LA Arts Recovery Fund

In spring 2020 in response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Getty initiated a $10 million fund to support LA-based nonprofit museums and visual arts organizations. We set aside a portion for emergency relief, awarding $2 million to 80 diverse small and midsized organizations, and co-launched the Relief Fund for L.A. County Visual Artists, which allocated $700,000 to 400 visual artists who reflected LA's cultural and geographic diversity.

Concurrently, Getty began working with other foundations in LA to create a pooled fund to support the city’s entire arts sector, including the performing and literary arts. This effort soon attracted national funders and resulted in the announcement of the LA Arts Recovery Fund, the largest-ever pooled private investment for arts nonprofits in LA County.

Administered by the California Community Foundation, the LA Arts Recovery Fund provides significant, flexible operating support for at least two years to small and midsized arts organizations with annual operating budgets of $10 million or below. In May 2021, the Fund announced over $36 million—including Getty’s remaining $8 million pledge and a challenge grant from the Ford Foundation’s America’s Cultural Treasures Initiative—awarded to 90 nonprofits representing visual arts, theater, music, dance, literary arts, and arts education.

The Fund’s guiding principles include dedication to organizations that have been historically underrepresented and a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. More than 70% of the grantees are founded, led by, or have boards with a member majority from BIPOC communities.

April 2020: Getty initiates a $10 million fund for visual arts nonprofits in LA
June 2020: 400 artists and 80 arts organizations receive $2.7 million in COVID-19 Relief Grants
Feb 2021: Applications open to award $36.1 million to arts organizations via LA Arts Recovery Fund
May 2021: Fund announces recovery grants for general operating support to 90 organizations
2022-2023: Fundraising continues for LA Arts Recovery Fund
2024: Operating support provided by the Fund concludes

LA County's more than 500 nonprofit arts organizations, along with the region's artists, are powerful contributors to the local creative economy, generating more than $203 billion annually. One of every seven jobs in Los Angeles is in a creative field, according to the 2020 Otis Report on the Creative Economy. They are also places of civic and community engagement that spark joy and inspiration and help us make meaning in the world.

Yet the future for arts and cultural nonprofits during the first year of the pandemic was grim. Surveys of local arts organizations by Americans for the Arts during that year show that in LA County, 46 percent of arts nonprofits had dipped into financial reserves, 38 percent had laid off or furloughed artists or creative workforce, 37 percent had concerns about their ability to make payroll, and 15 percent said they were not confident their organization would survive the impacts of COVID-19.

The pandemic also magnified pre-existing financial and structural challenges experienced by arts nonprofits, including inequities in national arts funding among small to midsized organizations and those that serve diverse communities. The LA Arts Recovery Fund was designed to address these challenges by offering two to three years of general operating support for cultural organizations to rebuild and re-envision their futures.