Grantmakers in the Arts Request for Proposals – Consultant

Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) seeks a consulting partner. The consultant would partner with GIA to bring together cohorts of public-sector colleagues around common themes and strategize how to address their challenges and opportunities in supporting the arts toward racial justice in public sector practice and policy. The Learning Lab (name subject to change) could include prepared curricula, guest speakers, facilitated presentation of case studies and iterations of solutions.

Goal: Racial justice and intersectional justice through the integration of cultural practice into public sector practices and services, such as: Workforce-development; Public health; Infrastructure; and the places in our public sector where children interact with our policing system, our court system and our incarceration systems.

The outputs would include documentation of projects’ successes and challenges, assessments and analyses and templates as well as draft legislative and operational language that GIA shares out for others’ adaptation. This Learning Lab could help draft and share model practices among public grantmakers and the private funders who may collaborate with them across the nation.

Why this project now?

GIA believes arts and culture are a part of everything and must be supported as such. GIA believes that we can respond to the contraction of public funding for the arts by expanding what public sector arts support can be; providing leadership development for our public sectorcolleagues; and giving our private sector members opportunities to leverage their support for greater impact across systems.

The Consultancy

GIA will engage a consultant who will partner with GIA to design a fellowship program that invites public arts agencies to bring other agencies into an exploratory dialogic process that facilitates their experimenting with efforts to integrate arts & culture into other forms of public service-provision practices and policies with the goal of racial & intersectional justice.

Grantmakers in the Arts projects an approximate timeline of approximately 3 months for the design of the project, 3 months for planning and 10 months for execution with a budget of approximately $75,000 to pay the consultant for their hours and related expenses.

Please fill in this Request for Proposals (RFP) and email it to GIA President & CEO Eddie Torres at eddie@giarts.org by May 14, 2021 with the subject line GIA Public Agency Learning Lab: Your name.

Name of Consultancy/Consultant:
Name of Primary Investigator:
Contact information:

Please provide:

  • Information on your professional background.
  • Familiarity with public policy and public agency practice.
  • Examples of past strategizing, project-design and project-execution that may be relevant to this project (hyperlinks or attachments).
  • Please articulate how the projects and your past experience reflect on your ability to add value to this project.
  • Please articulate how the projects and your past experience reflect on your working methods and on the values through which you approach your work.

In your proposal, please address how you would:

  • Conduct research to inform how to engage public agencies
    • How will you engage the field to inform this process before as part of its design and during its execution?
    • What extant information/research will you use to inform your design of this process?
    • Which extant models would you consider adapting for this process?
  • Design a curriculum
    • What extant information/research will you use to inform your design of this process?
    • What do you propose by way of participants’ learning?
  • Design a fellowship program that invites public arts agencies to bring other agencies into an exploratory dialogic process that facilitates their experimenting with efforts to integrate arts & culture into other forms of public service-provision practices and policies
  • Design a rfp for public agencies’ participation
  • Partner with GIA to select participants
  • Coordinate the logistics of fellowship program with GIA
  • Facilitate fellowship program with GIA
  • Curate, invite and engage partners and guest speakers
  • Document participants’ change efforts to inform other public agencies’ adaptation and private grantmakers’ complementary practices and support

References from past projects/roles (3)

ABOUT GIA

Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) provides leadership and service that advances the use of philanthropic and governmental resources to support the growth of arts and culture. GIA is the only national association of both public and private arts and culture funders in the US, including independent and family foundations, public agencies, community foundations, corporate philanthropies, nonprofit regrantors, and national service organizations across the US and into Canada.

GIA provides valuable professional development for arts grantmakers through conferences, workshops, and webinars; publications including the GIA Reader; research and policy work across the field of philanthropy; and communication tools on our website.

GIA has identified four core focus areas for our work: Arts Education, Capitalization and Nonprofit Financial Health, Racial Equity in Arts Funding, and Support for Individual Artists. GIA also strives to incorporate into our programs other interest areas of concern to our members.