Creative ways to make money. How to get grants

Finding funding can make the difference between a small-art life and a big-art career

Over the course of her career, author and visual artist Mira Bartók has won more than $80,000 in grants to support her work. The funds have paid for her to travel to research a reindeer-herding community in Norway and attend the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference in Vermont. She has lived in Italy twice on language study grants and participated in residencies in France and Israel. When she had a serious auto accident, grants even provided emergency funds.

Without grants, Bartók still would be an artist. But grants have helped her survive hard times, bought her time to write, and helped her market her work and earn prestige. Writers can’t live solely on grant money, but grants can speed and support the trajectory of a career.

WHAT IS A GRANT?

A grant is money that an organization gives away to fund a project its founders believe in. Grants are not loans, so they never have to be paid back. But landing a grant requires work, and that work usually involves writing a proposal or grant application. In your proposal, you have to explain why you want the money, why the granting organization should support your project, and how you intend to spend the funds. You are expected to include a detailed budget and samples of your work. Your application is judged by a panel of your peers-that means other writers and artists—in a competitive process.

Writing a proposal may sound like drudgery. You have to follow tedious instructions and dig deep into your plans. But all the hard work—the researching, brainstorming and crafting of your proposal—will not only earn you a shot at a grant but also give you the focus you need to bring your project to life and, in the process, ignite your career.

Grant writing forces you to sit down and write about your project: What is it? Why do you want to do it? Where will you do it? How will you create it? Who’ll be involved? And how will you tell the world about it? Every artistic endeavor benefits from this kind of vision and planning. Applying for a grant forces you to imagine, plan and call on other people. And this process moves your writing further into the world—no matter the result of your efforts.

WHAT DO GRANTS PAY FOR?

A grant can fund career advancement or the creation of a new project. It may take the form of a cash award, equipment access, or a residency that provides time and space to work.

• Professional-development grants can pay for you to take a class, attend a workshop, hire a consultant, build your website, produce marketing materials-anything that advances your career as a professional writer.

• Project grants fund the creation of a new work, such as a book, or a portion of that work. Some grants may specifically provide studio space, equipment access, or emergency funds for artists in dire financial straits.

• Awards and fellowships are the best kinds of grants because they’re usually “unrestricted”—no strings attached. An artist can spend the money to support future work in any way she wants.

• Residencies technically are not grants; they provide space and time for a writer to work, usually in a community with other writers and artists, I’ve included them in this list for two reasons: A residency application is similar to a grant application, and a residency can be as useful as a grant. Some residencies also include stipends.

Residencies are as diverse as the organizations that offer them. You could be the only artist or one of 50. You might teach a workshop at a local school or give a reading. Some offer rural solitude for uninterrupted creative work, and others offer the bustle of an artistic community. When I did a residency at Caldera in Oregon’s Cascade Mountains, I had my own A-frame house with a kitchen, sleeping loft and workspace. For a week, my only interruption was the sound of salmon jumping in the river that gurgled by my back deck. With long stretches of time broken up by hikes around Blue Lake, I could edit, write and dig deep into my next project.

WHERE DO THEY COME FROM?

One of the best resources for writers seeking grants from anywhere in the country is the New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), whose mission is “to empower artists at critical stages in their creative lives” NYFA is funded by public agencies, foundations, corporations and individual donors.

Perhaps the most useful service that NYFA offers is a free database called the Source (nyfasource.org), which is updated daily. In 2010, the Source listed 2,900 award programs for individual artists, including cash awards, emergency grants, scholarships, residencies, space awards for living or work, equipment access awards, honorary prizes, and grants for professional development.

The Foundation Center is another excellent resource. Funded by more than 500 foundations, the center is the nations leading authority on organized philanthropy in all areas, including the arts. It has library/learning centers in New York; San Francisco; Cleveland; Atlanta; and Washington, D.C.; as well as information offered at public libraries and other resource centers in every state and seine international locations. It also has an extremely useful database you can access for a fee.

WHO FUNDS GRANTS?

So where de grants came from? Funding for writers and artists comes from bath public and private sources.

Government. Public grants—from federal, state or local government—are funded by taxes. One example of a federal grant is the National Endowment for the Arts’ $25,000 artist fellowship. The National Endowment for the Humanities, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and other government agencies also provide grants to writers. A local grant might be a few hundred to a few thousand dollars awarded by your state arts agency or town art council.

Most states offer grants to individual artists. In fact, 12 percent of total state arts funding is targeted to individuals.

Only 11 percent of individual artist grants came from the government, according to data compiled in 2007 by the

Urban Institute for the New York Foundation for the Arts. Most grants for individuals came from foundations and other nonprofits.

Foundations and other nonprofits. Private grants are funded by foundations, corporations, nonprofit organizations (like an art center or an art service organization) or individuals. Foundations are nonprofit organizations with a mission and money to support that mission. They are eligible to receive tax breaks and are required by law to donate 5 percent of their assets annually to programs including grants.

Foundations came in all shapes and sizes and go by different names. Some are named after one individual; others are called family foundations. You’ll also hear about community foundations. Corporations may have a granting program through their corporate foundations. To make matters more confusing, some foundations aren’t even called foundations—they’re called trusts. Don’t let this confound you. The important point to remember about foundations and other nonprofits that fund grants is that each one is as unique as the people who started it. You’ll have to research each one to ascertain its particular interests and application process. The smallest foundations may have no full-time staff or website, so researching them will be more challenging. The biggest foundations have dozens of staff members and extensive websites that provide guidelines and detailed information on how to apply for funding.

GRANTS ARE NOT CHARITY

Many writers and artists tell me they sometimes feel that applying for a grant is like begging for charity. A grant is net charity. Granting organizations believe in art and its power to transform individual lives and, in turn, the world. Funding art is a crucial part of their mission, because they believe in what artists do.

These organizations need you to complete their work in the world. Your job is to make the review panel’s job as easy as possible: Follow the application instructions to the letter, demonstrate that you understand the goals and missions of the granting organization, and convince the decision makers that your project is the perfect way to manifest their vision. When writing your proposal, remember that the organization you’re applying to already believes in what you de.