Find Nonprofit and Small Business Grants

Eligible applicants:
- Incorporated not-for-profit Ontario-based visual arts organizations, including public art galleries, with a permanent physical address in Ontario
- Ad hoc groups/collectives of visual artists or arts professionals, with a permanent physical address in Ontario
- Independent curators who are Ontario residents and have a permanent physical address in Ontario. Curators must not be employed as full-time staff in a public gallery or artist-run center
- Other not-for-profit organizations such as non-arts organizations or organizations working in another arts discipline

Important:
- Galleries within a multi-purpose institution (such as a library, university, museum or municipality) must be governed by a board of directors or an advisory body solely responsible for the gallery.
- Non-visual arts organizations must demonstrate that they have engaged the appropriate visual arts expertise to carry out the project, i.e. the expertise of the arts professionals directly involved in the project, and/or the expertise of an advisory committee of visual arts professionals.

Projects must include Ontario artists. They may also involve non-Ontario artists; in these cases, the applicant must clearly describe the benefit to the Ontario’s arts community and/or audiences.

Presentation Projects:
- Presentation Projects must include the payment of appropriate professional fees to artists, such as fees for exhibition, reproduction, lectures, and workshops. The recommended minimum fee schedule is available at Canadian Artists’ Representation/Front des artistes canadiens (CARFAC), or through CARFAC Ontario. Artists’ travel and accommodation costs, per diems and catalogues, are not considered substitutes for fees to artists for presenting their work.
- Presentation Projects taking place outside Ontario are eligible as long as they include a component presented within the province, for the benefit of Ontario audiences.
- For large, multi-faceted projects, applicants are requested to contact the program officer to discuss how to focus the grant request on a specific component.

Ineligible applicants:
- Independent curators who are undergraduate or graduate students enrolled in full-time studies
- Individual visual artists applying to create or exhibit their art
- Municipalities, universities and/or colleges (including private career colleges)
- Organizations that receive a grant in the Public Art Galleries: Operating or Visual Arts: Artist-Run Centres and Organizations: Operating programs
- Organizations that receive an operating grant in other OAC programs, with the exception of organizations mandated to serve one or more of the OAC priority groups

This program does not fund:
- Major capital expenditures, including buying, leasing or renovating buildings and purchase of major equipment (including art acquisitions)
- Fundraising activities
- Student projects
- Media arts projects; for projects that include both visual arts and media arts
- Activities that take place in galleries or artist-run centres that receive operating grants in the Public Art Galleries or Visual Arts: Artist-Run Centres programs
- Activities that take place in a commercial/dealer art gallery
- Studio tours, prizes, awards, competitions
- Periodicals and newsletters
- Creation/production projects; individual visual artists and collectives should refer to the Visual Artists Creation Projects program
- Ongoing administrative expenses such as permanent salaries or rent, and expenses related to the production of art.

Deadline dates:
June 19 and November 28, 2019, 1 p.m. ET

- Applications are available in Nova (OAC’s online grant application system) approximately two months before the deadline.
- Grant notification will be available approximately four months after each deadline

It is possible to receive only one Visual Arts Project grant in an OAC fiscal year (April 1 to March 31).

Important: OAC will not fund 100 percent of a Presentation project. To show other community support for the project, the budget must include revenue from sources other than the OAC grant request, such as fundraising, earned revenue or other funding. Donations of goods or services are also considered community support for a project.

General Guidelines: http://www.arts.on.ca/grants/general-granting-information/guide-to-project-programs
Terms and Conditions: http://www.arts.on.ca/grants/general-granting-information/terms-and-conditions-receipt-of-oac-project-grants
Assessment: http://www.arts.on.ca/grants/general-granting-information/guide-to-assessment