“Narratives are the stories we tell that help us make sense of the world,” said Laura Hughes, Director of Narrative Strategies for PolicyLink. “And, most importantly, stories tell where we are today and shape the world we want to create.”

In this article, she addresses three ideas to keep in mind as, “we build our bright and bold housing futures,” including centering Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities are protagonists, messaging inevitability, and how, “the words we use shape our reality.”

Read the full article here.

GIA is advocating for policies that increase the amount of assets that people with disabilities can hold while remaining eligible for public benefits because disabled artists – indeed, all workers – deserve to get paid for their work and to build savings, even when circumstances – like a disability – prevent them from working a conventional fixed role or schedule. GIA is advocating for disability justice for artists and for all as part of our valuing of intersectionality.

In our Disability Justice in Arts and Culture Funding webinar, the speakers advocated for increased support to artists with disabilities. During this event, I received an email from a colleague who told me of the challenges they faced while trying to support artists with disabilities without disqualifying them from receiving Supplemental Security Income (SSI) benefits.

The SSI program is meant to reduce extreme poverty among the elderly and people with disabilities. Asset limits are part of the SSI program design: to qualify for SSI, your countable resources must not be worth more than $2,000 for an individual or $3,000 for a couple. These limits have not been raised or even adjusted for inflation since 1989. People are on SSI because they cannot otherwise “work” – but, by holding them to 1989 levels, we are preventing them from being paid for their creative offerings to society, something to which every artist should have access.

Understanding how these policies and systems are working, GIA recommends the raising of limits or “caps” (and indexing these caps to inflation) on the amount of income that people with disabilities and other low-income Americans may secure before being deemed ineligible for public supports such as SSI and other programs. These changes would allow GIA’s members to lend grant support to these artists without endangering the public support they require to survive; and most importantly, these changes would allow them to share their perspectives and vision, enrich the cultural fabric of our nation, and no longer deny proper compensation for their work. If an artist who is receiving SSI is turning down opportunities, they are losing out financially while society is losing out on access to the artist’s thinking, creativity, and talent.

These outdated caps are harmful for people with disabilities – including disabled artists – who seek opportunities to be fairly compensated for their art or receive grant support to enable them to create – perpetuating cycles of poverty. U.S. families’ median net worth is $121,700. The median net worth among households with adult members with a disability is $43,390. Households with adult members with a disability are almost 1.5 times more likely to be liquid asset poor.

These asset caps also have intersectional impacts. People with disabilities are generally low-income, a social outcome exacerbated by the intersection with race. The official U.S. poverty rate in 2020 was 11.4%. The poverty rate for non-Hispanic White disabled people is 24%. Nearly 30% of disabled Latinx people early 40% of disabled Black people live on income below the poverty line. As of March 2022, 3.6% of Americans are considered unemployed, while 65% of people with disabilities are unemployed. 75% of Black people with disabilities are unemployed. This overlap between the economic precarity of disabled people and BIPOC communities requires that we advocate for changes to public policies that allow grantmakers to support artists with disabilities and low-income artists. Thus, allowing them to be fairly compensated in ways that work for them without endangering their access to support such as healthcare.

Fortunately, policymakers have begun to address these shortcomings. In May 2021, U.S. Senators Chris Coons (D-DE.) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH) introduced the Allowing Steady Savings by Eliminating Tests (ASSET) Act, which raises the asset limitation for SSI and indexes it to inflation. The act also eliminates asset limitations that restrict eligibility for three other public assistance programs: The Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program (LIHEAP). U.S. Representatives Jimmy Gomez (D-CA.) and Kim Schrier, M.D. (D-WA.) introduced companion legislation in the House.

The setting of higher asset thresholds and indexing them to inflation as envisioned by the ASSET Act is an essential element of better support for artists with disabilities and other artists that receive public support. This bill provides one component of a solution to this problem, and GIA is advocating for and encouraging this as part of a larger public policy agenda – as part of our embrace of artists, workers, and intersectionality. We will also be working with our peers and policymakers to advance other solutions that enable full participation by artists with disabilities in our economy.

GIA invites all non-profit members to advocate for this bill and others like it. We invite our foundation members to support applicants’ advocacy to facilitate earnings and protecting the assets of all our nation’s artists and other workers. We have more than just grants at our disposal. We can – all of us – use all our tools to help break the cycles of poverty that inhibit the full and free expression of all our nation’s artists and ensure artists with disabilities have access to fuller economic opportunities.

“A new effort to help grant makers change the way they work so they can better support Black-led nonprofits was announced today. Abundance is a collaboration between three Chicago-area grant makers, Chicago Beyond, the Grand Victoria Foundation, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.”

“Abundance is not a pledge, but rather a program for grant makers,” said author Jim Rendon. “The foundations are in the process of hiring a director for Abundance and have given the group an annual budget of $400,000 for three years. Much about the way it works will be determined by the director, but the idea is to provide a forum for grant makers to learn from one another about how to change their practices so they are more effectively supporting Black-led groups, which are often small, locally focused, and historically underfunded.”

Abundance plans to address issues such as internal barriers and finding ways, “to get more grant makers interested in supporting Black-led nonprofits with multiyear grants, [and] to understand the challenges Black-led groups faced and to help such groups grow in a way that can be sustained.”

Read the full article here.

“Change is an act of creation, and that’s what artists do: Through a process of imagining, trying and building, artists create experiences that connect us to our own agency and power,” said author Laura Zabel who serves as the executive director of Springboard for the Arts. “We are in a moment when we urgently need these artists, culture bearers and creative workers who can help us envision and build a future of justice, health and wholeness.”

Zabel focuses on two of four recommendations from The American Academy of Arts and Sciences’ Commission on the Arts report, Art is Work. “The report includes four primary recommendations that provide a roadmap for the policy changes we need to become a nation that values our cultural sector and benefits from the innovation and imagination of our creative people.”

Read the full article here.

“The right way to expand a nonprofit’s impact is to build programs on three pillars: breadth, depth, and durability. Scaling means advancing all three of these dimensions simultaneously. And while the specific metrics an organization uses will vary, some version of each of those elements must be measured and advanced together to stay on track,” said author Mona Mourshed.

Mourshed list specific examples of nonprofit networks successfully achieving global impact, including Generation, the Community Health Impact Coalition and Last Mile Health.

“If the real goal is growth, then remember this: Growth is merely the outcome of all the inputs that drive it.”

Read the full article here.

“The Summit brought together thought leaders and creative economy experts to discuss opportunities and challenges for creative workers and entrepreneurs, as well as building a more community-centered creative economy. Topics ranged from opportunities for, and threats to, creative workers and entrepreneurs, in addition to impact investing and building creative economy infrastructure through networks and policy.”

Grantmakers in the Arts Vice President, Nadia Elokdah, was one of forty conference speakers that participated in the Creative Vitality Summit.

Read the full report here.

Launched in 2015, Common Field – a national network of independent visual arts organizations and organizers that connects, supports, and advocates for the artist-centered field – announced that, “after a comprehensive auditing and strategic visioning process in 2021, Common Field has made the decision to begin an intentional sunsetting process and will close as an organization in December 2022.”

“Having considered a number of paths forward with trusted field colleagues, our primary funder and financial advisors, we believe this decision holds the founding values of the organization most responsibly and addresses all of the complex challenges the organization faces intentionally. Sunsetting this organization is not an easy decision, but it is the responsible one.”

Read the full announcement here.

From National Endowment for the Arts:
“We invite you to join us in sending the below letter to the Interior, Environment, and Related Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee in support of funding for the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA).”

“The letter requests at least $204 million for the NEA in the FY23 Interior Appropriations bill to support the NEA’s core mission to strengthen the creative capacity of our communities by providing all Americans with diverse opportunities for arts engagement. Continuing to invest in our creative economy’s recovery from the devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on cultural organizations and workers makes robust funding to support this mission even more important.”

Please call your member of Congress and encourage them to sign this letter in support of the National Endowment for the Arts by April 22.