Federal U.S. Public Arts Funding in the Time of Covid-19

• In Event: The Many Functions of Government

Abstract

Very few studies have examined the link between public funding for the arts and programming at U.S. arts nonprofit organizations. This paucity extends to the literature on the COVID-19 pandemic, which has focused on the industry as whole or the health and human services sectors over the last few years. As part of the Coronavirus Aid, Relief and Economic Security (CARES) Act of 2020, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) awarded competitive stimulus grants to arts nonprofit organizations to recover and/or stabilize their programming capacities; however, no research studies have assessed the impact of this funding. Using recently available panel data from 990 forms from 2019–2021 that nonprofit organizations submitted to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and NEA CARES grant information, I compiled a sample of 58,871 observations. Through linear regression, I examined the relationship between the receipt of CARES Act grants from the NEA and earned income, number of employees, and number of volunteers, all of which I used as variable proxies for programming data because 990 forms do not have other ways to measure consistently program consumption by the public. I found no evidence to support an association between grant receipt and earned income but very statistically significant evidence of a link between total numbers of employees and volunteers and grant receipt. This research constitutes the first analysis of the CARES Act grants on arts nonprofit organizations and encourages new avenues of connection between public funding and programming indicators.

Author

• Brandy Moriah Wicker, University of Texas, Dallas
  Presenting Author