Deadline: 1-Mar-21
The East Central Regional Arts Council (ECRAC) is seeking applications for the Essentials Support Grant Program. ECRAC is a regional grant-making agency that supports the arts through funding from the Minnesota State Legislature and The McKnight Foundation. The Council distributes grant awards to artists, arts and other non-profit organizations, educational institutions, and local units of government and provides technical assistance for these grants.
ECRAC’s mission is to support the arts and bring the life-enhancing values they afford to Region 7E residents. The vision is that all Region 7E residents can participate, appreciate, create, and invest in the arts. The values of ECRAC are arts in action; integrity; artistic merit; and legacy.
Focus Areas
- Arts & Arts Access;
- Arts Education;
- Arts & Cultural Heritage.
Funding Information
- This program provides general operating support to high quality, established arts organizations that produce, present, or exhibit works of art; to organizations that provide a broad range of services to artists; and to community arts groups that make arts learning available to regional individuals of all ages and abilities. The General Operating Support grant program offers $3,000 to $5,000 of funding to qualified organizations to maintain their ongoing organizational operating needs.
Outcomes
ECRAC’s very broad ACHF outcomes are:
- Artists and the arts are visible in communities;
- Artists develop their practice;
- Organizations develop capacities that advance the arts; people access arts experiences;
- People develop arts skills or knowledge;
- people have meaningful arts experiences; and people make connections to ideas, organizations, or one another.
Eligibility Criteria
ECRAC serves the non-profit arts organization community in the five Region 7E Minnesota counties of Chisago, Isanti, Kanabec, Mille Lacs, and Pine. Eligible organizations must be located in one of these counties and must be a Minnesota private, non-profit arts organization which has obtained, for at least a year, 501(c)3 tax-exempt status under the Internal Revenue Code and have registered with the Minnesota Secretary of State and Department of Revenue. Applicants must submit their annual organization budget with these proposals. Applicants must not have been disqualified for ECRAC grant funding (due to overdue or incomplete past final reports or other grantee issues.) Your organization must also meet all of the following requirements:
- Your organization must be a 501(c)3 tax-exempt organization physically located in Region 7E.
- Your programming, services, or activities must take place in Region 7E in Minnesota, and must primarily serve and engage Region 7E audiences and participants.
- Your organization must be an arts organization defined as producing arts, presenting arts, a community arts school, or an artist service agency. For the purposes of this program, public or private pre-K-12 schools, colleges, or universities; radio and television stations; libraries; friends of the libraries; zoos; children’s museums; historical societies or museums; natural history museums; civic organizations; human service organization; or other community service agencies do not meet the definition of “arts organization.”
- Your organization must have a history of at least two years of arts programming and services prior to applying and at least one year as a designated 501(c)3 non-profit per your IRS determination letter.
- Your organization must be a regional arts organization. Local chapters of state or national organizations are only eligible to apply if they are administratively independent or receive little or no funding from their parent group.
- Your organization cannot have an annual organizational budget of over $174,000.
- Minnesota State Arts Board Operating Support grantees are not eligible for this funding.
Where to Apply
East Central Regional Arts Council has moved to an online granting system. All applications going forward must be submitted through the ECRAC Grant Portal. Links for each grant program application will only become available about 4 weeks prior to each grant deadline.
- Getting Started: On your first visit to the ECRAC Grant Portal, you will need to create a new account with a username and password. Please note that if you are applying as an organization, your organization can only have one username and password for the online system. Please be sure to keep this information as you will need it again to access the Portal for grant requirements and for all future requests.
- Returning to an Application: Your application does not need to be completed in one session and can be returned to and edited until you formally submit the application. Please be sure to save your application often while working on it and before you exit the system. To return to your application, you can access the ECRAC Grant Portal through the Manage My Grant page. There you may login using the email address and password you created the first time you entered.
- Uploading Information: There are fields in the application that will require you to upload information (documents, media, etc.). Please note that your information may not be completely uploaded until you click “Save”. Be sure to save your application often so as not to lose any progress or information.
- Submitting an Application: Once you have completed and reviewed your application, you may submit the application for funding consideration. Once an application has been submitted you will be able to view the application, but not edit or make any changes to it.
For more information, visit https://www.ecrac.org/grants/organization/essentials-support-grant