Sharing the Stage: Exploring Inequities in Resources for the Arts Across Funding Institutions

Abstract

This paper examines and compares the funding distribution inequities in arts organizations across three different funding institutions—government grantmaking, charitable contributions, and crowdfunding—through different inequity measures. Based on three different datasets including the National Endowment for the Arts grants data, National Center for Charitable Statistics data, and Kickstarter crowdfunding data starting in 2009, we find that compared to non-arts funds on the same platforms, arts-related funds in these institutions are not more concentrated in the hands of a few, although the level of concentration is strikingly high. In addition, we find that nonprofit contributions are heavily concentrated, far more than government grants. However, contributions to arts nonprofits are not more concentrated than to other nonprofits. We also explore how the pandemic crisis impacted arts funding distributions.