Need funding for a project? Don't know where to start?
We've compiled a list of grant resources and links for both artists and organizations. While this is by no means a comprehensive list, we hope it provides you with a jumping off point!
New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA)
NYSCA is a state agency that supports, among other categories, arts education activities of not-for-profit arts and cultural organizations in New York State. NYSCA achieves its arts education goals primarily through grant programs to not-for-profit arts organizations. NYSCA allocates funding to every county across the state for partnerships between schools and arts and cultural organizations.
New York Council of Non Profits
NYCON is a statewide association of nonprofit organizations. Every organization currently funded by the New York State Council on the Arts is currently a member of NYCON, and eligible to receive free telephone consultation about organizational development, governance and management issues. Organizations funded by NYSCA receive discounts on more intensive consultancies, workshops, computer/date backup systems, director’s and officer’s liability insurance. NYSCON provides free pre-recorded webinars on management, governance, conflicts of interest issues, communications, marketing, and issues relating to the use of independent contractors. It also organizes conferences in various locations in New York State, and operates Camp Finance, which provides intensive training in financial management.
New York Foundation for the Arts
NYFA is funded in part by NYSCA and offers financial support to individual artists and arts organizations through a competitive grant process. NYFA Source, its online search engine, includes a national directory of grant awards, services and publications for individual artists.
Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA)
VLA provides free or low-cost legal assistance for artists and arts groups statewide. Its workshops and lectures cover a variety of legal issues affecting the arts community, including the process of obtaining non-profit incorporation and tax exempt status issues. Through MediateArt, artists are paired with mediators to mediate or resolve arts related disputes outside the traditional legal framework. The Art Law Line is a telephone service providing the arts community with legal and business advice, referrals and information about both substantive legal questions and VLA’s services. Pro bono legal services are offered to artists and arts organizations meeting income guidelines, and the VLA Clinic provides VLA members with a free consultation by a volunteer attorney on an arts related issue.
Arts Deadline
Art Deadline allows artists who have subscribed to search a database of artist exhibition opportunities, grants, job opportunities, etc.
Grants to You
Grants to You provides very low cost or free volunteer grant writing and education classes to primarily seniors, students and other motivated citizens who are computer comfortable, have a strong interest in supporting their community and who will designate a particular local non-profit organizations to assist in their grant writing efforts.
The New York State Government Information Locator Service
A program of the New York State Library, provides a single point of access to information on grants provided by New York State Government agencies, the State Legislature and the Judiciary.
The Center for Nonprofit Management
Internal Revenue Service
The Citizens Media Law Project
Alliance for the Arts
The Alliance for the Arts serves the entire cultural community through research and advocacy and serves the public through cultural guides and calendars. The Alliance publishes information on the arts and cultural events in New York City as well as studies highlighting the importance of the arts to the economy and to education.
Americans for the Arts
National membership and service organization serving arts service organizations, educators, administrators and artists. AFTA produces publications about arts policy, issues, and management. It operates a national arts policy database and circulates the Arts Policy Watch E-News.
Arts & Business Council of NY
The Arts and Business Council provides workshops and webinars in arts management and marketing and offers an arts leadership institute for new and emerging arts leaders
The Foundation Center
The Foundation Center is a national network for information about where and how to apply for foundation funding. The NYC office serves as a library and learning center. A number of its resources are available on-line.
Fractured Atlas
Fractured Atlas is a national arts service organization that provides programs and services to independent artists, arts organizations, and the cultural sector at large. Services include fiscal sponsorship, liability insurance, health insurance navigation, professional development, technology tools, and advocacy
Governance Matters
Governance Matters provides an online good governance guide, a website with resources for board members and “Ask the Experts” answers to questions about governance practices.
National Endowment for the Arts
In addition to the agency's extensive grants programs, the NEA online provides a wealth of information, publications and opportunities via an electronic resource center.
TechSoup
TechSoup. provides resources for technology needs.through articles, blogs and free webinars. Qualified non profits who join TechSoup are provided with donated or discounted technology products for a small administrative fee. Over 400 kinds of technology products are available, from partners which include Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, Intuit and Symantec.
Philanthropy News Digest
Philanthropy News Digest publishes RFPs and notices of awards as a free service for U.S.-based grant-making organizations and nonprofits. Select the 'Arts/Culture' to filter out relevant potential grant opportunities.
The Awesome Foundation
The Awesome Foundation is a global community advancing the interest of awesome in the universe, $1000 at a time. Each fully autonomous chapter supports awesome projects through micro-grants, usually given out monthly. These micro-grants, $1000 or the local equivalent, come out of pockets of the chapter's "trustees" and are given on a no-strings-attached basis to people and groups working on awesome projects. Check out the Buffalo, NY chapter for more information on eligibility and applying.
A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art
A Blade of Grass is an organization that provides resources for talented artists who “serve as innovative conduits for social change.” Its fellowship program is designed to support artists in creating work that highlights social problems, and focuses on funding projects that challenge unfair power dynamics. Along with the financial support, the fellowship grants artists an expenses-paid two-day orientation retreat in NYC to meet fellow artists as well as the organization’s staff and board.
Burning Man Global Art Grants
The Burning Man organization offers art grants to help fund projects around the world. It focuses on art projects that are accessible to the public and that encourage the viewers to experience it in other ways than just visually. These artist grants can range between $500 and $10,000 dollars, but most often they fall between $3,000 and $6,000.
Creative Capital
Since 1999, Creative Capital has committed over $45 million in project funding and advisory support to 561 projects representing 700 artists. Their awards help artists working in all creative disciplines realize their visions and build sustainable practices. Creative Capital provides each funded project with up to $50,000 in direct funding and career development services valued at $50,000, for a total commitment of up to $100,000 per project. It typically awards grants for artists with plans for large or long-term projects. Most of the projects that get funded have a timeline between three to five years.
Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants
Emergency Grants provide urgent funding for visual and performing artists who have sudden, unanticipated opportunities to present their work to the public where there is insufficient time to seek other sources of funding or incur unexpected or unbudgeted expenses for projects close to completion with committed exhibition or performance dates. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
The Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant
It aims to support “serious” and “fully-committed” artists, meaning those who focus on their artistic goals over other personal or financial responsibilities regardless of commercial success. The foundation only awards these art grants to “mature” artists, which it defines as having worked for at least 20 years in a mature phase of their art. In 2019, the Foundation awarded grants of $25,000 each to 12 artists.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Guggenheim Fellowships are art grants that are given to individuals who show “exceptional creative ability” in the arts. The goal is to help provide the recipient with time so they can work with as much creative freedom as possible. Recipients can use the funds in any way they see fit to help with their work.
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation provides grants for artists in financial need, whether that’s professional, personal or both. When selecting an applicant, the organization focuses on artists who have been working for a significant amount of time, and who can demonstrate both artistic merit and financial need.
Radcliffe Institute Fellowship
Each year, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program chooses 50 talented artists and scholars to convene at Harvard University for a full academic year. There they can work on individual projects while benefiting from a multidisciplinary community. Applicants from any discipline and who focus on any subject matter are welcome to apply.
Sustainable Arts Foundation
The foundation aims to support artists with families by providing financial awards to parents that are pursuing creative work. Parents often put aside their creative impulses to meet the demands of raising a family, so the foundation’s goal is to encourage parents to continue with their creative passions.
Ruth & Harold Chenven Foundation
The Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation gives unrestricted cash awards to individual artists for the continuation of their work.
Aaron Siskind Foundation Grant
The Aaron Siskind Foundation is offering a limited number of Individual Photographer's Fellowship grants of up to $15,000 each, for artists working in photography and photo-based art.
Burn Emerging Photographer Fund
Supports the continuation of a photograph's personal project, or emerging career. This body of work may be either journalistic mission or purely personal artistic imperatives. There is no age limit, and no limit as to how many project you may enter. Projects submitted may be ongoing, or finished.
Project Launch Grant
The Project Launch is granted to an outstanding photographer working on a fine art series or documentary project. The grant includes a cash award to help complete or disseminate the works, as well as providing a platform for exposure and professional development opportunities. This grant is awarded to complete or nearly completed projects that would benefit from the grant award package.
W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant
This grant is designed to help a photographer begin a photographic project or help complete an ongoing photographic project. Judges will be looking for a photographer whose proposed project seems most likely to use exemplary and compelling photojournalism (possibly supplemented by or incorporating multi-media) to address an issue of import and impact related to the human condition; social change; humanitarian concern; armed conflict or interpersonal, psychological, cultural, social environmental, scientific, medical and/or political significance, ideally expressing an underlying acknowledgement of our common humanity.
Puffin Foundation Artist Grant
Provides grants for emerging artists who are often excluded from mainstream opportunities due to their race, gender, or social philosophy. It also focuses on new artists, and specifies that established artists are less likely to be considered for a grant. They look for projects that seek to enrich and inform the public on important subjects such as the physical environment, social justice, civil rights and other contemporary issues facing the country (and the planet), that some organizations might hesitate to fund.
Harpo Foundation Grant
Grant for emerging artists aims to help support under-recognized visual artists. Applicants are evaluated based on the quality of their artistic work and potential to expand aesthetic inquiry. The grant can be used towards any activity that will help with the development of the artist’s work.
Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant
The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation gives grants for emerging artists to develop their skills in artistic expression. Applicants must be 18 or older, in an early or developmental stage of their work, and be able to show a commitment to making art their lifetime career.
Shakespeare in American Communities
The program supports high-quality, professional productions of Shakespeare’s plays and related educational activities for middle and high school students in underserved schools throughout the United States.
Grants for Female Artists
Women's Studio Workshop Residency Grant
The Studio Grant is a six- to eight-week residency for artists to create new work in any of the following studio disciplines: intaglio, letterpress, papermaking, screenprinting, photography, or ceramics. WSW invites applications from artists at any stage in their careers.
NLPW Grants & Scholarships
NLAPW awards are established for the purpose of promoting professionalism in Art, Letters, and Music, encouraging talented women to pursue further education or other goals which affect their creative efforts
Barbara Deming Memorial Fund
Money for Women is the oldest ongoing feminist granting agency. The foundation gives encouragement and grants to individual feminists in the arts (writers and visual artists). Grants are awarded between $500-$1,500
Inge Morath Award
The annual Inge Morath Award is given to a woman photographer under thirty years of age, to assist in the completion of a long term documentary project.
The Bennett Prize
Awards $50,000 to a woman artist to create her own solo exhibition of figurative realist paintings, which will travel the country. The prize will propel the careers of women painters who have not yet realized full professional recognition, empowering new artists and those who have painted for many years.
Grants for Sculptors
National Sculpture Society
Provides several grant opportunities including sculptors working in nature, figurative, realist, and animal sculpture categories.
Virginia A. Groot Foundation
Each year the Virginia A. Groot Foundation offers three grants (up to $50,000, $20,000, $10,000) to artists who have exceptional talent and demonstrated ability in ceramic sculpture or sculpture. Artists may be at any stage of career development, from emerging through mature.
New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA)
NYSCA is a state agency that supports, among other categories, arts education activities of not-for-profit arts and cultural organizations in New York State. NYSCA achieves its arts education goals primarily through grant programs to not-for-profit arts organizations. NYSCA allocates funding to every county across the state for partnerships between schools and arts and cultural organizations.
New York Council of Non Profits
NYCON is a statewide association of nonprofit organizations. Every organization currently funded by the New York State Council on the Arts is currently a member of NYCON, and eligible to receive free telephone consultation about organizational development, governance and management issues. Organizations funded by NYSCA receive discounts on more intensive consultancies, workshops, computer/date backup systems, director’s and officer’s liability insurance. NYSCON provides free pre-recorded webinars on management, governance, conflicts of interest issues, communications, marketing, and issues relating to the use of independent contractors. It also organizes conferences in various locations in New York State, and operates Camp Finance, which provides intensive training in financial management.
New York Foundation for the Arts
NYFA is funded in part by NYSCA and offers financial support to individual artists and arts organizations through a competitive grant process. NYFA Source, its online search engine, includes a national directory of grant awards, services and publications for individual artists.
Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts (VLA)
VLA provides free or low-cost legal assistance for artists and arts groups statewide. Its workshops and lectures cover a variety of legal issues affecting the arts community, including the process of obtaining non-profit incorporation and tax exempt status issues. Through MediateArt, artists are paired with mediators to mediate or resolve arts related disputes outside the traditional legal framework. The Art Law Line is a telephone service providing the arts community with legal and business advice, referrals and information about both substantive legal questions and VLA’s services. Pro bono legal services are offered to artists and arts organizations meeting income guidelines, and the VLA Clinic provides VLA members with a free consultation by a volunteer attorney on an arts related issue.
Arts Deadline
Art Deadline allows artists who have subscribed to search a database of artist exhibition opportunities, grants, job opportunities, etc.
Grants to You
Grants to You provides very low cost or free volunteer grant writing and education classes to primarily seniors, students and other motivated citizens who are computer comfortable, have a strong interest in supporting their community and who will designate a particular local non-profit organizations to assist in their grant writing efforts.
The New York State Government Information Locator Service
A program of the New York State Library, provides a single point of access to information on grants provided by New York State Government agencies, the State Legislature and the Judiciary.
The Center for Nonprofit Management
Internal Revenue Service
The Citizens Media Law Project
Alliance for the Arts
The Alliance for the Arts serves the entire cultural community through research and advocacy and serves the public through cultural guides and calendars. The Alliance publishes information on the arts and cultural events in New York City as well as studies highlighting the importance of the arts to the economy and to education.
Americans for the Arts
National membership and service organization serving arts service organizations, educators, administrators and artists. AFTA produces publications about arts policy, issues, and management. It operates a national arts policy database and circulates the Arts Policy Watch E-News.
Arts & Business Council of NY
The Arts and Business Council provides workshops and webinars in arts management and marketing and offers an arts leadership institute for new and emerging arts leaders
The Foundation Center
The Foundation Center is a national network for information about where and how to apply for foundation funding. The NYC office serves as a library and learning center. A number of its resources are available on-line.
Fractured Atlas
Fractured Atlas is a national arts service organization that provides programs and services to independent artists, arts organizations, and the cultural sector at large. Services include fiscal sponsorship, liability insurance, health insurance navigation, professional development, technology tools, and advocacy
Governance Matters
Governance Matters provides an online good governance guide, a website with resources for board members and “Ask the Experts” answers to questions about governance practices.
National Endowment for the Arts
In addition to the agency's extensive grants programs, the NEA online provides a wealth of information, publications and opportunities via an electronic resource center.
TechSoup
TechSoup. provides resources for technology needs.through articles, blogs and free webinars. Qualified non profits who join TechSoup are provided with donated or discounted technology products for a small administrative fee. Over 400 kinds of technology products are available, from partners which include Microsoft, Adobe, Cisco, Intuit and Symantec.
Philanthropy News Digest
Philanthropy News Digest publishes RFPs and notices of awards as a free service for U.S.-based grant-making organizations and nonprofits. Select the 'Arts/Culture' to filter out relevant potential grant opportunities.
The Awesome Foundation
The Awesome Foundation is a global community advancing the interest of awesome in the universe, $1000 at a time. Each fully autonomous chapter supports awesome projects through micro-grants, usually given out monthly. These micro-grants, $1000 or the local equivalent, come out of pockets of the chapter's "trustees" and are given on a no-strings-attached basis to people and groups working on awesome projects. Check out the Buffalo, NY chapter for more information on eligibility and applying.
A Blade of Grass Fellowship for Socially Engaged Art
A Blade of Grass is an organization that provides resources for talented artists who “serve as innovative conduits for social change.” Its fellowship program is designed to support artists in creating work that highlights social problems, and focuses on funding projects that challenge unfair power dynamics. Along with the financial support, the fellowship grants artists an expenses-paid two-day orientation retreat in NYC to meet fellow artists as well as the organization’s staff and board.
Burning Man Global Art Grants
The Burning Man organization offers art grants to help fund projects around the world. It focuses on art projects that are accessible to the public and that encourage the viewers to experience it in other ways than just visually. These artist grants can range between $500 and $10,000 dollars, but most often they fall between $3,000 and $6,000.
Creative Capital
Since 1999, Creative Capital has committed over $45 million in project funding and advisory support to 561 projects representing 700 artists. Their awards help artists working in all creative disciplines realize their visions and build sustainable practices. Creative Capital provides each funded project with up to $50,000 in direct funding and career development services valued at $50,000, for a total commitment of up to $100,000 per project. It typically awards grants for artists with plans for large or long-term projects. Most of the projects that get funded have a timeline between three to five years.
Foundation for Contemporary Arts Emergency Grants
Emergency Grants provide urgent funding for visual and performing artists who have sudden, unanticipated opportunities to present their work to the public where there is insufficient time to seek other sources of funding or incur unexpected or unbudgeted expenses for projects close to completion with committed exhibition or performance dates. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis.
The Gottlieb Foundation Individual Support Grant
It aims to support “serious” and “fully-committed” artists, meaning those who focus on their artistic goals over other personal or financial responsibilities regardless of commercial success. The foundation only awards these art grants to “mature” artists, which it defines as having worked for at least 20 years in a mature phase of their art. In 2019, the Foundation awarded grants of $25,000 each to 12 artists.
John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
Guggenheim Fellowships are art grants that are given to individuals who show “exceptional creative ability” in the arts. The goal is to help provide the recipient with time so they can work with as much creative freedom as possible. Recipients can use the funds in any way they see fit to help with their work.
Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant
The Pollock-Krasner Foundation provides grants for artists in financial need, whether that’s professional, personal or both. When selecting an applicant, the organization focuses on artists who have been working for a significant amount of time, and who can demonstrate both artistic merit and financial need.
Radcliffe Institute Fellowship
Each year, the Radcliffe Institute Fellowship Program chooses 50 talented artists and scholars to convene at Harvard University for a full academic year. There they can work on individual projects while benefiting from a multidisciplinary community. Applicants from any discipline and who focus on any subject matter are welcome to apply.
Sustainable Arts Foundation
The foundation aims to support artists with families by providing financial awards to parents that are pursuing creative work. Parents often put aside their creative impulses to meet the demands of raising a family, so the foundation’s goal is to encourage parents to continue with their creative passions.
Ruth & Harold Chenven Foundation
The Ruth and Harold Chenven Foundation gives unrestricted cash awards to individual artists for the continuation of their work.
Aaron Siskind Foundation Grant
The Aaron Siskind Foundation is offering a limited number of Individual Photographer's Fellowship grants of up to $15,000 each, for artists working in photography and photo-based art.
Burn Emerging Photographer Fund
Supports the continuation of a photograph's personal project, or emerging career. This body of work may be either journalistic mission or purely personal artistic imperatives. There is no age limit, and no limit as to how many project you may enter. Projects submitted may be ongoing, or finished.
Project Launch Grant
The Project Launch is granted to an outstanding photographer working on a fine art series or documentary project. The grant includes a cash award to help complete or disseminate the works, as well as providing a platform for exposure and professional development opportunities. This grant is awarded to complete or nearly completed projects that would benefit from the grant award package.
W. Eugene Smith Memorial Fund Grant
This grant is designed to help a photographer begin a photographic project or help complete an ongoing photographic project. Judges will be looking for a photographer whose proposed project seems most likely to use exemplary and compelling photojournalism (possibly supplemented by or incorporating multi-media) to address an issue of import and impact related to the human condition; social change; humanitarian concern; armed conflict or interpersonal, psychological, cultural, social environmental, scientific, medical and/or political significance, ideally expressing an underlying acknowledgement of our common humanity.
Puffin Foundation Artist Grant
Provides grants for emerging artists who are often excluded from mainstream opportunities due to their race, gender, or social philosophy. It also focuses on new artists, and specifies that established artists are less likely to be considered for a grant. They look for projects that seek to enrich and inform the public on important subjects such as the physical environment, social justice, civil rights and other contemporary issues facing the country (and the planet), that some organizations might hesitate to fund.
Harpo Foundation Grant
Grant for emerging artists aims to help support under-recognized visual artists. Applicants are evaluated based on the quality of their artistic work and potential to expand aesthetic inquiry. The grant can be used towards any activity that will help with the development of the artist’s work.
Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant
The Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation gives grants for emerging artists to develop their skills in artistic expression. Applicants must be 18 or older, in an early or developmental stage of their work, and be able to show a commitment to making art their lifetime career.
Shakespeare in American Communities
The program supports high-quality, professional productions of Shakespeare’s plays and related educational activities for middle and high school students in underserved schools throughout the United States.
Grants for Female Artists
Women's Studio Workshop Residency Grant
The Studio Grant is a six- to eight-week residency for artists to create new work in any of the following studio disciplines: intaglio, letterpress, papermaking, screenprinting, photography, or ceramics. WSW invites applications from artists at any stage in their careers.
NLPW Grants & Scholarships
NLAPW awards are established for the purpose of promoting professionalism in Art, Letters, and Music, encouraging talented women to pursue further education or other goals which affect their creative efforts
Barbara Deming Memorial Fund
Money for Women is the oldest ongoing feminist granting agency. The foundation gives encouragement and grants to individual feminists in the arts (writers and visual artists). Grants are awarded between $500-$1,500
Inge Morath Award
The annual Inge Morath Award is given to a woman photographer under thirty years of age, to assist in the completion of a long term documentary project.
The Bennett Prize
Awards $50,000 to a woman artist to create her own solo exhibition of figurative realist paintings, which will travel the country. The prize will propel the careers of women painters who have not yet realized full professional recognition, empowering new artists and those who have painted for many years.
Grants for Sculptors
National Sculpture Society
Provides several grant opportunities including sculptors working in nature, figurative, realist, and animal sculpture categories.
Virginia A. Groot Foundation
Each year the Virginia A. Groot Foundation offers three grants (up to $50,000, $20,000, $10,000) to artists who have exceptional talent and demonstrated ability in ceramic sculpture or sculpture. Artists may be at any stage of career development, from emerging through mature.
Tri-County Arts Council | 110 W. State St, Olean NY 14760 | POB 406 Olean, 14760 | 716.372.7455 | info@myartscouncil.net