Creative Forces Community Engagement Grant

The Creative Forces Community Engagement Grant is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) in partnership with Mid-America Arts Alliance (M-AAA). This grant program aims to improve the health, well-being, and quality of life for military service members and veterans exposed to trauma as well as their families and caregivers through experiences of art or art making.

MAAA will award approximately thirty-five matching grants ranging from $10,000 to $50,000 for arts-based community engagement projects that engage targeted military-connected communities. These Creative Forces Community Engagement Grants are intended to support non-clinical arts engagement programs taking place in healthcare, community, or virtual settings. The grants will be awarded in two tiers, emerging and advanced, which reflect the capacity of the project at the time of the application.

Program Description

Creative Forces: NEA Military Healing Arts Network began in 2012 as an initiative of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with the U.S. Departments of Defense and Veterans Affairs and is managed in partnership with Americans for the Arts, the Henry M. Jackson Foundation for the advancement of Military Medicine, and Mid-America Arts Alliance.

Creative Forces seeks to improve the health, well-being, and quality of life for military service members and veterans exposed to trauma, as well as their families and caregivers, by increasing knowledge of and access to clinical creative arts therapies and community arts engagement. Since 2017, Creative Forces has invested in community arts engagement projects in order to advance understanding of the benefits and impacts for military-connected populations who have been exposed to trauma. More information, including project descriptions and research reports on existing Creative Forces clinical and community programming, can be found on the Creative Forces National Resource Center.

These Creative Forces Community Engagement Grants are intended to support non-clinical arts engagement programs taking place in healthcare, community, or virtual settings. Creative Forces-supported community programs have involved a range of arts activities, including visual, written, and performing arts offered through single events, drop-in programs, and ongoing engagement led by artists in residence, teaching artists, or creative arts therapists.

Matching grant awards of $10,000–$50,000 will be awarded to approximately 35 applicants to support projects that engage targeted military-connected individuals through experiences of art or art-making. M-AAA encourages applications from a variety of eligible organizations, e.g., with small, medium, or large budgets, and from rural to urban communities. Applications may be submitted in one of the two tiers, emerging and advanced (see descriptions below), as designated by the applicant and further substantiated by M-AAA staff.

Creative Forces Community Engagement Grant Program projects should engage military-connected individuals through experiences of art or art-making with one or more of the following participant outcomes in mind:

• Creative Expression: Participants have a better understanding of themselves and others by creating or engaging with art.
• Social Connectedness: Participants have supportive relationships in their life and a sense of belonging to a community.
• Resilience: Participants feel they can rebound from stress, unexpected events, or life’s challenges.
• Independence and successful adaption to civilian life: Participants have both an individual and shared sense of purpose, as well a positive self-worth, that supports adapting and readjusting to civilian life.

This grant program also seeks to advance the capacity of the applicant and its partner(s) in one or more of the following ways:

Networked Organization: Grantees build networks and partnerships that support the design, implementation, and evaluation of programs for participants leading to stronger outcomes for participants.

Strengthened Capacity: Grantees build their capacity to design, implement, and evaluate programs that meet the need of participants

Increase Value of the Arts: Grantee partnerships and activities lead to an increased understanding of the value and impact of the arts across local participating networks and communities.

Applicant Eligibility

The Applicant Organization must:

1. be a nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)3, U.S. organization, a unit of state or local government, or a federally recognized tribal community or tribe located in the U.S. (including the District of Columbia and all U.S. territories as well as the Native nations that share that geography);
2. have either a minimum of three years’ experience:
   • programming for/with military communities or
   • presenting/producing arts-based projects;
3. have completed a three-year history of programming prior to the application deadline. Programming is not required to have taken place during consecutive years. If your programming was affected or suspended due to COVID-19, you may reference 2020 or 2021 programming that was canceled or reimagined due to the pandemic. Virtual programming, planning, and COVID-19 recovery activities are considered to be programming. You may also choose to list arts programming from a recent year other than 2020 or 2021. For the purpose of defining eligibility, “three-year history” refers to when an organization began its programming and not when it incorporated or received nonprofit, tax-exempt status;
4. compensate all professional artists or supporting professional personnel at no less than the prevailing minimum compensation in accordance with Part 505 of Title 29 of the Code of Federal Regulations (CFR).
5. apply directly on their own behalf. Applications through a fiscal sponsor/agent are not allowed;
6. have a unique entity identifier (UEI), created in the System for Award Management [SAM.gov],
7. be in good standing with M-AAA, the NEA, and all other federal agencies, with no delinquent reports and/or grant documents;
8. commit to M-AAA’s Grantee Assurance of Compliance and Federal Suspension and Disbarment Policy; and
9. agree to acknowledge M-AAA and the NEA in all programs and press materials related to the project if funded.

The following types of organizations are not eligible to apply:

• Organizations whose primary purpose is to channel resources (financial, human, or other) to an affiliated organization if the affiliated organization submits its own application. This prohibition applies even if each organization has its own 501(c)3 status. For example, the “Friends of ABC Museum” may not apply if the ABC Museum applies. Furthermore, academic departments of colleges and universities are not eligible to apply, but the department’s parent institution is eligible, and
• State and jurisdictional arts agencies (SAAs) and Regional Arts Organizations (RAOs) are not eligible to apply or serve as partners in Creative Forces Community Engagement Grant Program projects.

Visit http://www.maaa.org/creativeforces/ for more information and to apply.