Canadian small businesses that are looking to hire a post-secondary student through the program must be established within Canada for over a year, have a company website and currently operate with less than 500 employees. Businesses that have received funding in previous years will not be considered eligible for funding. Those who are considered eligible can receive business grant funding for projects:
Eligible Candidates to Hire
Applicants will only be able to hire post-secondary students that are scheduled to return back to their studies at the end of the internship. Graduates and alumni will not be considered eligible unless they are returning for a masters or PhD program and are under the age of 30.
"A portion of the funds raised through the organization annual campaign will again be allocated for grants for artist career development and artistic projects that benefit the cultural life of their area.
A spokesperson said grants up to $500 are available to organizations and to individual artists in all disciplines.
Eligible organizations must have non-profit status and may include libraries, municipalities, churches and other community groups.
An artist who has been a county resident for at least one year and works in any artistic discipline, including crafts, choreography, film, fiction, poetry, printmaking, sculpture, painting, video, play writing, performance, music composition and photography, may apply for this grant program. Funding priority will be given to those applicants who demonstrate that a fellowship would have significant career impact.
Grant applications are accepted only by mail and must be postmarked by Thursday, March 15.
All applications are screened for eligibility and fulfillment of application requirements. An allocations panel made up of artists and community leaders reviews applications and presents funding recommendations to the board for approval.
Artists and community organizations interested in applying for funding can obtain application information and funding criteria online at the organization's website or by phone.
Though the prize is high, the feat is near impossible: the contest rules for the challenge note that the odds of winning the grand prize are one in 4,294,967,296. Last year, USA Today said the odds of filling out a perfect bracket (just using math, no basketball knowledge) were even higher: 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808. They said the the odds were closer to 1 in 128 billion if you do know about the sport.
In the contest, the grand prize winner would receive 40 annual installments of $25 million or could opt for a lump sum of $500 million. There's also $2 million at stake for creators of less-than-perfect brackets: 20 first prize winners with the closest brackets will receive $100,000 each to use toward buying, refinancing or remodeling a home.
"While there is no simple path to success, it sure doesn't get much easier than filling out a bracket online," says a spokespersson. "To quote a commercial from one of my companies, I'd dare say it's so easy to enter that even a caveman can do it."
As part of the promotion, the sponsors will also donate $1 million to Detroit and Cleveland non-profit organizations that work on youth education.
"So if you're stuck in a cycle of poverty, you have to share $1 million between thousands of other kids between two cities. But if you're lucky at basketball, you get a billion. Good to know!"
Further details and official rules will be released when the contest begins March 3. That's more than a month to start strategizing how to create the perfect bracket.
The $1.6-billion New York City-based foundation announced this week that it’s committing $50 million over the next 10 years to a special Performing Artists Initiative that will provide up to $27.5 million to 100 well-established “leading artists” and up to $8 million for 100 emerging figures. The balance, about $14.5 million, will go to administer the program and to fund an initiative in which individual artists will pair with dance companies, theater companies and performing arts presenters for four months of residencies spread over two or three years. At least 50 residency awards of $75,000 or $150,000 will be made, starting in 2013.
The new infusion, which Foundation says is “the largest allocation of cash grants ever given to artists in these fields,” will be on top of the Foundation’s regular arts giving, which has totaled $13.1 million a year since 2009 -– down from about $18 million before the financial crash and recession whittled its investment holdings.
In distributing $3.5 million in average annual grants to individuals during the coming decade, the Foundation will become the nation’s leading charitable funder of individual artists -– although it will take a few years to ramp up to that level. L.A.-based United States Artists awards $2.5 million annually, providing no-strings, one-year grants of $50,000 each to 50 mid-career USA Fellows who work in various visual, performing and literary disciplines. Last year, United States Artists kicked off a $50-million endowment campaign aimed at ensuring that its grants will continue “in perpetuity.”
The idea, is to fund artists who are in a fertile period of their career and are “passionate and pushing forward.” It’s not “a lifetime achievement award looking backward.”
Jazz musicians known for great chops but not original material or innovative approaches, and dancers and actors who mainly just play their roles (sublime as the results may be), need not wait for a call next spring. the winners will be “generative artists, people who are creating and pushing the art form forward, not necessarily playing something that someone else gave them. It means they’re doing something beyond simply acting out a role.”
While the individual grants are bigger, the grants" don't have an annual set-aside for artists. Of this year’s 22 Fellowship winners, seven of the five-year grants were awarded in the arts, including music, architecture, silversmithing and poetry. Just one, jazz composer-percussionist works in a field funded by the Foundation, which concentrates its arts giving on jazz, theater and contemporary dance because they were passions of the founder. In the 15 years since 1997grants have totaled more than $218 million.
The foundation’s president, said the new initiative responds to worsening funding prospects in the arts. “At a time when support … is being cut back across the country, and when most artists … are struggling to stay viable project by project, we thought it was essential to step up our commitment.”
Organizations and individual artists who have a track record of working together can team up to apply for the residencies starting late next year. But the “leading artist” grants and emerging-artist fellowships are on a don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you basis, with the winners decided by anonymous groups of experts. The first calls will come in March or April to 20 “leading artists,” who’ll receive their money over the course of three to five years (the timing is their choice). The emerging-artist fellowships will begin in 2014.
While the Fellowships come with no strings attached, the Foundation specifies that while winners can use $225,000 however they want, an additional $25,000 will be reserved for the artists’ efforts in arts education or helping to build a bigger arts audience. The last $25,000 is reserved for their retirement -– but they’ll only get as much of it as they’re willing to match with their own money (which can include part of the $225,000). Similarly, the emerging-artist fellowships, paid out over two or three years, provide for $60,000 that recipients can use however they choose, with an additional $10,000 for audience development and $10,000 for retirement, on a matching basis. Along with the grants comes free financial advice from the Foundation about how to use the windfall.
To narrow the field for “leading artist” grants, the Foundation will only consider artists who have had at least three projects funded by national arts grantmakers over the past 10 years, including at least one project that indirectly received money from the Foundation. Until now, the grant funding program had confined its arts giving to organizations that then mainly used their own discretion to hire or provide grants to artists while carrying out a program-funded project.
The boost for jazz, dance and theater isn’t coming at the expense of environmental conservation, medical research and child-abuse prevention, the other areas in which the Foundation makes grants.
For many early theatre professionals and recent graduates of advanced training programs, the combination of limited job openings in theatres, low compensation and student loan debt make a career in the not-for-profit theatre a questionable future. This grant program is not only designed to provide financial support for early-career leaders, but will also prepare recipients with greater leadership skills to enable a stable and a long-term career in the theatre.
Learning opportunities are also extended to mid-career professionals who could benefit from a short-term immersion outside of their organization and in their area of expertise. Observing the work of critical thinkers inside and outside the theatre field can help veteran leaders gain new perspectives on the opportunities and challenges within their own organizations as well as the field. This financial grant program provides practitioners with the rare time for reflection and inspiration to continue onward.
This grant program will award by grants in two initiatives: One-on-One for early-career leaders and Continuing Ed for mid-career and veteran professionals.
One-on-One grants of $75,000 will be awarded to six exceptionally talented early-career leaders from all areas of the theatre for professional development via mentorships at a Theatre, with an additional $5,000 honorarium for their mentor. Up to an additional $14,500 in supplemental funds may be used for student loan repayment, professional development or life needs (i.e. health care, child or elder or other medical expenses).
Continuing Ed grants of up to $6,000 will be awarded to eight mid-career to veteran professionals for learning opportunities to advance their leadership skills in areas that include artistic, administrative, educational and production. Grants will be awarded to the applicant's home theatre on behalf of the theatre practitioner.
Online registration applications and guidelines will be made available. For more information about the program, visit the website.
The grant program is a private philanthropic institution that makes grants on a selective basis in five core program areas: higher education and scholarship; scholarly communications and information technology; museums and art conservation; conservation and the environment; and performing arts. The Foundation's Performing Arts program focuses on achieving long-term results by providing multi-year grants to leading organizations in the disciplines of music, theater, and dance. Annual giving in the area of the performing arts has averaged approximately $30 million per year since 2005.
For 50 years, The group has existed to strengthen, nurture and promote the professional not-for-profit American theatre. For more information visit the official website.
