Call for Proposals: Quick Grant Program (US)

Funding Information

• Artists, creatives, cultural practitioners, and cultural producers meeting eligibility requirements may receive one award per CCI fiscal year of up to $600 to participate in approved professional development activities.
• Nonprofit arts organization staff members, including board and key volunteers, meeting eligibility requirements may receive one award, per CCI fiscal year, of up to $600 to participate in approved professional development activities. Up to two individual staff members may receive funding per organization per CCI fiscal year.

Eligible Activities

• Professional development activities that build administrative capacity, hone business skills, and/or strengthen the financial resilience of the grantee’s practice, area of cultural production, or arts organization.
• Activities must begin after application notification. For example, for the January 15, 2023 deadline, the proposed activity.
• Examples include (but aren’t limited to):
  • Conferences, convenings, festivals
  • Business trainings or workshops
  • Platform memberships
  • One-on-one work with consultants, coaches, and mentors, including requests to bring your practice or programming online
• Due to limited resources, requests by Los Angeles County applicants to work one-on-one with a consultant are extremely competitive. Priority will instead go to Los Angeles County applicants who propose group activities such as public workshops, conferences, and trainings.)

Ineligible Activities

• Activities focused primarily on creative or artistic skill development, art teaching/teaching artist methods and techniques, or artistic presentation/production
• Activities that support an applicant’s adjacent enterprise
• Requests to support overhead, general operating expenses, or lost income
• Funding to purchase art supplies, materials, or advance inventory
• Activities proposed by artists, creatives, cultural practitioners, or cultural producers to support the operations of a nonprofit organization or a role in arts administration
• Activities that have already taken place or that will occur before application notifications are sent.

Eligibility Criteria

• California artists, creatives, cultural practitioners, and cultural producers; and
• San Francisco and San José nonprofit arts organization staff

Application Requirements

• The online application (a complete application preview is available here) collects:
  • Eligibility questions
  • Information about the proposed activity
  • Narrative statement about the activity’s proposed impact
  • Project budget
  • One to three-page résumé (.doc, .docx, .pdf file types accepted) that references the applicant’s professional role in the arts and culture sector and California residence
  • Consultant Requests Only: Applicants who request a consultant/coach/mentor must also provide a letter of commitment from the proposed consultant/coach/mentor and the consultant, et al.’s bio or résumé
  • Fiscally Sponsored Organization Requests Only: Applicants applying as arts organization staff through a fiscally sponsored organization must contact CCI to discuss their eligibility. If eligible, these applicants will need to include the fiscal sponsor’s tax ID number, a copy of the fiscal sponsorship agreement letter, and a statement from the fiscal sponsor verifying that the majority (i.e., 75%) of the applicant’s public programming occurs within the City and County of San Francisco or the City of San José.

For more information, visit Center for Cultural Innovation.