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The Rochester Area Community Foundation has launched a new funding opportunity aimed at helping more students engage with the arts.
“Our children deserve to have access to vibrant arts opportunities across our region,” says Community Foundation President & CEO Simeon Banister. “At a time when federal funding for the arts is changing, our focus is to protect youth arts access here.”
This arts education funding cycle will award grants of up to $10,000 (typical grant sizes are listed as $5,000 to $10,000) for programs in visual arts, music, dance, and performance to PreK to Grade 12 students with an eye toward expanding geographic access, making program access more equitable, and increasing students’ engagement and passion for the arts.
The dollars available through the arts education cycle are separate and additional to the RACF’s existing arts and culture grant offerings, which closed in November 2024.
The foundation has cast a wide geographic net for these grants, including organizations across the eight counties of Genesee, Livingston, Monroe, Ontario, Orleans, Seneca, Wayne, and Yates.
This was an intentional choice as an analysis of previous arts and culture grant applications to the organization found that less than 10 percent of proposals were from nonprofits that serve the counties outside of Monroe, the foundation says. It hopes a targeted approach in outreach strategy will help strengthen regional vitality.
With these grants, funding will be unrestricted, another change brought about by previous arts and culture grantee feedback. A list of potential uses includes money for transportation, food to make it easier for kids to stay in the program, or specific staff training and equipment to help better engage young learners.
“The arts education grant opportunity invites applicants to ask for whatever they need to meet the goals,” RACF says.
In order to still produce actionable insights while remaining flexible, grantees will be required to complete evaluations at the end of the grant window, about a year later. Outcomes, such as the number of program slots, hours of operations, and program attendance should be recorded by grantees and students themselves will be asked several questions as well.
This information could also help continue making this type of funding available in future years, the foundation says.
“We’re really looking to partner with grantees and see what we can learn from this process,” Senior Program Officer Annette Jiménez Gleason says. “It might just look different based on what we learn. The data we get from grantees will help make the case for this kind of funding to continue in the future, and hopefully make the pot bigger.”
Applications for arts education grants are open now through March 28.
Jacob Schermerhorn is a Rochester Beacon contributing writer and data journalist.
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