A coalition of seven charitable foundations have launched the Literary Arts Fund, a new grantmaking organization that will award at least $50 million to the nonprofit literary sector over the next five years. The new group is led by the Mellon Foundation and also includes the Ford Foundation, Hawthornden Foundation, Lannan Foundation, John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, Poetry Foundation, and an anonymous foundation.
The Fund will target the "hundreds of charitable organizations and publishers that serve writers and readers in ways that are distinct from commercial publishing" in the U.S., including those that "champion established writers, critical first-time and historically underrepresented authors, and provide a home for the intellectually rigorous and artistically adventurous voices whose work deepens and challenges our culture," per the announcement. The coalition has tapped Jennifer Benka, who has previously led the Academy of American Poets and Poets & Writers, to helm the Fund.
“The literary arts give voice to who we are as a people,” said Elizabeth Alexander, poet and president of the Mellon Foundation. “Novelists, poets, and all manner of creative writers shape and drive our collective discourse and capacity for invention and imagination."
Since the Trump administration slashed federal arts funding earlier this year, the Mellon Foundation has stepped in on multiple occasions to fill the gaps, including an award of $15 million in emergency funding to state arts councils in April and a $1.4 grant to PEN America in August. The new funding also comes at a time when rising costs and distribution challenges have made it more difficult for literary publishing to succeed.
Established by one-time gifts from each of the coalition members, the Literary Arts Fund will be sustained through additional contributions to the Literary Arts Funders Collaborative, which currently counts the Houston Endowment, Jerome Foundation, McKnight Foundation, and the Adrian Brinkerhoff Poetry Fund of the Sidney E. Frank Foundation among its members.
In the announcement, Alexander said she believes that "American philanthropy can play a bigger role in strengthening the financial infrastructure of the literary organizations and nonprofits that serve these literary artists."
Executive director of the Lannan Foundation Brenda Coughlin added that she hopes the Literary Arts Funders Collaborative will "invite in and encourage" more charitable organizations to enter the literary sector. The percentage of total arts philanthropy in the U.S. that goes to literary community-building is "not even 2%," she said.
U.S.-based nonprofit or fiscally sponsored literary organizations and publishers that support contemporary writers of poetry, fiction, creative nonfiction, or hybrid literary forms can apply for funding starting on November 10. Full guidelines and eligibility details are available at literaryartsfund.org.
