IMPORTANT DATES

  • Application Available: October 2, 2024: APPLY HERE
  • Application Deadline: October 30, 2024
  • Panel Review: November 2024
  • Grant Award Notification: November – December 2024

Grants Program
The San Mateo County Office of Arts and Culture and its Arts Commission is pleased to announce our 2025 Grants Program. The streamlined grant opportunity will provide general support funding for eligible arts and culture nonprofit organizations located in or serving San Mateo County. This funding provides grantees with the flexibility to use the funds in the most applicable way for their individual organization, and for greatest impact on overall organizational health and sustainability. We look to you as our partners in our important work of growing our arts and culture eco-system to create a vital, creative, and healthy community.

To continue equitable and trust-based grantmaking practices, it is essential to maintain a respectful relationship between the Office of Arts and Culture, the Arts Commission, and grantees, past and future. To do this, we will:

  • Embrace engaging diverse, inclusive, and equitable perspectives and community voices that provide significant, relevant, and collaborative conversation and actions.
  • Require clarity, responsiveness, and transparency from both parties.
  • Provide a streamlined online application and reporting system that is efficient, accessible, and user-friendly.
  • Engage an expert panel of peer readers representative of the diversity of the County to review the applications along with Office of Arts and Culture staff and recommended funding priorities to the Arts Commissioners.

General support funds may be used by the organization as needed to support the organization’s overhead, salaries, or other needs.

Eligibility

  1. Must be an arts or cultural organizations located in or serving residents in San Mateo County
  2. Must be a 501(c)(3) nonprofit or fiscally sponsored organization in good standing with the Internal Revenue Service or a local public agency/entity.
  3. Must have been in operation for 1+ years.
  4. Must have a budget under $1,000,000

Review Criteria
Requests for grant funds are reviewed based on evidence organizations’ ability to:

  • Celebrate the arts and culture through programs that reflect the diverse needs and communities of the County.
  • Present effective arts and culture programs/services in San Mateo County, including programs that are accessible and inviting to BIPOC and low-income communities.
  • Articulate a clear vision and plan for success and sustainability.
  • Embrace diversity, equity, and inclusion in the organization’s staff, board, and communities served.
  • Demonstrate the organization is well-managed, effective, and financially viable.
  • Establish impactful goals and appropriate evaluation methods.
  • Partner/collaborate with others for community benefit and organizational efficiency.
  • Attract/secure diverse board members that are engaged and contribute financially.

What We Do Not Fund

  • Individuals, individual artists, scholarships or fellowships.
  • Organizations that discriminate with regards to employees, volunteers, delivery of programs/services or clients served based on age, sex, religion/creed, race, ethnicity, gender identity, disability, marital status, military or veterans’ status, or socioeconomic status.
  • Any organization that is not consistent with the mission, values, and strategic framework of the San Mateo County Arts Commission.
  • Capital expenditures including construction projects; purchase of land and buildings, equipment, or debt repayment
  • Trusts, endowment funds or investments
  • Activities with a political or religious purpose or lobbying activities

Review Process
The streamlined process ensures potential grantees’ eligibility before beginning the application and only fully completed applications may be submitted through the application. The Peer Review Panel will use rubrics that reflect the San Mateo County’s and its Arts Commission’s equity policies to review and rank applications for funding. The Arts Commissioners will review the panel’s recommendations and award grants accordingly. Decisions of the Arts Commission are final.

San Mateo County Arts Commissioners who have professional or volunteer affiliations with any organizations that apply for grants from the Commission will excuse themselves from any deliberation concerning these grants.

Please direct any grant related questions, to Mara Grimes, OAC Administrator-Manager mgrimes@smcgov.org

Online application live, October 2, 2024: APPLY HERE
We will not be providing a grants workshop this year. The 2023 recording of the workshop is available below and we will offer 30-minute office hour appointments for those organizations that have questions and/or need additional assistance. 

View the 2023 grants workshop recording: https://youtu.be/uwu6U3IEdlw

See the list of grants. 2023 Grantees