OVERVIEW

The Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture (MOAC) believes artists and cultural workers play a vital role in shaping a healthy, vibrant, and just society. To support this belief, Opportunity Fund 7.0 provides project-based support to Boston-based artists and cultural workers to create and present community-centered arts experiences that expand access to creative expression across all neighborhoods.

By investing in the creative labor of individual artists and cultural workers through a structure that prioritizes our communities’ access to the arts, the Opportunity Fund helps strengthen Boston’s civic fabric and supports more equitable participation in the arts for all Bostonians. It affirms MOAC’s belief that every neighborhood should be home to meaningful cultural expression—and that local artists are essential civic partners in that work.

Funds may support an entire project or a portion of a confirmed project, as long as the work is publicly accessible and aligns with MOAC’s commitment to lifelong arts access, neighborhood vitality, and cultural equity. Funded projects will offer a clear public benefit and must be entirely free to participants or audience members. Applicants are encouraged to share how their work promotes inclusion, representation, and shared cultural experience.

Recipients will be selected through a weighted lottery process, with priority given to performing artists; individuals from low-income backgrounds or experiencing financial insecurity; and artists living in Chinatown, Dorchester, East Boston, Hyde Park, Mattapan, Mission Hill, and Roxbury. Priority will also be given to applicants looking to fund projects in the neighborhoods where they reside and applicants who were not awarded the Opportunity Fund in last year’s application cycle. This approach ensures timely processing of applications while prioritizing equity in the distribution of funds.

 

BACKGROUND

In the Boston Creates Cultural Planning Process, Boston’s residents called for more community-based activities; recognition and valuing of neighborhood cultural assets; and greater exposure to artwork representative of diverse cultures. They also identified a need for greater investment in Boston’s arts and culture sector through increased public funding as well as private, corporate, and foundation support. Goal 2 of the plan was: "Keep artists in Boston and attract new ones here, recognizing and supporting artists’ essential contribution to creating and maintaining a thriving, healthy, and innovative city.” 

Goal 2 reinforces the importance of artists in Boston. Given that resources for individual artists in Boston historically have been limited, this goal was intended to help artists do their best work by providing essential means of support. The first strategy for meeting Goal 2 was to invest City of Boston funding into grant programs for individual artists. This Opportunity Fund was designed to directly address Goal 2, and was established in 2016 to provide grants for working artists, creative workers, teaching artists, and cultural practitioners of all artistic backgrounds and disciplines living in the city of Boston to increase their impact within their communities. The grant was initially designed to help artists take advantage of immediate opportunities to showcase their work.

Please read through the full grant description prior to applying.

The application starts below the guidelines - please read the full guidelines and scroll all the way down to find the application! If you don't see the application, you may need to sign in to your Submittable account or make a Submittable account and refresh the page.
 

THE BASICS

Contact: For questions regarding the Opportunity Fund grant please email artsgrants@boston.gov and use the subject line, “Opportunity Fund Grant Questions.”

Funding Source: Mayor’s Office of Arts and Culture Operating Funds

Total Funds Available: $300,000

Size of grants: $3,000

Number of grants awarded: 100

Important Dates: The application opens on Tuesday, April 22, 2025. The deadline for submitting an application is Tuesday, May 20, 2025 at 11:59PM. Grants will be awarded and disbursed by the end of July 2025.

 

FUNDING ELIGIBILITY AND PRIORITIES

Where can community-centered arts experiences happen? 

Experiences must be in a location that is publicly accessible and ADA accessible in the city of Boston. 

Examples include but are not limited to: public buildings such as libraries, schools, or less traditional arts-learning spaces such as community-based organizations, businesses, and parks. 

Applicants must ensure that they have or will receive permission to use the location that they propose hosting their experience or the appropriate permits. Learn more about common permits for special events in Boston.

 

Who is eligible to apply?

Individual applicants should meet all of the following criteria to be eligible. 

• You are 18+ years of age
• You are an active working individual artists, creative/cultural workers, teaching artists, and cultural practitioners of all artistic backgrounds and disciplines (subsequently referred to as “creative workers” throughout these guidelines) 
• You are currently a resident of the city of Boston, and have lived in the city of Boston for at least one full year at the time of this application
• You are not currently enrolled as a full-time undergraduate student or graduate student
• Due to limited funding and the goal to partner with a diverse range of arts stakeholders, the following are ineligible for this grant:                     
  • Previous Neighborhood and Downtown Activation Grantees who received over $20,000 in total.
  • Creative workers may apply for both the Opportunity Fund and Neighborhood Activation Grant, but if selected, they can only receive funding from one of these programs.
     

City of Boston employees and non-individuals cannot apply to this grant program. This funding cannot support inherently religious programming.

What expenses are eligible?

Experiences must be entirely free to the public. Eligible expenses include:

• Materials and supplies for the proposed experience (This can include refreshments that are free to the public. Alcohol is not an eligible expense.)
• Costs associated with marketing the experience
• Costs associated with renting a space for the experience
• Compensation for applicant creative workers facilitating the experience, and/or artists hired as part of the experience.
  

What are the funding priorities? 

Please note that the funding priorities are different from the eligibility requirements. We encourage you to apply if you meet the eligibility requirements, but do not meet all, some, or any of the funding priorities below.

• Creative workers with an individual annual income under 80% of the median household income in Boston ($91,200)
• Creative workers with an individual annual income under 30% of the median household income in Boston ($34,300)
• Performing artists
• Applicants who did not receive the Opportunity Fund in last year’s application cycle.
• Residents in neighborhoods who live in the following neighborhoods: Chinatown, Dorchester, East Boston, Hyde Park, Mattapan, Mission Hill, and Roxbury. 
• Community-centered Arts Experiences planned in the neighborhoods listed above.

 

Additional information to consider 

• You must provide a physical address where you reside in Boston. 
• MOAC reserves the right to request additional documentation to verify Boston residency.
• You may need to pay taxes on grants you’ve received.
• Payment will be made to you as an individual 
• If you receive public benefits that are income-limited and/or include asset limitations, this grant may impact those benefits. 

 

GLOSSARY AND FAQ

What is the definition of a creative worker in this context?

According to Springboard for the Arts, “An artist is anyone who thinks creatively about the world and their dynamic place in it. Our definition of artist is broad and includes visual artists, performers, writers, music creators, culture bearers, makers, artisans, storytellers, social conveners, idea purveyors, imaginaries, visionaries, students, teachers, organizers and nurturers. Artists are a powerful natural resource and they exist in every place and community.” We will be using this definition of an artist for the Opportunity Fund.
 

What is the definition of an “active creative worker” in this context?

Active creative workers are individuals who are currently engaged in creative work intended to function as a profession instead of as a hobby. Active creative workers may earn income by selling their creative work, receive funding to support the development of their creative work (such as grants, awards, fellowships, and residencies), or work in non-creative industries to fund their professional creative work, with the intention of focusing their careers on their creative work. While students may be considered active creative workers, the Opportunity Fund does not invest in full-time students at this time. If you are not currently enrolled as a full-time undergraduate student or graduate student you are welcome to apply as long as you are 18+ years of age.

What does it mean to reside in the city of Boston? 

Eligible applicants must reside in the city of Boston for at least one year at the time of application. To live in the city of Boston you must live in one of the neighborhoods mentioned on this City of Boston website.  

What is a “Community-centered Arts Experience”?

In the context of this grant program, a “community-centered arts experience” is a small event led by a creative worker that allows that creative worker to share their work with the public in a way that is free, that allows the public to benefit from a high-quality arts experience. The spirit of this grant program is to support local artists and teaching artists in doing what they do best, while sharing that practice with the community in Boston. Community-centered arts experiences are meant to enrich the everyday lives of Bostonians through access to high quality, free creative arts, and cultural experiences that have been designed with the audience in mind. Some examples of community arts experiences include but are not limited to:

• Arts educational workshops or classes across artistic disciplines
• Publicly accessible art exhibitions with one planned artist talk
• Concerts
• Dance or theatrical performances
• Film screenings by filmmakers showing their own work and discussing the work the audience

How does this grant differ from the Neighborhood and Downtown Activation Grant/Neighborhood Activation Grant? 

The Opportunity Fund is similar to NDAG and NAG in that it supports arts activations and experiences across Boston’s neighborhoods. However, this grant is distinct in that it is focused exclusively on supporting individual artists in sharing their work with the public. Applicants can request funds to support a new presentation of their work, or an ongoing or already planned presentation.

While NDAG and NAG are larger grants that require a longer and more detailed application process, the Opportunity Fund is designed to support smaller-scale projects. It is intended for either a single community-based presentation of work or a very modest series of presentations. The application is brief—designed to take no more than 20 minutes to complete—and is a great fit for creative workers who are newer to grantmaking or to publicly sharing their work.
 

Who is prioritized and why?

The Opportunity Fund will prioritize individuals who may have not had fair access to artists grant programs, including creative workers who are: 

• Performing artists
• Applicants who did not receive a grant from the Opportunity Fund in last year’s application cycle.
• From low income backgrounds and/or individuals who are currently experiencing financial insecurity
• Creative workers who live in neighborhoods listed above
• Creative workers proposing experiences in the neighborhoods listed above.

Applicants who self-identify into these priority categories will receive additional entries into the lottery.
 

Why does the Opportunity Fund prioritize performing artists? 

All artistic disciplines are eligible for the Opportunity Fund. In our most recent round of the Opportunity Fund, a third of applicants identified their artistic discipline as music. More broadly, the performing arts sector locally, and globally, was hit particularly hard by COVID-19. This industry has continued to face barriers toward recovering from COVID-19 because of the way the pandemic changed audience engagement, and the increased closure of performing arts spaces. For these reasons, the Opportunity Fund continues to prioritize investing in artists in the performing arts. 

How does MOAC define financial insecurity and why does MOAC prioritize low/moderate income applicants and extremely low income applicants?

The City of Boston has defined low/moderate income as households making less than 80% of the area median income and extremely low income as households making less than 30% of area median income. By these standards, more than half of the Opportunity Fund’s most recent applicants could be defined as extremely low income, while living in a city with a higher cost of living than the broader metropolitan area. This discrepancy indicates a higher financial need for extremely low income applicants, which is why MOAC prioritizes these applicants.

Why does the Opportunity Fund prioritize artists living in certain neighborhoods?

The Opportunity Fund welcomes applications from creative workers who live in all neighborhoods of Boston. The Opportunity Fund prioritizes applications from creative workers who reside in communities impacted by long-standing inequities, including Chinatown, Dorchester, East Boston, Hyde Park, Mattapan, Mission Hill, and Roxbury. Data on the impact of risks posed by climate change and COVID-19 are used to determine these communities. Click here to explore data we use to determine these communities. 

APPLICATION PROCESS AND TIMELINE 

The application is available on Submittable (starting below these guidelines). The application will open on April 22, and the deadline is Tuesday, May 20 by 11:59 pm. The application should take approximately 20 minutes to complete. Applicants will be notified of the status of their application no later than June 3, 2025. 

A condensed application process is as follows:

• Submit application via Submittable
• Review of applications to ensure applicants meet eligibility criteria
• Weight each application: eligible applicants who self-identify as members of priority areas will receive additional entries into the lottery
• Eligible applicants will be entered into a lottery
• Awardees will be chosen using Random Picker
• Applicants will be notified of the status of their application no later than June 3, 2025.
• Funding will be disbursed to awardees by the end of July 2025.
   

Award Requirements

• To receive funding, grantees must register with the City of Boston as vendors with the address used for this application.
• All grantees will be asked to submit a brief final report describing how their project contributed to their community.
   

Review Application Questions

Applications will be accepted through Submittable (continue scrolling and log in to Submittable to access the application). If you would like to review application questions before applying, you can review them here.

Accessibility and Accommodations 

Interpretation and translation services are available to you at no cost in English | Español | Kreyòl ayisyen | 繁體中文 | Tiếng Việt | 简体中文 | Kriolu | العربية | Русский | Português | Français | Af Soomaali here. You can view our Notice of Language Interpretation (available in multiple languages) for more information.

If you need accommodations or assistance with your application, please contact the grants team at artsgrants@boston.gov with subject line “Opportunity Fund,” or leave a message at 617-635-2787, and someone from the grants team will be in touch with you.