OAC Project Support: ArtsNext Grant

OAC Project Support: ArtsNext Grant

Status: ACTIVE
Funder: Ohio Arts Council
Amount: Up to US $25,000
Last Updated: November 29, 2025

Summary

The Ohio Arts Council's ArtsNEXT program offers competitive funding for innovative and experimental projects aimed at enhancing the arts in Ohio. With awards typically up to $25,000, this grant supports bold ideas that push artistic boundaries, improve accessibility, and encourage diversity in arts experiences. Projects may include collaborations, new programming strategies, or technology advancements that foster community engagement. Organizations must demonstrate a commitment to artistic evolution and meet specific eligibility criteria to apply.

Overview

ArtsNEXT Funding for Bold, Ground-Breaking Projects The ArtsNEXT program provides competitive funding for innovative and experimental projects. Awards support big ideas that push boundaries, engage participants in unexpected ways, pilot new solutions to challenging problems, improve program design with calculated risk-taking, or result in the creation of new work. These forward-looking projects help define Ohio as an exciting, cutting-edge place to make, consume, and experience the arts. Grant Awards: Applicants may generally request up to $25,000, though larger awards are possible in unique circumstances. All awards require a 1:1 cash match. How the Program Works ArtsNEXT grants are one-year awards for organizational project support. This program supports projects that allow an organization's programming to evolve creatively. Priority is given to projects designed to improve the accessibility, affordability, and/or diversity of arts experiences, as well as those demonstrating an appropriate amount of risk with a strong potential for success. Funds may be used for a wide variety of expenses, including artist fees, production expenses, marketing, planning, education, and program evaluation. The budget section of the ArtsNEXT application provides a full list of allowable expense areas. NOTE: ArtsNEXT is not designed to fund routine updates or minor embellishments of long-running programs. Organizations considering applying should be fully invested in the hard work of innovating through research, experimentation, and focus, with the goal of breaking patterns, testing ideas, and arriving at new results. The most successful ArtsNEXT projects, whether big or small in scope, will be those that address a specific challenge in a novel way, turn an existing idea or practice on its head, and achieve benefits impossible under the prior approach. ArtsNEXT applicants must identify which one of these three types of innovation best describes their proposed project. When possible, panels will review applications from each type of innovation together. Types include: Incremental Innovation. Projects exhibiting incremental innovation make small changes or improvements over time that nonetheless go above and beyond the routine course corrections required of all successful programs, and can be thought of as "variations on a theme." Examples might include trying a new marketing strategy, hosting an event in a new type of venue, or building on existing programming in a sequential, logical way. Incremental innovations involve minimal risk. Transferable Innovation. Projects that borrow, replicate, or adapt a proven practice from another industry, organization, or community are employing transferable innovation. Projects improve the design of an existing program or service by applying ideas that have been successful in another setting. Examples include producing a new activity that has been well-received elsewhere, modifying an idea from the private sector for use in a nonprofit setting, or experimenting with programming that has flourished in a different arts genre. Transferable innovation typically involves moderate risk. Disruptive Innovation. These are the big ideas that often come to mind when the concept of innovation is discussed. Disruptive innovation interrupts current behavior rendering existing practices obsolete. These projects are rare, unproven, and revolutionary. Examples might include radically changing the delivery of an arts experience, upending expectations about participation in a particular genre or type of arts activity, or creating something entirely new in the arts and cultural field. Disruptive innovation is inherently an unusual and high-risk proposition. Sample activities might include: exploring the intersection of the arts and healing with activities produced in partnership with a healthcare institutionimplementing a pilot program or activity based on a promising practice from another industry or arts genreorganizing a mural project in a community where public art is limited or nonexistentdeveloping a technology to deliver arts experiences in new and more accessible waysresearching and developing environmentally conscious artmaking materials and processes

Eligibility

You can learn more about this opportunity by visiting the funder's website. All applicants must possess nonprofit status or nonprofit intent, but need not be registered with the IRS as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit.Applicants may be:arts and cultural organizations in any arts discipline (literature, performing arts, visual arts, traditional arts, multidisciplinary arts, etc.);other organizations that provide arts programming (government entities, social service agencies, etc.); oreducational organizations (public, private, charter, and parochial schools from pre-kindergarten through university level) that demonstrate a commitment to arts programming in a larger community setting. Organizations receiving Arts Learning support, or operating support through the Sustainability or Arts Access program, are eligible to apply.

Ineligibility

The OAC cannot fund the following activities, organizations, and expenditures:Activity Restrictions – GeneralApplications to eliminate or reduce existing deficits.Interest expenses paid on loans or debts.Hospitality expenses (e.g., food and beverages for openings, receptions, or benefits).Fundraising efforts (e.g., social events, benefits, and entrepreneurial activities).United Fund drives or joint arts funding campaigns.Applications for projects that primarily present political, denominational, religious, or sectarian ideas or projects that enhance the property of religious institutions.Arts activities that are essentially recreational or therapeutic, except when the focus of the activities is on art-making led by professional artists and includes a public component, when appropriate.Applications for arts activities that have already begun or have already occurred.Applications that use funds from other OAC programs or funds from re-grant programs supported by the OAC as a match.Applications for out-of-state travel, except for professional development, conferences, or workshops.Requests for artists’ fees when information about the artists and samples of the artists’ work have not been included in the support materials.Applications to cover costs related to filing for 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service.Academic Activities RestrictionsScholarship assistance for academic credit.Programs of public and private schools, including school districts, affiliates, colleges, and universities that are not designed to involve the general public (this restriction does not affect Arts Partnership).Applications to support salaries and overhead of public and private schools, college, university, and government agency staff and faculty and operations.Projects that are primarily for academic credit.Organization Restrictions – Specific SituationsApplications from for-profit corporations, including S corporations and other entities.Applications from organizations not incorporated in or located in Ohio.Applications from organizations whose membership and participation policies do not comply with nondiscrimination laws.Applications from organizations that are requesting or receiving funds from other OAC programs to operate the same or a similar program in the same fiscal year.Applications from organizations that did not submit final reports within the time required for the preceding fiscal year.Applications from organizations acting purely as fiscal agents for individual artists.Applications from organizations where programming and facilities do not meet or exceed federal ADA requirements.Applications for operating support from arts organizations that are receiving operating support from the Ohio legislature through a line item or earmark in the state budget during the same fiscal year in which the organization applies to receive operating support from the OAC.Equipment and Capital Expense RestrictionsBrick and mortar activities and capital improvements, except in the Individual Excellence Awards.Equipment purchases exceeding $1,000, except in the Individual Excellence Awards.