The Fund For Artists is a collaborative initiative of The San Francisco Foundation (TSFF) and East Bay Community Foundation (EBCF) working regionally to build individual donor capacity and bring new resources to artists. The Fund For Artists Matching Commissions program (FFAMC) supports the creation of new artwork by Bay Area artists and expands the pool of individual donors engaged with artists and their work. Between 2004 and 2010, this program has provided $658,750 to commission 116 new works involving 181 artists, and has stimulated over $729,254 in contributions from 3,130 individual donors, many of them new to giving to artists’ projects.

In 2009, TSFF and EBCF commissioned Helicon Collaborative and WolfBrown to study the values and motivations of donors to FFAMC projects, and capture useful lessons about the program and the fundraising strategies used by its recipients. This is the first in-depth study of the psychographics of donors to artists and artist-driven projects. While it focuses only on the Bay Area, its findings may have national resonance.

It's Not About You... It's About Them reviews the findings of that study. It includes a demographic profile of donors to FFAMC projects and the values that motivate them; a distillation of the components of the program; and a summary of fundraising techniques used by grant recipient artists and organizations. It also compares the demographics and values of FFAMC donors to those of a larger pool of Bay Area donors to mid-sized and large arts organizations. A companion document includes profiles of seven FFAMC projects.

For more information about the Fund For Artists at The San Francisco Foundation and East Bay Community Foundation, see

www.sff.org/programs/arts-culture/fund-for-artists

www.eastbaycf.org/component/content/article/6-grantmaking-overview/97-east-bay-fund-for-artists