Grantmakers in the Arts

**NEWS FROM THE FIELD** A recent Inside Philanthropy article, “Trends to Watch in an Arts Funding Ecosystem Beset by Federal Cuts,” examines the current arts funding landscape amid ongoing federal cuts and political pressure on nonprofit organizations, artists, and communities. The article features Edwin Torres, GIA President & CEO, who cautions against treating this moment as “post-crisis.” As Torres argues, the arts and culture field remains under active pressure. Nonprofit organizations, cultural workers, artists, and communities continue to experience instability as federal cuts, political targeting, and broader attacks on civil society unfold. Check out the article on the GIA Reader: https://bit.ly/4aGdkE1

**GIA PODCAST** In this podcast episode, Rachel Fagiano (Philanthropic Consultant and Former Senior Fellow with Funders for Justice) interviews Erin Axelrod (LIFT Economy), Courtney Wicks (Racial Justice Investing Coalition) about ways foundation staff can start thinking about a spectrum of interventions and community care when we think about retirement – at the tactical, organizational, and worker levels – and how that can impact you and your community. The Center for Cultural Innovation commissioned Rachel Fagiano to author a toolkit called Envisioning Retirement that explores these themes. Listeners interested in next steps should be encouraged to follow an upcoming working group from Racial Justice Investing, co-sponsored by LIFT Economy and Just Futures. Check out the full podcast and transcript: https://lnkd.in/evxssMP2

**GIA READER** In "Building the Field of Neuroarts," Co-Directors of the NeuroArts Blueprint Initiative Susan Magsamen (International Arts + Mind Lab) and Ruth J. Katz (The Aspen Institute) explore the growing movement to better understand how the arts shape the brain, body, and overall well-being. They examine the collaborations between artists, researchers, healthcare providers, educators, and funders that are helping establish neuroarts as a lasting interdisciplinary field, while emphasizing the need for additional research, shared infrastructure, and sustained investment. As the authors write, "The arts are not a luxury. They are a biological necessity," underscoring the article's central argument that creative expression, as makers and beholders, should be recognized as an essential part of health and human development rather than an optional addition. The piece also offers a roadmap for philanthropy and other sectors looking to support this emerging field and expand its impact. Read the full article on the GIA Reader: https://lnkd.in/emr7S3zA Aspen Institute Health, Medicine & Society Program

**ORGANIZATION NEWS** The latest NPR story from reporter Sequoia Carrillo explores how the Santa Fe Indian School has transformed from a federal boarding school created to erase Native identity into a tribally governed institution centered on Native languages, culture, and self-determination. Today, students help decolonize everything from the library's cataloging system to the curriculum, while learning in more than 10 Indigenous languages and connecting with their own communities and traditions. The article highlights how reclaiming education has become an act of cultural preservation, proving that schools once designed for forced assimilation can instead become places of healing, pride, and Native leadership. Read the full article here: https://n.pr/4gOQH3X

**GIA PODCAST** Sunsetting a foundation isn’t just a financial decision; it’s relational and strategic. In this GIA podcast episode, Cate Fox (Center for Cultural Innovation) and Farhad Ebrahimi (Solidaire Network) share candid insights from their (completed and/or currently active) spend down journeys, unpacking how funders can collaborate to avoid funding cliffs, align resources, and strengthen the cultural ecosystem. This conversation tackles the tension between strategic clarity and trust, what it takes to foster vulnerability with grantees, practical steps funders can take to begin a spend down journey, and the importance of civic positionality. Check out the full podcast and transcript here: https://bit.ly/4oM6wug

**GIA WEBINAR** Narrative Power in Motion: Film, Media, and Cultural Strategy for Change Meet our guest speaker, Mandy Van Deven! Mandy Van Deven is the co-lead of Elemental, a funder learning and grantmaking initiative that cultivates conditions to resource narrative power. She is the founder of Both/And Solutions, a global consulting collective that draws on professional expertise and lived experience to provide strategic advice to wealth holders and philanthropic institutions that advance gender, racial, economic, and climate justice. She serves on the boards of Puentes, a network that builds the narrative infrastructure of social justice movements across Latin America, and Thousand Currents, which mobilizes resources to frontline communities and grassroots movements in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Learn more about Mandy and register for this webinar here: https://bit.ly/4ugUCud

**GIACON26** Grantmakers in the Arts is delighted to welcome you to Memphis–one of the South's Mississippi River cities, alive with cultural brilliance. Memphis is a majority-Black city whose creativity has shaped the nation’s music, movements, and imagination. Here, we don’t just gather; we learn. Memphis is not simply our host – it is our living textbook. At a time when arts ecosystems across the country are navigating politicization, instability, and inequitable investment patterns, we gather in a place that has long confronted these conditions with coordination, ingenuity, and collective care. Memphis sits within the Deep South freedom corridor – connected historically and culturally to Mississippi, Arkansas, and Louisiana – where music, civil rights organizing, and cultural production have always been intertwined. This conference invites us to examine how national funding logics show up locally, how cultural infrastructure is built and sustained under uneven conditions, and how value moves through sound, migration, ownership, and narrative. Through artist-led dialogue, site visits, and interactive sessions, we will learn from what is working, interrogate biased systems, and clarify what shared responsibility requires. The Mississippi River has carried culture outward from this city for generations. The question before us now is: What flows back – and how do we move differently, together? Join GIA members, colleagues, and partners October 18-21, 2026, in Memphis, where music travels, movements converge, and collective power takes root – realigning the future of cultural funding. Be on the lookout for upcoming conference details and updates at gia-conference.org!

Grantmakers in the Arts invited Mandy Van Deven to moderate a discussion to explore narrative power as both an internal practice and an external strategy for social change. Sonya Crespo Childress (Color Congress), Fabiana Gibim (Crushing Colonialism), and Kareem Alston-Rosales (Film 4 Good Fund) will share funding practices that strengthen narrative infrastructure that lasts and illustrate how community-led narrative strategies emerge, take root, and shift culture over time. Here's how you can join: https://lnkd.in/gBqS7vtA

**GIA WEBINAR** Narrative Power in Motion: Film, Media, and Cultural Strategy for Change Meet our guest speaker, Kareem Alston-Rosales! Kareem Alston-Rosales recently founded and launched Film 4 Good Fund—an initiative to cultivate pipelines for creators and filmmakers of color to connect with philanthropic resources for the final stages of film production. A Stanford graduate with an advanced degree in African Studies, Kareem received a grant from Stanford to create a thesis film about Hip Hop culture and its connection to anti-apartheid struggle in Cape Town, SA. He pursued filmmaking as an intern at Alex Gibney's Jigsaw Productions, before landing at New York Foundation, as their Communications Director doing short documentary films about their grantees to raise their profiles and attract larger funders. Kareem most recently served as Deputy Digital Director of The Communications Network, gathering storytellers from the most respected foundations and large nonprofits in our sector to help them both improve on and invest in narrative change work. Learn more about Kareem at giarts.org/webinar and read/listen to his recent interview here: https://sl1nk.com/cwmdpsp

**NEWS FROM THE FIELD** Hundreds of billions of dollars in new philanthropic capital will soon become liquid. The The OpenAI Foundation holds 26% of OpenAI, worth about $220B at today’s valuation. Anthropic’s seven co-founders have pledged to give away 80% of their wealth and have instituted the most aggressive donor matching program for employees in tech history. How much does this all add up to? And how meaningful is that in the context of philanthropy today? Authored by: Nan Ransohoff Read the full Substack here: https://bit.ly/4ea6N5m