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Allison Clark, Associate Director, Impact Investments, and Sandra Aponte, Program Officer, Chicago Commitment, discuss how two of our programs collaborated to better support arts organizations’ financial resiliency.
Grants, along with ticket sales, gallery admissions, and other revenue streams, are essential for nonprofit arts and cultural organizations to stage plays, choreograph dance performances, and teach classes—all of which help make our communities thriving, vibrant places to live.
But what happens when organizations need to spend money on staffing, costumes, and utilities before some of this revenue comes in? Like any business or commercial enterprise, nonprofit arts and culture organizations need working capital, which is cash on hand to pay expenses in advance of customers paying for their work.
While businesses can apply for loans from banks and other lenders to help manage cash flow challenges, nonprofits often cannot because they lack hard assets to pledge as collateral or do not have the financial expertise to present their case to a lender. This is why, 17 years ago, we created the Arts and Culture Loan Fund (ACLF), a loan program specifically for our Chicago-based Culture, Equity, and the Arts grantees, as well as for organizations that receive funding from MacArthur and the Field Foundation through A Road Together.
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