Ask Gigi: What if the grant is for $5,000 but you really need $10,000?

Welcome to this new feature of my blog where I answer your questions about funding and marketing for artists and writers. Send me your questions and I will choose the best one and answer regularly on the blog. Kharis Kennedy wrote with these two related questions about grant application budgets:

Dear Gigi,

The grant is for $2,500 but my project will cost about double.  Does this look bad to the granting agency?  Is there a standard way to write the budget such that the remainder cost difference is acknowledged/addressed?  

You must address the fact that the project will cost double. Look at it from the agency’s point of view: They don’t want to give you $2500 if you have no plans for how to fund the rest of the project. Then, their hard-earned money would be wasted. You need a solid plan for how you will cover the rest of the budget. Have you already earned that money through your own fundraising? (That would be best!) Will you donate your own funds? Will you do a fundraiser and if so, how can you prove to the granting agency that you have the chops to raise that amount of money? How many followers do you have? What’s your success with other fundraising? Get the idea? Put yourself in the funder’s shoes and you will quickly see that you have to prove to them that you’re a safe bet: you will get the project done, be a good steward of their funding, and you have a solid plan for how to raise the other money OR better yet, you’ve already raised it.

What if a grant was for $10K but I only needed 5K?  Obviously I wouldn't write up a fake budget and would just leave my budget at 5K but do granting agencies ever award less (i.e., just the 5K needed for the project) or do they award 10K no matter what?

First make sure that you really couldn’t expand your project and use the full amount. Have you included every possible expense that would be covered by the grant? Are you dreaming big enough? If you are, then call the agency and ask them. You want to make sure that a smaller request won’t mean a demerit for your project. It may actually make your project more attractive because then they’ll have money leftover to fund something else. But first see if you could use the full amount and second ask them if it won’t be seen as a negative.

The Artist Statement that Opened Doors

When Carmen Mariscal contacted me from France last year about artist coaching she wanted help writing a grant application. Soon, we realized that before working on the application, she needed to revamp and write a new artist statement. That statement took months. The process included my interviewing her via Skype from her home in Paris, then she did several writing assignments, then I edited, then she re-wrote. It was like making a piece of art!

I kept noticing when we talked or when she answered my incessant questions in writing, all the stories Carmen had about her work. It felt right that her artist statement contain these stories especially the one about an accident she’d had that changed her life and a family heirloom given to her by her great grandmother. I also noticed that she made many different kinds of work where objects were “trapped” or “preserved.” The vitrines she refers to below are reminiscent of much of her work.

I was delighted to receive this email from Carmen last week about how the artist statement opened this door for her:

Thanks to the artist statement that I wrote with your wonderful coaching I got an interview at a Museum in Brussels. The space is perfect for my work and that is because before giving me the interview the curator learned about my car accident and my great grandmother's wedding dress. She had previously curated a Frida Kahlo exhibition and the museum where she works now is full of old objects in vitrines. Without the statement she would have never given me an interview and we are talking about the possibility of me doing site-specific work in the middle of the museum's collection!

I tell this story so that it helps you when you feel doubt about all the hard work that goes into writing a statement. At my lowest moments, I think to myself: Why am I doing this? Nobody’s ever gonna read it anyway.

Well, the truth is that people do read statements. And even just the writing of the statement strengthened Carmen’s sense of her work and gave her a clearer picture of how all the threads of her life and work weaved together.

Try this over the weekend: tell a life story that changed you as an artist or write about an object that holds great meaning for your work. These stories may inform your new, revamped statement.

Fundraising helps your artistic process

"Consider the pursuit of support and raising money as part of your artistic process. It is not a burden. It is a way of meeting people, building community and articulating ideas, concepts, and intentions… If you have an idea for a project by the time you’ve described it to forty people it will be a better idea." -- Anne Bogart, Theater Director, from her book and then, you act: making art in an unpredictable world.