2023-25 ORGANIZATIONAL SUPPORT PROGRAM (OSP)
GRANTS FOR ARTS AND CULTURE NONPROFITS
Attachment D
The OSP Program
The City has a long history of investing in artists and cultural organizations with the goal of ensuring that residents have an exciting and stimulating array of arts and heritage programs and services in which to participate. Santa Monica residents share a vision for their community that weaves the arts, cultural activities, education, and an understanding of history through their daily lives, work, cityscape, and neighborhoods. This vision has been documented extensively in the City’s cultural plan, Creative Capital, adopted by Council in 2007, and in subsequent community assessments and marketing studies. Sustainable access to arts and heritage programming has been shown to contribute to a sense of connectedness and to promote mental health by broadly enriching a community’s emotional and intellectual capacities, improving children’s school performance, facilitating the ability to acquire new skills, and encouraging creativity in every aspect of life.
The Organizational Support Program (OSP) was created by City Council in 1997 to support resident arts and heritage organizations with multi-year grants aimed at operational expenses.
Operational grants assist nonprofits in the achievement of their artistic and administrative goals.
The City of Santa Monica funds both large and small arts and heritage organizations, recognizing the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in meeting the community’s cultural needs.
During the 2020 budget cuts, staff prioritized the retention of the OSP grant funding, keeping the program whole while making some unfortunately necessary cuts to the Community Access and Participation (CAP) and Artist Fellowship grant programs. The City’s ability to sustain OSP funding during the challenges of two-and-a-half years of mandated closures due to the pandemic – while real estate prices continued to heavily gentrify – has been central to the survival of the City’s cultural sector.
Community Assessment Recommendations and Responses
In the fall of 2022, in preparation for the 2023-25 application process, a community assessment was completed which is attached to the end of this document. The following recommendations from the report were addressed by staff in the current OSP application process. • Recommendation: Prioritize support for those who strategized and tried new ways to reach audiences, fundraise and make an impact within their communities.
Response: Staff reversed the long-standing selection criteria order and made Community Engagement the top consideration for jury review. Artistic Excellence is now second for review, though it remains a key value. The intention was to ensure that organizations that can demonstrate their community impact are recognized, including their responses to the paradigm shifting dialogues that have occurred nationally in the wakes of both the George Floyd murder and the pandemic.
• Recommendation: Broaden and loosen requirements around “serving Santa Monica audiences.” Response: the OSP eligibility rules now allow performing arts groups that are based in Santa Monica but spend a substantial portion of their seasons touring to qualify for the program.
• Recommendation: to address key equity goals, the total OSP budget allocation would need to increase by approximately 25-30 percent. If that is not a reality, the City may find itself either delaying equitable funding to the smaller organizations or notifying the historic grantees that they should expect to receive significantly smaller grants. Response: Staff has worked to balance the mandates of equity with the needs of the larger, more established institutions. OSP funding is intended to provide a stable level of support for grantees year over year; the goal is to provide funding amounts that do not fluctuate wildly. Due to an anticipated flat budget for the program, staff recommends that new applicants begin with “starter grants,” while those who were new in the last cycle receive a slight increase based on the panel scoring, which will step them up toward the more traditional funding levels. Staff will also recommend flat funding for long-term organizations.
Grant Application Process
The OSP application process re-opened this year for the first time since 2019. Proposals were solicited for the grant period FY2023-25. A request for applications was distributed widely on December 16, 2022; the City received 27 eligible submittals by the January 31 deadline.
Applications were reviewed by a diverse jury of arts professionals, including regional experts in each of the artistic/cultural disciplines represented in the applicant pool. The jury process was designed to be rigorous and objective, with each application reviewed by the entire group.
Cultural Affairs staff reviewed applications for eligibility only; staff did not score applications.
Jurors included regional experts in the areas of music, theater, dance, visual arts, cultural heritage, nonprofit management, and community arts organizations. Applications were scored on a 100-point scale. 21 organizations are being recommended for funding in this cycle, one more than in the previous cycle in 2019.
Jurors for 2023-25
o Olga Garay-English, former Cultural Affairs Manager for the City of Los Angeles o Rick Noguchi, President and CEO of California Humanities, former Chief Operations Officer for the Japanese American National Museum o Artist Mark Steven Greenfield
o Elizabeth Kennedy, former official of the Music Center of Los Angeles County, Vice President of the Autry National Center, and Vice President of Occidental College
OSP Program Goals
• Increase and sustain world-class artistic production and exhibition in Santa Monica. • Deliver opportunities for creativity, artistic participation and the understanding of cultural heritage to diverse components of the community.
• Promote high standards of organizational management in Santa Monica’s arts and • culture ecosystem.
• Highlight the City as an international creative center. • Open avenues of discourse to broad topics of human creativity and learning among the general public.
2023-24 Grant Recommendations
Guide to Grant Amounts
Grant amounts are determined by a combination of jury score, previous grant award, and the City’s available resources. Organizational budget size is defined as very large ($10+ million), large ($2+ million), midsize ($500,000-$1,999,999), and small ($1-$499,999). In addition, due to limitations in City resources, a reduced scale of grant levels is being recommended for applicants who are new to the program. This approach allows the City to bring a greater number of organizations into the program.
Proposed Grant Amounts
The following grants are being recommended for approval. (New applicants recommended for funding are noted with an asterisk.)
Very Large Organizations ($10 million+):
Applicant
Organizational
Budget Recommended Grant
KCRW Foundation, Inc.* $22,018,583.00 $6,000
Large Organizations ($2 mil - $9,999,999):
Applicant
Organizational
Budget Recommended Grant
Madison Project dba
BroadStage $2,121,096 $70,400
Midsize Organizations ($500,000 - $1,999,999):
Applicant
Organizational
Budget Recommended Grant
18th Street Arts Complex $1,203,684 $65,150
Jewish Women's Theatre $600,145 $23,690
Jacob Jonas The Company* $527,368 $5,350
Elemental Music $608,919 $28,055
Small Organizations ($1 - $499,999):
Applicant
Organizational
Budget
Recommended
Grant
Highways, Inc. $465,135 $26,000
Santa Monica Symphony Assoc $148,711 $15,700
SOL-LA Music Academy* $346,051 $5,350
Santa Monica Youth Orchestra $327,602 $8,920
Aresis Ensemble dba City Garage $193,690 $11,300
Dancessence, Inc. $50,690 $1,970
Santa Monica Conservancy $262,292 $13,300
Building Bridges Art Foundation $94,731 $4,060
California Heritage Museum $164,261 $15,950
Westside Ballet of Santa Monica $362,879 $12,970
Santa Monica Theatre Guild dba
Morgan-Wixson Theatre $334,720 $8,000
Santa Monica History Museum $429,371 $30,500
Jacaranda Music $320,998 $24,650
Orchestra Santa Monica Assoc $204,390 $5,040
Ruskin Group Theatre $161,200 $19,570
Verdi Chorus $101,690 $8,000
*New grantee recommended at a corresponding entry grant level.
Not recommended for funding:
Applicant Budget
ShareWell dba Cayton Children's Museum $3,876,607
Human Family Educational and Cultural Institute $574,416 Santa Monica Repertory Theater $18,254
Theatre for a Small Space $14,770
Santa Monica Playhouse $357,646
ATTACHED: COMMUNITY ASSESSMENT REPORT