Deadline: 15-Jul-23
Opportunity Fund awards grants to small to midsize arts organizations, and organizations and initiatives that advance social and economic justice.
Funding Areas
- Arts
- Performing Arts, with an emphasis on theatre, dance and music, especially classical chamber music and jazz, presented by small and mid-sized arts organizations
- Visual Arts, with an emphasis on craft and small to mid-sized organizations
- Social & Economic Justice
- with a focus on Racial Justice
- Black-Led Movement Work
- Civil Liberties
- Civil Rights, with special interest in Black and LGBTQ+ people, and other groups impacted by social injustice
- Human Rights
- Reproductive Freedom
- Safety Net Resources for people in need, including social services, economic independence, housing, tangible aid, transportation, healthcare
What does their focus on craft mean?
- Their visual arts funding has a focus on craft. Their definition of craft emphasizes the handmade and the custom. It is centered on the concept of materiality, by which they mean the materials used and the skill in using them, both manually and conceptually.
- Craft artists work with materials associated with folk and/or contemporary craft traditions: clay, glass, fiber, wood and metal. They celebrate practices rooted within a common ethnic heritage, geographic region, religious affiliation or occupation, just as they do those that expand upon these traditions through non-traditional materials, new technologies and experimental approaches.
What does their focus on Black-Led Movement Work mean?
- The Opportunity Fund seeks to support activist organizing and movement work that:
- challenges, disrupts, and transforms existing power structures, when those power structures lead to disparate and unjust outcomes: benefitting some, disadvantaging others;
- is led by people who directly experience the disparate and unjust outcomes–or those whose work is deeply informed by the directly affected;
- is led by a significant majority of people who self-identify as Black, African American, and/or of African descent;
- originates from Black-led community organizing;
- remains grassroots and community-centric; and
- is structured to resist institutional pressures that often work to dilute visions and tame power.
Funding Information
- Their grants typically range between $7,500 – $15,000. A $20,000 grant is large for them.
What types of activities does the Opportunity Fund support?
- The Opportunity Fund offers both project-based grants and operational support. As a new funding entity, Opportunity Fund is continually finding and adjusting its focus. As such, past grants are not entirely indicative of what will be funded in the future.
Eligibility Criteria
- The Opportunity Fund awards grants to organizations that have 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, and to certain governmental entities.
- The Opportunity Fund does not make grants directly to groups without 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status, or to organizations located outside of the United States. They cannot make grants to individuals.
- If your organization is applying for arts funding. The Opportunity Fund focuses its arts funding on small to mid-size arts organizations, which they classify as organizations with annual budgets of $1.5 million or less.
- That said, any nonprofit organization may apply for social and economic justice funding, regardless of its size.
For more information, visit Opportunity Fund.