Get Help
We’re here to help creatives navigate the world of public funding for arts & culture.
View Current Funding Opportunities
Our team regularly gathers funding opportunities for the creative community in Illinois.
Get Help
Our Help Desk offers free 1:1 support navigating various public funding opportunities. We’ll accept anything from a hello to an in-depth question about tax forms!
Upcoming Events
How do you sustain your artistic business or creative venture for the long haul? We’ll dive into long-term financial planning plus hot-button issues like how AI impacts your business, copyright considerations, and more.
Join us September 10, 11, and 12 from 10-11:30am on Zoom. Register for the entire series here.
Join us for the third part in our series supporting creative nonprofits.
From adapting your finance office to the virtual working world to building operating reserves, join us for two days of expert-led workshops to help sustain your nonprofit.
Register here.
Funding Opportunities
Deadline: Ongoing
Is a loan right for your creative business or nonprofit? Check out a recording of our April webinar with lenders and creatives talking you through the process of thinking through and applying for a loan.
Deadline: Region-specific
Illinois Arts Council (IAC)’s latest grant offers up to $12,000 to Illinois artists and nonprofit organizations for arts-related projects, programming, events, and/or professional development.
More information here.
Deadline: September 13
The State of Illinois Capital Development Board has put out a Request for Qualifications for Illinois artists to create permanent original public art for John A. Logan College in Carterville, Illinois.
More details here.
Deadline: September 16
$10,000 grants for organizations with annual budgets of $250,000 or less. More details and how to apply are here.
Deadline: September 20
Allies for Community Business has a special loan discount to early, emerging, and established businesses in Illinois and Indiana, offering loans and lines of credit between $500 and $100,000.
Learn more and apply here
Deadline: September 23
National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA) is calling on organizations to scale efforts to expand digital opportunities. Arts and culture organizations focused on bridging the digital divide are encouraged to apply. More information here.
Deadline: October 16
This program provides financial support to public agencies, tribal governments or nonprofit organizations to preserve and interpret historic places along the Route 66 corridor. Grants made from the Preserve Route 66 Fund will generally range from $2,500 to $10,000.
Learn more here.
Deadline: November 1
Golden Egg, an artist-led initiative strengthening financial security for Chicago’s freelance musicians, is giving retirement matching grants to local artists.
Learn more here.
Deadline: January 16, 2025
Through fellowships to published translators, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) supports projects for the translation of specific works of prose, poetry, or drama from other languages into English. Translation projects should be of interest for their literary excellence and merit. The NEA encourages projects that feature languages, perspectives, and writers that are not well represented in English, as well as work that has not previously been translated into English. More details here.
About the Help Desk
The Arts Alliance Help Desk assists creative workers, organizations, and businesses with applying for public funding opportunities.
While the help desk is primarily a vehicle for helping the creative community learn about and apply for existing opportunities, we are also available to answer any questions about the Alliance’s work, including advocacy, programs, and research.
As the advocacy organization for Illinois’ creative sector, Arts Alliance created the help desk to bridge the gap between government organizations with funding programs and the creatives applying for the funding. If our conversations with the sector lead us to discover anything amiss in an application process, like a form submission error or incorrectly interpreted eligibility criteria, our team will elevate the issue to the government group administering the funds and advocate for a solution. We’ll also take what we hear in the Help Desk and use it to inform our advocacy and programs.
We encourage you to visit the help desk periodically to learn about new public funding opportunities and get help applying for them. Better yet, sign up for updates from Arts Alliance to receive news straight to your inbox and follow us on social media (@ArtsAllianceIL).
We welcome anything from a “hello” to an in-depth question about your tax forms.
When you submit a question to our Help Desk, you will get a response from one or more Arts Alliance staff knowledgeable about the funding opportunities. Alliance Help Desk staff are your advocates! While we know our stuff, please keep in mind that if you are reaching out about a specific funding opportunity, anything shared by the Alliance staff does not constitute a formal decision about grant eligibility. The Arts Alliance help desk staff does not play a role in determining who receives an award for any of the grants we’re here to assist with.
Our help desk staff respond to inquiries in approximately 24 to 48 hours, but we’ll do our best to help you as soon as we can.
We use information that we collect about you or that you provide to us, including any personal information obtained through intake forms, email correspondence, phone calls, and virtual meetings only as necessary to fulfill your request and support the creative sector. The demographic data we collect helps our team provide that assistance and will also be used to further Arts Alliance Illinois’ understanding of the composition of the creative sector.
We may share your information with parties outside our organization only so far as is necessary to fulfill your request. We may share anonymized demographic data with entities that fund our efforts to support the creative sector.
View our privacy policy here.
For more information, email the Arts Alliance team at info@artsalliance.org.
The help desk is available in English and Spanish.
Support this work
If you’re a funder interested in helping the Alliance provide funding navigation services to the creative sector, we’d love to talk! Reach out to our Deputy Director of Development, Kaitlin Donnelly, at donnelly@artsalliance.org.
