This report provides a forecast of state government funding for the arts in the
fiscal year ahead, as states enact budgets for FY2020 and national funding trends emerge.
Arts Funding
State Arts Agency Revenues
Twice yearly, the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) reports revenue information for state arts agencies (SAAs). This report provides information on financial support for the arts and places individual SAAs’ funding within the context of national trends. Appropriations for the arts will fluctuate throughout the year as legislatures reconsider state budgets in light of shifting revenue projections. Figures included in this report reflect enacted funding levels for fiscal year 2019 (which began in July 2018 for most states) as well as revised FY2018 budgets. NASAA monitors appropriations changes, and will report updates in summer 2019.
This research presents detailed information on state arts agency revenues. While appropriations from state legislatures are the primary revenue source for most agencies, NASAA’s revenues survey also tracks information on funding that state arts agencies receive from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), supplemental state revenue streams, and private and miscellaneous sources of support. Included in the analysis are state-by-state comparisons of funding levels, per capita rankings and line item information, as well as discussions of the SAA revenue outlook in the context of state budgets and inflation. Explore our interactive visualizations for a more in-depth look at SAA revenues.
State arts agencies use their funds to support a wide variety of programs and services that make the arts more accessible to the public. They stimulate the marketplace for cultural activities, spur local and private
investment in the work of artists and arts organizations across the country, and help states and jurisdictions achieve their economic development, education and community enhancement goals. To learn more about how state arts agencies use the funds they receive, visit nasaa-arts.org.
Re-Tool: Racial Equity in the Panel Process
Valuing racial equity requires examining how our organizational practices can
support equitable outcomes by assessing/addressing racial disparities and
inequity. The panel process involves a system of often unquestioned activities–assumed to be inherently impartial-that directly impact funding outcomes.
To address racial equity in the panel process, we must actively investigate
who has access to opportunities and who doesn’t. Put another way, anti-racist grantmakers must design and implement systems and protocols that increase access and decrease barriers for historically under-resourced groups. We must ask ourselves: Who submits applications? Who do we award? How do we train panel moderators, panelists, and facilitators? In what ways can we interrupt racial bias and contribute to systemic change?
By interrogating every step of the process from applicant pool, to the selection and training of panelists, to the panel experience and outcomes, as well as our communication with grant-seeking artists and organizations every step of the way, we can apply a racial equity lens to grantmaking and move from being part of the problem to being part of the solution.
Review of Evidence: Arts Education Research through the Lens of the Every Student Succeeds Act
The Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA) considers arts and music to be essential components of “a well-rounded education” and offers funding to help state and local education agencies teach them in their schools. In order to access this funding, however, education agencies must show evidence that the programs and activities they propose can affect student outcomes.
Researchers from the American Institutes for Research scoured through hundreds of reports to find arts education interventions that meet the standards of evidence that ESSA requires. This report explains ESSA standards and cites 88 studies that make a range of arts-education activities eligible for ESSA.
These activities focus on art forms such as visual arts, music, dance and drama. Among them are arts courses, supplies, professional development for teachers, supports for English learners and extended-learning-time programs. All of the studies cited by the report’s authors show improvements in student outcomes, such as reading, writing, math and social and emotional learning.
Authors warn, however, that educators must be careful instituting such activities in their schools. Many activities that qualify for ESSA may not fit the needs of the schools in which they are placed. It is necessary to carefully consider the goals for an arts education effort and select only the activities that help meet those goals.
This report is one of several products Wallace has commissioned or prepared to help educators make sense of ESSA’s evidence requirements.
Strategies to Achieve Equitable Investment by Local Arts Agencies and Nexus Organizations
According to the Americans for the Arts Local Arts Agency Profile, each year the United States’ 4,500 local arts agencies (LAAs) and nexus organizations collectively invest an estimated $2.8 billion in their local ecosystems. This includes an estimated $600 million in direct investment in artists and arts and culture organizations through grants, contracts, and loans. This investment has grown steadily since the founding of the local arts movement 60 years ago. For comparison, according to Helicon Collaborative’s Not Just Money, all of private philanthropy invests approximately $4 billion annually to the arts, and according to Giving USA’s 2017 report, corporations give about $950 million annually to the arts.
This makes LAAs, collectively, the largest distributor of publicly-derived funds to arts and culture and
one of the largest and steadiest underwriters of artists and creative workers in the United States. LAAs
must employ a strong lens of equity in their investments through grantmaking and beyond.
Existing systems of power grant privilege and access unequally. At this moment and in this sociopolitical
climate these inequities are more visible even as they are more untenable.
Service and funding organizations, such as Americans for the Arts, that support LAAs and nexus organizations must encourage a thoughtful, quick, and decisive transition of inequitable investment policies and practices toward equity. In the short-term, this means propelling shifts now in the nature and structure of LAA investment programs, policies, and practices. In the longer-term, this means supporting and driving root transformation in the systems and structures that undergird LAA investments in the community and cultural ecosystem, transforming the minds and hearts of those who currently controll and
impact such investment strategies; and training and establishing a more diverse and representative set of
leaders among those who make decisions and set policies.
In partnership with a field-based advisory group, Americans for the Arts proposes four goals that, if
achieved, would support meaningful, measurable progress toward the fair and equitable distribution of all
types of LAA investments, as well as specific strategies to achieve those goals. Together these goals address the need to change the conditions and culture in the agencies stewarding cultural investment resources, while also providing immediate and proximate support for people leading the change. The goals and associated strategies listed here and detailed below are interrelated and synergistic. Multiple prongs of effort need to be implemented concurrently and strategically staged.
While this document guides rather than dictating specific next steps, Americans for the Arts and our
various partners are actively moving on the recommendations in this document and developing new
bodies of work around national communities of practice, leadership pipeline, and the education and
transformation of existing leadership in the field.
Equitable Investment Policies and Practices in the Local Arts Field
Cultural equity is critical to the arts and culture sector’s long-term viability, as well as to the ability of the arts to contribute to healthy, vibrant, equitable communities for all. At the core of challenges related to cultural equity is the historically inequitable distribution of resources, and the values systems, biases, and systemic barriers associated with that distribution.
To achieve fair and equitable distribution of resources within the cultural sector of each community, all types of investment made by local arts agencies should adhere to core practices and competencies that center equity and address bias, honor and embrace the inherent knowledge of the communities and constituents with which they engage, strengthen and broaden the leadership pipeline, support the fullest range of arts, cultural, and creative expression, and embrace new models of power-sharing and decisionmaking.
Each year the United States’ 4,500 local arts agencies (LAAs) collectively invest an estimated $2.8 billion in their local arts and culture ecosystems. This includes an estimated $600 million in direct investment in artists and arts and culture organizations through grants, contracts, and loans. For comparison, all of private philanthropy directly invests approximately $4 billion annually to the arts, corporations about $1.5 billion, state arts agencies about $300 million, and the National Endowment for the Arts about $100 million.
This makes LAAs, collectively, the largest distributor of publicly-derived funds to arts and culture and one of the largest and steadiest underwriters of artists and creative workers in the United States. It is therefore crucial that LAAs employ a strong lens of equity to consider the full scope of their investments-including not only direct financial infusions such as grants, contracts, and loans, but the estimated $2.2 billion each year that are expended on staff salaries, vendors, direct-to-community programming, overhead, marketing and communications, and more. This is particularly important because the existing systems of power that often drive the policies underlying such expenditures grant privilege and access unequally. With data, will, and guidance, however, progress can be made.
This report reviews results from the 2018 Local Arts Agency Profile, an annual survey deployed in April 2018, with a particular focus on an added module to the survey about how, when, and where LAAs in the United States currently consider equity in the deployment of their funds, time, space, and staff. The data was gathered from a broadly representative sample of 537 local arts agencies in the United States of varying budget size, community size, tax status, geography, etc.
Overall, the report tells a story of a field where direct and indirect practices about and centered on equity are on the rise. While major demographic challenges continue to exist among staff at LAAs of all sizes, the majority of large LAAs, and, in most cases, midsize LAAs as well, are taking a variety of steps to consider, engage, and develop support mechanisms for the full diversity of their communities. LAAs with more limited financial capacity and smaller staff sizes are not able to participate in these new mechanisms at the same rate but are inclined to want to know how they can.
That said, there is significant work to do. Only half of LAAs with DEI-related policies say that those policies affect fiscal decisions. The majority of entry- and mid-level staff do not have access to supported professional development. And, perhaps most starkly, LAA funds are distributed inequitable, with the largest 16 percent of grant recipients receiving 73 percent of the dollars awarded.
The centering of equity in the investment practices of the LAA field is necessary to the continued relevance of not only LAAs themselves, but the arts and culture sectors each LAA nurtures. The information in this report provides a jumping-off point. Those at the cutting edge of new practices like start-up capital, loans, and other creative financial mechanisms, as well as those who are pioneering and iterating better ways to addressing systemic inequities, biases, and other challenges within the field and its structures have now been identified, and their stories and learnings can be more easily told.
