Arts & Business Partnerships
The Private Sector Initiatives department of Americans for the Arts is leading efforts to stimulate additional support from the three major areas of the private sector: business, foundations and individuals. This support, which accounts for 40% of an arts organization’s budget, occurs across a broad spectrum of engagements from audience participation to volunteerism to board service and leadership to arts-based corporate training to sponsorship and funding. This work includes promoting partnership between the arts and business, in part through the national network of Arts & Business Councils, Business Committee for the Arts, Business Volunteers for the Arts affiliates, and United Arts Funds (UAF).
Arts and Civic Engagement
Animating Democracy, launched in the fall of 1999, is a programmatic initiative of Americans for the Arts made possible with support from The Ford Foundation. Its purpose is to foster artistic activity that encourages civic dialogue on important contemporary issues. Animating Democracy seeks to do this through an integrated set of program components, including:
- Publication of the study Animating Democracy: The Artistic Imagination as a Force in Civic Dialogue, reports, and other field resources
- The Animating Democracy Lab, designed to identify and strengthen exemplary arts-based civic dialogue projects sponsored by arts and cultural institutions through financial and advisory support
- An interactive website and searchable database, centralizing extensive information on arts-based civic dialogue
- National convenings to share learning resulting from the Animating Democracy Initiative
Arts Education in Your Community
Americans for the Arts has partnered with the National School Boards Association (NSBA) to provide local education decision-makers with the necessary tools to effect positive change for arts education in their schools. Learn more about NSBA, arts education, and what you can do to support arts education. In addition to this resource, Americans for the Arts provides arts education information to the constituencies of both NSBA and the National PTA.
When you face a funding cut, you need to be able to take swift and efficient action to mitigate the situation—mobilize your advocates, create your message, and implement your strategy. To simplify this process for you, we have developed this ever-expanding online tool to provide you with current information and key messaging, communications and advocacy strategies, and the research you need to make the case.
Arts Services Directory
The Arts Services Directory is an online search tool that contains arts resources in communities across the United States such as state arts agencies, public art programs, and performing arts centers. Search by location, service needs, or type of organization.
Arts Watch Policy E-News
Subscribe to our Cultural Policy Listserv and receive concise and convenient update on developments in the field. The listserv provides weekly news, events, announcements and jobs in Access & Equity; Community; Creativity & the Law; Education & the Creative Workforce; International Relations; Heritage & Preservation; and National Investment.
Economic Impact
Nationally, the nonprofit arts and culture industry generates $166.2 billion in economic activity every year—$63.1 billion in spending by organizations and an additional $103.1 billion in event-related spending by their audiences. Arts & Economic Prosperity III: The Economic Impact of Nonprofit Arts and Culture Organizations and Their Audiences documents the key role played by the nonprofit arts and culture industry in strengthening our nation’s economy. This study demonstrates that the nonprofit arts and culture industry is an economic driver in communities—a growth industry that supports jobs, generates government revenue, and is the cornerstone of tourism.
Institute for Community Development and the Arts
The Institute for Community Development and the Arts provides a research-based understanding of how the arts are being used to address social, educational, and economic development issues in communities across the country.
Marketing for the Arts
ArtsMarketing.org, the official website of the National Arts Marketing Project, is a comprehensive web portal that organizes practical marketing information in a format that is easily accessible to novice, intermediate and expert marketers alike. It serves as a resource for teachers and students in arts administration/arts management programs and for all members of the arts community, across all artistic disciplines. Through ArtsMarketing.org, artistic peers and marketing professionals address daily marketing needs and longer-term marketing issues.
National Arts Policy Database
The National Arts Policy Database is a tool that enables users to access current information on a multitude of topics related to arts policy. Records in the database are classified into four types: research abstracts, news articles, program profiles, and sample documents. The database is updated weekly and contains over 8,000 records—providing arts policy researchers, advocates, and administrators with comprehensive information on arts policy and practice.
Research
Have a question or two about the best way to launch an arts/arts education initiative, produce effective arts programming, secure funding, and advocate effectively? Are you trying to serve the diverse art forms of your community? Annually, more than 5,000 of your peers tap into our up-to-date reports, surveys, online databases, and one-on-one communications. Visit this section of our website to learn more about the Research Department and its many services.
Video and Audio
Watch and listen to audio and video from our events as well as ARTcast, an Americans for the Arts podcast that takes a look at news affecting the arts around the country, as well as those who are shaping the landscape of the arts in America.