Bay Bottom News

Money For Nothing…

There are many grants available to match any number of needs. While finding the right one is key, it is a good idea to cast a net around to as many possibilities as you can find. Don’t get your heart set on an NEA grant, an Andy Warhol grant, or the Ford Foundation. Be resourceful, persistent, and realistic.

First, what are your needs?

Is your organization trying to receive a grant for operating or administrative costs to run the organization?

Or is there need based on circumstances, such as a catastrophic situation after a natural disaster, help for poor or homeless individuals, for those whose health has taken a bad turn? You may need short term or long term support.

Or do you want to do a specific project and want the granting agency to fund it?

Or as an artist or a scholar, do you need a stipend?

To find a foundation that might fund your project, your organization, or you, the first thing to do is research foundations.

You can go to the Foundation Directory and pick a few foundations by searching key words. You will probably be overwhelmed by the choices. I would advise instead that you ask friends in your field which grants they have received. Then apply for those. Or look at similar projects as yours to see which grants those projects were awarded. Look at local community foundations, as well.

Once you’ve found a few granting agencies that seem to fit your needs, find out what they generally fund, and how much they fund. Check into whether they will fund an individual (most will not) or if they want your organization to be a nonprofit, or organized as a corporation or LLC. If you don’t have that type of organization, then you might want to find a partner with which to apply.

Once you’ve determined whether you are eligible, then find out what the granting organizations want by reading their grant guidelines. Guidelines are generally found online along with grant applications.

Another good idea is to read the year-end report, which is also often available online. In the year-end report, there is usually a list of organizations or projects they have funded that year, and how much they gave. You can see their priorities.

When I find a granting organization that I think fits my goals, the first thing I do is look at their deadlines, at what they are asking me to give to them, and whether I think I can hit their deadline. Take the shotgun approach and find a few that might work for you and your project. Write their deadlines on your calendar. Some will list an actual time of day for the deadline. If you are even a minute late, you can be closed our of their application process.

About ten years ago, it was routine to have a postmarked deadline. I would trudge to the post office to mail my 40-page proposal, along with ten copies for the grant reviewers. As a filmmaker, I would often have to provide ten dvds or tapes of a sample of a previous work, or a work-in-progress. I’m glad those days are over. Nowadays grant applications are submitted online and links are provided for the grant reviewer to access your sample works.

Some organizations will ask you to first contact them by phone to see if you fit their guidelines. Or they may want you to send a short Letter of Intent. It is best for you to make that phone call, send that email or LOI, instead of spending a week on a proposal to find you are not eligible to apply.

If you want to do some sleuthing into government grants, here is a good link: What Is A Grant?

Next, I’ll discuss what to do after you have identified a target to ask for funding. Stay tuned.

I happened upon Creative Pinellas CEO Barbara St. Clair at the pop-up show in downtown St. Pete by CP’s Emerging Artist Kenny Jensen.

Kenny Jensen’s show

I moaned. I was behind in the blog posts I was to do as part of a grant from Creative Pinellas. But my life applying for grants seemed to leave me nothing interesting to write about. Surely she would disapprove of this most un-artful topic – grants!

But instead she told me that some of the most-read blogs were those that offered solutions to problems that artists often have – problems in writing grants, for instance. Or getting grants.

I’ve learned over the years that it is often up to the whims of judges to determine whether or not you get a grant. Judges can be capricious! But there are some things that are helpful in grant writing. I have received many grants since my first one in 1984.

At that time, I applied to private foundations, corporations, and government entities for funding for Tampa Bay Oasis,a PBS film that explored marine ecosystems, filming over an entire year in the Tampa Bay (body of water). I raised $80,000 in a relatively short period of time. Since then I’ve raised more than a million and more for my films, with grants from NEA, NEH, Ford Foundation, Corporation for Public Broadcasting, humanities councils in eight states, the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs, and many others – including this Creative Artist grant from Creative Pinellas.

My next blogs will explore the process of grant writing, based on what I’ve learned. Like I said, getting grants has a lot to do with what the judges are looking for, in that particular grant. But you also need to be able to state an argument for your project and defend why you deserve that grant.

So stay tuned for more.

GROWING UP POSITIVE – REMEMBER TO KEEP IT SAFE!

The goal is ZERO Pinellas. That’s the number of HIV transmissions this group is hoping our county will soon have – despite our having the 17th highest rate of HIV transmission in the country. They want ZERO transmissions. We were there today when they launched their drive to end HIV in Pinellas County.

By combining efforts, these individuals whose organizations represent the leading HIV/AIDS activists in our county, are hoping to make a difference by providing testing, outreach, drugs to keep HIV positive persons healthy, condoms, and advice that leads toward non-transmission.

The problem out there is that many people do not know they have the virus and so they are unknowingly passing it to their partners. And while 4,594 people with HIV are reportedly living in Pinellas County, only 3,366 are taking drugs that suppress the virus, which diminishes the chance of passing it on.

And that’s where our film GROWING UP POSITIVE will be a help. We want to get the message out to people that there are ways to stay safe. Anyone who has sexual relationships with un-tested persons – or is untested themselves – is taking a risk of passing on the virus.

My film GROWING UP POSITIVE will make people aware that Pinellas has a growing problem but there are ways to keep HIV under control.

The article in the Tampa Bay Times about the Artists and Writers Balls in Ybor City in the 1980s might not have resonated with everyone but for many of us, the memories flowed. As the group founder says, “That’s when Ybor had balls.”  But to call the group of artists who created these events party planners undermines their talents and their purpose.

Not many parties sought to re-create outer space in the Cuban Club, a four-floor historic building built in 1917 in Ybor City (photo at left). While the balls were visual eye candy – thanks to the playful imagination of the fearless leader, David Audet –  they were also an effort to upset the social strata of Tampa society.

Theirs was not the segregated, all-male Gasparilla Parade but rather an all-inclusive ball of silliness and pure joy, amid four floors of music. What mattered most to those who put on the event was that there were new and different ideas in play. This was a new and nurturing focus in the Ybor arts’ district, an enclave inhabited at the time by  a colony of like-minded individuals – artists!

Sadly, those artists would leave in the 1990s when the alcohol zoning changed and a head-banging bar scene took hold. Ybor City was never the same.

Today the Artists and Writers Group is still around and while it is not much more than some crazy-minded people who once put on those events in Ybor City, it is also a 501(c)3 non-profit group with a mission:

The purpose of the Artists and Writers Group is to develop and nurture cultural events that contribute a positive and meaningful experience to our community.

As an organization open to all like-minded individuals, the Artists and Writers Group respects the creative and cultural diversity of our community and is committed to equality, peace and social and economic justice. The Artists and Writers Group aspires to provide events and forums to serve the community by the exposure and sharing of these values.  

I am the President of the Artists and Writers Group, and David Audet – the original organizer of the Artists and Writers Balls – is its Vice President. We are currently re-organizing our web site and re-assessing our purpose, and planning for new experiences to upset the social strata. When we have our new web site, I will re-post. We hope to be able to work with other artists in the Tampa Bay area who want to do more silliness, create more art, and stimulate imagination.

This posts’ first home was on my artist blog for Creative Pinellas, the local arts agency for Pinellas County and St. Petersburg (and other cities), in the Tampa Bay area.

Two weeks ago, I attended a conference for nonprofit organizations, sponsored by The Foundation for A Healthy St Petersburg. What I learned that day surprised me.

The group detailed the findings of a United Way survey of Asset Limited, Income Constrained, Employed persons. They made up the ALICE report, which described deep pockets of poverty throughout Florida. In Pinellas County, where I live, the towns specifically were Ridgecrest, Lealman, Kenneth City, High Point, South Pasadena, and Gulfport.

These are the working poor – employed individuals living paycheck to paycheck – set back by costs of child care, transportation, disabilities, and a high cost of living in their chosen location.

The populations mentioned were predominately white working class poor people. This is not the area of Pinellas County known as The South Side, but rather towns where poor white people have not been able to pull themselves up and attain a standard of living to be considered middle class.

I met Jake-Ann Jones,  the Managing Editor and a reporter for the Weekly Challenger newspaper sitting at the same table with me. We committed ourselves to doing something together with our talents to help reverse the tide for disadvantaged people.

Jake – as she prefers to be called – is currently working through the Venture Philanthropy Fund to help nonprofits grow and thrive. Another statistic of note at the conference was that there are more than 6200 “501(c)” nonprofit organizations in Pinellas County.

Jake has worked in film and television in her native New York borough, Harlem, and will now work as an Associate Producer on my film Growing Up Positive.  The film explores the lives of young people born with HIV, and others who acquired HIV. In Tampa Bay, HIV is increasingly impacting people of color – both black and Latino – and is still affecting populations of gay white men.

We hope you follow our journey.

This posts’ first home was on my artist blog for Creative Pinellas, the local arts agency for Pinellas County and St. Petersburg (and other cities), in the Tampa Bay area.