Testimony from The Asian American Arts Alliance (A4):
“The Asian American Arts Alliance (A4) received funding through a CCNSF grant to support the work we do behind the scenes and between the lines to empower our community.
The CCNSF grants have allowed us to:
Conduct training for our board
Develop a strategic plan
Assess our programs and outcomes
And build the online infrastructure to better communicate with and track our constituents.
All of this is critical work to ensure the stability of an organization, yet would not be affordable to us without the support of the City Council and the CCNSF grant.
As our cultural and economic landscape continues to shift, it's ever important for nonprofits to adapt and create a path forward in order to stay relevant. Without the support of initiatives like CCNSF to conduct holistic assessments and develop practical steps toward achieving long-term sustainability, the smaller organizations that contribute so much to the diversity of our city's great culture are destined to continue a hand-to-mouth existence or worse.
So many nonprofit organizations, especially those serving communities of color, struggle to receive capacity building support from foundations and other grantors. Our organizations are often under-resourced and overlooked in favor of the much larger cultural organizations serving mainstream populations. And so many granting organizations offer funds strictly for programs, not recognizing the tremendous amount of administrative resources that go into running and maintaining these programs. Or they create strict guidelines for application that smaller organizations often cannot abide due to the cost or administrative burden of complying.”