GIA Blog

Bloomberg Philanthropies and the Flamboyan Arts Fund announced their partnership on the Arts Innovation and Management (AIM) Puerto Rico program, which will provide two-year management training in strategic planning, fundraising, digital marketing, and resilience planning to 10 Puerto Rico-based arts organizations, according to the announcement.

Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions (LACE) recently announced the launch of the LACE Lightning Fund, a new regional regranting fund. For its inaugural round, the Lightning Fund will provide emergency relief grants for independent visual artists based in Los Angeles County who are experiencing financial hardship due to the severe economic impacts of COVID-19 on artists’ livelihoods and practices, according to the announcement.

As protests for racial justice seethed through Philadelphia, "Philadelphia’s Bread & Roses Community Fund, a grant-making organization with a social-justice mission, received as much in donations — more than half a million dollars — as it would normally get for the whole year," The Philadelphia Inquirer reported.

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced it will make a $1,000,000 investment in a National Folklife Network to develop new folklife infrastructure in spaces where it does not currently exist and will also expand its Folk Arts Partnerships to all 62 states, territories, and regions of the country for the first time in the program’s history, according to Mary Anne Carter, chair of the NEA.

The Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors passed a motion recently to adopt the Arts for All Children, Youth, and Families: Los Angeles County’s New Regional Blueprint for Arts Education, which aims to bring arts education to young people throughout LA County.

The Ford Foundation and The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation launched Disability Futures, the only financial award in the US for disabled creatives from all disciplines, according to the announcement.

The world is in the midst of a historic moment with our changing our practices in order to function during the pandemic and embracing the movement for racial justice. This is a time of great opportunity, as long as we recognize and embrace it. At the start of April I shared a letter calling for us to build deep resilience in our field.

A recent report from Candid and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy looks at the philanthropic dollars that were distributed for COVID-19 in the first half of 2020.

“Black media—and my expertise is in Black media—is an endangered species. If there’s not a wholesale investment in reviving and supporting and providing resources to Black-owned media, it will go away.”

An article in Nonprofit Quarterly discusses President Donald Trump’s Executive Order on Combating Race and Sex Stereotyping, explains "how the EO and related actions of the government are bigger and far worse—and why nonprofits need to pay attention."