have a social justice curator.

For the month of July, GIA’s photo banner features work supported by United States Artists.

As the coronavirus pandemic brought our city to a halt, The New York Community Trust and several philanthropic partners reached out to each other and quickly organized a powerful mobilization of funds to strengthen the city’s safety net.

The 18 lead partners created the NYC COVID-19 Response & Impact Fund to, in part, get urgently needed money to arts nonprofits whose survival was suddenly endangered. The needs across the city were enormous. But, because of our experience with previous catastrophic events such as September 11 and superstorm Sandy, we knew how we could respond: our grantmaking needed to be well-informed, precise, and go to where it would do the most good.

A new report from the Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP), based on a nationally representative survey of nonprofit leaders in May 2020, addresses what is most needed from funders "and what differences in experience are emerging based on characteristics such as organization type and gender of nonprofit leaders."