Georgia arts advocates mobilize in response to multiple budget blows

“The time is urgent,” Muhammad said. In June, federal COVID relief funds for the arts will be exhausted. For the last three years, American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) funds have accounted for roughly 60% of grant funds available to Georgia nonprofit arts organizations through the Georgia Council for the Arts (GCA), inflating the GCA’s grant pool by about $3 million per year for three years.

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

Credit: Jason Getz/AJC

Georgia Council for the Arts is the government organization, under the Department of Economic Development, responsible for distributing grants to arts organizations and arts projects across Georgia’s 159 counties. It gets its grant fund pool from three main sources: the federal government via the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), the state government as appropriated by the state budget and, for the past three years, COVID relief funds from the ARPA.

In FY2025, for example, the state of Georgia provided $976,356 to the GCA for arts grants (plus $610,794 for operating expenses); the NEA provided $1,029,425 and ARPA paid $3,016,284. As a result, the council was able to award $4.9 million to Georgia arts organizations and arts projects. Without COVID relief funds, the council’s grant pool will be $3 million less and dependent only on state appropriations and federal funds from the NEA.

Given the current federal political climate, many arts advocates fear the NEA money could also be at risk, or more highly regulated based on President Donald Trump’s agenda. The NEA also requires a state’s one-to-one investment. If a state decreases its funding, the NEA may also adjust its appropriations. The NEA proposed contribution to the Georgia Council for the Arts for fiscal year 2026 is $1,635,756, an increase from the previous year’s allocation of $1,029,425, but that federal money may face review by the cost-cutting Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

When it comes to per capita state funding for the arts, Georgia ranks low in the nation, according to the FY2025 report by the National Assembly of States Arts Agencies. It states Georgia spends 14 cents per capita on arts funding. This places Georgia drastically lower in per capita spending compared to nearby red states such as Mississippi at $3.38 per capita, South Carolina at $2.24, Tennessee at $2.22, Alabama at $1.58, and Florida at $1.31. When compared to blue states, the difference is even more drastic. Hawaii appropriates $11.10 per capita in state arts funding.

But according to Marie Gordon, executive director of communications for the Georgia Department of Economic Development, comparing states may not be fair because one state may include arts education or a state art museum in their arts funding budget, while other states might group those costs in another department.

“It isn’t apples to apples,” she said.

Regardless, said Rachel Ciprotti, former executive director of the Atlanta Chamber Orchestra who has served on the boards of arts advocacy groups in multiple states, “Georgia’s current state funding for the arts is, quite frankly, embarrassing. The people of Georgia deserve better access to culture.”

How Georgia got here

Before the recession took its toll on the economy and prompted reactive budget cuts, the state gave more to the arts. In FY2008, the state budgeted $4.1 million, and in FY2009, $3.9 million to the arts. In FY2010, the number was reduced to $2.32 million. In FY2011, it reduced again to $759,106. From FY2012 to FY2015, the budget ducked under $600,000.

“Many other states that saw budget cuts following the recession have, over time, restored their arts funding to prerecession levels. Georgia has not,” said Muhammed.

Now, 15 years postrecession, the state funds slated for the Georgia Council for the Arts are still less than half what they were in FY2008. The proposed budget for FY2026 includes $976,356 for grants and $610,794 for the council’s operating budget; a total of just over $1.5 million.

Muhammad and arts advocates who took to the Capitol last month had one primary request, and two smaller ones. The primary one, which she called “emergency triage,” was to increase the state arts budget by $3 million to replace the lost COVID relief funds and restore support to prerecession levels.

“Now more than ever, we need the Georgia arts community to support this addition to sustain state-level funding,” Muhammad said at the time.

Since then, on Monday March 10, subcommittees presented their FY2026 budget proposal to the Georgia House Appropriations Committee. It did not include any increase to the GCA budget.

The second request was to revive House Bill 1265, which, when it was proposed in February 2024, would have added Georgia Council for the Arts as a voluntary contribution option when Georgians file their tax refunds had it not died in committee after its second reading in the house. Right now, Georgians can voluntarily donate to other funds, such as the Georgia National Guard Foundation or Dog and Cat Sterilization Fund.

The last ask concerned license plates. Right now, when organizations get special license plates to support their causes, there are three tiers. For each sale of a license plate, the organization receives either $10, $19 or $22. The amount depends on which tier the organization is assigned. Arts advocates want the Georgia Legislature to consider the $22 giveback per license plate purchased, rather than the $10 that was initially codified in 2014.

County budget cuts

Regional arts organizations in Fulton County suffered a second blow in January when the county decreased its arts funding by 56%.

At a Jan. 29 meeting, the Fulton County Board of Commissioners voted 3 to 2 to approve the 2025 county budget, which did not include a $1.7 million enhancement for the arts as it did last year. The money available for arts grants from the county shrunk from $3 million, to $1.3 million.

County Commissioners Dana Barrett and Marvin Arrington Jr. pushed the commission to reconsider the $1.7 million enhancement. At the following commission meeting, they filed a resolution to get the matter back on the agenda.

“Atlanta is a destination for arts and culture events. People come here from all over for the music, the museums, the festivals,” Barrett said in a statement. “It would be devastating to see parts of this vibrant community disappear because we couldn’t be the funding partner they’ve come to depend on.”

About two dozen citizens supporting arts organizations came to the meeting, some taking the podium during the public comment period.

Muhammad spoke, as did Conrhonda E. Baker, a program officer for the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta; Chris Moses, artistic director of the Alliance Theatre; and Christopher Escobar, executive director of the Atlanta Film Society and owner of the Plaza and Tara theaters. Each of them, in their own ways, urged commissioners not to think about the arts as a cost but rather a smart investment with measurable returns.

Credit: Greg Mooney

Credit: Greg Mooney

According to an economic impact study created by Americans for the Arts in partnership with local entities such as Georgians for the Arts and the Atlanta Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs, the arts are an economic driver. In Georgia, the arts combined with related spending by their audiences contributed more than $49 million in city, county and state tax revenue in FY2022. In Atlanta alone, the study found the arts and related audience expenditures contributed $28.7 million in city, county and tax revenue.

“Reducing investment in the arts guarantees a decline in tax revenue, which will only increase the financial pressure in the long term,” Baker said at the Feb. 5 Fulton County Commission meeting. “It is fiscally responsible to maximize revenue generating investments.”

Moses focused on a different kind of positive return.

“I want to talk about the return on investment in impact on young people in our community,” he said. “We no longer have to guess what the outcomes are. We have commissioned study after study … about what happens when a young person experiences theater … it is unassailable that the impact is real and long-lasting.”

One of the challenges in talking to elected officials, Escobar expressed in an interview, is that creatives tend to lead with their hearts instead of their heads.

“All of us who are in the nonprofit art space do it because it’s in our hearts and we’re passionate about it, but the truth is that’s not how change gets done,” he said. “It gets done because at the end of the day, public elected officials need to reconcile a budget … we need to make cases that are more about how we stimulate the economy.”

In the end, the Fulton County Commission again voted 3 to 2 to not reinstate the $1.7 million enhancement. The reason commissioners gave for voting no was the impending and unpredictable costs to fix the Fulton County Jail, as demanded by a federal judge following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

“While we have life and death issues to deal with in our jail that will require significant funding, we cannot afford to stop investing in our communities and in our future. Arts and culture play a huge part in that,” Barrett said in a statement.

The commission noted it may reconsider the enhancements at a later date, but Laura Hennighausen, director of strategic philanthropy for Purpose Possible, a consulting firm that focuses on nonprofits and funders, said by then it might be too late for some metro Atlanta organizations that are on the brink.

Metro Atlanta arts funding research

Hennighausen is a part-time project manager for Arts Capital, a coalition of arts organizations focused on arts funding issues that formed in response to the 2023 closure of the 42-year-old Cobb County-based Atlanta Lyric Theatre. She helped spearhead a survey of 173 out of 210 nonprofits in 11 metro Atlanta counties to determine how much money it would take to stabilize existing metro Atlanta arts nonprofits, then strategize solutions.

The results determined it currently takes $92 million to operate metro Atlanta arts organizations. The total pool of public grants available is $5.7 million based on current proposals from Georgia Council for the Arts, Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund, Fulton County Arts & Culture and City of Atlanta Office of Cultural Affairs. The $86.3 million difference is funded through earned income, including ticket sales, entrance fees, memberships and subscriptions; foundation grants; and individual donors.

Hennighausen noted that corporate donors are not a primary source of arts funding in Atlanta except for the Woodruff Arts Center, home to three of the metro area’s largest arts entities ― Atlanta Symphony Orchestra, Alliance Theatre, High Museum of Art.

From the organizations surveyed, more than 20% rely on government funds as their largest source of income. Their ability to survive government funding cuts is bleak considering 40% currently had zero operating reserves, while another 40% had reserves of less than six months.

Arts Capital set its fundraising goal at $100 million with the aim of giving organizations six months of operating reserves to survive.

“Solutions need to come fast or many of these organizations could cease to exist,” Hennighausen said.

Part of the solution, she said, could be the creation of an easy, centralized way for individuals or entities to give to the arts broadly. Right now, arts supporters can donate to individual arts organizations, become members or subscribers of arts organizations, or give to private foundations that control how funds are distributed and oftentimes have criteria that disqualify smaller arts nonprofits.

Arts Capital is exploring new models for giving. The coalition has talked with several foundations that could potentially partner with Arts Capital to provide safe, tax-incentivized avenues for donors or corporations to give to the Arts Capital grant pool. Arts Capital would then have a stake in how the pool is distributed. The coalition has drafted a strategy to distribute grants based on the percentage of a nonprofit’s operating budget, and it would give the highest percentage to small organizations that don’t qualify for other grants.

“[The foundations] are very much a part of us investigating what this model might look like and how it would work,” Henninghausen said.

Whether it’s in the U.S. Capitol, the state Capitol, the Fulton County Commission or anywhere else, Muhammad said, organizing advocates for the arts is critical.

Ciprotti, who sat on the board of Georgia Arts Network (the arts advocacy organization that predated Georgians for the Arts) from 2011 to 2016, agreed. Before she returned to her home state of Georgia from Maryland, she served as advocacy coordinator at Maryland Citizens for the Arts, that state’s equivalent to Georgians for the Arts. When she was working there, she was one of two full-time and one part-time staff dedicated to pushing for arts funding.

When she joined the board of Georgia Arts Network, which dissolved in 2019, the organization had no paid staff and was made up of only volunteers. This was likewise true for Georgians for the Arts up until 2023 when a grant from the Zeist Foundation finally made a salary possible for a single staff member, Muhammad.

“Historically, the lack of a stable or robust arts advocacy arm compared to other states may be part of Georgia’s challenge,” Ciprotti said. “With public funds being a competitive arena, having an advocacy arm to remind legislators that the arts provide a solid return on investment is important.”

A previous edition of this article misidentified the legislative status of House Bill 1265.