Businesses continue to play a significant role in supporting the arts through their corporate foundations, direct-giving programs, or marketing departments. The arts have the power to inspire people and change lives. The company’s supportof the arts reflects this deeply held belief. Unfortunately, we see all too often how competing pressures and limited resources can result in reduced public support for the institutions and individual artists that play a critical role in our communities.

In this context, companies have an important part to play in a locating resources to arts initiatives that spur economic development, offer children arts-education pportunities, and enrich the quality of life in communities large and small. Specifically, companies can influence policy and support neighborhood-based arts activities as well as programs in our schools that inspire creativity and provide important artistic outlets for youth. Corporate philanthropy can help fund artist-in-residence programs, student field trips,
and other opportunities that encourage free thinking and imagination—qualities crucial to future leaders and cultural innovators.
Through support for arts programming, corporations are helping to make our communities better places to live and work for residents, our employees, and our customers.

Successful grant-writing involves solid advance planning and preparation. It takes time to coordinate your planning and research, organize, write and package your proposal, submit your proposal to the funder, and follow-up.

• Grant Writing Tips
• 101 Corporate Partnership Ideas
• Four P’s of Marketing Fundraising
• Guidelines for Grant Writing

• www.powersponsorship.com
• www.FoundationCenter.org
• www.CoreStrategies4NonProfits.com
• www.LitLamp.com
• www.MiamiDadeArts.org - website of the Miami-Dade Department of Cultural Affairs with information on grants available for non-profit arts groups and artists
• www.npguides.org - Non-profit guides are free Web-based grant-writing tools for non-profit organizations, charitable, educational, public organizations, and other community-minded groups.
  www.FoundationCenter.org - Established in 1956, and today supported by more than 600 foundations, the Foundation Center is the nation's leading authority on philanthropy, connecting nonprofits and the grantmakers supporting them to tools they can use and information they can trust.
• www.ArtsMarketing.org - sponsorship articles and resources
• www.CorporatePhilanthropy.org - Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy (CECP) is the only international forum of business CEOs and chairpersons pursuing a mission focused exclusively on corporate philanthropy.
  www.GrassrootsFundraising.org - The Grassroots Institute for Fundraising Training (GIFT) is a multiracial organization that promotes the connection between fundraising and movement-building.
• www.FundraisingSuccessMag.com- fundraising resources