From the Research Team

We’ve spruced up our monthly research column in NASAA Notes. Now called “The Research Digest,” this monthly sampling of bite-sized research will offer both timely updates on new research from NASAA as well as curated and relevant pieces of information from the field. We hope that you find this new format to be both convenient and tantalizing! This month, the “From the Research Team” section of The Research Digest features updates to NASAA resources on state arts agency grant making.

Annually, NASAA publishes national descriptive statistics on state arts agency grant-making. We’ve just made the latest updates to our grant-making fact sheets and our grant-making explorers to reflect fiscal year 2018 data. On NASAA’s Grant Making page you’ll find fact sheets describing state arts agency grants going to rural places, local arts agencies, general operational support, individual artists and arts education. These fact sheets can help you quickly answer important questions about the scope of state arts agency grant making at the national level and help you understand how your state compares to national medians and percentages.

Each grant-making fact sheet contains language describing the importance of each of these key grant-making functions for a majority of state arts agencies. This evergreen text can be useful to lift up when crafting case statements or advocacy materials. The fact sheets provide answers to questions such as, What percentage of state arts agency awards go to rural areas? How many state arts agency dollars fund general operating support awards? and What percentage of state arts agency awards fund arts education grants?

In additional to these fact sheets, NASAA maintains interactive data visualizations that allow you to explore key types of state arts agency support as well as grants by institution and discipline. The SAA Grant-Making Explorer: Trends in Key Types of Support—now updated with FY2018 data—shows the 10-year trends for total dollars awarded, operating support, arts education and individual artists. This explorer lets you select a state arts agency to see individual trends for any state. The SAA Grant-Making Explorer: Institution & Discipline, looks at 10-year grant-making history by categories of institution types and disciplines. The explorer allows users to select whether these trends are displayed in terms of percentages or dollars and to see individual state trends by selecting any state arts agency on the map.

Combined, these tools, summaries and language provide enormous amounts of information in digestible packages. As always, NASAA’s research team is available to find specific answers to your questions, create custom data pulls and analysis, or to help you think through how to present the data you need. If you have questions about the explorers or fact sheets, please contact NASAA Grants Data Associate Kelly Liu.

See more research news From the Field.