intermediaries, to ground my speculative visioning. This essay hopes to linger briefly there and trace trends per- haps only realized through hindsight. I lean upon recent, more robust reflections that analyze current funding's tructures including “Creating New Futures” (2020– 2023), Funding Bodies (2021), and Artists on Creative Administration (2024), and find solace in facts, personal experiences and community solidarity. I aim to write towards a radical future that eliminates foundations and redistributes wealth in BIPOC, queer, disabled, and immigrant communities. After all, as many of my mentors describe, we are the experts of our experiences. WHAT JUST HAPPENED F rom 2020-2023, the arts field experienced a major shift in philanthropy. Funds flowed relatively easily into the pockets of Black, brown, queer, trans, and disabled folks and the organizations that support their creative endeavors. While not everyone experienced bounty, those who did, generally redistributed the funds judicially. The beginning moves required of trust-based philanthropy (TBP) gained momentum. Grant applications shortened, program officers offered transparent assessments of their resources, and relief funds (even if highly inaccessible) floated venues, organizations and a few individuals into the present. It seemed, on a surface level, that the glacier of philanthropy was in fact rotating to show a new, more efficient side. We were still far from true trust-based philanthropy, which calls for a radical redistribution of money, power and decision-making to historically under- resourced artists and local communities. In the recently published workbook, Artists on Creative Administration, administrator Maura Cuffie-Peterson was prompted by artist Yanira Castro to reflect on her experiences with philanthropy. Cuffie-Peterson is the Director of Strategic Initiatives, Guaranteed Income at Creatives Rebuild New York (CRNY) and was Program Officer for ArtPlace America. Castro is a working artist and met Cuffie-Peterson through CRNY’s work toward a Guaranteed Income program in 2021. Cuffie-Peterson experienced trust-based philanthropic practices at ArtPlace America where artists and their communities led the grant making process based on their needs and desires. In contrast, when working in support of CRNY to cajole other funders to reconsider their methods, she met challenges to the idea of redistributing funds quickly and effectively. In Cuffie-Peterson’s opinion “Money is tied up in endowments, in infrastructure, in investments. There’s money everywhere. It needs to move. Money doesn’t belong to philanthropies in the first place” (Lockyer 57).
In 2020, the quickest and more effective way to make this change was to challenge the 5% rule, or the annual percentage foundations are required to spend in line with their mission (be it on staff time, grantmaking, or infra- structural support). Some foundations followed this heed, though it was largely not sustained in subsequent years. As philanthropy professional Edgar Villanueva, asks in his 2018 book, Decolonizing Wealth, “What about the 95%?!” [emphasis original], as the investments of these funds often compound on inequities. Out of the ten big- gest foundations in the world, only the MacArthur Foun- dation and the W.K. Kellogg Foundation disclosed their investment returns on their remaining 95% of total assets (Villanueva 151). 1 This leaves communities they suppos- edly support through their grantmaking in the dark, with slim resources, and often impacted by the very investments foundations profit from such as fossil fuels, real estate, poor labor conditions, and more. Building upon this culture of secrecy, arts workers are now experiencing yet another retraction and re-entrenchment disguised with language like evaluation, priorities, assess- ment, and alignment. Unfortunately, this shouldn’t be that surprising. When efforts to redistribute wealth from his- toric sources of power (foundations, police) to communi- ties of culture (artists, Black communities) happen, there We were still far from true trust-based philanthropy, which calls for a radical redistribution of money, power and decision-making to historically under- resourced artists and local communities. tends to be a racist and classist backlash, often with additional claims of corruption, misuse of funds, and a general sense of distrust. This is made visible through advocacy like national Defund the Police movements or more locally San Francisco’s Dreamkeeper Initiative (DKI). DKI aimed to “reinvest $60 million annually into San Francisco’s diverse Black communities.” Now in 2025, the program is publicly misunderstood and funding is indefinitely paused. Artists and community advocates call for reimplementation and trust in the process. City officials and mainstream media point out potential mis- use of funds and signs of corruption. Castro described the dynamic simply after reading an initial draft of this essay. While philanthropic bodies attempted to redistrib- ute funds equitability in the wake of multiplying crises in 2020, they are now retreating to a “cultural mindset of protectionism, hierarchy, and control as a way to maintain a perceived sense of security.”
Instability & Intermediaries: How Major Funders Continue to Fail the Arts Ecosystem by REBECCA FITTON
“The oppressors maintain their position and evade their responsibility for their own actions. There is a constant drain of energy which might be better used in redefining ourselves and devising realistic scenarios for altering the present and constructing the future.” – AUDRE LORDE, “SISTER OUTSIDER,” 1984 .
“A revolution that is based on the people exercising their creativity in the midst of devastation is one of the great historical contributions of humankind.” – GRACE LEE BOGGS , 2014
I OPENED MY EMAIL LATE ON TUESDAY, February 26th to an email from The Phyllis C. Wattis Foun- dation with news that they are phasing out their Legacy Grant, a small but impactful fund for organizations that support individual artists in the Bay Area. Both organiza- tions I currently co-direct (Bridge Live Arts and Jess Curtis/ Gravity), would each receive one exit grant before the pro- gram’s closure. Wattis sustains our staff infrastructure and programming, after this year, what’s next? 2026 feels far away as I scan my list of upcoming grant deadlines. At least the news is partnered with a positive update. In their email, Wattis indicates that they will open their New Work grant up to former Legacy Grantees which was previously not an option. I sigh, somewhat unsurprised. Rewind almost a year ago to almost the same scene, but with a different funder. Over Zoom, the program officer with the Walter & Elise Haas Fund let us know that they will pause their funding to the arts as the Board and staff re-evaluate priori- ties with a goal to integrate several of their programs. Bridge Live Arts’ received an exit grant. At the time, the general oper- ating support B.L.A. received from Haas covered almost 30% of the annual budget. In between these two moments, I loosely tracked how many national grants that supported dance terminated their pro- grams. With some helpful, internal insights into philan- thropy trends from a group chat with two arts administrator friends, the updates were almost weekly.
The funding landscape that supports the nonprofit and nonprofit-adjacent dance field in the United States irrevocably changed in 2024. As an arts administrator I often found myself on the leading edge of the updates, tasked with ferrying bad news to arts workers who support the dance ecosystem. Now, faced with devastat- ing cuts to both private and public funding opportuni- ties, we must dedicate precious time to think about the future. But how do we move forward when the groundwork of grantmaking in the arts as we know it is so destabilized? Bhumi’s provocation about future dreaming was the impetus to put words on a page, but in practice, I’ve been researching what is happening, why and what to do next for the past few years. I am an arts administra- tor and researcher whose eight-year career is inextrica- bly woven into the pockets of philanthropists who support arts and culture in what is now called the United States. I can’t escape the torrent of news about philanthropic changes in my work. I might not be able to provide any answers by the end of this reflection. But, at the very least I hope to share what has been swimming around in my brain, offer forward other’s reflections in which I find solace, and share some calls to action as we work toward a more creative, worker- led solution to a sustainable arts ecosystem. When I began to write, I found myself turning towards the immediate and more distant pasts, with a focus on fiscal sponsors and re-granting organizations,
1 To listen to a conversation between Villanueva and choreographer Miguel Gutierrez about the interplay between money and artmaking, visit bridgelivearts.org/media.
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