Arts Grants and How to Apply for Them

Cafe Society
1

[Not sure if this is Cafe Society or GQ territory . . .]

So I’m ego-surfing on amazon.com, and some reviewer just called me “the best writer on film and acting we have,” and a “national treasure,” and it’s not even a friend of mine! I’m talking to one of the editors here, and she said, “You should apply for a MacArthur Grant.”

Hmmm. I thought the whole deal with MacArthur Grants was you couldn’t apply for them; that they held Secret Meetings, and the MacArthur Fairy sneaked up on you unawares and whacked you on the back of the head with the MacArthur Grant Blackjack. And they usually go to hippies in Nevada who make sculptures from old rust deposits, anyway.

So, does anyone know of any serious arts grants I can apply for, so maybe I can actually write my books? I mean, I have a whole list of them, and a publisher who’s willing to put them out—all I lack is the time and money, as I have to spend my days sweeping up after other people’s punctuation to pay the rent and buy lipstick. All biographers need day jobs . . . Unless we can get grants . . .

Anyone know of any that give serious money? I mean, a thousand bucks isn’t gonna get Baby through the summer . . .

2

Here’s a few to get you started. You could also look into humanities and histories grants.

http://www.nea.gov/grants/
http://www.neh.fed.us/grants/index.html
http://www.nysca.org/public/home.cfm
http://www.nyfa.org/level3.asp?id=240&fid=1&sid=51

Good luck with your book!

I think you should change your username to “National Treasure.” :smiley:

3

The national clearinghouse for information on grants is the Foundation Center, headquartered in NYC. If you live there, or near one of the affiliate resource centers in LA, San Francisco and other major cities, you can just walk in and use their database for free … if not, there are several levels of access you can subscribe to via the net. Their website is at - http://fdncenter.org/

4

Oooh, thanks, MagicEyes and wonK! Duly bookmarked, so I can go over them at my leisure. (Like, at home when no one’s looking over my shoulder.)

5

There is the Academy Film Scholars Program. See http://www.oscars.org/grants/scholars_index.html.

6

That would let my current book out (it’s laregely theater and dance history), but good to keep in mind for the future.

7

So I’m looking at the MacArthur Foundation site, and I see the fellowship grants: “Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $500,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years. The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations.”

Woo-hoo!

But the frustrating thing is, you can’t apply for one: “Nominators, evaluators, and selectors all serve anonymously and their correspondence is kept confidential. This policy enables participants to provide their honest impressions independent of outside influence. The Fellows Program does not accept applications or unsolicited nominations.”

Crap. You just have to wait for the MacArthur Fairy to sneak up behind you and whack you on the head with the $500,000 blackjack.

8

Yeah, one has to be a Genius In Your Field to get a MacArthur.

But your local library probably has all those big directories, and possibly the Foundation directory on CD, which is the new format. Not to mention lots of resources on grant writing. If not the public library, rest assured an academic library is well-supplied with these sorts of resources, which can otherwise get expensive if you buy them.