Finding Grants for the Arts

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Hello, hello, everyone. You are listening to The Success Palette,

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a place to discuss everything that you are not taught in school about how to

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be successful in the arts.

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I'm your host, Soda, and today I have Ernise Cummings to talk about grants specifically

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for creatives, artists, writers, entrepreneurs.

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Podcasters, and how we can find that funding because it It is very difficult

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to find ways to fulfill these dreams that a lot of us have.

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But first of all, Ernise, do you want to talk a little bit about your experience with grants?

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I know you've been working with helping people find grants for a long time.

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Well, let's just say it's been a minute and it depends on what you'll feel, whatever you're in.

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You know, like you say, right now, this podcast is about artists and stuff like

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that. So for me, what I do is I just go out and search.

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You know, there's a website called grants.gov, right?

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And a lot of people think that it applies specifically for people who work for

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the government or who have contracts for the government. But it's not.

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It's for anyone that has a project that they believe would help the economic

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of this world and overseas.

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You know, some people forget to even look into that. I'll give you an example.

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Like just last month, I was looking for a grant for this individual who do educational.

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And there was a grant up there looking for a company that can provide after school care.

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And I think it was like in India somewhere.

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And they had to come up with the curriculum, you know, and it could it could

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be virtual. It could have been in person, which I thought was amazing.

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So, you know, just little discoveries like that. So once again,

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it's grant.gov and you just go up there and instructions on how to utilize their

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website, you know, how to look for different types of grants.

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And you don't have to be the grant, the grant recipient yourself.

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Yourself, you can have other companies that work with you in a partnership.

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What they look for is small businesses because that is my world.

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I am a SCORE mentor for the SBA on the SCORE, and we help small businesses get

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their businesses off the ground.

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We also help mature small businesses if they're running into a challenge.

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We also work with them to try to locate grants. We also work with them to try

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to find federal government contracts.

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So in that particular arena, speaking of grants, the Smithsonian,

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I don't know if you guys ever thought about that, but the Smithsonian sometimes

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have grants looking for artists.

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You have to look at the museums. You know, and Soda, I think you and I talked

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about that when we first had our conversation.

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There are millions and millions of museums that are operated by the government. Think about that.

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They have grants that they give out to new artists.

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And I can't remember what website we went on, Soda, but remember we found that

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they were giving money to some artists for particular projects.

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So when we talk about grants, grants is not specifically or just coming from the government.

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Grants come from all sources, you know, in your city, in your state,

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you know, in your county.

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You know, specifically if you focus on libraries, museums, and you know how

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many libraries and museums in your local state?

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You might be surprised, you know, and I tell people to reach out.

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To the individuals who manage, because no one owns the library or owns a museum,

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but reach out to who manages those institutions and find out what type of art

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projects that they have coming up.

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And, you know, if there's grant money associated to that.

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So hopefully I've answered the first question so we can move on to the next.

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Yeah, because so many people, you think grants, oh, that's just U.S.,

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you know, it's straight from the government.

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So if you're not doing something specifically for the government,

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there's no point in applying.

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But there's a lot of stuff out there for, you know, even like musicians,

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podcasters, people who, you know, and there's these companies,

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I remember you were showing me these companies that really wants to help these creatives succeed.

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And I'd love to hear more. So you talked about grants.gov.

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I know that there's a lot of websites like

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hello alice i don't really go to

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that one too much because i'm not sure if they're

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real granted so i never

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dealt with that because i've had people say they apply they never hear anything

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so my advice like i said earlier you have to reach your local sources first

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because if you are a taxpayer in any state that deal with grants,

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okay, for,

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like I said, the library, the museums, the high school, the elementary school, they are programs.

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It will be easier for you to get a grant from them because they have them.

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You know, a lot of people want to go online and look at all these different

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sites and apply and apply and they don't hear anything.

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I say, start with your local community, you know, go to your local city hall

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and go to the media people in there or whatever and ask them, hey,

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who do I talk to about seeing what type of grants are available in my state, in my city?

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And like I said, you'd be surprised that there is funding because the arts,

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you know, what STEM is, right? Now it's STEAM.

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It's society, technology, arts, and math.

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Remember? They changed it. So if STEM turned into STEAM, then the A would be

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where the artists and the musicians fall under.

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So there are programs. Matter of fact, I just read an article last week where

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I can't remember who composer is, But he started a program at one of the high

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schools so that the kids can learn how to play specific instruments.

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And they did that with a grant.

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So any individual that's listening to this podcast, you know,

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they can insert themselves in the high schools, in the elementary schools,

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offer, you know, just say you want to offer some type of program for the kids

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and ask them, do they have funding to support something like that? A lot of times they do.

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And the other thing is that California, I just saw on 60 Minutes about two weeks ago,

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California just implemented repairing of instruments and they got a massive

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grant for that because a lot of kids, parents cannot afford to buy them a new instrument.

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Instrument so the state of california just put

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a they just got

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a big grant a big donation i can't

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remember which one it was but now they're going to repair

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you know like broken instruments and be able to give them to the kids like new

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so they can learn to play an instrument so grants.gov is one place let's go

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through the steps grants.gov check box one go to your local state and ask what type

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of grants or other funding opportunity that they have for artists.

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Then go to your local city.

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I live in Georgia. We have counties. I don't know if some people have boroughs,

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you know, go to those people and ask them, Hey, you know, do you have any funding

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grants, free money for artists?

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You know, because if you, if you are a painter, you know, a lot of the local

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painters us in Georgia, they exhibit their work all over Georgia. I mean, in our airport.

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And the question is, how do these people do that? They get out.

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You have to go out and talk to people.

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Sitting at your computer and looking for grants is fine, but you have to connect

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with the local artists and talk to those individuals, especially,

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like I said, the museum and the libraries and say, where is grant money?

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Your librarian is your best friend.

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Because they know everything about everything because it's their job.

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So check with your local librarian and ask, you know, are there,

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do you know of any grants, you know, that are for artists?

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Yeah, that's something that I definitely need to do. I live like three doors

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down from a library and I just need to get over my shyness, my introversion.

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But I know that, you know, I can't keep making excuses of not going for these

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grants, these opportunities, just because I'm shy.

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And what are some common mistakes that creatives make when applying for grants? They don't tell a story.

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Story. Okay. So how important is storytelling?

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That is very important. You know, I'm going to start with A.

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A, you have to tell the story because the individual who's reading what you're

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submitting, they don't know you from the next person.

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So your story has to be convincing.

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It has to show why would they give you this money for you to do whatever you're asking to do.

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And the only way that they're going to know who you are, what your mission is,

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what the outcome is going to be, is to list, to read your story.

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And a lot of the information that a grantor would ask is basic stuff.

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What are you going to do with this grant money? And if you say,

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oh, I'm going to buy some awesome paintings.

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You know, I'm going to paint a couple of paintings. They're like,

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eh, people do that all the time.

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But if you say, well, I'm going to go to the low-income schools and I'm going

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to set up a program for the young kids to teach them how to paint and how to

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do this, they'll be like, oh, you see the difference?

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So you have to always talk your story where it's going to benefit others.

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Granteurs' job is to give money to individual companies, individuals or companies

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or nonprofits, whatever you may be, to help others.

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That's what they want to know. Then they also want to know your stability because

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if they give you $50,000 in grants, they have to be sure that you know how to

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manage the $50,000 and you're not going to go out there and buy you a new car.

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So that's another area where individuals who apply for grants do not explain

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themselves thoroughly.

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You have to have a budget. So kind of like a business plan type thing?

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I would say a mini business plan. Okay. So you draft out kind of a mini business

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plan for the grant when applying in addition to, and with that business plan,

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you kind of tell the story of both why it's important to you and how it can help the society.

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Right. And here's the thing, the grant application is going to tell you what they want to know.

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And if they say submit three pages, do not submit five, because they're not

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going to read the other two. Don't tell me.

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They're just going to read what they want on the front end. Yeah,

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so that's probably another big mistake that artists make is not exactly following

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the rules that the application needs.

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And my third thing, my third thing I want to jump in there, you have to be personal.

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You have to write your grant responses as if you are talking to an individual because you are.

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That's very important. It's like this podcast, you know, you talking to me,

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I'm talking to you, but we have an audience.

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Same thing when you respond to a grant. Can you give an example of how we can,

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when we're writing our grants, how we can make it more personal versus generic? Yeah, sure.

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So if I'm applying for a grant to open up an after school care program,

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what I would do is talk about why that's important to me, not generally why

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people need why people need after school care program.

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I would make it heartfelt.

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You know, for me, I need an afterschool program because, you know,

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and I think it would help others because I'm a single parent,

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you know, and I work long hours,

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you know, and it would benefit my child if they had somewhere to go and,

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you know, be creative after school, be able to intermingle with other children,

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blah, blah, blah, instead of saying, well, you know, I would like to get a grant

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to open up an after school care program,

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you know, so that, you know, I could be able to, I can do that.

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You talk about why it's important to you and why it's going to be helpful to

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others in the same situation.

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And that's just a mini version, you know, of what I think, how you can tell

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the difference. And I think honestly, when it comes to arts or creativity,

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so much of it, the benefit is to help society.

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I know you helped me kind of figure out because with this podcast,

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I'm like, how do I use this podcast to help my, my society and you helped me

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really think about why I started it.

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I started it because I didn't have the tools that I needed when I was in high

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school and college to start my own creative business.

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I didn't have any of that information. I had to learn it all on my own.

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And I want to have that information for others.

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And then you suggested maybe making a workbook for high school kids who kind

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of want to go that direction.

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Now that's helping me fulfilling my journey of learning everything that needs to be done.

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Making my entrepreneur, creative entrepreneur business, getting funding,

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but it is also helping, you know, high school kids or any adults who want to learn about it.

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So I think in general, just having that bigger picture, understanding our why.

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And if we are struggling with figuring out our why and how we can help society,

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what are some ways that we can think of something like that?

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Is there people like you that we could reach out to?

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I know you mentioned you did stuff with the SBA.

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Can you talk about what the SBA is and how we could find it?

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Sure, sure, sure. The SBA means Small Business Administration.

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And it's a regulatory organization that was developed by the federal government.

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And it is funded by the federal government. And the purpose of the SBA is to

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help small businesses to achieve their goals as a small business.

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The SBA have different categories of preference, which is woman-owned,

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small disadvantage, veteran-owned, service-disabled veteran-owned, HUBZone.

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Those are the distinct socioeconomic groups under the federal sector of the

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government that have preference. So you might say, what is preference?

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It means that if you are applying for a contract or a grant and it's set aside

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for a small business, you would get first preference over a large business.

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So under the umbrella of SBA, there's an organization called SCORE, S-C-O-R-E in all caps.

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So if you were to go to SCORE.org.

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And you open up that website, it's a plethora of information up there. It's all free.

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They connect you with a mentor. So if you went up there today,

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Soda, and you went up there to score.org and you clicked on find a mentor,

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they're going to ask you some questions about yourself, whatever you live in

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and why you need a mentor.

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And once you hit submit, if you say I need a mentor in the artist,

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I mean, in the artist world,

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you know, in the music world, and you hit submit, they will reach back out to

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you with a mentor that understand what you are trying to do in your area of

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expertise, which is artists.

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And then that mentor sit down with you, you become buddy, buddy,

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you can talk to them, you know, every week, if you want, it's what you guys set up.

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And they walk you through every phase of what you need to know.

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And I could repeat again, I always tell people it's free. You realize it, it is free.

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Yeah, we a lot of people don't realize how many free resources there are.

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And the arts, they go, oh, it's too competitive. It's too unlikely that I'm going to get anything.

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How can we, and it is competitive. What are some ways in addition to having

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a good story and following the rules,

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what are some ways that we can stand out to make our project,

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whatever it is, desirable for people to fund? I just tell people, be yourself.

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There's only one of you. So regardless

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if there's a lot of other people competing, there's only one of you.

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And if you tell your story and talk about you and you're passionate about it.

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And you drive the point home why you need the grant and you follow and answer all the questions.

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A lot of people don't answer all the questions and the application get rejected.

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You have to answer all the questions up until the end and submit what they ask you to submit.

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And a lot of people fail to follow up. You know, a lot of people will apply

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for grants and they never, ever go to that contact that's on there and say,

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why didn't I get the grant? grant. Because, you know, if you get a letter,

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say, well, we're sorry, thank you for applying.

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However, you know, the grant will reach out to that person and say, what did I not submit?

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Why didn't I get the grant? And you learn from the negative to make it a positive.

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Yeah, asking that feedback. That's cool that they are even willing to do that.

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I know that there are options to hire someone to write the grant for you.

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How useful do you think that is? Is it worth the money?

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I'd love to hear any of your thoughts on that. I'm positive and negative on

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that because I don't think anybody can talk about themselves but yourself.

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Because everything that the grant writer needs, you have to feed it to that individual.

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And I know the grant writers that I've met, they're very costly.

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So if you have deep pockets to throw it in the wind and if that's what you want

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to do, then go forward. Because think about it, a grant writer does not guarantee

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you're going to get the grant.

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So once again, at SCORE.org, they have classes on how to write grants.

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Go up there and in the search box, say how to obtain grants.

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OK, on SCORE.org. And there's a whole bunch of classes up there,

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which once again is free.

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Or you can ask for a mentor to help you learn how to write your own grants.

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Because like I said, no one can talk about yourself and your company or your work but you.

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Grant writers are fine, but they are costly, very costly.

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Because think about it. That's all they do. That is their job.

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They are earning a living off of writing grants for you.

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My intent is to apply for my own grants. I had somebody write me a grant package,

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but the individual knows me.

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If she didn't know me, that package costs $2,000. And a lot of these,

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there's no guarantee that you're going to get that grant.

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So you could be spending a lot of money, especially if it's a smaller grant.

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I mean, I know that the grant that I am wanting to go for, it's like between

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$50,000 and $80,000 or something because it's a pretty big project.

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But if it's something small, there's definitely, you don't want to. Right, right.

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And I think if you, I can't think of the name of the website,

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but there are professional websites out there that will give you information

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on, you know, how to complete your grant.

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But like I said, my best resource is score.org.

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For real, that's the best I can give you because it's free.

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And there's a lot of information up there. I think it's Candid.

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I think it's C-A-N-D-I-D.

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I think that's the organization where they have classes on how to write grants and stuff like that.

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But you can ask AI how to write a good grant now.

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But the key to a good grant to you, Soda, and anybody listening is to tell your

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story, follow the directions, make sure you respond to every question,

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and make sure you submit what they're asking you to submit.

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And if you don't get the grant, do a follow-up, a feedback to know why you didn't get the grant.

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I know you mentioned SCORE before to me, but I haven't done it yet because I

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think that my biggest thing that's holding me back is feeling like I don't have enough credentials.

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I don't have, I'm not making enough money already for my business.

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It has nothing to do with it.

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It has zero to do with the work. Even if it's something,

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so for example, the thing that I'm working on making the handbook about entrepreneurship,

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is there how much like experience do you need to be already making money?

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Does your business need to be set up with an LLC?

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Zero. If you're just thinking about opening a business, reach out to SCORE.

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They will tell you what you need to do to open a business. It doesn't matter

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if you're doing a dog walking business.

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It really doesn't. They have mentors in every field you could have possibly imagined.

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So once again. That is so good to know. Yeah. I can't say that enough. I can't say that enough.

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SCORE.org, you know. And I will have that in the show notes below,

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the score.org, because that sounds like an amazing, amazing site.

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Okay. You know Sarah, right? Yes. Okay.

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Sarah reached out to SCORE, her and her brother, and they have a whole building

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of mentors, and she's so excited.

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So just check with Sarah. She will validate what I'm saying.

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I think I got the naysayers stuck in my head, like, oh, you can't get a grant.

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You don't have, you're not established enough.

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You don't have the experience. And so I've been very reluctant.

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So now you got me having more confidence about that. So I really appreciate that.

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And I tell people who goes for and you get a mentor, that's what I call a deadbeat.

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And you're not risking anything.

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No, you're not. It's free. Right. And you're going to find out that you're going

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to find out more information that you could imagine.

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And so if you aren't able to get a grant, there's no grants that work for you

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or the ones that you do, your application gets rejected.

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Are there any other sort of places where you can go to try to get funding,

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whether crowdsourcing or companies or anything?

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Your state, your city, your borough, whatever those other little things they

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call inside of the state.

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You know, you can go to those because they have funding.

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You know, I found out something interesting about a week ago.

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You know, the coaches for the kids at school, I thought they were salaried.

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They get stifled. I was shocked.

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They don't get stifled. They're stifled. So maybe these schools and these libraries,

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you know, maybe they have stifles where, you know, they say we have,

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you know, $2,500 looking for somebody to do this.

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Or a hundred thousand, it might not come in the form of a grant.

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It might come in the form of an investor. You have people that invest in different

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portions of the schools, you know, whether it's public or private,

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you know, they have endowment, you know, people leave money.

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So there, there's a lot of other resources out there besides grants that can fund your programs.

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So I will say once Once again, if you go to SCORE.org, ask the pertinent questions.

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Well, if you can't help me with grants, do you know how else I can get funding for what I'm doing?

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Your local librarian is your best friend. I can't say that enough.

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You know, they should know all the other sources outside of just getting a grant.

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Because art is very needed. And if they change STEM to STEAM,

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I mean, there has to be a reason why they put the arts back in it.

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Might have to do a little research, but I think everybody, you know,

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myself, you or anybody listening to this podcast will find the answer.

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You just have to figure out where you want to implement yourself in the process.

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You know, it's not always about grants. You know, you can go up there and do

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your own campaign for funding.

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If your project is something that's needed in your community,

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I tell people, start in your own community.

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Get to know your local council people. Go talk to them. Let them know what you're

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trying to do in the community.

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They will give you the answers. And it's not always grants, but there are other

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types of funding out there.

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I wish people talked about this so much more often.

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And that's why I'm really glad you were willing to come on to talk about this

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because so many people don't realize how many opportunities they focus so much

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on sponsorships of getting these big companies to pay for ads or things like that.

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But there's so many more options. So I really, really, really appreciate that.

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And I'd love to hear if there are any final thoughts before we end on people

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who might be struggling to feel that confidence to apply for these grants or

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feel that maybe their project might not be worth it.

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Well, this is my closure. I use that. My closure is this. You first believe in yourself.

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Got to first believe in yourself. Every door you knock on is not going to be a yes.

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But there will be some doors you knock on that will be a yes.

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And you have to be prepared when that individual say, of course, I'll support you.

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That is not the time for you to run back home and try to get it together.

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You have to have it together before you knock on the door, which I do a lot

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of teaching that in my mentoring to entrepreneurs, okay, who's in every field that I'm familiar with.

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I make sure that my mentees are prepared before they go knock on the door.

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Because once you get the, how can I help you?

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You have to be able to spill it out of your mouth, talk about your project,

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be confident in your own project.

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Because if you can't regurgitate who you are, what are you trying to offer somebody?

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How is it going to help somebody? And why do they need to give you money?

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It's no sense of knocking on those doors or even filling out grants.

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Am. So my number one thing is have confidence in yourself.

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My number two thing is be prepared when you go out and start talking to people

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about your event or your project or whatever you're doing.

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And number three is it's going to happen.

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It's going to happen. You have to have faith and believe that what you're doing

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is positive and somebody needed.

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And finally, you know somebody needed. There are millions of schools out here.

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There are millions of museums.

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There are millions in the libraries, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

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So narrow it down to where do you want your artistic abilities to be and how

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far are you willing to put yourself out there and talk about your project?

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You know, they say the people who get noticed is the people who make the most noise.

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And that's a true statement. If you don't make a lot of noise about yourself

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and about your project, who's going to know?

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Yeah. And that could be hard to do. Sometimes you're like, oh, I feel annoying.

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But I mean, that's the only way it's going to be done. So I really needed to hear that.

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But check this out. Here's another way. You have a lot of shy people in the world.

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Get somebody else to be your mouthpiece. You get somebody else to get something for you.

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Yeah. I love that. Because I know for me, I could talk so much about how great

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someone else's project is, but I have a hard time talking about my own.

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So maybe even swapping with someone who likes your project, you like their project,

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and you could talk about each other's project. That's right.

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I love that. You only need the voice out there.

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And that voice has to be knowledgeable. okay i mean

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you have a lot of famous people or

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people that they get in front of the camera they

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have spokesmen try that angle i'm gonna

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try that i'm gonna try it but thanks so much

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00:29:39,273 --> 00:29:44,973
again ernest i even even though we've talked before i still needed everything

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that you said today so i really appreciate it and i know you're super busy so

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i will let you go but i will make Make sure to have any links that you want to send me.

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I know you've sent me some before, so I'm going to make sure to have those in the show notes.

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Any of your personal links that you want people to be able to have,

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I will definitely add those in.

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Okay. I will text you and send it to you, and then you can put them in the bottom.

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But the biggest one is at score.org. Yes.

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Thanks again for joining me on this week's episode of The Success Palette.

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For information on social media links where you can request any specific episode

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00:30:28,813 --> 00:30:35,213
that might help you in your creative journey, and also information on how to

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00:30:35,213 --> 00:30:37,013
watch some bonus episodes,

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00:30:37,533 --> 00:30:40,833
you can go to thesuccesspalette.com.

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And let's work together to make sure this week is a successful one.