Any working artist with residence in Mecklenburg County, or an arts organization with an office in Mecklenburg County, who is not currently a grant recipient of the Knight Foundation, can apply.

The Fund supports artists and arts organizations looking to increase their reach and capacity by using technology. Types of work supported by the Fund include:

Purchase and installation of hardware and/or software (e.g., licensing of archiving software, installation of livestreaming equipment, purchase of cloud storage) 
Build-out/permanent infrastructure (e.g., installation of networking equipment, outdoor projections)
Staff or contract support (e.g. hiring of contract or staff videographer, web developer, social media manager)
Website design and development
Mobile application development
Digitization/archiving (e.g. digital collection photography, media conservation/preservation, archives records management)

Applications will be accepted from June 17 to August 9 at 11:59 p.m. ET.

The idea must involve using technology to further your work or mission.
The artist or or arts organization must be a resident of, or have an office in, Mecklenburg County.
The artist or arts organization must receive a portion of their annual income/revenue from producing artistic work in Mecklenburg county.

No, the Art + Tech Expansion Fund is open to individual artists, nonprofit arts organizations, and arts collectives.

No, the Art + Tech Expansion Fund is open to applicants of all nationalities, provided you live or work in Mecklenburg County.

Yes.

Yes. Individual submitters must be residents of Mecklenburg County, and organizations must have an office or business address in Mecklenburg County.

We accept one idea per applicant.

Individual artists may ask for up to $25,000. Organizations or collectives may ask for up to $100,000.

Some grantees may be eligible to receive additional technical and operational support consulting hours through Apparo.

Yes. A letter of support is required from critical key partners.

The Fund is intended to increase the long-term capacity of working artists and arts organizations. We encourage applicants to be as detailed as possible on how the application of technology will have a lasting impact on their work, and ultimately, on their community. 

Applications that emphasize the long-term impact of the application of technology will have an edge over those that emphasize short-term or unclear goals. Here are some example descriptions:

NOT GREAT: By procuring our own podcasting equipment, we’ll be able to make more podcasts every year.

GOOD: Purchasing this podcast equipment will enable my organization to produce 15 additional podcast episodes per year, while reducing the cost of each podcast by 30%.

EVEN BETTER: We currently increase our podcast subscription base by approximately 20 people per episode we produce. Because we rent our equipment, we can only produce 10 podcast episodes per year. By owning our podcasting equipment, we could reduce the per-episode cost and produce an additional 15 episodes per year. We expect this to lead to an increase in our subscriber base by approximately 300 people per year.

If you are a for-profit organization or a nonprofit organization with a projected 2024 annual operating budget greater than $1,000,000, you may be required to raise a dollar-for-dollar match to your Art + Tech Expansion Fund award.

No. Match dollars must be “new money.” That means you’ll need to get others to invest funds just like ours, whether it be from other grants, individual contributions, corporate sponsorships or other sources.

If your award requires a match, you will have approximately six months from the time you receive the grant to match our funding.

No. Your best resources for raising matching funds are your local community foundations, private corporations, earned revenue, in-kind donations, public funds and crowdfunding.

Test it out, we’re happy to talk it through with you. Knight staff will be holding a town hall meeting (details to come) and daily virtual one-on-one office hours specifically for this purpose. It only takes a few minutes to offer your idea. Book an appointment with a member of the Knight Arts team above.

Knight staff, with the aid of independent arts experts from the community. Ultimately, the final decision lies with Knight Foundation’s Board of Trustees.

Winners will be announced in Fall 2024.

Members of the Knight arts team will contact applicants via email approximately two months after the closing date. We will inform you of our decision at that time, and we may have additional questions about your application. 

Due to the large number of applications we receive, we are unable to share with you the reason your proposal was not selected.

Feel free to send questions to [email protected].