For Grantseekers

Thank you for your interest in the Hewlett Foundation Performing Arts Program. The focus of the Performing Arts Program's funding is multiyear general operating support. Consequently, most of our funds each year are awarded to renewal applicants and only a small portion is available to fund organizations not already in our portfolio.

The Performing Arts program is no longer accepting unsolicited letters of inquiry at this time.

We are very interested in learning about the great work that every member of the Bay Area's performing arts community is doing and welcome notices of performances and programs at:

Performing Arts Program
William & Flora Hewlett Foundation
2121 Sand Hill Road
Menlo Park, CA 94025
Or email to: performingarts@hewlett.org

We recognize that these are tough economic times and that performing arts organizations are particularly affected. We encourage Bay Area performing arts grantseekers to explore funding opportunities provided by the following intermediaries and regranters with whom we partner:

CA$H Grants - A program of Theatre Bay Area, in partnership with Dancers' Group. CA$H is a grants program designed by artists for artists to support professionally oriented theatre and dance artists and small companies with budgets under $100,000. Its purpose is to spark a creative surge throughout Northern California's theatre and dance community by providing grants to artists ($2,500) and small-sized organizations ($5,000). Funding decisions are made by a rotating five-member panel.

Creative Work Fund - projects feature one or more artists collaborating with nonprofit 501 (c)(3) nonprofit organizations.  The Fund encourages the artists and organizations to "come together" for the sake of this collaboration. The Fund encourages artists to collaborate with nonprofit organizations of all kinds.  The principal collaborating artists must live in Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Monterey, Napa, San Francisco, San Joaquin, San Mateo, Santa Cruz, Solano, Sonoma, or Stanislaus County and have lived there for at least two years.  Collaborating organizations also must be based in one of the 12 counties.

Zellerbach Family Foundation Community Arts Grants - Non-profit community arts organizations doing their work in San Francisco, Contra Costa, and Alameda counties, representing the fields of dance, theater, visual arts, music, festivals, poetry, literature, and publications are eligible to apply. The Community Arts program supports mainly performance-oriented requests that represent contemporary, cutting-edge new work. 

Wallace Alexander Gerbode Performing Arts Collaboration Initiative  - The Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation and The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation award $75,000 grants for the creation and production of major contemporary dance compositions by California choreographers, in collaboration with other artists. These works are to be commissioned and premiered by nonprofit Bay Area arts presenting organizations. Each grant will be divided into three parts: $25,000 will go to a California- based choreographer; $25,000will go to another California-based artist (choreographer, composer, playwright, digital media artist, filmmaker, designer or other) who will be a key collaborator on the project; and the remaining $25,000 will go to the presenting organization for expenses related to the creation and world premiere of new compositions either a full-length dance work, or a suite of shorter dances.

Horizons Foundation Community Issues Grants - This program makes Arts and Culture Awards to nonprofit and fiscally sponsored organizations in the following counties: Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma. LGBT organizations are strongly urged to apply for general operating support and non-LGBT organizations are welcome to apply for support for a specific project serving LGBT people. The maximum grant award is $10,000.

The Musical Grant Program is a new initiative designed by the San Francisco Friends of Chamber Music to support outstanding projects of San Francisco Bay Area professional chamber music ensembles, presenters, and individuals with chamber music projects. The program will award grants through a competitive process to creative, well-conceived projects that seek to further the artistic, educational, and administrative goals of this constituency. The program is open to applicants with budgets that do not exceed $100,000 and applicants must reside and/or work in the nine counties of the Greater San Francisco Bay Area (Alameda, Contra Costa, Marin, Napa, San Francisco, San Mateo, Santa Clara, Solano, Sonoma). Grants will be offered up to $3,000.

The Living Cultures Grants Program is a funding program of the Alliance for California Traditional Arts for for California non-profit organizations to support exemplary projects in the traditional arts. Grant awards are generally limited to $5,000 or less. A small number of grants of up to $7,500 will be awarded to projects that demonstrate significant impact on a particular cultural tradition.

The Investing in Artists grants program, administered by the Center for Cultural Innovation, is designed to enhance the working lives and creative environment for California artists by funding tools and market strategies that will allow them to create their best work more consistently, and distribute that work more broadly to new audiences.  Grants of up to $15,000 are made to individual artists in California for the acquisition of arts equipment and materials or towards presentation and marketing of their creative work.

Forging an innovative collaborative effort between Bay Area Community Foundations, individual donors, and the Irvine, Hewlett, Surdna, and Ford Foundations, the Fund for Artists supports the endeavors of individual artists through commissions, artists' residencies, awards, advocacy, workshops, promotional instruction, and networking support.  The San Francisco Foundation and the East Bay Community Foundation, partners in administering the program, strongly believe in the importance and value of our local artists and their work and are dedicated to giving a voice to artists within our community.  The Fund for Artists gives awards, ranging in size from $1,500 to $15,000, to outstanding individual composers, choreographers, visual artists, and playwrights.

Arts Council SiliconValley supports the Silicon Valley arts community through a number of different grant opportunities and programs, including the Community Arts Fund, which provides project support for arts activities reflective of our multicultural region, with an emphasis on encouraging small, community-based, volunteer-driven organizations. It provides grants to a maximum of $4,000 to organizations with total expenses of $8,000 to $100,000 in the last completed fiscal year.  The Regional Arts Fund provides general operating support for the administrative and artistic development of arts organizations with emphasis on encouraging professional and semi-professional groups; grants range to a maximum of $5,500, $9,000 or $10,000 depending on the size of the organization.

Cultural Council of Santa Cruz County provides General Support (award amounts to be decided) and Project Support (awards between $1,0000 and $3,000) grants to organizations and artists headquartered and doing the majority of their work within Santa Cruz County in order to support the creation and presentation of artistically excellent, creative and culturally significant work;  to proportionally fund a broad and culturally diverse range of arts organizations and individual artists based in Santa Cruz County and to fund arts organizations and individual artists based on their artistic excellence, service to the community and administrative competence.