ARTS & CULTURE

BACKGROUND

Healthy communities have vital arts and culture. Piper Trust's history of giving to Arts & Culture recognizes national and local trends. Nationwide, traditional audiences are aging and declining in number; new audiences must be identified and recruited. Locally, Phoenix has a young arts environment, and arts and culture organizations are notably underfunded compared to other major metropolitan areas.

STRATEGY

The Trust developed its key grantmaking strategies to assist arts and culture organizations in becoming stronger. The Trust does not underwrite individual performances or events, and does not make artistic judgments in deciding which organizations to fund. The Trust supports both well-established arts and culture organizations and smaller, community-based groups.

Strength through building organizations. Piper Trust focuses on developing arts and culture organizations by improving financial stability, marketing, planning and leadership.

1. Financial capacity through cash operating reserves, marketing to increase visibility and sales, fundraising efforts and endowments.
2. Enhanced business operations through grants for business and strategic planning, technology, training and management development.
3. Capital project grants.

Strength through collaboration. The Trust works to form specific initiatives to foster collaboration among arts and culture organizations as a way to promote efficiency and crossfertilization. Through funder collaboration, the Trust has sponsored significant research to measure the impact of arts and culture on the community and has provided funding for a major initiative, Maricopa Partnership for Arts and Culture, designed to advance arts and culture in the greater Phoenix community. Another Piper Trust initiative, Alliance for Audience, addresses collaborative arts marketing.

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