Grants for Dance
Learn about grants for dance by browsing our curated list of top dance funders below. Members can also research funding opportunities for dance using the search tool for Grant Finder. Become a member.
Key Funders
- American Dance Movement
- Arnold Foundation
- Max and Victoria Dreyfus Foundation
- Doris Duke Foundation
- Fidelity Foundation
- Ford Foundation
- Foundation for Contemporary Arts
- Howard Gilman Foundation
- John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation
- Mellon Foundation
- MAP Fund
- National Dance Project/NEFA
- Jerome Robbins Foundation
- Shubert Foundation
Funding Trends for Dance Grants
Only a very small percentage of American adults – in the area of 2-3% – attend dance performances or perform or practice dance, according to the NEA’s research on arts participation patterns. The world of dance philanthropy is similarly small, even compared to other performing arts fields like theater and music. This creates the conditions for a competitive grant space.
Still, the nonprofit dance ecosystem is vibrant – it includes performing companies, dance education organizations, and festivals. As with other performing arts, dance organizations’ revenue is a mix of earned income (e.g., from ticket sales) and contributed income from philanthropy and government sources. While there are some large, well-resourced ballet and contemporary dance companies, the vast majority of dance organizations in the U.S. have a budget of under $500,000, the national service organization Dance/USA found.
Individuals have long led donation-revenue for dance nonprofits, but foundation funding has begun tomake up a larger share of the funding pie in the years since the pandemic. That said, trustee support has receded, according to 2024 findings from SMU DataArts. Substantial individual giving for dance occurs through donor-advised funds. National grantmaking foundations like the Mellon Foundation and the Doris Duke Foundation are among the field’s biggest funders. There are also a number of foundations that fund dance organizations in particular cities or regions, such as the Barr Foundation in Boston, the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation in Denver, as well as several focused on New York’s storied dance world.
Community foundations play a critical role in dance funding both through discretionary grants to local dance organizations and as hosts of donor-advised funds, through which many individual donors support dance groups across the country.
Regional arts organizations, funded by a mix of public and private dollars, also make grants for dance. Dance/USA, Dance/NYC, and the National Dance Project (housed at the New England Foundation for the Arts) are important regrantors in dance philanthropy.
Corporate funders are another source of revenue, especially for large ballet companies, several of which receive support from banks and other nationally recognized corporate names.
This philanthropic space includes some major individual donors with a deep personal passion for dance, such as Glorya Kaufman and the former dancer and renowned dance educator, Jody Gottfried Arnhold.
Where are dance grants going?
The lion’s share of grants for dance support classical ballet, followed by some of the larger contemporary and modern dance companies. Very little philanthropy goes to other forms of dance.
In addition to grants for performing companies, dance grantmaking supports dance festivals, dance-education nonprofits, and occasionally individual artists including dancers as well as choreographers.
Gaps in funding for dance
Unfortunately, private funding for dance has not keeping up with inflation, SMU DataArts found, so there is a need for more dance funding in general. More specific funding gaps are outlined below.
There is a growing conversation in the dance world about how to create stable, sustainable careers for dancers, most of whom are only partially employed in dance, as described in Dance/USA’s 2024 survey of the dance ecosystem. To change this, dance organizations need funding to pay dancers living wages year-round. Dance nonprofits are also looking to funders for dedicated grants to support the development of new streams of earned revenue.
With the notable exception of Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater – one of the most well-known dance companies in the world and one of the only modern dance companies to have a budget anywhere near that of the large ballet companies – there has long been a gap in funding for dance organizations led by or rooted in communities of color. This will only be exacerbated in the Trump era, when an NEA grant program designed to support arts initiatives in underserved communities has been cancelled amid the Trump administration’s broad attacks on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Public funding for the arts had already been declining for decades when the administration made deep cuts to what was left of it in 2025. The abrupt cancellation of NEA grants and threats to eliminate the national arts agency altogether will create funding gaps for dance organizations across the country.
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