Arizona Arts & Culture Groups Receive $305,000 Grants to Boost Participation

The Flinn Foundation has awarded seven grants totaling $305,000 to Arizona arts and culture organizations to encourage strategies to increase participation. The grants aim to help the groups generate additional earned revenue to endure economically challenging times.

Through its Participation Enhancement Grants Program, announced in June, the Foundation asked 20 major arts and culture organizations across Arizona to submit proposals for grants that would expand and deepen participation from audiences, participants, and donors.

Grants ranging from $25,000 to $50,000 were issued to seven organizations whose applications best addressed the initiative's criteria. Recipients were: Alliance for Audience, Arizona Theatre Company, Ballet Arizona, Childsplay, Desert Botanical Garden, Mesa Arts Center, and Tucson Museum of Art. [A summary of grant projects is available here.] After one year, those organizations demonstrating project success will be eligible for an additional award of $25,000.

"In this period of shrinking resources for arts and culture organizations, one area with potential for expansion is earned revenue," said Jack Jewett, president and CEO of the Flinn Foundation. "While Arizona organizations traditionally do well in this area, it's critical to emphasize earned revenue even more during these tough economic times, when funding revenues from government, corporations, and other traditional sources have declined or disappeared."

Arts and culture organizations across Arizona with annual budgets of at least $2.5 million were eligible to apply, in addition to Alliance for Audience, whose stated mission is audience development.

As part of the application process, groups were required to submit financial and organizational information to the Arizona Cultural Data Project, an effort launched in early 2011 to streamline the reporting of data from arts and culture institutions. Arizona became the ninth state to join the national CDP movement, supported and coordinated by the Pew Charitable Trusts.

The CDP initiative helps arts and cultural organizations improve their financial management and community services; enables researchers, advocates, and policy makers to articulate the sector's contributions and needs; and assists funders in effectively planning and evaluating individual and collective grantmaking activities. The Arizona CPD is funded by the Flinn Foundation, Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, and a host of Arizona private and public partners.

The Flinn Foundation is a Phoenix-based, private, nonprofit philanthropic endowment established in 1965 by Dr. and Mrs. Robert S. Flinn with the mission of improving the quality of life in Arizona to benefit future generations. In addition to arts and culture, the Foundation supports the advancement of the biosciences in Arizona, the Flinn Scholars Program, and the Arizona Center for Civic Leadership.

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