The Musician's Way Blog

“I find my greatest pleasure, and so my reward,
in the work that precedes what the world calls success.”
–Thomas Edison (The Musician’s Way, p. 216)

If we want to present self-produced events, one way that we can mitigate financial risk and boost our bottom line is to partner with non-profit organizations and then raise money via grants.

This post summarizes two strategies for doing so.

Grant Basics
Most institutions that award grants, such as foundations, can disburse monies only to registered non-profit organizations – typically those designated as 501(c)(3) in the U.S. tax code.

Although there exist some grant programs in the U.S. that aid individual musicians, most either confer paltry sums or are not suited to performance projects. (Composers will find more avenues to obtain individual grants.)

Plus, funders require prospective recipients to submit time-consuming applications and reports, so it’s more efficient for us to forgo trivial grants and instead come up with larger-scale projects that can attract bigger sums.

A sensible way to proceed is to team up with non-profit organizations whose missions intersect with ours. Then, those organizations can serve as our presenters or our fiscal agents.

Non-Profit Organizations as Presenters
Let’s say that we want to start a concert series in a town that we feel would embrace our music – we’ve got a powerful idea for our event, a well-written proposal, and an itemized budget.

We might partner with the likes of a college or church that has an appropriate performance space to host our concerts.

That non-profit organization would then submit grant applications to potential funders to underwrite costs such as artist fees, insurance, and advertising (we’d usually write the bulk of the grant proposals that the organization submits).

I employed this funding structure when I directed the Southwest Guitar Festival in San Antonio, Texas.

The University of Texas at San Antonio served as the presenter and the recipient of the grants; festival artists were then paid by the university, which also contributed resources.

In this way, the festival didn’t have to rely solely on ticket sales and registration fees to pay its bills. We kept prices low, making the event accessible to everyone, and the university was able to fulfill its mission of serving the greater community.

We drew large audiences, and the festival earned glowing reviews and a modest profit. The surplus monies remained in an account at the university and helped fund subsequent festivals.

Non-Profit Organizations as Fiscal Agents
Another funding strategy that can complement or replace the one above involves working with non-profit organizations that don’t necessarily put on concerts but can obtain grants to support our projects.

For instance, if we develop programs tailored to schoolchildren or the elderly – ones that we’d present at multiple sites in a particular region – we might partner with a community organization whose mission includes serving those populations.

That non-profit, acting as our fiscal agent, would receive grants and then pay us to deliver programs in the region it serves. (Often, such fiscal agents retain a small portion of the grant monies received – the amounts vary and sometimes can be negotiated.)

I implemented this strategy to fund workshops that I taught to teen musicians at a number of high schools in Forsyth County, North Carolina.

A local music society that promoted arts education served as the fiscal agent. It was awarded grants from the North Carolina Arts Council and the Winston-Salem Foundation, and my workshops didn’t cost the schools or the students a penny.

*  *  *

To entice non-profit partners, we have to begin with cogent project goals – ones that will break new artistic ground, impact disadvantaged people, target unmet needs, and so forth.

The first steps, therefore, entail recognizing opportunities, generating ideas, and identifying possible partners.

Indexes of nonprofit organizations and funders can be accessed via the Music Career Resources section at MusiciansWay.com. For inspiration and ideas, check out my other posts under the Entrepreneurship category.

© 2011 Gerald Klickstein
Photo © Losevsky Pavel, licensed from Shutterstock.com