Grantmakers in the Arts

"We have to stop being afraid of the critique,” Joe Scantlebury, CEO of Living Cities says in the Chronical of Philanthropy. “We don’t improve in silence.”

In a new report, "Pulse Checking Progress Toward Operationalizing REI: Arts, Culture & Healing," from LivingCities revisits learnings and progress from internal racial equity work over the part five years in response to a 2017 internal learning report, “What Does it Take to Embed a Racial Equity & Inclusion Lens?"

“Our work here in Chinatown,” Yin Kong, director and co-founder of Think!Chinatown, says, “Is about place-keeping. It’s about celebrating, strengthening and amplifying,” in an interview with NextCity. The article continues, "For a neighborhood relatively compact in size — Chinatown covers roughly two square miles in Lower Manhattan — it boasts an impressive and dedicated collective of cultural organizers," and more than $200 million announced in public dollars just in the past two years, after decades of "pigeon-holing" and insufficient funding.

"Color Congress, a national collective of majority people of color (POC) and POC-led organizations aimed at centering and strengthening nonfiction storytelling by, for and about people of color in the US, has launched in advance of the 2022 Sundance Film Festival," Filmmaker magazine reported this January leading up to the 2022 Sundance Film Festival. "Founded by documentary impact and field-building strategists Sahar Driver and Sonya Childress, the collective will invite POC-led doc-serving organizations to apply for unrestricted two-year funding from a $1.35 million fund, and later in the year, they’ll be invited to join the Congress and direct over $1 million in grants aimed at addressing field challenges."

"We’re moving beyond DEI (bodies at the table), racial equity (measuring POC against white people), and perhaps even racial justice (the righting of racial wrongs), to an actual focus on what Black people need to thrive (building pro-Black)," Cyndi Suarez writes in the latest issue of NonProfit Quarterly (NPQ). "These parallel realities exist right now. But there is a gap between the leaders of color and radical white conspirators at the edge—and the funders who claim to be."

"Last year, Charlotte city government, business executives, and The Foundation For The Carolinas developed a plan aimed at boosting arts funding," reported Erik Spanberg in the Charlotte Business Journal. "It included the addition of an arts and culture officer — Priya Sircar, hired last summer — and the creation of an 18-member advisory board made up of arts, civic, and philanthropic leaders." $4.4 million remain uncommitted from this inaugural grantmaking period, and as organizations and communities face increased challenges due to the Covid-19 Omicron variant, the advisory board are opening new possibilties for how it could be allocated.

"Music works in both magical and clinically substantiated ways in communities with rich musical traditions that span bluegrass, country, gospel, and more," writes Taylor Sisk in a long-form piece in National Geographic about how music and health are intertwined and inextricably linked throughout the Applachian region.

In a new report, "Trading Glass Ceilings for Glass Cliffs: A Race To Lead Report on Nonprofit Executives of Color," from the Building Movement Project, experiences and challenges of nonprofit leaders of color who have attained the top position in their organizations are explored, addressing the struggles of often increased racism on the path to leadership.