Sustaining Support for Arts Organizations
Reminder: Please review General Grant Information and Eligibility Requirements before proceeding.
About
Sustaining Support provides flexible funding to arts organizations in North Carolina that consistently produce arts programs and services that engage audiences and reflect their communities. These organizations provide work opportunities for artists and arts professionals, are well managed and financially accountable, are committed to diverse and inclusive practices, and contribute to the state’s creative economy.
Sustaining Support grants are reviewed and awarded on a 3-year cycle by discipline. Each year, a third of the disciplines will be open for new applications on the following schedule:
- Music, folklife, and arts in education organizations will submit applications for panel review and award determination on March 3, 2025. The award will cover the 3-year cycle of FY2025-26, FY2026-27, and FY2027-28.
- Literature, visual arts and film, and dance organizations will submit applications for panel review and award determination in March 2026. The award will cover the 3-year cycle of FY2026-27, FY2027-28, and FY2028-29.
- Theater and multi-arts organizations will submit applications for panel review and award determination in March 2027. The award will cover the 3-year cycle of FY2027-28, FY2028-29, and FY2029-30.
Organizations that received a Sustaining Support grant in FY2024-25 in the disciplines of literature, visual arts and film, dance, theater, and multi-arts are considered “mid-cycle” and must submit an update application to be eligible to receive a mid-cycle Sustaining Support grant award in FY2025-26. Each mid-cycle grantee will receive an email from their Arts Council program director with instructions for accessing and completing the mid-cycle update application form. Mid-cycle update applications are due on Monday, March 3, 2025, and will be reviewed by staff.
Application dates
- Open: January 6, 2025
- Due: March 3, 2025
Grant amount
- Range: From $7,500 to $65,000
Who may apply
- Arts organizations* that meet the North Carolina Arts Council’s general eligibility criteria and have maintained an average organizational expense budget of at least $75,000 over the past three fiscal years
- Arts organizations that employ at least one half-time equivalent staff person**, as demonstrated in the organizational financial statement for the most recent fiscal year
Colleges, universities, and arts organizations that are part of another entity (such as a municipality) are not eligible to apply in this category.
Generally, organizations that receive funding through the Statewide Service Organizations grant category or that receive the county Grassroots allotment as a Designated County Partner or Provisional County Partner are not eligible to apply in this category.
Applicants are not allowed to use fiscal agents to apply for Sustaining Support for Arts Organizations.
Scope and allowable expenses
These grants support the ongoing artistic and administrative functions of arts organizations. Recipients may use them to fund salaries, artists’ fees, production, travel, promotion, office expenses, and facility operation. Grant amounts generally range from $7,500 to $65,000 and are based on the organization’s application rating and budget size. Grant awards may not exceed 10 percent of the organization’s cash operating expenses, averaged over the past three fiscal years.
Project period
Grant funds must be spent between July 1, 2025, and June 30, 2026.
How we make funding decisions
We evaluate applications using the following criteria:
- The artistic value of an organization’s programs
- Involvement of artists and arts professionals who are qualified and paid equitably, and who reflect the demographic diversity of the communities and audiences served
- Programs with demonstrated benefit to their audiences, participants, and broader community
- Strength of audience engagement and outreach strategies involving artists and representative community partners, as appropriate to programmatic goals
- Evidence of staff and board leadership and sound management practices, including financial accountability
Application information
Submit your application through the GO Smart grant portal.
The following questions and documents will be required for the application. Reach out to your staff contact for questions or application assistance.
Profile questions
In addition to contact information, you will be asked to submit your organization’s mission statement, an organizational history, and both an Employer Identification Number (EIN) and Unique Entity Identifier (UEI) number.
Application narrative for full applications (music, folklife, arts in education)
- Provide an overview of your artistic programs and activities for the proposed grant year.
- Give details about the artists who will conduct programs, including their compensation and how the selected artists relate to the demographic diversity of the community and audience served.
- Include information about the location(s) where programs will take place.
- Upload a schedule of programs/events for the proposed year and anticipated dates.
- Describe the geographic area and the audiences you reach with your current programs, and the new audiences you plan to engage in the upcoming year, especially those whose opportunities are limited by educational background, geography, race or ethnicity, economics, or disability.
- Include participation statistics and demographics for your audiences.
- Describe your planned audience engagement activities, focusing on outreach, educational and interpretive programs, and strategic partnerships in the community. Examples of these types of programs are workshops, in-school performances, field trips, lecture series, post-performance discussions, publications, and other ways you connect artistic content with the audiences you serve. Include marketing strategies you will use to reach your intended audiences.
- Describe your board and staff who serve in leadership roles.
- Give recent examples of how your board actively promotes, participates in, and provides resources for the organization.
- Upload a list of current board members and identify them with titles and professional expertise.
- Upload an organizational chart identifying the staff person in each position.
- Describe your organization’s financial condition, including information about accumulated debt, deficits, surpluses, principal sources of revenue, cash reserves, and endowments.
- Upload your audit or a completed 990 form or a financial statement for the most recently completed fiscal year (FY2023-24 or 2024).
Application narrative for mid-cycle update applications
- Upload a schedule of programs/events for the proposed year and anticipated dates.
- Describe your planned audience engagement activities, focusing on outreach, educational and interpretive programs, and strategic partnerships in the community. Examples of these types of programs are workshops, in-school performances, field trips, lecture series, post-performance discussions, publications, and other ways you connect artistic content with the audiences you serve.
- Provide any updates to your board and staff leadership in the year since your last application.
- Provide any updates to your organization’s general financial condition since your last application.
- Upload an audit or a completed 990 form or a board-endorsed financial statement for the most recently completed fiscal year (FY2023-24 or 2024). Documents from earlier fiscal years will not be considered.
Full applications must include support materials appropriate to the proposal; mid-cycle update applications are not required to provide support materials. Support materials provide evidence that builds a strong case for an application and addresses the evaluation criteria. Please upload all support materials as PDFs. Here are some examples of support materials that you can upload:
- Strategic plans, annual reports, etc.
- Recent brochures and/or other marketing materials
- Letters of support from key community partners
- Recent published reviews of artistic work
- Letters of intent signed by artists who will be featured in the FY25–26 season
Full applications must include work samples appropriate to the proposal; mid-cycle applications are not required to provide work samples. The purpose of a work sample is to provide evidence of artistic value, which is an important evaluation criterion for the category. A good work sample will represent the artist(s) involved in the programming that the application narrative describes and help the panelists who will evaluate your application to understand the level of artistry that you anticipate.
Music
Submit no more than five minutes of an audio or video sample representative of upcoming or current-year programming. Samples can be uploaded directly into the Go Smart work sample bank and linked to the application or provided through the Web Link Collection form. The audio or video may include just one piece or a sampling of more than one. In the description, provide the title, names of the composer and featured artists, and the date of the performance.
Arts in Education/Folklife
Upload up to 15 digital images and/or complete a Web Link Collection form in the GO Smart portal with one five-minute sample of audio or video of featured artists or programs representative of the upcoming year’s programming. For more information, refer to the work sample instructions above for the artistic disciplines that you are highlighting.
Note: Work samples for Arts in Education applications should focus on the artistry of the instructors.
*For the purposes of this operating support category, an arts organization is defined as a 501c3 organization that has the creation and/or promotion of arts in its mission statement and dedicates at least 80 percent of its annual programming expenses to arts activities. North Carolina Arts Council staff will ask a nonprofit organization whose scope of work is broader than the arts to submit an itemized annual expense statement to document the 80 percent threshold.
**To determine the half-time equivalent staff person threshold, North Carolina Arts Council staff will look for one individual who is paid by the applicant to manage the operations of the arts organization, working an average of 20 hours per week, and compensated at a rate that meets or exceeds minimum wage. The individual can be a salaried staff person or can be a contractor.
Staff contact
Dara Silver
Senior Program Director, Artists & Organizations
(919) 814-6531
Email Dara about about visual arts, craft, and film
Jamie Katz Court
Music and Dance Director
(919) 814-6502
Email Jamie about music, dance, accessibility, and multi-disciplinary presenting
Khalisa Thompson
Theater and Literature Director
(919) 814-6512
Email Khalisa about theater and literature
Lizz Wells
Arts in Education Director
(919) 814-6515
Email Lizz about arts in education
Zoe van Buren
Folklife Director
(919) 814-6518
Email Zoe about folk and traditional arts
Grant Application Assistance
North Carolina Arts Council staff are here to assist with grant applications. Visit our application assistance page for resources and grants staff contact information.
Accessibility
For accessibility questions or accommodation requests, please contact the North Carolina Arts Council's Music and Dance Director, Accessibility Coordinator Jamie Katz Court at jamie.katzcourt@dncr.nc.gov or (919) 814-6502.