Expanding the Path to Equitable Arts Funding
Dalouge Smith
Funding inequities in the arts are historic. For too long, too little support has gone to BIPOC-led and -serving organizations and artists. Helicon Collaborative measured this nationally in 2011 and 2017. They last reported that people of color (POC) comprise 37% of the U.S. population while only 4% of foundation arts funding went to POC serving organizations. Similar disparities were evident in funding for “culturally specific [1]” organizations.
Subsequent state, regional, and city examinations of inequitable arts funding show progress since 2020, but the risk of reversal is high. Since these reports were published, paths to achieving equitable arts funding have been impeded further by anti-DEI policies, the specter of lawsuits, and threats of government investigation.
Despite the risks and uncertainty surrounding us, we can’t be impeded by them. We must remain in pursuit of a path that will sustain and grow support for BIPOC [2] -led organizations and artists based on the characteristics of their work. This is the path travelled by The Lewis Prize for Music (TLPM), where we recognized and supported the holistic practices common among BIPOC-led and -serving arts organizations and artists.
These artistic practices are described in many ways, such as community arts, social practice, cultural organizing, and creative youth development, among others. They share approaches that put arts and culture at the center of personal, community, and societal well-being. We saw this repeatedly at TLPM. The Roots of Music is devoted to cultural continuity in New Orleans, RYSE Youth Center in Richmond, CA is an anchor of community healing, We Are Culture Creators is fostering a music industry solidarity economy in Detroit, and Louisville’s Hip Hop Into Learning is successful in its activism. These and other BIPOC-led initiatives are intrinsically multi-faceted, not a blend of primary artistic activities with supplemental or secondary “non-arts” characteristics. They reveal the cohesion between art making, community building, and thriving.
This is the cohesion we journeyed to understand at TLPM, a five-year $20 million initiative to support creative youth development (CYD) music organizations devoted to systems change. CYD organizations put the artistry and perspective of young people – who others are not resourcing or listening to – at the center of efforts to change and improve the systems they experience.
During TLPM’s five application cycles from 2019-2024, BIPOC-led organizations received over 70% of our awards and funds, including the $500,000 Accelerator Awards. Our process prioritized systems change practices, not racial identity, and found that BIPOC-led organizations more commonly pursue them than White-led organizations.
Figure 1. Percentages of BIPOC and non BIPOC-led organizations, and percentages of organizations who met all systems of Nexus Change requirements.
We first recognized this in our 2021 Midcasting Toward Just Futures report about the field’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic. 66% of the organizations working across the “Nexus of Systems Change” identified in the report were BIPOC-led, despite comprising only 44% of total survey respondents (Figure 1).
We applied lessons learned from the Midcasting research to the annual TLPM application and reviewer training. This enabled us to shorten the Round One application to only five narrative questions alongside multiple-choice questions. These long-form questions illuminated applicants’ Big Idea for systems change and their approaches to racial equity, youth leadership, and reciprocal partnership. Instead of fixating on program design and organizational capacity, we considered applicants’ fulfillment of their values through collaboration and shared leadership with young people and the community. Our rubric examined these practices from several angles simultaneously: how they contribute to systems change efforts, how young people’s leadership responsibilities increase as they mature, and the complementary strengths associated with partnerships.
When TLPM concluded in December 2024, our Summative Report included a comprehensive analysis of the application data we collected from 665 organizations. Applicants who advanced beyond Round One, not just those who received awards, had more internal equity practices (Figure 2), provided more direct services (Figure 3), and impacted more systems than non-advancing applicants (Figure 4). Simply put: they embodied more systems change characteristics. BIPOC-led organizations were a larger share (64%) of applicants advancing beyond Round One than their representation in the overall pool (54%), and BIPOC-led representation reached 71% of awards (Figure 5).
TLPM also found that budget size was not a factor in applicants advancing through our process. Despite having less philanthropic support, BIPOC-led arts and culture organizations pursue their work in holistic ways and sustain it as they grow their budgets. Discounting the readiness of smaller organizations because they lack funds, strategic plans, or audits misses the potency of other indicators. We found BIPOC-led organizations of all budget sizes achieve systems change when they practice shared leadership, build networked partnerships, and embody community values (Figure 6, Figure 7, and Figure 8).
TLPM’s example is not singular. The Arts for Everybody partners in 18 cities, supported by One Nation/One Project, invested primarily in BIPOC artists. The same is true for the California Arts Council-funded Far South/Border North initiative in San Diego and Imperial Counties along the border with Mexico. In both cases, artists were selected for their commitment to improving community health through the arts for people most negatively impacted by inequity. Similarly, the newly launched CultureBanq has selected 2025 Fellowship artists, the majority of whom are BIPOC, on the basis of catalyzing “vibrant communities and thriving places.” None of these projects used the racial identity of the artists or the leader at partner organizations as a decision criterion.
The path to equitable funding includes more than moving beyond identity criteria and budget considerations and toward recognition of holistic arts practices. It also requires funders to sit with the ambiguity of not being expert and embracing curiosity. Recognizing that there are multiple ways to acquire knowledge from the field can reorient grantmaking. It opens the door to inviting practitioners and others into application development and grantee selection. It expands the range of possible learning agendas embedded in grantmaking, and opens the door to trusted collaboration with grantees.
TLPM’s board and staff learned the lessons that guided our award making because we let ourselves be educated by the CYD field. We invited field experts to assist in writing the first application and young adult leaders to participate in the selection process. We collected feedback from applicants on their experience and collaborated with awardees on research. We did this through iterative learning with grantees and the field, not pre-grant making field studies.
Taking this path of humility that honors the existing strength and wholeness of BIPOC-led and serving organizations and artists may feel like a risk. Yet this is a path more funders need to take—by embracing curiosity, partnering with the field, and investing in organizations already leading the way—so the path becomes clear to all and equity in arts funding becomes the norm. The real risk lies in not taking this path.
NOTES
[1] Culturally specific is an often contested term, but has been widely used throughout racial equity data capturing in the arts funding field. Defined in the 2017 Helicon report, “Not Just Money,” explained, “The term ‘culturally specific’ here, and elsewhere in referring to DataArts information, is DataArts’ designation for organizations with missions that focus their activities on one or more of the following populations: American Indians/Alaskan Natives, Arab/Arab Americans, Asians/Asian Americans, Blacks/Africans/African Americans, Hispanics/Latinos/as, Native Hawaiians/other Pacific Islanders, LGBT people and/or people with disabilities. DataArts refers to organizations that do not have missions explicitly focused on such populations as ‘benchmark’ organizations." Grantmakers in the Arts encourages transparent use of terminology, noting that all cultures are specific, and invites the field to interrogate the use of this term today.
The report continues defining additional related terminology in the field, including “mainstream,”
“The Foundation Center data that follows categorizes grants to ethnic/racial minority focused arts and culture organizations, economically disadvantaged-focused arts and culture organizations, LGBT-focused arts and arts and culture organizations focused on people with disabilities. Groups that do not have an explicit mission to serve one of these communities are described by Foundation Center as ‘mainstream’ organizations. Grants to ‘mainstream’ organizations to serve one or more of the four selected populations are also captured here.”
[2] BIPOC = Black, Indigenous, and People of Color
ABOUT THE LEWIS PRIZE FOR MUSIC
The Lewis Prize for Music (TLPM) was a $20 million 5-year philanthropic initiative from 2019 to 2024. TLPM partnered with leaders who create positive change by investing in young people through the Creative Youth Development (CYD) music field. TLPM acted on the belief that every young person deserves equitable access to music and the arts as part of their development. It sought to fill gaps where systems failed and reimagine new pathways for young people to thrive, lead, and shape the future.
Through awards, grants, research, and collaborative projects, TLPM worked with over 80 organizations across the United States to support youth development, foster community impact, and amplify the transformative power of music. Over 80% of CYD organizations advancing in the awards selection process offered youth a combination of mental health support, social connection programs, workforce training, and entrepreneurship opportunities. These and many more CYDprograms continue to provide young people with the tools to thrive and become leaders in their communities so their contributions resonate for generations. Learn more at their website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Dalouge Smith (Co-founder and former CEO, The Lewis Prize for Music) is a champion for bringing people together and strengthening communities through music, arts, and culture. He co-founded The Lewis Prize for Music and served as CEO beginning in August 2018. Dalouge now leads the Creating Abundance Collaborative, which was incubated by The Lewis Prize to strengthen the cross-sector reach and impact of the entire creative youth development field. Prior to The Lewis Prize, Dalouge led San Diego Youth Symphony and Conservatory (SDYS) for 13 years and transformed it into a community instigator for restoring and strengthening music education in schools.Chula Vista Elementary School District (California’s largest K-6 district) hired over 100 certified visual and performing arts teachers in 2015 and restored arts education to all 30,000 of its students as a result of SDYS’ partnership. Dalouge grew up singing folk songs with family and performing in professional theatre productions. He earned a Bachelor of Arts in World Arts and Cultures from UCLA and studied Gandhi’s non-violent movement for a year in India. He is married to Sue Ann and the father of Wright.
“Better Together” artwork credit Ana Filipa dos Santos Lopes
