“The art of money isn’t hard to master . . . The money surrounds us . . .
“Sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet money Money on a wet, black bough
“Do not go gentle into that good money The pure products of money go crazy”
— From “Money is the Thing With Feathers,” by Susan Firer
Foundations are almost constantly changing. Leaders, initiatives and strategic plans come and go, and with them, grant money ebbs and flows like irregular weather patterns. But few funders have undertaken the kind of transformational change that the Poetry Foundation has undergone twice in less than two decades.
First, in 2003, the eye-popping news dropped that Ruth Lilly, a great-granddaughter of pharmaceutical company founder Eli Lilly, had made a $200 million donation to the nonprofit behind Poetry Magazine. That gift led to the formation of the Poetry Foundation, which, in turn, has grown into the country’s leading organization working to make poetry widely accessible. Besides continuing to publish Poetry Magazine, for example, the funder’s website is a vast treasure trove of poems, book reviews, podcasts and other resources designed to allow anyone with internet access to quickly and easily immerse themselves in verse and the art and scholarship of poetry. As Inside Philanthropy’s Mike Scutari reported in 2015, the foundation also began to make fellowship grants to individual poets — a practice that continues today.
Then, in 2020, in the wake of criticism over its response to the murder of George Floyd, the Poetry Foundation rewrote itself again. Former President Henry Bienen stepped down, as did the board’s former chair, and a new leader, Michelle T. Boone, was hired in Bienen’s place. The foundation issued a public apology, promised to take specific, “ongoing action[s] in response to the call to dismantle white supremacy,” and started working to ensure that poets are represented on its board.
Next, the foundation transformed itself from an operating foundation to a grantmaking foundation during a reorg in 2022. It has since moved almost $8 million to a diverse array of nonprofit literary organizations, in addition to providing $2 million in awards and prizes to individual writers and poets. Along the way, its biggest surprise as a new grantmaker is something that any funder that cares about literacy or the arts will want to pay attention to, particularly in this latest era of library wars and book bans: Just how little money actually supports the literary arts.
This is wonderful… and it isn’t enough
For he was a wandering lamb trapped & lured toward the flames For the flames were upon him for they would seal his story For he was taken down face down body down to account ….
For he was the future no one had prophesied the Now & the Is For he was taken in the evening as we noticed the power remain
— From “For George Floyd Was a Great Man,” by Juan Felipe Herrera
For much of the two decades following Lilly’s gift, the evolution of the Poetry Foundation was mostly “internal,” said Ydalmi Noriega, the funder’s vice president of programs. The organization wanted to figure out its identity and identify “the ways that, as an extension of the magazine, we want to support poetry in the world.” Throughout that time, she said, many stakeholders thought that its work was wonderful, with the organization receiving strong positive feedback about its website and other programs.
Others weren’t as thrilled. “We also kept hearing ‘That isn’t enough, because there’s a whole field that needs to be sustained,’” she said. As probably the best-resourced literary arts organization in the country “and maybe beyond that,” Noriega said, the foundation realized that it wasn’t enough to “just do [the work] internally and with ourselves. We needed to sustain the people that do the work outside the foundation, because it’s an ecosystem that we’re a part of.” So while the conversation about whether or not the foundation should become a grantmaking organization wasn’t a new one in 2020, the murder of George Floyd “brought an urgency to the organization to really consider the question fully.”
That period of consideration came to a definitive conclusion when, in December 2021, the Poetry Foundation announced a commitment to dive into grantmaking with $9 million in grants over three years beginning in 2022. Nor did “the power remain” entirely within the foundation’s walls; instead, it employs a trust-based philanthropy approach wherein it pays poets active in the nonprofit literary arts world to make initial recommendations on grant applications, and has also committed that 60% of its grants will be in the form of general operating support.
An entire grantmaking program, Equity in Verse, is dedicated to BIPOC-led, poetry-dedicated nonprofits or literary nonprofits with “a significant focus” on poetry. Further, the funder’s program-focused grants provide 25% in “indirect cost recovery,” i.e., operating expenses, and it pays the full grant amount up front, said Director of Grants and Awards Chris Guzaitis. “We try to do the things that we feel really make it easier for the grantees so that they have less hoops to jump through — that they get the money they need and are able to do the work they do.”
The approach seems to be working for grantees. “The Poetry Foundation was a dream funder for us,” said Carla Du Pree, the executive director of CityLit Project in Maryland, and not just because of the $50,000 her organization received from the foundation in 2022. Dupree said that the application process was straightforward, the funder’s staff was quick to assist and respond to any questions, and, when CityLit was getting ready to reapply for the 2023 cycle, they received a notice from the Poetry Foundation that their renewal application could also serve as an annual report to the foundation, reducing paperwork obligations. CityLit received another $40,000 in 2023.
Even with these positive practices, though, Guziatis said she believes her organization “could probably do a better job” supporting applicants and grantees, including providing multi-year funding. Still, it’s hard to fault a foundation that managed to create a trust-based philanthropy process, develop an application and reporting process that works for its grantees, and institute generous general operating support and operating cost policies in the nine months between announcing a first round of grantmaking in December 2021 and moving those grants out the door in September 2022.
Foundations that have been in the business for far longer might want to look to this new funder on the block for examples of how to provide value for grantees without weighing them down with unnecessary burdens.
“Funding in the field is dire”
How lucky we are That you can’t sell A poem, that it has No Value. Might As well Give it away.
— From [How lucky we are], by Gregory Orr
As an MFA student in 2003, the year that the Poetry Foundation was launched with Ruth Lilly’s gift, I knew that poetry offered few career options. The main avenues were academia or getting a “real” job, and either way, hoping to have the time and energy to write on the side. In the end, given a chance to write for a living, I ended up leaving my program to go into the highly paid, ever-stable field of journalism.
Sarcasm aside, the fact remains that except for unicorn donations like Ruth Lilly’s gift, the literary arts remain the neglected stepchild of the arts funding world. The biggest surprise the Poetry Foundation encountered as it became a grantmaker, Noriega said, was learning about “of all the arts funding in this country, the tiny percentage that goes to literary arts.”
According to Candid/Guidestar figures provided by the Poetry Foundation, in 2022, more than $7.9 billion in grantmaking was committed to arts-based nonprofits overall, including nonprofits involved in dance, visual arts and music. Just $97.4 million of that money was committed to literature and writing — roughly 2%.
“It was quite shocking for all of us to see how little funding there is in the literary arts,” Guziatis said. “Eighty-one percent of the organizations we fund have budgets under $1.5 million, and a majority of them have budgets that are under $250,000. Many have no staff or part-time staff only, who are not even making living wage salaries, a situation that’s particularly troubling during the current resurgence of attacks on freedom of expression via book bans and other state legislation.”
The foundation wanted to start providing more general operating support precisely because “the funding in the field is so dire,” Guzaitis said.
Noriega said that one reason literary arts are funded so poorly may be due to a misconception about just how little support exists for literary artists who aren’t writing best-selling novels. People believe “you can just go into your attic and write your novel, and then it will be published and you’ll make money, right? People have a very big lack of understanding that [literary arts are] an ecosystem and writers need support. It isn’t a solitary art,” Noriega said.
The nonprofits that the Poetry Foundation supports are that ecosystem. To give just one example, fall 2023 grant awardee In-Na-Po (Indigenous Nations Poets) is “a national Indigenous poetry community committed to mentoring emerging writers, nurturing the growth of Indigenous poetic practices, and raising the visibility of all Native Writers past, present, and future.” In-Na-Po and the rest of the nonprofit literary arts ecosystem educate and inspire young writers, mentor young and older writers alike, and nurture the ground for literary arts to thrive alongside the commercial publishing marketplace, with its focus on the next bestseller.
This support is particularly important for poetry. As Guzaitis said, “Poetry books don’t sell,” despite the fact that the art form is experiencing a resurgence. The Poetry Foundation website alone received an average of more than 4.5 million monthly visitors in 2023. There’s clearly a popular appetite for poetry, whether or not the market seems to value it. This makes supporting poetry, and literary arts more generally, a prime opportunity for funders that care about access to all forms of artistic expression.
“Literary arts is a very significant part of arts and culture in this society, and there’s a huge gap between understanding that as a fact and then understanding what it means to truly have the resources in place to support it and to make it thrive,” Noriega said.
The Poetry Foundation is once again making some of those necessary resources available. The funder is currently accepting applications for its fall 2024 round of Poetry Programs, Partnerships, and Innovations grants for nonprofits working on priorities including broadening audiences for poetry; increasing access to poetry; and innovations in the field of poetry including investing in new technology; and for Equity in Verse grants, which are open to BIPOC-led poetry nonprofits or nonprofits with a “significant focus” on poetry. Grants range in size from $10,000 to $75,000. The deadline to apply is September 4, 2024.
Supporting literature’s dangerous magic is essential to democracy
A favorite cartoon of mine from long ago features a person with a stunned expression on their face sitting in a chair, holding a book. The caption read something like, “the feeling when your entire life has just been turned upside down by a paperback.”
All of the reasons we give to explain the importance of the arts have been reiterated to the point that they’re beyond cliche by now. For me, what it comes down to is this: Novels, short stories and poems are among the most powerful means ever devised for a person to find mirrors into themselves — who they are and who they could be. Reading, and writing, taught me more about myself and how the world really works than my early schools and the people who raised me combined. Literary arts offer the same promise to anyone. All it takes is picking up a book.
This dangerous magic is the prime reason reactionaries are targeting the right to read; it’s also the reason why the work of the Poetry Foundation and other literary arts supporters is as vitally necessary as every other ongoing effort to save our democracy. Even if we win that struggle, democracy would be a far less vibrant place without the power of diverse literary arts to help us imagine what comes next, and next, and next after that. The publishing industry in itself isn’t an enemy to the literary arts, but at its best, it provides a highly limited array of artistic options and an even more limited means by which artists can support themselves. For the rest, we have to look to funders like the Poetry Foundation.
Dawn Wolfe covers philanthropy-related issues including racial equity, women’s and girls’ issues/abortion access, economic justice, and philanthropic reform. She also occasionally writes poetry. She can be reached at: dawnw@insidephilanthropy.com
