Back to Normal is an Illusion and a Trap
As we enter the second half of 2025, Grantmakers in the Arts would like to reflect on where we are and to invite you to join your grantmaker peers in establishing and working toward a collective vision for the future at Monthly Member Discussions, accessible via the My Accounts page on www.giarts.org.
Our national arts funding field has begun rolling out new funds to support organizations negatively impacted by our federal government’s actions. Please find HERE GIA’s evolving document developed to capture emerging information.
Our national cultural community entered 2025 in a state of extreme vulnerability. As GIA shares in our Nonprofit Financial Health Workshops, by 2024, grantmakers had already begun to divest from the measures that had supported the cultural community through the early years of the pandemic. This has resulted in a cultural sector that has once more begun to experience reduced savings or even budget deficits, personnel cuts, and layoffs.
The grantmaking practices that helped the cultural community through the early years of the pandemic included more flexible funding, increased general operating support, more multi-year support, easier applications, and relaxed reporting requirements.
As GIA’s own Member Survey data shows, the increased embrace of general operating support by GIA’s Member Survey respondents (43%) is beginning to slow.
Increased support for flexibility is flat (45%) after having declined over the prior two years.
Relaxing reporting requirements (29%) continues to slow.
Increased embrace of multi-year funding (33%) slowed for the first time since the pandemic began.
These findings may suggest that the members’ adoption of responsive grantmaking has reached such high levels that further increases are unlikely (our surveys measure increases). However, when viewed in light of SMU Data Arts’ analyses, these findings instead appear to reflect a slowdown in funders’ commitment to supporting grantee financial health. According to GIA Capitalization & Nonprofit Financial Health consultant Rebecca Thomas & Associates and SMU DataArts, organizations became far more financially vulnerable in 2024. As Rebecca Thomas shares in GIA’s workshops, racialized organizations have been hit particularly hard.
This impact on organizations of color is especially disheartening as the field’s pandemic response included increased investment in culturally explicit organizations. According to GIA’s 2024 Member Survey, increased support for organizations of color (50% of respondents) slowed for the first time after a period of acceleration.
These grantmaking shifts in 2024 left the national cultural field very vulnerable just as the new federal administration began.
At times like these, it is normal to want things to return to “normal.” But GIA proposes that we, as a national funding field, set a vision for “better than before,” and pursue that vision collectively. That is why GIA have started Monthly Member Discussions. Registration is available on the My Account page of www.giarts.org.
“Back to normal” is an illusion and a trap. “Normal” was vulnerable. As we shared in 2019, the cultural community’s recovery from the Great Recession left them more vulnerable than before. The field was better financed but poorly capitalized, with inflexible funding that left organizations without sufficient savings to weather unexpected crises. This vulnerability has come to be seen as “normal,” simply because it’s typical. That doesn’t make it healthy.
The only way to prevent our national cultural community from continuing to ricochet from crisis to crisis is to collectively establish a long-term vision and pursue it together. The national arts grantmaking community has begun this process. I’m so grateful to the GIA members who participated in our first Member Discussion on July 24, and to all of you who will continue to - or begin to - meet with your national peers each month to shape and pursue our shared vision for the future.
Please register for our next Member Discussion on the My Account page of www.giarts.org.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Eddie Torres is president & CEO of Grantmakers in the Arts
