FAQ

Creative Work Fund grants range in amount from $15,000 to $45,000.

It’s in to the grantseeker portal of the Walter and Elise Haas Fund: https://haassr.fluxx.io

Possibly! Please register for an account and tell us about your relocation in the registration form. We’ll contact you to confirm your eligibility.

Complete the artist or the organizational eligibility quiz to request your grantseeker credentials.

We review registrations by hand, so it may take us a business day or two to send your log-in information. If you registered after hours or on weekends it may take us a little longer, but we will be in touch!

Sometimes login credentials sent to your email address end up in junk and spam folders. Be on the lookout, and adjust your sender list so you can receive things from “haassr.org”.

Enter “Lead Artist” in the Title field under Personal Contact Information.

Register anyway. We can associate you with your collaborating organization once you have that information in hand. However, you will need that information before you can complete a letter of inquiry.

Two steps.

1. Talk to your collaborating organization contacts to confirm they already have a grantseeker account with us. If they don’t, they may complete the organizational eligibility quiz to request an account.
2. Once your collaborators have grantseeker accounts, email us with their contact and organization information.

We will connect your account to the collaborating organization and send an update to all.

Request a reminder using your email address.

It is fine for you to participate in both projects as long as you are not the “lead artist” for more than one of them.  However, the Fund tries to support a range of projects and artists; the two projects will be competing against each other; and in a “close call” it might influence a decision.

You don’t need to have the site confirmed though you should identify some options that seem plausible.

Yes. Only one organization may be the applicant entity, but another organization may be involved.

That is fine if it has a local office and staff with whom you can collaborate.

The organization can use a fiscal sponsor. If they choose to do so, the Creative Work Fund will assess the financial stability and organizational reliability of the fiscal sponsor and will evaluate the genuineness of the collaborative partnership between the applying artist and the organization that does not yet have nonprofit status.

We prefer you use the fiscal sponsor affiliated with the collaborating organization. If the project is selected and a grant is awarded, the collaborating organization will be the entity responsible for receiving the funds, paying invoices, and completing financial reports at the project’s completion.

That said, we have accepted the use of a different fiscal sponsor in a few cases. Usually these have been instances where the lead artist collaborated with an organization from outside the arts and that organization’s fiscal sponsor had a specific mission that was not arts-related. (e.g. a fiscal sponsor whose mission is to support grassroots environmental efforts.) Contact us to discuss your situation.

Yes. One member of the group will need to put their name forward as the “lead artist” on behalf of everyone.  For example, Taen Linh Saelee served as lead artist on behalf of the Mien Needlework Group, which collaborated with Asian Community Mental Health Services to create traditional Mien wedding costumes.

Yes. A lead artist may not be an employee or a board member of the organization with which they are collaborating.  However, having occasionally done a project with or volunteered for the organization is fine. If you have questions about your eligibility, contact us.

Use the Summary Budget form that follows the Narrative section of the LOI.

We encourage applicants to summarize their major sources of income and major costs in 8-12 lines. The readers will want to know that the project budget is feasible and that the project partners are planning to spend two-thirds of the funds on artists’ fees and artists’ direct expenses.

Watch this project budget tutorial on Vimeo.

The Fund is inviting artists working in all genres and disciplines to apply for its January 22, 2021 letter of inquiry deadline.

No, the Creative Work Fund does not mind being a project’s only source of support. It also does not mind project budgets that are higher than $45,000 as long as the project partners have reasonable plans for raising the balance of funds needed.

Not necessarily.  Project budgets should be reasonable and well-considered.  It’s just as much of a disadvantage to request a grant that appears to be too low to meet your goals as it would be to request a grant that appears higher than is reasonable to complete your project plan.

Yes, a fiscal sponsor may be part of an unlimited number of projects.

Organizations and artists that received grants in 2017 or earlier are eligible to apply if they have completed their projects and submitted their final reports.

The Fund likely will receive 150 letters of inquiry from which it will invite 45 full proposals. An estimated 15 grants will be awarded.

A minimum of two-thirds of the project budget must be dedicated to paying the artists or covering their direct expenses for creating the work.

A lead artist may substitute a conversation with the Creative Work Fund director (with an interpreter) if that would be a better method of reporting on the project.

Email us or call 415-402-2793.