Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast: Making Art Work
#326: David Holmes (Educational Programming Manager at Candid) (pt. 2 of 2)
This week on the podcast is part two of our interview with David Holmes. He’s an Educational Programming Manager at Candid, where he helps nonprofits and individuals find funding. He also coordinates national trainings and educational programming for the Midwest region.
David returned to Candid in 2015 from a position as Senior Consultant at Grants Plus, writing grants and doing research for a variety of large and small nonprofit clients. In his initial nine-year tenure with Foundation Center, Dave served in various roles including Regional Training Specialist, Interim Director of Foundation Center – Cleveland, and the Director of Capacity and Leadership Development.
If you’ve ever wanted to write a grant, learn where you can find information about grants, or learn more about the grant writing process, you won’t want to miss our interview with David! https://candid.org/
Welcome to the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast. Making art work. We highlight how entrepreneurs align their artistry, passion and vision to create and pursue opportunities to capture value in the arts. The views expressed by guests on the Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast are solely their own and do not necessarily represent the views of the podcast or its hosts. The appearance of a guest on the podcast, the venture they represent or reference to any product or service does not imply an endorsement or recommendation by the podcast or its hosts. The content provided is for entertainment and informational purposes only and does not constitute business advice. Here are your hosts Andy Heiss and Nick Petrella.
Andy Heise:Hi Arts Entrepreneurship Podcast listeners. I'm Andy Heiss and.
Nick Petrella:I'm Nick Petrella. David Holmes is joining us today to talk about artist grants and grant writing. He's an educational programming manager at Candid, where he helps nonprofits and individuals find funding. He also coordinates national trainings and educational programming for the Midwest region. David returned to Candid in 2015 from a position as senior consultant at Grants Plus, writing grants and doing research for a variety of large and small non-profit clients. In his initial nine-year tenure with Candid, formerly Foundation Center, david served in various roles, including regional training specialist, interim director of Foundation Center Cleveland and the director of capacity and leadership development.
Nick Petrella:Early in his career, david served as a program officer for the Stocker Foundation in Lorain, ohio, and as the director of grants and prospect research at Notre Dame College in South Euclid, ohio. He holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Pittsburgh, an MA from Villanova University and an MLIS from Kent State University. Thanks for coming on the podcast, dave. You're welcome. Good to be here. So you gave a ton of great advice already and we've been dancing around kind of the process and you spoke about showing the finished grant to others before you submit it. How can artists improve their grant writing skills to get to that point? Are there books that are available?
David Holmes:wow, yeah, I mean I. There are a couple of books we have. I'm gonna push you back to candid again, because candid has, as a collection of online books, audio books and, um online, you know, downloadable books that you can check out for free, and in those there are books that are spec, you know, for specific artists, the working artist, um I. I do a lot of looking around to see what advice could I take from each of these different books. I don't think there's one person that has the absolute answer for everything. Certainly I don't have all the answers for everything, so I always look to see well, you know, I'm not really a working writer what's a good option for me. This time, and especially in the blog and podcast world, you will get input from a lot of different places that you should pay attention to. I don't think there's one again, there's one right answer place, but I like to keep an eye out for all of that, yeah.
Nick Petrella:So search far and wide and you're going to triangulate and you're going to see common themes.
David Holmes:Yeah, oh yeah, you do. You will see common themes over and over again and I teach people that are new to the fundraising world. I said I'm telling you this and it may sound really strange and really hard, but you're going to hear it again and again. It's going to repeat itself to you until you think, oh yeah, that's the way that these work and that's the way it's going to go. Oh, I have to have an artist statement. Oh, I have to do this by this deadline. I, I get it. Oh yeah, I'm doing something educational. Oh, they want to know how it connects to the curriculum. That's something you'll see over and over again. You just become very, very used to it, and I think that's kind of when you become good at being a professional you were talking about. Like, how do you know you're really getting up to that level? How do you know that you are maybe at a tipping point? It's when you start to see the same things again and you recognize them for what they are. Yeah, that's great.
Andy Heise:Are there any trends you're seeing in the types of projects or artists that funders are most interested in supporting right now?
David Holmes:Well, I think right now is a difficult thing to talk about because right now might be changing drastically depending on federal funding, going down to state arts agencies and the restrictions on types of programs, types of funders. I just saw a call today from a group that works with foundations asking them to respond to what's going on on the national level by increasing funding, by broadening your outlook on who you're going to fund and by making the applications easier. Love all those ideas, but who is going to shine up for that? Who is going to do it? It's hard to say.
David Holmes:I would say there's definite awareness in the private funding world about the fact that some of the national funding might not be available and might be changing. So there's a definite thinking about what are the things that are being targeted and turned off and how can we step up. I mean mean there's not anywhere near as enough money in the private foundation world, even though it's billions of dollars. It's not enough to replace federal amounts which are, you know, multi-billion. But they can make an effort and they can help people sustain. So I would look, particularly if you feel like your art is not being supported or is in danger of not being supported, pay attention to, maybe, people that you haven't looked at in a while, to see if they've changed and to see if they've stepped up.
Nick Petrella:That was going to be a question I had. Do you know the percentage of funding from federal to private?
Announcer:This like offhand.
David Holmes:Yeah, just okay, but, but I'll tell you that that one of our data I mean there's for all non-profits. I mean in the united states, somewhere around 30 percent um are getting money from the federal system, and for individuals I'm not really sure what that number is compared, but I know that state art agencies in particular are a lifeline for a lot of artists, and not just grants but positions. You know arts positions and artists in residence and you know short term, different kind of things that are reliant on federal amounts. It might be bigger than that. There's definitely a strong leadership from the governmental sources.
David Holmes:Yeah, so what we have been doing at Candid is in our Candid Insights, which is our blog that regularly comes out. We've been working with our data team to track you know how much money is needed to replace any money that might've been cut and where does all that money come from. We've been trying to make sure that people know and there's a lot of free stats on that on our website that we'll talk about it. My problem is that I can never remember what it was 32% or 38%, you know, but the point is it's a substantial amount of money. My problem is that I can never remember what it was 32% or 38%, right, right, but the point is it's a substantial amount of money and when it disappears you might think well, I know they're going to cut that nationally, but it won't affect my citywide arts organization. That's probably not true, yeah.
Andy Heise:Well, our conversation here today is primarily focused on the arts, but I'm guessing you all are involved in grant making across all sorts of different sectors. Sure, yeah.
David Holmes:Yeah, we track the grant making for all different types and there's a lot of intersection in all the different types of organizations. I mean, am I giving to an organization that does upcycling? You know, part of that might be arts that they create out of that upcycled material and that's an arts program that could get arts funding and maybe that disappears. But is there, you know, environmental funders are? Is there, you know, environmental funders are connected to that? Community funders are connected to that.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, so it's, there's a lot of intersectionality among that do you think it's man, it's easier to do cross collaborations? You just prompted me what you just said. Is it easier to do like upcycling, because you could have fashion, you could have art, you could have anything else? Is it easier to get grants in that vein? Or just say only as an artist?
David Holmes:I. I would say that I always talk about how what you do intersects with any other things. If you just look as a filmmaker and say I'm just going to look for funders that are interested in funding film, you're going to find a very narrow window. But if you say the subject of my film is this documentary about mine workers I don't know mine workers in the 19th century who's interested in the historical element of that? Who's interested in that based element of that? Who's interested in that based on where you're talking about. That opens you up so much to potential funding to people, to organizations, to foundations that maybe never funded a film before. Right, because they care about the issue, they care about what you're doing. Yeah, just just trying to focus on the medium is not is not a good idea, so break out of silos.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, definitely.
David Holmes:And and partnerships happen because you realize that what you're doing might have an impact on people that are in a neighborhood or people. You know the upcycling idea very closely. The organization I'm thinking of is very closely connected to its neighborhood and oftentimes what it does is offer arts classes and a shop. It lifts the community, it brings people together. It's something that so many local funders are interested in and, you know, even if they have no interest in the art that gets produced for these things.
Nick Petrella:Dave, it's my understanding that many arts grants require applicants to detail the impact of their project on the community or their field. How do most successful applicants measure their impact?
David Holmes:their field. How do most successful applicants measure their impact? Well, there's two ways you can. I do teach like measuring impact, and I would have to say that what throws people is the idea that, well, how can I show an impact of teaching somebody art? What does that do? I'm not a scientist. I can't tell you how it's bettering their life. I can't track these people for 40 years, tell you how it's bettering their life. I can't track these people for 40 years to see that they had a more successful life. What people need to understand is that there are things you can track. You can track attendance, you can track the satisfaction rate, you can track what people learn and you can keep that as information that you gather about your program. That's something that you have to think about is how can I show that this program was really doing or getting people started on the route that I wanted them to be able to? But when it comes down to saying, you know, oh, this, you know, I taught them art in third grade and they wound up being better people, you're not going to be able to do that Right. However, there are lots and lots of places that have measured that Americans for the Arts is a go-to place that I always talk about when I'm talking to artists and they're saying well, you know, how do I show what art does to the brain and what art does for the community and what art does for social interaction? All of those things are advocacy. Organizations like Americans for the Arts collect that data.
David Holmes:Other people have done the research. I did a. You know I don't recommend using AI for everything because it gives you a lot of bad answers and bad information. But one thing I did was like I I read, I just ran a search that was you know what does? How does art improve your social skills, something like that. And I put it in and I got a big long paragraph about that and I'm like that's great, cite where that comes from.
David Holmes:And I put that back into the chat g GP and they gave me all these citations and I said give me a citation from the last five years, because all of them were at least 20 years old. But as you do that kind of research, it's not as hard as people think it is to make a case for why something is vital. And you can do that research. You can use chat. I shouldn't endorse any particular type of AI. You can use whatever AI you want to find the answers to different kind of questions, but think about what's reasonable for you to track and when it gets beyond that, think about who are the experts in proving how impactful what you're doing is, and make sure you get their data too. Yeah, Good.
Andy Heise:I love that idea of finding the empirical evidence right, the research that shows that what, whatever, like the example, what art does for the brain, and then you can show in my project or in my program. These are the things I'm going to do which has been shown to support this research or whatever the logic of your program, the logic of your art.
David Holmes:Yes, that's what you're trying to show. If I do this, if these people learn these things, this is how their lives will change, right.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah, no, that's great, that's good advice.
David Holmes:I'm interested have you seen any unique or novel or unexpected ways that artists have used funding, maybe not just in a single project, but in their overall careers or artistic careers, say, um, sometimes it's kind of an exciting sort of thing where I've been talking to somebody and I will find, like, oh, like, did you know that there's this short-term funding opportunity about, like, public art in this area? Have you thought about doing this? And I've actually known a couple of artists who have said you know what? I wasn't going to do that, but I thought what I did was really connected to it. Um, so I wrote and you know they took it right away. It was just like it was amazing that it was so connected, because the funders ask for such specific things in their mind. They have specific ideas of what they want to see. It's looking around and finding that, um, people that say I'm not a grant writer, I'm not this, I'm not that, are really doing themselves a disservice. Yeah, if they're doing art, if you're working individually with a non-profit organization and you don't think there's another nonprofit that I was thinking about, whose? Theater nonprofit that was interested in a particular program that was actually about civil rights. The theater had actors that could portray this and had particular skill in doing this. This other non-profit and this other big program that was about civil rights education were like we're a perfect match and it turns out that way and you go well, yeah, of course you are.
David Holmes:I mean, didn't everybody know that already? But everybody doesn't know these things? It's it's keeping your eyes open to it. I I really hate hearing and this is part of what keeps me going too is I hate people coming to me and saying there's just nothing out there for me. Yeah, I'm like it's not easy, but it's. It may be out there for me. I'm like it's not easy, but it may be out there, and you don't know until you look. You don't know until you reach out. Don't be afraid of the people with the money, as if they don't want to talk to you because they know you don't have any. I mean, they need to give it away. You're the perfect person to talk to them.
Nick Petrella:How many grant applications do you see in a year?
David Holmes:Well, we don't give grants away, so I don't see as many as I used to when I was program officer at a foundation Small foundation like I worked for would see about 450 grant applications for $5 million in awards. It was a lot more than we could actually fund. However, when I see them, I see people that are drafting, people coming up with this. I teach proposal writing boot camp, which is a workshop that has people create applications, so I still read about 200 or 300 grant applications a year.
Nick Petrella:And so the next half of that question was do you recognize, or have you recognized over different periods, themes in grants? Are the grants for community civil rights, environmental things like that? Do you see that? Is there anything that's current?
David Holmes:well again, the current stuff. I'm with all the caveats about. Things change all the time, and quickly. I think that there's definitely been more of an awareness and I would want to underline of the understanding of that you're not creating something or doing a project or that's at people, that there's much more of a consistency with the understanding that if you're doing something for a group of people, those people are weighing in on it. Those people are actively involved. It's not you know, these are at-risk youth that I'm helping. It's what do these youth want in this community? What do these?
David Holmes:Paying closer attention to what change means for the people that you're going to be doing it.
David Holmes:Paying closer attention to the impact of of your work, not just for yourself but for the community.
David Holmes:I think there's definitely an awareness of that and you know there's a lot of ways that you can characterize that and categorize it, but I think it's really inspiring because what, what helps me with being ready to do this and keep teaching same kind of things to different people, is that I hear different things.
David Holmes:I hear things about ex-offenders which used to. I mean, there are terms that were used in the past that are not used as much because those groups of people are being part of the art that's being created or the projects that are being created. That excites me to see because that is what leads to solving problems is when, instead of saying I have the answer for your problem, you talk to the person and say let's work on getting an answer to this problem together. I like that. That is the most inspiring thing that I see, and it isn't I mean, sometimes it's your artist, your art is very much you and it's really connected to you in artistic inspiration. But there's so many other ways that you can connect it to other groups of people and I love to see that.
Andy Heise:Yeah, yeah. The word that comes to mind there is like authenticity, can you, are, you is what you're proposing. Is it an authentic project? It's not just which is actually leads to. My next question is sort of that tension between, like I'm an artist who does this and there's funding for this over here, you know, and I need some funding. But I'm not really jazzed about it's sort of the tail wagging the dog sort of situation. So I think that that that tension exists that, that that tension exists.
David Holmes:Um, it's so tempting to go for for a grant that all you would have to do is sort of change a basic part of what you do, right, right it's. I mean, I can live with that and I can. You know you start doing that and then I'm like, oh, wait, a minute, the money's over here. I need to change again, right, and I need to be. I think that's a bad situation to get into.
David Holmes:I think people sell their own vision and art short a lot of the time because they see a big pile of money and they think we can get that money when there might be other piles of money that you're not seeing, because you know whoever happens to be the latest.
David Holmes:You know there's giant opportunities available. I'm trying to think of the name of the person who is giving and for some reason I'm blanking on her name giving large grants and she had set out it's like I'm going to give a million dollars to all these different places and so many people wanted to go for that money. I'm like, well, what's going on in your town? You know what are the foundations and you know what funding opportunities are here that maybe don't get a lot of applicants, but you can be who you are and get them. Yeah, I think that's an important thing to know. Yeah, changing who you are, changing the essence of what you believe in for money is it's better if you can explain what you do in a way that they understand it, rather than change who you are to fit what you think they want yeah yeah, that's I.
David Holmes:I I'm always saying don't you know, don't just say well, yeah, I can do that.
Andy Heise:Um, think about whether you can do that yeah, and I that I think about you know, um, a lot of times grant funding is for, particularly in the arts, is for an arts project or program, so we'll give you the funding if you do X or if you do whatever you said you were going to do, um which again, there may be some alignment with how that artist's views success artistically or wants to do or whatever, um. But then there's also sort of these new types of uh, practice based grants that are more focused on supporting practicing artists. Um, I think you you called it unrestricted type of funding, um, so maybe trying to to address some of that, maybe mismatch that exists between how artists see themselves as successful artists and what the existing funding mechanisms are.
David Holmes:Yeah, I mean, I don't think. I think you can be a successful artist without ever getting a grant. I think you can be a successful artist without ever getting any money, but if that's part of what you need, if you what? People are always looking for unrestricted funds and it's always my bad news to say, well, there's not a lot of unrestricted funds out there when they are out there.
David Holmes:You want to pay attention to how you can get them and whether you qualify them for them, but don't sell what you're doing short enough for because you think, well, they are not funding painters today. Yeah Well, what are you painting? Why are you doing it? How are you getting the word out about it? Who is it helping? Who could you partner with that might help get the word out about what you do? I don't ever want to tell an artist and I've had people come up to me. I can remember a guy from one of my classes. He's like yeah, I've tried to get grants before, but they don't understand me. And I'm like, okay, I'm sorry. I mean, you're a good photographer. I've seen your work. It's really really great. I know downstairs in the foundation offices there's a wall with photography by an artist, not that different from what you are doing, not that different from what you're doing, but you be you and you do what you do. I'm just saying that there can be somebody out there that you can match up with.
Nick Petrella:Yeah for sure, there is a misunderstanding.
Andy Heise:The art speaks for itself.
Nick Petrella:Yeah, there you go.
David Holmes:Yeah, well, it's good if you can speak a little bit about it. Tell me too.
Andy Heise:But that goes back to you. Don't know who's going to be reviewing your application. So, assume they know nothing, right.
David Holmes:Assume they knew nothing. Assume that they're like anybody, that they can get inspired. If it inspires you, what is? How were you to say that it won't inspire them Absolutely? Yeah, yeah.
Andy Heise:Well, david, we've reached the point of the interview where we ask all of our interviewees the same three questions and what advice? The first question is what advice would you give to others wanted to become an art entrepreneur? Oh, the first question is what advice?
David Holmes:would you give to others wanted to become an art entrepreneur? Oh wow. My advice would be, I guess, like the collective advice I would give is don't operate in isolation. Talk to as many people as you can. Talk to your local art agencies, people that are working as entrepreneurs in your region, people that are working as entrepreneurs in your region. If you know other working artists, talk to them, especially ones that do the kind of thing that you want to do, you know. Reach out to them and say how'd you get there? You know, what did you do? What are some of the things that helped you?
David Holmes:I think that's to try and think, well, I'm going to do it all myself on this mountain, with no help, is a really dangerous way to do it. Best entrepreneurs that I've seen always think you know, they don't try to make things into things that they aren't, but they try to listen to people that might help them. And the person I'm thinking of that is my ideal as an art entrepreneur. She's always nodding. She's like, yeah, I got to think about that, I got to see what I can do with that, and sometimes she can't do anything with it, but sometimes she can do a lot with it.
Nick Petrella:And she sounds like she tries yeah all the time. What can we do to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience?
David Holmes:to ensure the arts are more accessible and reaching the widest possible audience. It's just, I mean, I think that the arts that I see, the artists that I know, I see them because I'm in a place that I didn't intend. A lot of times I didn't intend to see them. I'll go to an event and in the corner will be this little arts display or I will be talking to somebody and they'll be taking pictures and I'll say, oh, what are you doing? Is the widest possible audience is everybody you might come in contact with. And part of the widest possible audience is right outside the door of your studio, right outside the door of your nonprofit. Those people that live in your neighborhood might be part of your audience. Those people that live that are also doing the things that you're doing, people that are doing similar art. You know they're doing a program. Is there's a play about a certain thing? You know, have you thought about talking to them about this? Because you create art?
David Holmes:I went to see um. There's a non-profit that works, uh, classical guitar society. That did um, they have a guitarist who is working on transcriptions of spirituals, uh, for guitar, and it was a performance that happened inside a theater that was connected to um, one of the schools that had vocal music. I'm like that didn't just come about because one person was thinking, oh, I'm doing this and I don't want to tell anybody about it until it's done. It was about everybody should know about this and I should. We should be able to get the word out about it, and that's. That is the kind of experiment. The more the audience is out there, um, it's not everybody, but it is people connected to people, so okay lastly, what's the best artistic or entrepreneurial advice you've been given?
David Holmes:um, there's a. There's a podcaster and author, elizabeth Wheatley. She writes romance. I don't read anything that she writes. She's a romance novelist fantasy romance. It's really not the thing that I'm interested in reading, but I watch her videos and podcasts and TikToks and whatever.
David Holmes:Because she is very straightforward, because she was a self-created artist. She did all this stuff without a publisher. She put this together as an entrepreneur, and her advice and she may have gotten it from somebody else but that's part of the point is don't listen to everybody. Don't listen to people that are have not been a success in what you're going to do tell you to do something, and that's the only way that you can do it Listen to people and gather different information. Everybody isn't right. Everybody doesn't have all the answers.
David Holmes:I don't know where every single grant is. I don't know what your likelihood. I say you can't get a Gates grant. What do I know? Maybe you can get a Gates grant. Look at it. Make sure that you make the judgment about it. I love that kind of advice, which is you know, don't let people discourage you. That is not what you're going for. Look for the people that encourage you and then you know, trust and verify. You know, listen to it but then go out and see is that really something that I could do? Would it work for me? Would it make my life better? Would it make my art better?
Nick Petrella:Yeah, that's great advice. Well, dave, thanks so much for coming on the podcast. You gave a wealth of information on grants and I'm sure this will be a very popular episode.
David Holmes:Great. Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it. Thanks, Dave.
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