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DC Arts
 
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FY24 General Operating Support FAQ

ELIGIBILITY: 

Are these grants strictly for DC residents, or DMV?

For GOS and organizational grants, organizations must be a 501(c)3 and have a physical address in the District of Columbia.

Does our organization need to be a current or previous grantee to apply for the FY24 GOS grant?  

Yes, in order to be eligible, organizations need to have received funding through a CAH competitive grant that was awarded in the District’s Fiscal Year 2022 (FY 2022) and/or Fiscal Year 2023 (FY 2023). Organizational relief grants, including CAH’s Facilities and Buildings - Rent and Mortgage Relief grant program, are not considered to be competitive, and therefore, organizations that are recipients of these grants alone are ineligible to apply to GOS. 

Are individuals eligible for this general operating grant?  

No, the GOS grant is for organizations. However, our individual grants, Arts & Humanities Fellowship Program (AHFP) and Projects, Events or Festivals for Individuals (PEFi), launch later in the year typically around May/June. 

Application Materials:  

For the "Board Approved" budget, is the CAH interested in the actuals, or the board approved? 

Please provide your current organizational budget that is approved by your organization’s Board of Directors. 

For resumes of staff, what information are you looking for?  

Please provide detailed resumes of your organization’s key staff which would be considered as artistic/managing/executive directors; arts educators; etc. The resumes should capture their roles, areas of responsibility, and home addresses/wards as applicable. Lastly, please provide a detailed list of your organization’s current Board of Directors. Please provide board roles (e.g. president, treasurer, etc.), responsibilities and addresses/wards. 

Is the organization demographic form required at the time of application? 

The inclusion of the organizational demographics overview form is not required at the time of application but will be required of each applicant prior to award notification. 

Application Questions: 

When CAH asks for FT and PT employees who are DC residents, do you want us to count actors / stage managers as FT or PT? (For example, our organization counts them as FT because of their hours.)  

If they are categorized internally as full-time staffers, please share that information. Full-time and part-time employees should be listed in that section, not contractors. Including contractors can artificially inflate staffing numbers for arts and humanities organizations. Please simply note in the narrative section above those questions the number of contractors. 

Do you have any "tips" for working with the grants portal? 

We encourage applicants to review the Questions and Uploads page found here and write out their answers in a word document. Then you can paste your answers into the portal, to avoid losing any work due to “timing out”.  
Secondly, we strongly suggest that aplicants use the browser ‘google chrome’ when using the grants portal, as we have discovered other browsers do not necessarily work as well.  

Regarding the I.D.E.A. (Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access) piece of the application, are you more interested in our I.D.E.A. efforts and plans internally with our board and staff or more externally with the community/ audiences or are they equally important?

We would say they are equally important and would like to hear about any, and all, of your plans around I.D.E.A. knowing the importance of "effort" - what intentional efforts are organizations making to reach out to diverse populations to ensure they have access and are welcomed? Sometimes effort doesn't always lead to the outcomes we want but is still important.  

Allowable Costs 

Is rent expense an allowable expense? 

Yes. 

General: 

Someone on our staff was part of the panel process last year, where could I find information on being a panelist?  

Please take a look at the “Be a Panelist” section on our website: https://dcarts.dc.gov/page/be-review-panelist

If we have been a GOS panelist in the past, should we still fill out the application? 

Yes, please. In addition to growing our pool of panelists, it is good for us to know who is still interested. Additionally, contact information, organization affiliation, and/or your availability may have changed from years past.