Artworkers who develop free and low-cost community-engagement activities are the bedrock of LA’s cultural ecology. Local nonprofit arts agencies harness the spirit, passion, and talent to strengthen the SoCal region by allowing residents and tourists to feel ourselves as interconnected peoples with personal insights to share and collective wellness to invigorate.
Under the leadership of General Manager Daniel Tarica and Grants Director Joe Smoke, DCA is pleased to renew it primary open call to review and sponsor project proposals by independent nonprofit organizations for activities and events that will be produced and presented within the City of Los Angeles between July 1, 2024, and June 30, 2025.
The goal of all DCA grant-contract opportunities is to support jobs for LA artists, arts administrators, and arts managers while they produce community-relevant high-quality creative projects that will engage a well-defined demographics of residents or tourists. Activities and events in arts-underserved areas of the Los Angeles are especially encouraged.
The instructions and forms which follow will enable eligible applicants to strategically detail the specific “service they want DCA to purchase.” These services must be free or low-cost socio-educational opportunities that are expertly conceived, produced, and marketed to some or all of the general public. Such services will also encourage participation, so that residents, regional visitors, and overnight travelers can become actively involved (personally or collectively) in art-making or dialogue. Finally, these services will develop creative jobs which are full-time, part-time, or occasional/seasonal, as well as volunteer positions within arts enterprises.
The first step in the Cultural Grant Program application process is to identify what percentage of the applicant-organization’s overall budget can be used to determine an eligible vendor request. Next, identify the DCA portion of the project budget and your organization’s financial-matching capabilities to produce the proposed project. DCA requires an SMU Data Arts profile with most proposals (or an IRS 990 statement from festival producers). Applicants who have updated their DataArts profit and have prepared a draft project budget can use our Allowable Grant Request Calculator to estimate a max allowable grant request. Then you can proceed to form a clear and concise narrative that defines the size, scope, duration, and goals of your proposed project. Applicants must have at least one year of experience producing and presenting the proposed project, which will allow you to effectively highlight recent audience metrics and feedback and showcase video and/or images from the most recent iteration of your project. Tailoring a grant-narrative which estimates how an investment of City funds can make a existing project bigger, stronger, or faster is the simple way to shape each proposal.
Two key factors to explain are location and interactivity. Location matters a little more than the demographics of the people you intend to serve. Projects situated within traditional venues are judged as easier than projects in unique venues or those accomplished with exceptional partners. In addition, the higher the level of interactivity (learning/participation) the more you can elevate the project’s cost-per-head ratio which is the total project budget divided by the total amount of participants/audience. These factors are evident in our published scoring-criteria which we strongly encourage you to read (and use as a framework for how you structure the clear and concise paragraphs of your narrative) because DCA is seeking to support the broadest and deepest possible spectrum of cultural-arts projects.
It is super important to remember that DCA is a project funder and not a program or general operation funder. The City is also a reimbursement funder, so please do not propose projects that take longer than 6 months to complete (without special dialogue with the Grants staff). DCA is only seeking proposals for a specifically defined set of free, open-to-the-public, activities/events (which may fit within a larger program that is briefly sketched within the narrative). DCA also holds most panel scores for two years, so the project proposed needs to be repeatable in style (with a related theme or topic) in a second year. Please do not forecast two years within your proposal. Each grant is a one-year contract, and first-year grantees will be asked to submit a separate Renewal Form to continue their project-funding within a renewable score).
The instructions and forms posted herein are for nonprofit cultural-arts organizations requesting project-support as well as social-service nonprofit organizations partnering with arts event experts to request festival support. Each proposal should additionally comply with sub-criteria listed herein, and each proposal must fall within one district category (which determines the kind of peer experts they wish to review and score their proposal). This 2023 deadline has a emphasis on generating two-year scores for projects in: culture/history presentations, literature or publishing projects, media activities or presentations, design/visual art exhibitions or museum projects, or traditional/folk arts. New applicants in Dance, Music, Theatre, or Multi-Disciplinary art forms will receive one-year scores. Existing grantees in Dance, Music, Theatre, or Multi-Disciplinary art forms should render only a one-page Renewal Form (provided to you by the grants staff).
The expert grant team is providing the following six tips to all prospective applicants:
1. If your project tours to or takes place in multiple city council districts, then you should consider asking DCA to fund 50% *of your locations and strategize (by talking with the DCA staff) on which districts have been historically least served by former DCA applicants.
2. Be thoughtful about which Council District boxes you select in your proposal. Please note that if your project is sited within 5 or more districts, your selection will indicate which districts are served with DCA funding, while others can be served with matching funds. Please be reminded that if you are awarded a contract based on this proposal, your services cannot include new districts or changed districts.
3. Projects that cannot estimate 60% of the local artists (national and international artists are acceptable as long as they do not comprise more than 40% of the total project proposed) and arts managers, who will be paid to produce and present a specific number of thematic services, are not ready to be proposed.
4. Including 20% of overhead business expenses is very acceptable for every artistic project proposal. By naming the theme, site, and relative dates of your activities will help you determine what expenses are truly needed to stabilize your progress in advance of the free or low-costs and publicly accessible activities which are the entire focus of your application narrative.
5. Our application allows for answers with limited word counts, so we do NOT recommend asking for support of more than 2 projects in your singular proposal. If you do decide to ask for support of Project A and Project B, please be aware that DCA panelist will select whichever they prefer and rarely tell DCA to fund elements of both.
6. The cost-per-head ratio between your financial request and the number of people served will determine how deep your narrative must speak to “level of change” in your participants+audience. DCA wants to support a variety of artistic projects — some of which will be wide and low cost (like a $20 movie ticket) and some of which will be deep and moderate cost (such as $50 per person activity) for a project with an average of $200 per person investment in deep sequential and transformative learning for a target population that needs a city sponsored program to develop equitable outcomes (except for the outdoor festivals category). The depth of change you create in the life of an example-participant from one or more prior year(s) of the same project, is the best way to justify a high cost-per-head-ratio.
We encourage you to start early and work progressively on the required documents. We use two online platforms (SMU DataArts and SurveyMonkey Apply) both of which are user-friendly but neither of which is housed within our office. Some questions will be referred to technical workers managing these independent platforms.
Mouna Benbouazza, Grants Associate
Ben Espinosa, Grants Manager
Brenda Slaughter Reynolds, Grants Associate
Armando Smith, Grants Associate
Joe Smoke, Grants Director