Programs & Activities

Annual conference

At the annual conference, GIA members have the opportunity to meet their colleagues and participate in plenary sessions featuring artists and arts leaders, member-organized roundtable discussions, panels investigating policies and practices in arts grantmaking, member reports, site visits, workshops, and festive events. Annual conferences have been held in many locations around the country including Charlotte, Seattle, Pasadena, Boston, Atlanta, and Brooklyn. Past conference speakers have included Bill Ivey, Charles Johnson, Bill T. Jones, Van Jones, Garrison Keillor, Liz Lerman, Patricia Nelson Limerick, Meredith Monk, Naomi Shihab Nye, Pepón Osorio, Kenneth Prewitt, Wynton Marsalis, and Rocco Landesman. Archives, including sound and video, from past archives are in the Library.

Grantmakers in the Arts Reader

Artists, cultural critics, historians, and grantmakers contribute to GIA's Reader. Published three times per year, the Reader features articles on topics of interest to arts grantmakers, summaries of recently published reports and studies, and regional and interest specific reports by arts grantmakers. Contributing authors include Ben Cameron, Cynthia A. Gehrig, Arlene Goldbard, Bess Lomax Hawes, Pamela Kingfisher, Malcolm Margolin, Robert Pinsky, Richard Rodriguez, Peter Sellars, Joan Shigekawa, Holly Sidford, Bruce Sievers, James Allen Smith, and Jerry Yoshitomi.

The Reader editorial committee is chaired by Frances Phillips (Walter & Elise Haas Fund) and includes Judi Jennings (Kentucky Foundation for Women), Janet Brown (GIA executive director), and Tommer Peterson ( GIA deputy director.)

Anyone may subscribe to the GIA Reader (download and complete this form to subscribe); GIA members receive the Reader free as a benefit of membership. You can search the contents of past issues in the Library.

Phone Forums

Grantmakers in the Arts Phone Forums are a regular series of one-hour presentations on current topics of interest to arts and culture funders. Phone Forums are free to GIA members, and open to non-members for a fee of $35. Advance registration is required.

Research and other publications

Beginning in the early 1990s, GIA has commissioned the Foundation Center to study trends in private arts funding. A major ten-year study was completed in 1993 and updated in 1995 and 1998. With guidance from our research advisors GIA has developed a research plan that builds on our past work with the Foundation Center.

Since Arts Funding IV: An Update on Foundation Trends was published in 2003, GIA has published an annual “snapshot” that updates key findings from the report. In 2005 GIA published a special report, Foundation Funding for Arts Education in partnership with the Foundation Center. GIA also published two Field Resource Books, General Operating Support, A View from the Field, and Creative Family Giving in the Arts. GIA publications can be found in the Library.

Communication among members

GIA supports arts grantmakers in their work with each other. In addition to the annual conference and other communication tools, members have networking and learning opportunities at GIA-sponsored events at the annual Council on Foundations conference, at other gatherings of grantmakers, and through interest-specific meetings and Phone Forums.

Member Interest Groups

GIA also encourages subsets of members who work together on programs around specific shared interests, helping to further learning and programs in these specific areas. The member interest groups active during the past few years include the Indigenous Resource Network (IRN), Arts and Education, Support for Individual Artists, and Arts and Social Justice. New member interest groups emerge as interests develop. Each provides a different range of opportunities for participation.

Resources developed by member interest groups are featured in the Arts Funding Topics section of this site.