CT Cultural Fund FAQs

The payment structure for this grant is 75% at the time of contract and completion of grantee survey and 25% after completion of the final report and follow up grantee survey. You can find more information on this payment structure in your grant agreement.

Yes. Since these are general operating funds, you can use your award for any organizational operating expenses as long as they are not listed as funding exclusions in the grant guidelines.

However, grantees are encouraged to use their funding to help advance their organization’s priorities that also support the following program priorities that helped make this funding available from the CT State Legislature:

• Organizational staffing (bringing back employees or hours lost to the pandemic, hiring new staff, hiring CT contractors, etc.);
• Activities that help your organization maintain and grow your ability to serve your community and the public;
• Activities that help connect K-12 teachers and students to strong humanities and arts content;
• Activities that improve your informational technology and digital infrastructure.

If the activity/expense is not listed in the funding exclusions in the grant guidelines, you more than likely can use the funds for this activity/expense. If you are unsure, feel free to reach out to the Grants staff with your specific question.

Data collection is important for CTH to continue to advocate for future funding to support the state’s cultural, humanities, and arts community. That said, we know that this is an area where many organizations are uncomfortable or would like assistance. Over the coming weeks and months, CTH will work to create and roll out a series of tools, templates, and trainings to help CT Cultural Fund grantees start to better collect data from their respective audiences. Please click here to see tips, recommendations, and a template shared from CT Humanities’ evaluation consultant, Wilkening Consulting. You may download an editable data collection template here.

The final report will have two components. In CTH’s online grants system, you will be asked to fill out a brief narrative report and financial report about how you spent the funds and the impact that they had on your organization. While CTH does not require you to submit copies of invoices, checks, or receipts with your final report, we do ask that you keep supporting documentation on file for at least 5 years in case your grant is ever selected to be audited.

You will also be asked to fill out a follow up survey from Wilkening Consulting much like the one you completed at the beginning of the grant period. The purpose for this survey is to help us collect and report data on the impact these operating support funds had on CT’s cultural sector. This data will also be used to advocate for continued funding for CT’s cultural sector.

Click here to see the data stories created from CT Cultural Fund grantees’ initial survey responses.

We anticipate that the final report and follow up survey will be made available to all grantees in the early summer. The reason for the delay is that the survey is intended to show the impact of funds on the CT cultural sector, which CTH will use to advocate for continued funding. We will send out an email notification when the final report is made available in the CTH Grant Application Portal.

Yes. CTH will open a second round of CT Cultural Fund Operating Support Grant applications in late summer 2022, with funding decisions and notifications made late 2022, for use of funds in 2023.