Thrive

AWF THRIVE Grants (Currently on Pause)

AWF’s new Thrive grant program provides three-year general operating grants to arts and culture organizations that intentionally reflect and serve the priorities of Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC), LGBTQ+ people, women, and people with disabilities, and those at the intersection of these identities.

The program aims to create opportunities for advancement, sustainability, or visibility by providing support and a runway for stability to community-rooted arts organizations. It is also an opportunity for AWF to learn and share new ways of looking at arts organization vitality beyond the traditional measures of audience size or numbers and critical reviews typically used by funders.

photo: The Thrive Design Team

Program Design

Thrive was developed through a participatory design process involving people with direct and varied experience in the types of arts nonprofits that this program seeks to support. A Selection Committee convened by AWF came together to nominate a participatory Design Team as a way to amplify community participation and de-center grantmaking institutions from the outset. The 12-member Selection Committee included two members of the Steering Committee and ten community leaders outside of philanthropy. The Selection Committee identified 37 prospective members for the participatory design process from diverse demographics, artistic practices, and contexts.

AWF worked with its project consultants, Gita Gulati-Partee and Katy Love, to research nominees and compose a final group of 12 Design Team members. The Design Team included three AWF funder-partners working alongside nine artists, arts organization leaders, and arts activists/organizers from Chicago and Cook County. Participants reflected but were not asked to formally represent the geographic, cultural, and art communities the Thrive grant program aims to support.

The Design Team identified four values to guide the creation and implementation of the new grant program: 1) Sustenance & Sustainability, 2) Connection & Wholeness, 3) Transparency & Mutuality, and 4) Accessibility & Inclusivity. These values helped guide decisions, large and small, throughout the design of the grant program and continue to guide grant program implementation.

Meet the Selection Committee Meet the Design Team

Program Details

The program prioritizes organizations that practice and promote the following:

• Artistic & Cultural Focus: The organization’s core mission promotes artistic and cultural practices that resonate with their communities and advance artistic and cultural life in Chicago.
• Community Rootedness & Relevance: The organization is rooted in its community, actively reflecting and responding to its community’s cultural needs and wants. As such, the organization has a vision for using the grant funding in meaningful and impactful ways that further embed it into the community’s cultural fabric. The definition of “impact” will differ from organization to organization, community to community.
• Interconnectedness: The organization enhances and contributes to the arts ecosystem via connection, collaboration, and exchange with organizations, groups, and individuals serving the same community and/or addressing complementary community needs.
• Self-determination and Leadership: Organizational leadership represents the community it seeks to serve, and decision-making reflects community needs. The organization enables people and communities to participate in cultural life through a lens of choice, empowerment, and freedom.

Thrive grants give organizations autonomy and flexibility to decide how the funds will best benefit their organization and community. This grant program is not solely a place-based initiative; organizations can define their communities geographically or demographically.

Eligibility

To be eligible for the Thrive grant program, organizations must:

• Have a mission and primary purpose that supports artists and the production and presentation of art.
• Be based in and serving Chicago or Cook County.
• Be a 501(C)(3) or have a formal relationship with a fiscal sponsor. Organizations with fiscal sponsors should have an independent budget and a board of directors or other formal, organized oversight team that serves a governance function and otherwise complements staff leadership.
• Based on the most recently completed fiscal year, annual operating expenses are under $2 million.

Restrictions

The Thrive grant program does not support:

• Universities, schools (private, public, charter), and religious entities.
• Organizations whose primary purpose is arts learning (i.e., more than 50% of its programming, staff time, and/or budget is for arts education activities),
• Arts service organizations.
• Organizations with a mission and primary purpose that fall outside supporting artists and producing and presenting artmaking.

Note: If an organization receives a Thrive grant, it will be ineligible to apply to any future AWF grants during the three-year Thrive grant period. Once the grant period ends, organizations can apply for other AWF grants.

Shared Learning

Grantees in the Thrive program will join a cohort enabling exchange, resource sharing, learning, and potential collaboration throughout the grant cycle. The cohort will meet twice yearly. The learning agenda will be developed collectively by the grantees.

Grant Size

AWF recognizes that different organizations have different needs. Grant sizes will vary depending on the organization’s current budget, its vision for its future, and potential opportunities for growing its revenue streams.

Timeline

Frequently Asked Questions