Answer: Funding for arts organizations of color

A new study about funding in the arts shows that most African American and Latino arts organizations are struggling to get enough funding to keep operational. That struggle has an enormous impact on the range of art performed and exhibited in cities across the nation, and would gravely imperil not only the representation of people of color on the creative side, but also in terms of audience and community engagement with the arts.
The “Diversity in the Arts” report issued recently by the University of Maryland’s DeVos Institute of Arts Management states that Black and Latino arts organizations "are plagued by chronic financial difficulties that place severe limits on what can be produced, how much can be produced, how many artists are trained, and how many people are served.”
In Philadelphia, according to research conducted by the University of Pennsylvania in 2014, 96 percent of foundation art investment is concentrated in Center City, rather than in neighborhoods where more Black, Latino and Asian residents live. “This is absurd and contrasts with the changing demographics of our city, state and nation,” says Allan L. Edmunds, the president of Brandywine Workshop and Archives on Broad Street. “For a vibrant cultural community, foundations should recognize the essential role the small minority art groups play in their communities.”
If there is any recognition, it isn’t reflected philanthropically. “Hispanics in Philanthropy has done extensive analysis of the field of philanthropy,” says Carmen Febo, director of Taller Puertorriqueño (at 5th & Huntingdon), “and consistently has found that as a group, Hispanic non-profits get in the range of 2 percent of philanthropic dollars compared to white organizations.”
Edmunds echoes that: “It has been obvious to me for years that major funders support major cultural institutions to provide programming and outreach efforts to communities of color to grow their audiences, while ignoring the very critical needs of cultural organizations of color. They set up barriers or filters (guidelines) that preclude these organizations, many of which serve underserved communities, from even applying.” 
Further, he adds: “The policies of many foundations do a disservice to the large groups they strongly support by depriving the smaller minority organizations of basic funding to sustain and grow their arts programs and prepare the next generation of artists and audiences to participate in the larger institutions.”
As Edmunds notes, foundations that fund the arts have shown a desire to make the arts more inclusive — both in terms of what is exhibited or performed and the audiences those exhibits and performances draw — but in one of its harshest findings, the study indicates that as larger, more mainstream arts organizations have received funding to produce Black and Latino-themed exhibits and performance, they “siphon away artistic talent, donations and attendance from Black and Latino companies.”
What’s worse, though there is a desire at major arts institutions to draw more diverse audiences (because otherwise they are playing to a dwindling demographic) rarely does that translate into more diverse staffing at these same organizations. Edmunds, again: “Most large institutions tie their long-term audience development strategies to attracting more ethnically diverse attendance ... We need more diversity within large arts institutions, if they are to meet their strategic goals. This can be accomplished through staffing opportunities, internships and an honest engagement with communities of color, sharing their talent and audiences and creating pathways to cooperative programming that don’t specifically fall on Hispanic Heritage Month or Black History Month.”
The challenge of embodying the diversity the organization needs to appeal to isn’t limited to mainstream arts organizations, of course. Mainstream media organizations face it as well (see the recent Philadelphia Magazine lack-of-diversity centered controversy), as do business and urban development boards and policy-setting organisms of government.  It would be a mistake to dismiss concerns about representation in any of these venues as trivial because together they shape the quality of our lives; our history, our present, our future. 
Shape, in this instance, means according diversity a greater value and weight via the money actually invested in securing it.
And in this the “Diversity in Arts” report is particularly damning. The gulf between giving to small arts organizations of color and major arts organizations couldn’t be more stark. For Black and Latino arts organizations the median percentage of donations coming from individuals is a paltry 5 percent compared to 60 percent for bigger mainstream arts organizations.
There is a bit of gentrification going on the way arts organizations are (or are not) funded, and as in actual gentrification of neighborhoods, we sometimes favor the veneer of diversity rather than the deeply-rooted actuality of it.
Philadelphia is justly proud of its grand cultural institutions, and has adroitly placed them at the center of its promotion of itself as a destination city.
But the city and the foundations and individuals that invest in every aspect of the city’s well-being have been slower in realizing that the dynamism and authenticity (and often the innovation) of smaller community arts organizations is not only a draw, but a stay.
Without organizations like the Brandywine Workshop or Taller Puertorriqueño or Raices Culturales (which is, lamentably, closing) or the myriad story slams and pop-up performance events,  the city would be but a veneer of its truly manifold  and diverse self — and what a great loss that would be.