Expanding Access to Arts Funding in the Bay Area Through a Common Application

Philanthropy News Digest

September 20, 2023

By David Blazevich, Margot Melcon, and Shelley Trott

Just like so many vibrant cultural centers across the country, the San Francisco Bay Area arts community was devastated by the COVID-19 pandemic and is still in recovery. Museums and galleries closed their doors. Concerts, dance, and theater performances were canceled. Overnight, artists and cultural workers’ livelihoods ground to a halt, and their health and ability to cover their basic needs hung in the balance.

Public and private funders jumped into action to respond to the emergency as best they knew how. More than 140 COVID-relief funds were available to help artists and small and midsize arts organizations in San Francisco, Alameda, and Contra Costa counties, and grantmakers created new funds focused on Black, Indigenous, artists of color, and BIPOC-led arts organizations.

However, as the July 2021 Vogl Consulting report Pandemic Relief & Recovery found, grantseekers struggled to find and access funds, and funding was unevenly distributed across counties. In addition, if grant applications had been simplified during this time, and if there had been better communication and greater transparency about funding opportunities, then the mad rush of arts relief funding distributed in the first year of the pandemic would have been allocated more effectively, efficiently, and equitably.

Phasing in a common application

We’ve known for a long time that creating a single application would make the process less burdensome for artists and grassroots arts organizations.

And yet, creating a common application that maintained the integrity of funders’ individual priorities, and could be widely accepted by arts funders, felt like a distant dream. It took the hard lessons we learned during and after the pandemic to push us to stop saying “someday” and get serious about doing things differently. We realized that if we waited for all the stars to align to launch something comprehensive, we would be waiting forever—which is why we decided to take a phased approach.

For phase one of the Common Application for the Arts, our three foundations—the Fleishhacker Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, and Zellerbach Family Foundation—agreed to use a standard set of lean and focused application questions and answer fields with the same word-count limits. As we looked at our individual application processes, we realized that a lot of the questions we asked were only slightly different from other funders, and that in some cases, based merely on history and habit, we requested information that was not essential to our decision making.

Asking the same questions in the same way will solicit concise, essential organizational and project information and allow grantseekers to insert their answers into each foundation’s application form, saving significant time. These questions account for 90 percent of the application; the remaining 10 percent provides space for grantseekers to reply to questions that speak directly to each funder’s priorities.

Grantseekers can use the responses they create in a dynamic PDF, available on the Common App website, to fill in applications for arts grants directly to the Fleishhacker Foundation, Kenneth Rainin Foundation, and Zellerbach Family Foundation, as eligible. The Common App also offers optional short-form budget templates for grantseekers to use.

Increasing consistency, efficiency, and coordination

In addition to saving grantseekers time, the purpose of the Common App is to provide greater consistency and efficiency in the application process and enhance coordinated outreach and communication about grant opportunities.

To be clear, using a common application does not mean that all the funders involved will be funding the same organizations; it does not replace individual grantmaking. Each funder’s organizational priorities, eligibility requirements, funding guidelines, strategies, and goals remain unique and are not altered by participation in the Common App. To alleviate any possible confusion about this, the application process includes a “speed bump” that requires applicants to confirm they meet each foundation’s eligibility requirements.

Being open to making changes

We developed this new tool with input from artists, grantseekers, and grantmakers, and with an openness to making changes as we go so this tool becomes increasingly easier to use and effective in connecting more historically marginalized groups to funding opportunities.

Features we’re exploring for subsequent phases include standard reporting and coordinating the back end of funders’ individual grants management systems so grantseekers can upload one application that will automatically be sent to all funders whose eligibility requirements they meet. We are also thinking about how to better align our grantmaking cycles. Our first attempt took place this month—from September 4 through 18, the Rainin and Zellerbach Family foundations both accepted applications from project-based arts grants using the Common App.

As funders, we can and must do better to advance equity every day. We’ve come to understand that we should be doing everything possible to put the needs of our grantees first, reduce their administrative burden, and increase access to funding. Our arts ecosystem is too fragile for us to risk waiting for the next crisis to hit.

Margot Melcon is a program officer for arts and culture at the Zellerbach Family Foundation; Shelley Trott is chief program officer at the Kenneth Rainin Foundation; and David Blazevich is executive director of the Fleishhacker Foundation.