Portland Arts Project Grant

RACC will accept applications from individual artists, arts organizations, arts or other businesses, or other nonprofit organizations who are working on art projects. We will accept applications to this grant from schools. You must be headquartered/legally residing in the City of Portland service area: https://portlandmaps.com. General Operating Support arts organizations and arts students are not eligible. Applicants with a current open grant with RACC can fill out an application, but their Final Report must be submitted in order to be awarded a new grant. Further eligibility is outlined in the guidelines.

No, Clackamas County, Washington County, and East Multnomah County residents and organizations headquartered in those counties are not eligible due to lack of available funds. This program is only for the City of Portland.

No. IRS 501(c)3 status is NOT required. However, if you are applying as an organization or a business, please verify in your Applicant Eligibility Profile how you are organized and be prepared to provide a Federal Employer Identification Number (FEIN). RACC makes grant awards to nonprofits, Limited Liability Companies (LLC), partnerships, and other legally organized entities, in addition to individuals.

Individual artists are welcome to create an account and apply on behalf of a collective or organized project that does not have its own FEIN. The applicant artist would write about the work of the collective and the collaborators within the application, but accept the grant funds as income to their Social Security Number and be responsible for the administration.

Applicants with open RACC grants, including Project, Make|Learn|Build, or Arts3C grants, are not eligible until your activity and reporting on past grants is complete. If final reports on open grants are not submitted by the completion of the Portland Arts Project Grant panel process by the end of December, the applicant will not receive a new award (with the exception of FY25 Professional Development grantees with spring 2026 activities.)

No. You may apply to be a Community Reviewer, if that role interests you. If you are hired as a Community Reviewer, you will not be eligible to apply for your own grant while under contract. If you are not hired, you are welcome to apply with your own grant proposal in a future cycle, and if you are hired as a Community Reviewer, you will be eligible for future RACC grant opportunities after your contract is complete. If you have an open grant with RACC, you are welcome to apply to be a Community Panel Reviewer.

No. For this Portland Arts Project Grant cycle, if you receive a grant, it will be for the full amount that you have requested.

Yes, if you have completed the previously funded activity or phase, finished all your required reporting, you are welcome to apply for a RACC grant for the next phase.

Yes, the applicant/grantee must legally reside or be headquartered in the City of Portland service area: https://portlandmaps.com, but you can hire or work with artists, vendors, or other contributors from all over.

For many artistic projects or disciplines, this is the final presentation of the artwork with an audience or community. This can a formal performance, screening, exhibition, or other way to share the work with an audience. Some projects engage with community as participants, such as students or arts learners, and the public engagement would be the ongoing work with community without the need for a formal final presentation. Public engagement can be a plan to share work through online or digital means, but the plan for distribution should be specific.

The applicant will define the start date and end date of their proposed opportunity. The end date should be after the grant award announcements are planned as noted in the guidelines and on the RACC website. The award announcement date is essentially the beginning of the grant award cycle.

If you receive a grant, you will receive the full amount after you submit your Grant Agreement and financial documentation. You need to claim the funds within one year of the award, or the grant will be forfeit.

There is no requirement for using the claimed grant funds within a calendar year or any specific time period, as long as you stay in communication with RACC. You should submit your Final Report when the activity is complete. We recommend that you submit your report within 45 days of finishing your activity, but there is no deadline for your activity or end of a “grant cycle”. Instead, please keep in mind that you will be issued a 1099-NEC at the end of the calendar year in which you claim the grant funds, so keep track of your expenses for tax purposes and note that you will not be eligible for future grant awards until your activity is complete and your Final Report is submitted.

You can submit one application in a grant cycle. If you receive a Portland Arts Project Grant, you will not be able to apply again within a year. One grant per year per applicant. If you are not selected for a grant, you are welcome to apply for the same or different activity in a future cycle. There is no limit to the number of times you can apply for a RACC grant. Starting Fall 2024, there will be only be one grant cycle annually.

The upcoming grant cycle will open on July 16, 2025, with applications due on September 24, 2025 by 5pm PST. This cycle is to fund activities starting in January 2026. The next possible grant cycle will not open until Fall 2026.

You can mark as many Request Categories to “tag” your application for consideration in different groups for paneling. This includes both discipline specific elements of a proposal and general categories. For example, a Media Arts Film/Video proposal would select either Live Screening or Digital Distribution, or all multiple request tags if they are all part of the proposal. These will be used to group applications into panels that address the same elements in their proposals, so select the categories that represent your work and connect with your proposal. The more categories that you select, the less likely you will be grouped with the applications that make the most sense.

Yes. The Working Title for a project can change in the future. If your grant request is for an opportunity or investment without a title, please title your request with the activity itself.

RACC Team members will pre-record a Grant Info Session in mid-August 2025 and post to YouTube with a link from the Grant web page. Frequently Asked Questions will be addressed on the web page as well. Project Budget Office Hour work sessions and an Instagram Live will be held in September. The RACC Grants Team can read a draft of your application and provide feedback. This service is provided on a first-come/first-served basis and offered to first-time applicants and/or those who have not received funding from RACC in the past. If you have received a RACC grant in the last three years, please allow others the opportunity for a Draft Review. Please prepare your narrative and budget in the RACC Opportunity Portal, save a draft, and then email grants@racc.org to request a time. We will review the draft you have saved online and schedule a time to provide feedback over the phone. Your draft application and the draft request email must be received no later than the TUESDAY of the week PRIOR to the deadline (September 16th by midnight) to allow time to prepare and schedule feedback. Late requests cannot be accommodated due to the volume and limited staffing.

Contact us at grants@racc.org with your specific questions about the application or the process, or to request Technical Support for the RACC Opportunity Portal, Translation Services and Language Support, Accessibility and ADA accommodation requests.

Technology has glitches. If you notice anything acting differently than expected, please first check to make sure you are using a compatible browser that is up to date (Chrome is preferred, Firefox and MS Edge work smoothly, Safari and Internet Explorer are not supported). Next, make sure that you are using the correct account and your Applicant Profile is up-to-date. Not every grant program is open to all applicants based on criteria you have entered in your profile, and many applicants have inadvertently created more than one account, as well. Finally, make sure you have submitted all Final Reports for past grants. If you haven’t found a user error, send us an email at grants@racc.org and we’ll try to sort out the issue for you and other users.

This year, the City’s Office of Arts and Culture is partnering with three local arts service providers – Friends of IFCC, MusicOregon, and RACC – to award $1,360,000 in small grants to artists and organizations. Grantseekers may apply to more than one of the city’s arts service providers, but may not receive more than $5,000 total from all three partners combined in 2025-26. For more information, visit portland.gov/arts-grants