Fry Foundation: Arts Learning Grants

The Lloyd A. Fry Foundation offers Arts Learning Grants aimed at enhancing educational opportunities for low-income children and youth in Chicago through the arts. The foundation prioritizes programs that demonstrate effective services, innovative approaches, and efforts to improve arts education quality in public schools. By fostering creativity and engagement, these grants aim to enrich learning experiences and provide valuable resources to educators and students alike.

NOTE: Before you dedicate time to generate a large application, a letter of inquiry allows us to give you preliminary feedback concerning your request and its potential fit within our funding priorities. Please allow our program officers 30 days to respond to letters of inquiry.
Program focus & areas
The Fry Foundation funds grants in three primary areas—arts learning, education, and employment—because these sectors align with our goals of improving the quality of life for individuals and communities.
Improving access to high-quality arts learning experiences for low-income youth
The Fry Foundation’s Arts Learning funding focuses on programs that improve access to high-quality arts learning experiences for low-income youth in Chicago Public Schools (CPS).
What we fund
Our funding focuses on:
Student Arts Instruction: The Foundation invests in programs that provide students with access to high-quality arts instruction, performance or exhibition experiences, and exposure to the high-quality artistic products offered by Chicago’s rich and diverse arts and cultural organizations. The program seeks to provide low-income students in the city of Chicago with access to high-quality instruction taught by trained art instructors. The Fry Foundation invests in programs that help build student skills and knowledge in a variety of artistic disciplines and uses the arts to nurture students' ability to solve complex problems and assess their own work.
Teacher Professional Learning: We fund programs that build and improve the skills of Chicago public school arts teachers, Chicago public school classroom teachers, and teaching artists to more effectively provide arts instruction to students.In arts education for students, we give priority to programs that provide a combination of arts instruction, performance or exhibition experience, and exposure to the high quality artistic products offered by Chicago’s rich and diverse arts and cultural organizations. We look for programs that are artistically rigorous, engage students in the creative process, and assess student learning in the arts.

Eligibility

We focus on 501(c)3 organizations based in ChicagoWe make grants only to tax-exempt organizations and rarely fund organizations outside Chicago.

Ineligibility

What The Foundation Does Not Fund:In general, the Foundation does not make grants to individuals, government entities, or 509a3 supporting organizations, although exceptions are sometimes made for publicly supported charities.We also do not provide funding for: general operating expenses for new grantees; capital projects; endowments; fundraising events; political activities; medical research; or religious purposes.We rarely fund unsolicited applications from organizations based outside Chicago. When exceptions are made, we look for organizations with strong local board leaders who are responsible for establishing program priorities and policies in Chicago. In addition, organizations must agree that funds awarded for Chicago-based programs remain in Chicago and are not included in calculations of funds exchanged between local and national offices.
While the Fry Foundation is committed to enhancing arts learning outcomes, there are certain areas we generally do not support: Scholarship programs: We do not fund individual scholarships.
Unsolicited proposals from individual schools: Proposals must align with our broader focus areas and come through invited partnerships.
Competitions, productions, or exhibitions: We do not fund programs that are solely for performance and do not have robust learning components for students.
Programs serving students outside of Chicago: Programs must benefit students who reside within Chicago.