Federal grant-reliant arts organizations in the Bay Area are forced to find new funding sources after the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) announced a cancellation of Challenge America, a program which aimed to “extend the reach of the arts to underserved groups/communities,” on Feb. 6.
The NEA said it cancelled the program to focus staff resources on the Grants for Arts Projects category, which will prioritize organizations that honor the 250th anniversary of the United States and the signing of the Declaration of Independence.
The cancellation of the Challenge America program will pose detrimental consequences to smaller arts organizations in minority and underserved communities. Many of these non-profits relied on the small grants that the NEA has awarded under the program since 2001. A lot of their current projects would not align with the America250 focus, as well as the new “requirement for applicants to have completed a five-year history of arts programming prior to the application deadline.”
Lyz Luke, director of Living Jazz, a non-profit organization in Oakland, CA, explained that “when you frame it like that, there are a lot of organizations that won’t make the cut. It’s very, very culturally specific, and it’s not very accessible for a lot of organizations.”
The Palo Alto Art Center Foundation (PAACF), a non-profit that has supported the Palo Alto Art Center for over 50 years, received a $35,000 grant from the NEA in 2024 under the Grants for America project. The grant helped pay for an internship and fellowship program which allowed diverse youth to engage at the Art Center, as well as a year of programming that supported artists and art installations. The foundation was planning on applying for another grant next year that would support an initiative focused on clay making, which would host a broad range of artists from different backgrounds.
“We were really banking on funding from the NEA to support this initiative,” said Karen Kienzle, director of the Palo Alto Art Center. “I don’t think it’s going to fit within the anniversary of the Declaration of Independence unless it’s a significant stretch– it’s going to be really hard not to talk about equity in that context.”
The clay initiative would have provided scholarships for individuals that couldn’t afford registration for pottery classes and free hands-on workshops for the community.
Karen Kwan, Certified Fundraising Executive Chief Development Officer of PAACF, explained that Art federal grants can lend a sense of credibility to an organization that appeals to donors. Without them, “it’s a ripple effect down the wrong path. These federal grants are often five-six figures, so it’s hard to find that money in different ways.”
Pear Theatre, a small non-profit theatre in Mountain View, California and recipient of a $10,000 grant from the first round of Challenge America in 2024, voiced similar concerns.
“One of the shows that I was looking at definitely would have fallen into Challenge America,” said Sara Dean, the artistic director at the Pear. “[It’s] about a young teen immigrant boy who is trying to get back to his mom, his community, and find himself again, which would have been a really nice pairing with that grant. Now, we go okay, where else can we find the funds to fill that gap?”
The organization, which relies on ticket sales, individual donors, and grants, is looking to the community for help. Since the price of tickets just barely accounts for the cost of putting on a $10-14,000 show, the bills can begin to pile up. The Pear is left with the expenses of rent, payroll for the core staff, as well as development and outreach efforts.
The Bay Area may not be willing to step up to the plate. Dominated by wealthy venture capitalists focused on technology and artificial intelligence, there is a need for philanthropists who care about the arts.
Louis Stone-Collonge, technical director of the Pear and an experienced grant writer, said “Silicon Valley, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties have some of the largest population of millionaires per capita in the world. And our philanthropy is nowhere. And it’s getting with the politics, right? You see a lot of CEOs who we thought were kind of liberal sucking up to the new administration.”
Dean added her frustration, gesturing at the Google and Microsoft buildings within walking distance from the 3,500 square foot theatre. “They could sneeze and fund our programs for a year,” she said.
Dean added that many of the core group artists at the Pear work at such companies because “most people can’t make a living off of the arts in the area. So how do we make that change, to get corporations to understand that the arts and the people who are here are valuable? They’re their employees– at Google, at Apple, at Facebook, Meta, and these major tech companies, they’re all here [at the Pear],” Dean said.
Luke also expressed her concerns about relying on philanthropic efforts in the face of federal cuts that are compounding other funding losses at a state and local level. Among the biggest losses are the City of Oakland Cultural Affairs Council voting to eliminate the Cultural Funding Program’s General Purpose Fund allocation of $683,532, as well as the Oakland Unified School District declaring themselves insolvent. Furthermore, in response to an initial budget deficit last year, the state of California cut the California Arts Council’s funding by $5 million, leaving several cultural and grant-reliant organizations largely unfunded.
Aside from the NEA, Luke discussed that if federal funding were to be cut across the board, Living Jazz would stand to lose a significant portion of their budget that comes from after-school program funding to California. She explained that the organization was lucky to have applied for an NEA grant in the earlier cycle as the $50,000 value represents the majority of their education manager salaries.
“It’s a lot of money that’s not happening this year that’s happened for 40 years in the past. It’s a little stressful,” said Luke. “And as much as we’re asking for individuals and philanthropists to step up for us for the next four years, it’s a big ask. So, this can’t be a long-term sustainable thing, but I’m hoping we could ride out the next four years.”
