The Montgomery County Council is considering a change in funding arts grants that could mean more money for smaller organizations. A council committee is looking at ways to allocate more money to help arts groups with the greatest financial needs.
The council’s Education and Culture Committee met Monday to discuss the proposal, which is part of an equity initiative the council launched this year. The initiative mandates that the county take racial, gender and socioeconomic disparities into account.
The County Council each year allocates funding to the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County (AHCMC), a Silver Spring nonprofit, as part of the budget process in the spring. The AHCMC then uses the money for grants to organizations, schools, civic groups and individual artists.
In fiscal year 2020, the council approved $5.6 million in funding to the AHCMC.
Of this total, $3.4 million went toward “operating support” grants for large organizations.
More than $854,000 went toward small and mid-size organizations, as well as artist and scholar grants, arts education and creative projects.
The AHCMC grant money also included $250,000 in “undesignated grants,” which are awarded to the organizations in need of the most money. Council analyst Linda Price said this category was established during the fiscal year 2020 budget process.
Price said the current structure of the arts and humanities grants “ties the hands” of the AHCMC because it sets pools of money designated for large, mid-size and small organizations. Increasing the amount of money for “undesignated grants” helps offset this problem.
“It just really gives more flexibility to see where the [grant] requests are coming from and grant based on that,” she said.
Council member Craig Rice, the chair of the Education and Culture Committee, said in an interview Thursday that the committee’s goal is to increase funding for smaller and mid-size organizations that have the greatest needs.
One option, he said, would be to maintain the current structure of separate grants for large, mid-size and small organizations and increase money in the “undesignated” category.
A second option would be to combine the grants for small and mid-size organizations, along with individuals, with the “undesignated” category. He said he hopes to increase this amount to as much as $1 million to $2 million.
Rice said operating support grants for large organizations won’t drop regardless of the committee’s decision. Operating support grant money won’t be shifted from larger organizations to smaller ones.
“In the future years, we want to retain existing grant funding, but when it comes to increased funding, it needs to be strategically placed,” he said.
Rice said some organizations, such as the Strathmore Hall Foundation, can be assured that they will have steady funding.
“We really can’t tinker with that because it would cause a lot of jeopardy,” he said. “You can’t cut Strathmore’s funding in half and expect them to operate. There has to be some funding support that stays consistent.”
Bonnie Fogel, the executive director of the Bethesda children’s theater Imagination Stage, said even though her organization is now classified as a large organization, it was much smaller when it started 40 years ago. Fogel said she supports the council’s initiative to increase funding for smaller organizations.
“We were a small organization ourselves and would have benefited from that in our journey,” she said. “However, we wouldn’t want to see that happen in any way that would jeopardize the larger organizations.”
“We have been small, and we have been mid-sized, and we know what it’s like to struggle,” she said.
Nigel Horne, the musical director of the Washington Metropolitan Gamer Symphony Orchestra and the Rockville Brass Band, said both groups are small organizations that received grants this year from the arts council.
Musical groups, he said, typically need money to cover rehearsal and performance space rentals, which can cost $3,000 to $4,000.
Horne said he wants small arts groups such as his to succeed, but not at the expense of large ones.
“If we can agree that’s what will be happening, that would be splendid for everybody. Yes, it’s true that my focus is going to be on acoustic and symphonic music, but I hope the other beneficiaries do well out of this,” he said.
AHCMC CEO Suzan Jenkins said on Wednesday that the funding change is meant to be more inclusive.
“If you look at the demographics in Montgomery County, we have so many different cultural groups that as we look at our funding, we want that funding to reflect our demographic. It’s really important that taxpayer dollars respond to that diversity,” she said.
The Education and Culture Committee discussed the idea at its meeting Monday. Rice said the committee hopes to finalize details within the next year.
Dan Schere can be reached at Daniel.schere@moco360.media.
