Eighty Portland-based arts organizations will share $4,098,538 in general operating grants for fiscal year 2024-25, the city announced this week. General operating grants are eagerly sought because they help provide necessary money for basic operating expenses rather than specific projects, allowing for flexibility in company budgets.

It’s the first major round of general operating grants since the city’s new Office of Arts & Culture was created in April of 2024. For the most part the new city agency replaces the Regional Arts & Culture Council as the major governmental grantmaker for Portland arts groups.

Awards range from a high of $391,648 for the Oregon Symphony, which performs in the city-owned Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall, to a base level of $21,000 allotted to each of 29 organizations, among them Boom Arts, the Children’s Healing Art Project, En Taiko, the Independent Publishing Resource Center, New Expressive Works, PassinArt: A Theatre Company, Rejoice! Diaspora Dance Theater, and Third Angle New Music.

You can see the full list of awardees and the amounts of their awards here. The arts & culture office has also released this breakdown of allocations, which lists amounts for base awards, investment awards, and special allocations.

Grant money comes from the City of Portland’s general fund and its Arts Access Fund, which gets its money from Portland’s annual $35 arts tax. Among other high-award groups are Portland Center Stage ($350,000), Portland Art Museum ($245,000), Oregon Ballet Theatre ($208,555), Portland Opera ($138,770), and Literary Arts ($94,765).

The grants arrive at a time when Mayor Ted Wheeler has called for all city bureaus except for public safety departments to prepare to slash at least 5 percent from their 2025-26 budgets to meet an expected shortfall. And the announcement of the 2024-25 awards has sparked some controversy among small- and medium-sized organizations, several of which averred that grant amounts were weighted disproportionately to a small number of large arts groups.

Blake Shell of the visual and performing arts center Oregon Contemporary, in North Portland’s Kenton neighborhood, sent a message to city arts staff and overseeing City Commissioner Dan Ryan.

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“I’m writing to express concern for the arts here,” she wrote in part. “Oregon Contemporary is receiving a significant (to us) reduction in funding from the city. This is after a promise that the city canceling its contract with RACC would be better for us all as RACC was inflated in their own operating costs. …

“I understand that the larger organizations have large needs. But we have been asking about how the changes from RACC would shift the focus away from equity and ultimately hurt smaller orgs since the announcement that Portland was separating from RACC. …

“A few notes of my main concerns here:

“The implication is that budget size now matters more than data-driven equity reporting. When the Equity portion of General Operating was broken out in the past, the largest orgs received 13.5% of their funding based on equity reporting while smaller orgs received 31.0% of their funding based on equity reporting. The Equity portion of General Operating funding for these has not been for new areas of growth, it has been to help orgs who are doing much of this work regularly stay open, accessible, diverse, and equitable. 

“45 orgs received $414K+ less total out of 80 orgs total, many of them rely on this funding to exist. 

“There was $450K more in funding to go to orgs, but even more than that went to the top orgs which went from receiving 20% of the overall funding to 33%.”

Josh Hecht, artistic director of Profile Theatre, voiced similar concerns, declaring that Profile’s grant in the new, city-operated round is “significantly less than we have received from RACC in any of the seven years I’ve been at the helm of Profile Theatre — and by a good $10,000 or more.”

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City staff responded that, in essence, the granting mechanism is a work in progress following the city’s takeover from RACC. Jeff Hawthorne, the Office of Arts & Culture’s grants program manager, responded to Profile’s Hecht that “Profile and a handful of other groups are receiving less because RACC awarded you a disproportionatly high Investment Award last year. … Investment Awards are not entitlements and you shouldn’t plan on them — the amount of funding available, and the way that funding gets distributed, is subject to change every year. … Also, the City’s arts budget … took a small cut this year, so that ate up some of the funds we hoped to have.”

In late August Hawthorne sent a note to arts groups that said in part: “As you know, in the past, RACC offered ‘Investment Awards’ to [General Operating Support] organizations to support a variety of initiatives that aligned with RACC’s core values, including advocacy programs, equity work, and developing artistic leadership within an arts organization. Going forward the City will distribute funds to GOS partners that can demonstrate alignment with the original ballot measure language that was used when voters approved the arts tax: ‘Funds will be awarded as grants to non-profit organizations and schools to provide high-quality arts access to K-12 students, and to make arts and culture experiences available to underserved communities.’”  

And in a response to Oregon Contemporary’s Shell, the city arts program’s Darion Jones and Chariti L. Montez made a distinction between general operating support grants, which “have remained constant over time,” and investment awards, which “can vary significantly each year.”

“Ultimately, this year, we removed barriers to accessing the investment awards,” they continued, “allowing us to distribute more funds to more organizations — including some that had not received investment funds previously. This is a year of transition, and the Office of Arts & Culture will convene all General Operating Support organizations before the end of the year to discuss funding and resources in more detail.

“We also want to clarify that the city remains committed to supporting the arts ecosystem — from individual artists and creatives to small, medium, and large arts organizations alike. … While we’ve worked to insulate the arts community amid City budget reductions, we recognize the financial challenges that many arts organizations face and will continue to face. Moving forward, we will strive to secure additional funding, prioritize strategic investments, and support initiatives that advance the arts in alignment with Our Creative Future,” the regional plan to promote and advance arts and cultural efforts.

While there is a push to promote and expand generally smaller cultural groups in the city’s neighborhoods, many people inside and outside of city government also believe that the draw of strong and healthy major arts and cultural organizations is among the keys to the revival of Portland’s downtown, which has been struggling to come back from pandemic shutdowns, the effects of political protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, the flight of office workers from the city core, and drug and houseless epidemics.

That may account in part for the city’s emphasis on supporting the large downtown cultural groups. As the Office of Arts & Culture’s Jones and Montez note, this year’s awards include one-time rental subsidies to groups that perform in the Portland’5 Centers for the Arts, which have significantly raised their rates. Eleven groups are receiving subsidies, ranging from $1,360 for PDX Jazz to $146,648 for the Oregon Symphony. In addition, Portland Center Stage received a special allocation of $250,000 at Mayor Wheeler’s direction.

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Bob Hicks

Bob Hicks has been covering arts and culture in the Pacific Northwest since 1978, including 25 years at The Oregonian. Among his art books are Kazuyuki Ohtsu; James B. Thompson: Fragments in Time; and Beth Van Hoesen: Fauna and Flora. His work has appeared in American Theatre, Biblio, Professional Artist, Northwest Passage, Art Scatter, and elsewhere. He also writes the daily art-history series "Today I Am."