Grants

Our 2021 grant cycle is now open to qualifying applicants! We look forward to receiving your submissions before this year’s cycle closes on May 30. If you’d like to submit an application for funding, please first determine that you and your organization are eligible by reviewing the eligibility requirements below. 

Thank you for your interest & please take very good care.

ELIGIBILITY

To submit an application for funding, you must be an official representative or staff member of a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization (as defined by the Internal Revenue Service), working in the arts, and towards a mission that aligns with the Wilhelm Family Foundation’s work.

  • Nonprofit organizations working in the arts with current tax-exempt status under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code, and which are not classified as a private foundation. 
  • The Foundation is not legally capable of making grants to individuals, individual artists, to any type of religious organization, nor to funding a 501(c)3 that directly or indirectly participates in, or intervenes in, any political campaign on behalf of (or in opposition to) any candidate for elective public office.
  • Organizations without nonprofit status may apply for funding through a fiscal sponsor. An application for funding, and all accompanying documentation, must come directly from the fiscal sponsor. The Foundation will consider applications utilizing fiscal sponsorship on a case-by-case basis, at the Board’s discretion, and may require further documentation regarding the partnership between the organization and its fiscal sponsor.
  • Generally, the Foundation’s grants are given to small nonprofit organizations that use their staff, programming & resources to further dialog around creativity, cultural, environmental and social issues, towards the benefit of artists, as well as the communities in which they operate. We do not typically fund exhibitions or capital campaigns.
  • The majority of our grants are awarded for a one-year period. We do consider applications for multi-year funding, though projects or programs seeking funding beyond two years are not usually granted.

OVERVIEW

The Foundation’s grantmaking practices focus on funding nonprofit arts organizations of all types and sizes. We believe that equality, diversity, democracy, and environmental wellbeing are fundamental components of a healthy society and these tenants are what drive our work. We believe that self-expression and creative collaboration not only empower people to better understand themselves, but that art is a powerful tool for representing diverse voices, experiences, cultures, and opinions.

Our mission is to help expand artists’ access to resources by supporting organizations working to make creative expression, experimentation, public programming and discourse accessible to all people, artists and non-artists alike. By supporting creative orgs & arts programming in diverse communities across the country, we hope to expand artistic practices of all kinds, deepen community engagement, creative collaboration, and improve the quality of life of artists and all people.

The Foundation is interested in organizations and programming that similarly prioritize diversity, inclusiveness, community, and freedom of speech. We’re especially interested in organizations that utilize art and programming to engage diverse, marginalized, at-risk, or underserved communities of all kinds. We strive to help secure the longevity of creative organizations, their staff, creative practices, programming, and community resources, particularly in areas where gentrification and/or Covid-19 has forced the displacement of artists, nonprofit art spaces, and other marginalized peoples.

GUIDELINES & TIMELINE

Applicants that meet the Foundation’s eligibility and application requirements, and whose mission and work aligns with the Foundation’s goals, will be reviewed by our Board for funding the same year.

Organizations that submit an application for funding on or before the May 30, 2021 deadline will receive a decision by July 16, 2021 (at the latest). Once an application has been submitted, it’s likely that an organization will be asked to provide further documentation, information, or correspondence before receiving a decision on their application.

FORMAT

To submit an application for funding, please complete all four documents below in the order that they are described. Please pay close attention to the page limitations provided for each section. Your entire application should be a maximum of 6 pages (not including your 990). Please be sure to include all information requested, but also remember that any additional materials (beyond those described below & the 6-page maximum) will not be reviewed.

Please write your application in a 12-point font and 1.5 line spacing. All documents should be prepared and submitted in either MS Word or PDF formats.

Once you’ve completed all documents, please attach them all in a single email. Please include both the name of your organization, and the name of your organization’s primary contact in the “Subject” line of your email (for example, “ABC Organization, Jane Does”). Once completed, please email your entire application to: info@wilhelmfamilyfoundation.org

If you prefer to submit an application via mail, or should you have any questions about your submission, or regarding the application process, please contact Cascade Wilhelm (ED):  cascade@wilhelmfamilyfoundation.org

GRANT APPLICATION

1. Contact Information: 1 page

A. General Information about your Organization. Please include the following:

  • Organization’s name & complete mailing address (street number & name, City, State, and Zip Code). Please indicate if the legal name of your organization differs in any way. *If you’re working with a fiscal sponsor, please include your fiscal sponsor’s name, mailing address, and your contact’s information (name, email and phone number).
  • Organization’s Federal Tax ID or EIN # (or that of your fiscal sponsor).      
  • Organization’s Mission.     
  • Organization’s website address.
  • Organization’s most recent operating budget (2020 or 2021).                 

B. Primary Contact Information.

  • First & Last name of the representative completing this application (who is available for questions and correspondence).
  • Title/Position at Organization.                                                             
  • Phone number.                                                                                       
  • Email address.

2. Overview & Funding Proposal: 1-4 pages 

A. Overview: A summary of your organization’s vision, projects, programs, initiatives, outreach, needs, and/or goals. Please focus on those that best define your organization’s work and ethos.

B. Proposed Grant Activity. Describe the activity for which the funds are being requested, including the following information:

  • Intended purpose of your proposed program, project, or funding area. If you are applying for general operating support, please describe in detail how the funds would be utilized.
  • Amount of funding requested.                                                                 
  • Total budget of proposed program or project, and the amount of your organization’s total general operating budget.
  • Proposed timeline and/or fiscal year.                                                                 
  • Scope of work, including activities pertinent to this request.  
  • Status of funds raised to date, if any, including all amounts received and all grant funds applied for.

3. A copy of the organization’s 501(c)3 ruling from the IRS: 1 page

4. A consolidated copy of your organization’s most recent IRS 990 filing, and/or your organization’s most recent audited, or unaudited, financial statement.

Grant Recipients

Craft Contemporary Los Angeles, CA Craft Contemporary’s mission is to reveal to the potential of craft to educate, captivate, provoke, and empower. To achieve this mission, Craft Contemporary is committed to presenting work from emerging artists who take traditional craft techniques in new and surprising directions; working with established artists who experiment and develop new craft-based approaches; prioritizing the development and presentation of work by culturally diverse and under-recognized artists; stimulating new, surprising, and engaging collaborations between artists and the public; attracting audiences through hands-on experiences; utilizing our public spaces to provide the greatest opportunity for access and experience of art. View Website
Art Resources Transfer New York, NY Art Resources Transfer is a nonprofit organization committed to documenting and disseminating artists' voices and work to the broadest possible public. Our two programs, A.R.T. Press and the D.U.C., activate the key components of the printed book—publication, distribution, and spaces of reading—to create more egalitarian access to the arts and literacy. In 2019, A.R.T. celebrates Kara Walker by distributing free art books in her name. View Website
Clockshop Los Angeles, CA Clockshop is an arts organization in Los Angeles working to expand the dialogue around cultural production, politics and urban space by commissioning new projects by artists and writers and partnering with diverse institutions. View Website
A.I.R. Gallery Brooklyn, NY A.I.R. Gallery is a non-profit arts organization founded in 1972. It is an artist run organization and exhibition space that supports the open exchange of ideas and risk-taking by women and non-binary artists in order to provide support and visibility. A self-directed governing body, the organization is an alternative to mainstream institutions and thrives on the network of active participants. View Website
Primary Information Brooklyn, NY Primary Information was founded in 2006 to publish affordable artists’ books and artists’ writings. The nonprofit organization’s mission is two-fold: (1) to publish out-of-print books that remain vital to ongoing conversations around artistic practice and (2) to publish contemporary books by emerging, mid-career, and established artists. Primary Information believes that books can function as exhibitions, making the work of artists distributable to a global audience. As a central tenant of its mission, the organization prices all books at cost so that they are affordable and accessible to the largest possible audience. View Website
Institute for Contemporary Art, Los Angeles (ICALA) Los Angeles, CA ICA LA’s mission is to support art that sparks the pleasure of discovery and challenges the way we see and experience the world, ourselves, and each other. ICA LA is committed to upending hierarchies of race, class, gender, and culture. Through exhibitions, education programs, and community partnerships, ICA LA fosters critique of the familiar and empathy with the different. ICA LA is committed to making contemporary art relevant and accessible for all. Admission is free. View Website
The Compton Initiative Paramount, CA The Compton Initiative is a non-profit organization founded in 2006 with a commitment to restore the city of Compton by painting homes, schools and churches on quarterly workdays in partnership with individual volunteers and other organizations. Starting with a small group of volunteers eager to show love and inspire hope, we’ve grown to thousands of caring workers of all ages and backgrounds in yellow shirts who serve across the city. We offer community organizations, service groups and non-profits an opportunity to make a sustainable impact in Compton by instilling a sense of care and pride within each neighborhood. View Website
Museum of Jurassic Technology Culver City, CA Like a coat of two colors, the Museum serves dual functions. On the one hand the Museum provides the academic community with a specialized repository of relics and artifacts from the Lower Jurassic, with an emphasis on those that demonstrate unusual or curious technological qualities. On the other hand the Museum serves the general public by providing the visitor a hands-on experience of "life in the Jurassic".... View Website
Los Angeles Filmforum Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles Filmforum is the longest-running organization in Southern California dedicated exclusively to the ongoing, non-commercial exhibition of independent, experimental, and progressive media art. View Website
Echo Park Film Center Echo Park, CA Echo Park Film Center is a non-profit media arts organization committed to providing equal and affordable community access to film/video resources via five channels: • a neighborhood microcinema space • free and nominal cost education programs • a comprehensive film equipment and service retail department • an eco-friendly mobile cinema & film school • local and international artist residencies We feel it is imperative that more members of marginalized communities become active participants in the creation and dissemination of experimental and documentary film in order to truly share the many powerful voices and visions that make up the fabric of contemporary life. With a special focus on “at risk” youth, EPFC programs and services use cinema as catalyst to inspire, educate, and empower communities. View Website
Fathomers Los Angeles, CA Fathomers is a creative research institute dedicated to producing sites and encounters that challenge us to live and act differently in the world. We cultivate the ideas of diehard dreamers, commission projects that seem far-fetched, and enlist expansive thinkers across disciplines to redefine the limits of scale, scope and support for artist-led projects. View Website
Philadelphia Contemporary Philadelphia, PA Philadelphia Contemporary presents cross-disciplinary art through a dynamic model of collaboration and partnership. Since 2016, we have offered a robust program of pop-up exhibitions and performances across the Philadelphia area in collaboration with various partner organizations, while working towards building a new permanent home. View Website
Project X Foundation for Art and Criticism Los Angeles, CA X-TRA’s mission is to provoke critical dialogue about contemporary art. As a collective of artists and writers, we produce the quarterly art journal X-TRA, the website x-traonline.org, and public programs. Founded in Los Angeles in 1997, X-TRA collaborates with artists, writers, and institutions to generate meaningful content for a diverse contemporary art community. View Website
Artistic Ensemble at San Quentin San Quentin, CA Artistic Ensemble is a troupe of 16 diverse men in prison working with 5 outside members. In our explorations to discover how we can reach the public, we also discover more about what it means to be human by connecting with each other. Our creative process is dialogic. Together we explore social inequalities with language, sound, and movement. It is through the collaborative effort between outside Artistic Ensemble members and incarcerated Artistic Ensemble members, that we take constraints and boundaries and turn them into tools of liberation: art, dialogues, confrontation. Our stories cannot be properly told without the echoes of our voices, you cannot picture our world unless we are behind the camera. There is nothing about us, without us. View Website
Coaxial Arts Foundation Los Angeles, CA Coaxial Arts Foundation is a 501(c)3 non-profit multi-disciplinary media arts organization devoted to the support of media, sound and performance art. Coaxial provides residencies, studio space, technical support and public exhibition space for live events to showcase underground artists whose works are often not exhibited in galleries as ephemeral art is not conducive to the gallery sales system. Coaxial activates a community of experimental media, sound and performance artists through commissions, events, workshops, live TV tapings, and exhibitions through the foundation’s downtown Los Angeles studio space. View Website
Equitable Vitrines Los Angeles, CA Equitable Vitrines is a Los Angeles based nonprofit organization committed to examining theoretical and discursive approaches to contemporary art with the intention of determining their veracity and usefulness. At times, Equitable Vitrines asks practitioners to produce artworks for spaces and audiences that lie outside of the contemporary art world’s immediate sphere of influence. Equitable Vitrines also produces exhibitions meant for audiences familiar with contemporary art, but which challenge orthodoxy. In either case, Equitable Vitrines’ intention is to advance a manner of speaking and thinking about art that is nuanced, widely accessible, and which strives toward coherence. View Website
The Southland Institute Los Angeles, CA The Southland Institute (for critical, durational, and typographic post-studio practices) is dedicated to exploring, identifying, and implementing meaningful, affordable, sustainable alternatives in design and art education in the United States. Through interconnected programming that includes a graduate-level typography workshop, in-depth discussion and critique of participant work and external exhibitions, partnering with local arts organizations, and a curriculum gleaned from public events and resources at area institutions, the Southland Institute offers a rigorous, accessible alternative to graduate education, with an emphasis on identifying exemplary public events, courses, screenings, lectures, trips, discussions, and readings involving image, typography, (infra)structure, sound, time, space, pedagogy, archives, and language, while proposing and implementing supplements where necessary. View Website
Alive Inside Foundation New York, NY Connecting Youth and Elders to themselves, each other and life itself we reduce suffering for those with Alzheimer's and change our shared future. OUR MISSION Improve the quality of life for elders living with and without Alzheimer's, by providing music and relationships. Increase Emotional Intelligence and Wisdom in the next generation. View Website
Center for Land Use Interpretation Culver City, CA The Center for Land Use Interpretation is a research and education organization interested in understanding the nature and extent of human interaction with the surface of the earth, and in finding new meanings in the intentional and incidental forms that we individually and collectively create. We believe that the manmade landscape is a cultural inscription, that can be read to better understand who we are, and what we are doing. View Website
Los Angeles Poverty Department Los Angeles, CA Los Angeles Poverty Department was founded in 1985 by director-performer-activist John Malpede. LAPD was the first performance group in the nation made up principally of homeless people, and the first arts program of any kind for homeless people in Los Angeles. Skid Row Los Angeles is the poorest area in the city, with the largest concentration of homeless people of any neighborhood in the US. At the time of its founding, homelessness in Skid Row was thought of as a “beans and blankets” issue. Poor and homeless people in the neighborhood were warehoused in shelters, fed in soup lines and there was little belief and no means for assisting people to rise out of this condition. LAPD, as the first arts organization on Skid Row, was active in a conversation and a movement with advocates, residents and social service professionals, that changed the paradigm by putting forward the idea that Skid Row could be improved, by embracing and nourishing the powers of the people who live there. View Website
Women's Center for Creative Work Los Angeles, CA Women’s Center for Creative Work cultivates L.A.’s feminist creative communities and practices. View Website
Common Field National Common Field connects, supports and advocates for the artist-centered field by providing a network for independent arts organizations and organizers. View Website
Velaslavasay Panorama Los Angeles, CA Drawing on the illustrious history of the great panorama paintings of the 18th and 19th centuries, The Velaslavasay Panorama is an exhibition hall, theatre and garden dedicated to the production and presentation of unusual visual experiences, including those of the 360-degree variety. The Velaslavasay Panorama panoramic exhibition encircles the spectator within a fully enveloping atmosphere; a vast painting of a continuous surrounding landscape, accompanied by sound stimulation and three-dimensional elements, affords the viewer an opportunity to experience a complete sensory phenomenon. View Website
Side Street Projects Pasadena, CA Founded in 1992, Side Street Projects’ mission is to give artists of all ages the ability and means to support their creative endeavors. We are a mobile, artist-run organization that supports artists, projects, and programs to foster leadership through socially engaged art and a DIY ethos. We are social entrepreneurs who work with communities to solve real world problems. View Website
Kala Art Institute Berkeley, CA Kala Art Institute’s mission is to help artists sustain their creative work over time through its Artist-in-Residence and Fellowship Programs, and to engage the community through exhibitions, public programs, and education. View Website
LAND - Los Angeles Nomadic Division Los Angeles, CA LAND (Los Angeles Nomadic Division) is a non-profit organization founded in 2009 committed to curating site-specific public art exhibitions in Los Angeles and beyond. LAND believes that all people deserve the opportunity to experience innovative contemporary art in their everyday existence, to enhance their quality of life and ways of thinking about their community. In turn, artists deserve the opportunity to realize projects in the public realm, unsupported through traditional institutions. LAND brings contemporary art outside of the walls of museums and galleries, into our shared public spaces and unique sites. View Website
Sarah Lawrence College Bronxville, NY At Sarah Lawrence College our mission is to graduate world citizens who are diverse in every definition of the word, who take intellectual and creative risks, who cross disciplinary boundaries, and who are able to sustain exceptional academic discipline within a framework of humanistic values and concern for community. View Website
Human Resources LA Los Angeles, CA Human Resources was founded in 2010 by a team of creative individuals who seek to broaden engagement with contemporary and conceptual art, with an emphasis on performative and underexposed modes of expression. View Website
LXAQ San Francisco, CA LXAQ (Los Angeles Art Quarterly) launched in September 2016. Again after shifting focus from San Francisco to Los Angeles in SFAQ, we decided that it made sense to make a separate magazine with a focus on Los Angeles. View Website
Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions Hollywood, CA LACE both champions and challenges the art of our time by fostering artists who innovate, explore, and risk. View Website
The Wende Museum Culver City, CA The Wende Museum is a collections-based research and education institute that preserves Cold War artifacts and history, making resources available to scholars and applying historical lessons of the past to the present. View Website
San Francisco Art Institute San Francisco, CA Encompassing some of the most significant art movements of the last century, SFAI has historically embodied a spirit of experimentation, risk-taking, and innovation. View Website
Gray Area San Francisco, CA Our mission is to apply art and technology to create social and civic impact through education, incubation and public events. View Website
Saturday Night Bath Concert Fund Lawndale, CA Our mission is to write and perform contemporary compositions by our ensemble of musicians– and to educate, improve and impact the lives of youth, passing this art form on into the 21st century. We aim to encourage our young audiences–now totaling over 36,000 teenage students since 1986–to finish high school, and to seek, study and enjoy music throughout their lives. We hope some of them will become apprentice musicians too. View Website
PhotoAlliance San Francisco, CA PhotoAlliance is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the understanding, appreciation and creation of contemporary photography. View Website
The Tofu Project San Francisco & Tokyo The Tofu Project connects entrepreneurs, innovators, and creative leaders from Japan and the United States through curated events and projects designed to challenge people to discover their fullest potential, share their stories, and create impact. View Website
Small Space Festival Las Vegas, NV The Weft in the Weave Collective is gathering together visual and performing artists from diverse creative backgrounds for one night of expansive works in unique, small spaces. View Website
826LA Los Angeles, CA 826LA is a non-profit organization dedicated to supporting students ages 6 to 18 with their creative and expository writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. View Website
San Francisco Arts Education Project San Francisco, CA Our mission is to bring art — in many exciting forms — to San Francisco’s youth in vivid, experiential ways. View Website
Southern Exposure San Francisco, CA Southern Exposure (SoEx) is an artist-centered non-profit organization committed to supporting visual artists. View Website