Arts Services Inc. has distributed fifteen “Give for Greatness” Grants providing capacity-building support to arts and culture nonprofits across Allegany, Cattaraugus, Chautauqua, Erie, and Niagara counties. The funding will assist diverse missions and artistic disciplines in helping preserve and enrich the region’s cultural landscape.
These $2,000 grants are designed to support WNY’s smallest nonprofits in investing in and building a strong foundation for effectiveness and sustainability, as well as strengthening a nonprofit’s ability to fulfill its mission.
The selection panel, composed of local arts and culture leaders from across the region, was impressed by the broad-ranging missions and remarkable impact of the more than 50 organizations that applied this year. They faced the difficult task of selecting only 15 organizations to receive funding.
The 2024 Give for Greatness recipients are:
“Small and micro nonprofits, which make up more than half of our region’s organizations, are critical to community building,” said ASI Executive Director Jen Swan-Kilpatrick. “Capacity-building opportunities such as ASI’s Give for Greatness Grant provide these organizations with the vital support they need to boost their capabilities, enhance efficiency, and expand their impact.”
In the past decade, Give for Greatness Grants have provided $311,500 in funding to support over 135 regional art and cultural nonprofits. Nearly half of this year’s grants were awarded to new organizations that were not funded in previous years.
“With this funding from ASI’s Give For Greatness Grant, the Lewiston Council on the Arts will be able to build our organizational capacity by evaluating, expanding and restructuring our fund development strategies with an eye to the future, to ensure varied, reliable income streams,” said Maria Fortuna Dean, Executive Director of Lewiston Council on the Arts. “With increased, and more efficient, development efforts, we will be able to establish long-term, sustainable program growth, raising the level, variety and frequency of shared artistic experiences that we make available to our community.”
The Give for Greatness program is funded by Lawyers for the Arts and Rupp Family Foundation.
Click here to learn more about Give for Greatness grants.