Portland’s arts and culture institutions face financial woes

In Portland, arts organizations are facing shrinking budgets, donor fatigue and other financial struggles. The city launched the Office of Arts & Culture last year, but Portland faces a $27 million budget gap. As people move out of Portland, an arts tax aimed at boosting the region’s arts and culture offerings might yield less money.

Blake Shell is the executive and artistic director of Oregon Contemporary. Marissa Wolf is the artistic director of Portland Center Stage. Kimberly Howard Wade is the executive director of Caldera, which serves young people in Portland and Sisters. And Darion Jones is the assistant director of the city’s Office of Arts & Culture. They join us with more about these challenges and what they mean for a city that prides itself on a robust arts and culture scene.

Note: The following transcript was transcribed digitally and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.

Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. We start today with arts funding in Portland. As you might remember, the system of that funding changed significantly this year. It used to be that most city money for the arts was funneled through the Regional Arts and Culture Council. The city has now taken over that grant making. Many arts organizations expressed concerns about that change. Those concerns, especially on the part of a group of smaller organizations, became more pronounced after the city announced its first grants in the fall.

We’ll hear from the assistant director of Portland’s Office of Arts & Culture (RACC) in a little bit. We start right now with representatives from Portland-based arts organizations of different sizes. Blake Shell is the executive and artistic director of Oregon Contemporary. Kimberly Howard Wade is the executive director of Caldera, which serves historically under-resourced young people in Portland and in Central Oregon. Marissa Wolf is the artistic director of Portland Center Stage. It’s great to have all three of you on the show.

Blake Shell: Thank you.

Kimberly Howard Wade: Thank you.

Marissa Wolf: Thank you for having us.

Miller: Blake Shell, first – why did you write a letter to the city recently?

Shell: Well, when we found out about our funding, I realized that we were receiving a lot less from RACC than we had in the last five years or so. And when I looked at it, it became clear that while there was more funding available this year, it had actually been weighted differently. Instead of there being one portion of funding that went based on budget size and one portion based on equity measures, it was all determined by budget size. [This] meant that over $400,000 was given to the top-five-in-budget-size organizations instead of the lowest 45 out of 80 organizations. So we’ve really lost a big batch of funding for small organizations, mid-sized organizations that really depend on those funds and ...

Miller: In what way? I mean, how dependent, let’s just say, is your organization on this particular pool of money as opposed to money you earn from everything else or philanthropy?

Shell: Great question. So for the largest organizations, the bump that they saw was less than 1% of their annual budget. But for the smaller organizations, the average is 4% of the annual budget that’s been lost. One organization lost 8% of their annual budget, and that’s in the middle of the year. So that means that organizations might be depending on the city funding for general operating support because their other funds are coming in as program support. So that’s immediately jobs lost. People are letting people go. They are not hiring for new positions. And one organization is talking about that if this continues, they could close within two years.

Miller: Are you arguing essentially that the ratios of support for smaller, mid-sized and large organizations that existed under RACC should just be continued indefinitely? That the amount of money that was given in total to the larger ones and in total to the smaller, medium sized ones in previous years should just be codified somehow and it should always continue that way?

Shell: Actually, every year we were required to give data based on what we were doing for accessibility, diversity, equity, inclusion community work. So it’s just historical in the sense that we were receiving around the same amount of money, but we were actually reporting out numbers and we were given the funds based on those numbers. The amounts could fluctuate if we stopped doing something or we started doing something else. And RACC really worked with us on that.

So we worked on it over time and got better at our DEIA work. They also were really understanding of the fact that we are an organization that provides free programming in diverse neighborhoods. Things like that could change for organizations. Amounts could change, but the fact that now it’s entirely based on budget, means that smaller organizations that are doing that kind of work are no longer getting funds to support that work and to just stay afloat … but also, with no notice.

Miller: Marissa Wolf, how would you say the largest performing arts organizations in Portland are doing right now?

Wolf: That’s a great question. Yes, so this is a time of scarcity and I would say it feels important. I think so many of us, certainly all of us here today, are fighting scarcity and a scarcity mindset because what we need, even with dwindling resources, is a sense of abundance, a sense of connectedness and interconnectedness.

Miller: How do you do that? Scarcity, in particular … Portland is one of a bunch of cities that are facing a budget shortfall. I mean, it’s almost the definition of scarcity.

Wolf: Yes

Miller: The word “abundance” is wonderful, but how do you achieve even that mindset when there’s not enough money?

Wolf: Well, it’s actually a great question because it feels really hard, and especially for me as an executive leader of the largest theater in our region. We’re the second largest theater in the state. There’s an incredible amount of pressure in order to make sure we stay open, continue to serve our community and keep the lights on in our neighborhood of Downtown Portland.

I can only speak on behalf of Portland Center Stage, but certainly, my incredible colleagues around the city who are also holding it down in theaters … everyone is, I think, inside of a very challenging time. I think when I’m approaching things calmly, with a sense of possibility and hopefulness around abundance, it has to do with partnerships. It has to do with what resources we have that we can share.

I’m really thrilled and proud that Portland Center Stage, [which is] in the beautiful Armory building that has two theaters and a rehearsal hall right in Downtown Portland … Last year, we worked with 42 other nonprofits in our region, having people come in. We worked with so many other artists, visual artists. I’m also really proud that we work predominantly locally. So, 90% of our actors are local and they’re all union members. And 78% of our creative teams are local and also all union members. There’s something about really digging in to supporting our community in that way that feels exciting and important.

Yet, I will say [that] for us, having extra funds from the city this year was a Hail Mary for us. We are really in a position of struggle right now. It’s been a volatile time as we build back from the pandemic. When I initially went to the city, they thoughtfully said, “you get the amount that everyone gets, according to the budget size.” That is why I directly reached out to the mayor, because we were in pretty dire straits and I felt it was important to kick it up to that level.

Miller: What’s it been like to be one of the largest arts organizations, when there is now this very public conversation? And I’ve noticed that there’s been an effort on the parts of arts organizations to not point fingers at each other, to say that “our beef is with the city.” That’s the sense I’ve gotten from the letter you’ve written. But still, if we’re looking at a pie that’s not getting bigger, there is somewhat of a zero-sum game here, that every dollar that goes to one organization, regardless of its size, is not going to go to any other one.

So I’m just wondering what it’s been like to be one of the large ones, at a time when smaller and medium-sized ones are saying this is not fair?

Wolf: Yeah, I hear you on that. I was raised up in an indie theater in San Francisco and I ran a very small organization with three staff members. That organization is continuing to thrive and I’m so proud of that. I am a very firm believer that a healthy arts ecosystem takes all sizes of organizations and I am deeply uninterested in any kind of pitting against each other. I also understand that to be the largest theater in the community can easily, I think, look like a sort of usurping of resources – and that’s not OK. I can understand how it can look that way from the outside.

I think what I would offer is that I am doggedly going after resources right now, in ways that I think that all of my colleagues running theaters are as well, in order to pay for a living wage for 60 staff, and 10 to 30 artists and technicians at a time, all of whom are union members. I think that’s part of my job. And I never wanted to be taking resources from others, which is why I want to advocate for greater resources for the state and city so that the city Arts and Culture Office can distribute those resources.

Miller: Kimberly Howard Wade, along those lines – Caldera, you don’t just operate in Portland as I mentioned. You operate in Sisters as well, in Central Oregon. So I’m wondering what do you think the arts funding conversation looks like more broadly, when you look at it statewide?

Howard Wade: Well, to build on what Marissa was just saying, the pot needs to be bigger and it always needed to be bigger. I was on the steering committee of Our Creative Future. The amount of money that was talked about – as the plan that we needed in just this region, the tri-county region – was I think about $15 million. That’s the same number that they were talking about in 2008, 2009 when we were talking about the arts tax for the first time. So that’s, what? I can’t do math very well. I’m an artist …

Miller: Yeah, like 12 or 13 years.

Howard Wade: Yeah, that was a long time ago. And $15 million, obviously, even just in the last couple of years with inflation and other things is not enough money. So I’m constantly advocating for creative solutions to how we generate a larger pot of money. I think part of the reason that the pot has stayed so small is because we have been myopic about how we’re thinking about it, both at the state level, the regional level and the city level.

Miller: Well, let’s say you were talking to a lawmaker who says, “Yeah, arts are great, culture is great, I know that. But there’s a housing crisis, there’s an opioid crisis, there’s an education crisis. And arts and culture, as amazing as they are, it’s just lower on my personal priority list for budgeting.” How would you respond?

Howard Wade: I would respond exactly the same way that Marissa would respond. Sixty people are employees of that organization. I don’t know how many people work at Oregon Contemporary. Twenty-one people work at Caldera. Of those 21, nine of them are here in the Portland metro area. Those are people that are part of the economy. They need to have a living wage. There needs to be affordable housing and there needs to be other good education for them to sustain being here in this community.

So when we think about arts funding, I think we get, again, so narrowly focused on [how] we’re going to carve out a lot of this money to give directly to an arts organization or to an individual artist to do this work, [but] we should also be thinking about what part of housing is affecting the arts and cultural community? What part of economic development could the arts and cultural community be actually helping to benefit [by] bringing more money and more resources to the community, that then goes back to paying living wages for the people who are providing the most valuable resource to each and every one of us: hope, possibility and joy in arts and culture, not just consumption but also participation.

Miller: Blake, what changes would you like to see specifically going forward? I mean, what’s at the top of your list? Let’s say that there is not a change in terms of the money that’s already been announced for this year’s grants. You’re hoping that’ll change. That seems unlikely.

Shell: Yeah. It seems unlikely.

Miller: It’s a lot to say we’re promising you X amount of money. And we’re not going to give that to you, we’re going to give it to somebody else. But going forward, what are your top two hopes for how the city’s grant making process will change?

Shell: Well, I think that the first is really the the criteria change so that it’s not just looking at budget size. For example – and this kind of speaks to the overall arts ecology that we’re all part of – we worked with over 50 arts organizations and partnerships last year at Oregon Contemporary. Not all of those show up on our books, because sometimes we’re giving free space to other arts organizations to put on programming. If they’re BIPOC-led or focused on those audiences, if they are LGBTQ+, if they are focused on programs for people with disabilities, we do significant cuts. And sometimes that can be entirely off the books because it’s not counted in our budget.

So when I think about our creative futures and the planning that’s been going on, a lot of that is about how it should be spread across the different districts. Arts ecology really is not just about one locale or one-size organization, because if there are no more of the small to mid-sized organizations to rent theater space, then we’re in trouble too. I feel like, not just thinking about budget size in terms of economic impact, knowing that those things ripple out and affect all of them – that’s the biggest criteria I need the city to focus on.

I guess the other thing that I would say is that I do worry for a larger picture thing that would affect all of us here and all of the organizations, which is that the city Office of Arts and Culture is saying that they need to find more money. And when they’re talking about that and they’re talking about private and public funders, I have a concern … because RACC is no longer doing this. Now, it’s going through the city, the criteria changed and we were told after the fact [about] the new criteria. I have great concern. For example, the Oregon Community Foundation and the Miller Foundation are doing amazing things for arts and culture in this region. I worry about the city going to funders like that or other funders and saying, “give to us, we support 80 organizations,” and then become the gatekeepers of regional funding. The criteria could change on all of us last minute, without any notice. I worry for all of us for that to happen.

Miller: Blake Shell, Kimberly Howard Wade, Marissa Wolf, thank you very much.

Shell: Thank you so much.

Howard Wade: Thank you.

Wolf: Thank you, everyone.

Miller: Kimberly Howard Wade is the executive director of Caldera. Blake Shell is the executive and artistic director of Oregon Contemporary. Marissa Wolf is the artistic director of Portland Center Stage.

Darion Jones is the assistant director of Portland’s Office of Arts &Culture. He joins us now for another perspective on what we’ve been talking about. It’s great to have you back on the show.

Darion Jones: Yeah, thanks for having me, Dave.

Miller: So I want to start with the concerns that we heard from Blake Shell. She brought up the change in funding relative to organization size. As she and others have pointed out to you, 45 smaller arts organizations got less financial support from the city in 2024 than in previous years, while six of the largest institutions got more. We’re talking about, combined, a little over $400,000 difference. How did that happen and do you think it’s good policy?

Jones: Thanks for the question, Dave. When the Office of Arts & Culture took over oversight of the city’s grant making program to artists and arts organizations, alongside management of Portland’5 Centers for the Arts, as well as Our Creative Future and the Public Art Program, we’ve been looking at ways to not disrupt the system, and continue to be able to support arts organizations and the ecosystem without a major disruption. So what that looked like this year was importing some of the tools that were already built in place with RACC. The system that we used to distribute grants this year looked a little different for some of the nonprofits who historically had to apply for an additional grant through RACC. RACC ‘s grant making process created three applications, where nonprofits applied at different times in the year.

This year we were able to reduce some barriers for nonprofits by providing them advance notice of grant awards and a single check as well. So, a lot of the organizations you spoke to today received grant awards in June of this year, earlier of 2024, prior to our office taking it over. And we announced later in winter, around December, future grant award amounts, which are being disbursed right now. So we’re actually dispersing grants about six to eight months ahead of schedule. A lot of these nonprofits would get these grants later on in the year.

What we did in reducing that barrier for application – we surveyed those grantees to see how they were meeting the goals and outcomes of the Arts Access Fund, which is funded by many Portlanders, who know it as the Arts Tax. The Arts Tax raises about $12 to $13 million a year that pays for first teachers and all of our K-5 schools, across six school districts. It funds the grants that go to a lot of these arts organizations. We were able to find out this year that those organizations and our general operating support program met the criteria. So every organization received an additional investment award for the first time.

So many of the smaller organizations who are in our system never applied and never had historically received those awards. We know [that] sometimes equity looks a little different to different people, but as we’re making changes and shifts, we’re trying to create a playing field where we can provide the most investment to our grantees.

Miller: The system that you had for this year, this first year when the city took over the grant making, will this be the norm going forward, or was it a kind of stopgap because you didn’t have a fuller grant making system up and running?

Jones: It’s a great question. I would say we’re in a year of transition at the city. Our office was previously assigned to the arts commissioner, which was identified by the mayor. That is no longer the role. We are now in the Vibrant Communities service area, alongside the Portland Parks Bureau and the Children’s Levy, which are also parts of the city that support arts and culture in different ways. We want to look within our service area to create more support systems and look at how we can deliver our services citywide better.

So, again, this first year is a year of transition and our goal was to create the least disruption in the system. We know, going forward, organizations will continue to receive their base awards. We don’t know what the future will look like for those investment awards, knowing that the Arts Tax is a finite resource that has not been adjusted for inflation. It’s a $35 tax that truly goes to the schools first and then the arts community. We know there was a recent increase in teachers' salaries, and we’re also anticipating needing to provide more funding to the districts and wanting to also insulate the arts community from that. So we’re thinking about a lot in this moment.

Miller: Broadly, when you’re thinking about dispersing grants going forward, will you be looking at the overall math, in the same way that we heard Blake Shell doing? Will you be looking at the amount of money that the large organizations get and the amount collectively that the smaller or medium-sized ones get? Is that a metric that you are interested to know about, that you care about? Or, are you more focused on “tell us who you are, what you’re doing, we’ll give you money and we’re not going to count the ratios of large versus small”?

Jones: Meeting the needs of the arts ecosystem, I’d say, is our primary goal. And this year will be a year of transition. We’re also listening and learning from the nonprofits. In November of last year, our grants program manager, Jeff Hawthorne, hosted two sessions with all of our generating operating support organizations, where we learned organizations want a lot of different changes in the system. We’ve heard organizations say they want multiple years of funding, which would look quite different overall.

We also know there are amazing arts and culture organizations that never applied for this funding. They didn’t know it existed and have reached out. We’ve heard from dozens of other organizations who would qualify for these dollars, that they want a piece of the funding as well, too. [That’s] why we’re really looking at the ecosystem to see where we can have the most impact to advance our creative future, which is the cultural plan we’ve built with the arts community over the last three years.

Miller: Which of those things that you heard people saying that they’d like are you seriously considering? So, for example, multi-year funding – is that on the horizon?

Jones: Again, it’s too early to tell what we’ll see. We had our first conversation with these nonprofits less than three months ago, and we’ll continue to have them across this year and beyond. But we hear from these nonprofits who say they want sustained funding that they can rely on year-to-year, which is why we provided eight months' notice of these grant awards. And we were advancing those awards earlier in the year. As we continue to shift the system, we’ll look at more efficiencies we can do to meet their needs.

Miller: One of the big similarities between what you’re saying and what we heard from the artistic or executive directors earlier, is that there’s a need for more money. You both talked about the unchanged per-person Arts Tax and how that is intersecting with higher salaries, just a higher cost of goods and services.

At the same time, it’s hard to imagine the state putting a lot more money towards arts statewide. So, where does this leave you? How likely is it that there actually is going to be more arts and culture funding for the city to give out in the coming years?

Jones: I will say last year I was able to join a coalition of partners in Salem to help advocate for more funding, which did show some returns here in the city. But I think a bigger picture question we need to talk about is the fact that charitable giving is crucial at maintaining the arts health and ecosystem of our communities. And it’s down throughout the country.

Right now, before Congress, is Senate Bill 566, which is known as the Charitable Act. [It] would expand and allow for a non-itemized deduction for taxpayers to provide additional resources in the arts ecosystem, and look at what those arts and cultural organizations do in a way that they haven’t before. So charitable giving is another piece of this puzzle beyond this government, and we want to move forward and try to support more dollars in the system.

Miller: Darion Jones, thanks very much.

Darion Jones is the assistant director of Portland’s Office of Arts & Culture.

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