Enrich Chicago Report Shows Growth In Funding To Arts Organizations

After sharing the results of Enrich Chicago’s 2024 Funding Equity report, philanthropic leaders and BIPOC arts leaders convened to discuss next steps. Photo provided by The Silverman Group.
After sharing the results of Enrich Chicago’s 2024 Funding Equity report, philanthropic leaders and BIPOC arts leaders convened to discuss next steps. Photo provided by The Silverman Group.

Enrich Chicago Report Shows Growth In Funding To Arts Organizations

By Tia Carol Jones

A report was recently released showing how funds are distributed to Black Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC) -led arts organizations in Chicago. Enrich Chicago’s 2024 Study Funding Equity: From Crisis to Sustainability showed gains in the funding and visibility of those arts organizations.

Enrich Chicago was founded in 2014 as a collective of arts administrators and philanthropic leaders from across the city. The collective came together as a response to data about the arts and cultural sector that showed the majority of executive leaders and senior level leaders in arts and cultural organizations across the country were white.

“That really begged the question of what does that mean for a city like Chicago which is by and large a people of color city and what does that say about our institutions and our leadership,” said Nina Sanchez, Executive Director of Enrich Chicago.

From that conversation about the leadership of cultural institutions in Chicago, initiatives were developed to look at the leadership pipeline for people of color in the arts and cultural sector, how arts and cultural organizations that are BIPOC led were being funded, as well as to look at and address the root causes of the inequity within the sector, with a commitment to make change culturally and institutionally.

The 2024 study is a follow up to Enrich Chicago’s 2018 study, A Portrait of Inequity, which looked at arts funding in Chicago between 2013 and 2015. In the first report, Enrich Chicago found that for every dollar of grant funding historically white institutions received from the foundation, BIPOC organizations received $.50. It also found that there was a significant underrepresentation of BIPOC arts organizations in funding portfolios for foundations that funded the arts in Chicago.

Sanchez knew with Enrich Chicago there was subsequent changes being made by foundations to correct the funding that was going to BIPOC arts organizations. Funding Equity: From Crisis to Sustainability looked at foundational giving of 15 funders to BIPOC arts organizations between 2020 and 2023. The goal of the new study was to understand how the funding practices changed and what is different.

Those findings showed that BIPOC arts organizations made up 40% of the grantmaking portfolio for foundations, which has doubled from the 2018 study. They also nearly doubled the amount of grant dollars they are receiving. Sanchez said foundations changed their grantmaking practices to be more inclusive of BIPOC arts organizations. They did this by assessing their portfolios to understand who was represented and who was not, and do the work of identifying institutions that were located in communities of color, for people of color, by people of color. Another change was the funders started to think more expansively about the kinds of institutions that are doing cultural work, looking beyond performing arts and music organizations to consider community-based organizations who provide programming from healthcare to arts programming in communities.

Another shift was community review panels for funders, as well as giving more grants that were general operating support, which let organizations use the funding for whatever they wanted. Also, there was more communication between funders and BIPOC arts organizations to understand the needs of those arts organizations and how they were different from other arts organizations.

In April, the field data was shared to get the feedback from philanthropic leaders and BIPOC arts leaders. From there, a conversation led to a set of recommendations on how to move forward. Enrich Chicago will convene with philanthropy professionals who are committed to advancing antiracist practices and will come back with that group about  opportunities for action within the next three years. In three years, Enrich Chicago will come back together to do the project again.

“Our priority in this project all along has been to position people of color and the perspective of leaders of color so that those closest to the challenges are the one’s devising the solutions,” Sanchez said.

Sanchez also acknowledged that some funding streams that were available between 2020 and 2023 are no longer available. She said that there is more work that has to be done to compel foundations to make the funding pie bigger because that is something that has not changed. She would like to see a collective advocacy agenda around funding the arts and culture sector to identify strategies and tactics for more funding.

“Our biggest question in front of us, is for each of us to consider how are we individually and collectively stepping up to keep towing the line for structural change; how are we going to do that to support the leaders who have always been doing that work and in particular BIPOC leaders who have been on the ground before the Supreme Court decisions, before elections, who will stay on the frontlines,” she said.

For more information about Enrich Chicago, visit enrichchi.org.

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