Infrastructure Grants

Each year, the Pop Culture Collaborative awards dozens of grants to seed and fortify the narrative infrastructure of the pop culture narrative change field. Infrastructure support includes: core capacity and operations; leadership development; research and cultural analytics; convenings and gatherings; network building and weaving; knowledge exchange; solutions that bridge and foster relationships and collaborations between organizations, movements, sectors, and industries; and field and funder learning.

The Collaborative seeks grantee partners working at the intersection of pop culture and narrative change who:

• Are artists, activists, organizations, strategists, researchers, and/or others who identify culture change as a clear outcome of their work and pop culture strategies as a critical aspect of their culture change efforts.
• Demonstrate emerging or pathbreaking leadership around long-term narrative and culture change strategies in the arts, entertainment, digital, mass media, and/or social justice sectors.
• Prioritize authentic and equitable leadership and/or partnership from the communities most directly affected by the work.
• Have the ability to clearly define how their work fits into a long-term narrative change strategy and theory of culture change.

Grant Eligibility & SELECTION CRITERIA

U.S.-based nonprofits, for-profits, and individuals/organizations with fiscal sponsorship are eligible for Pop Culture Collaborative narrative infrastructure grants.

To be considered, proposals must engage, affect, center, and/or support at least one of our multi-community focus areas: people of color, immigrants, refugees, Indigenous peoples, and/or Muslims, particularly those who are women, queer, transgender, and/or disabled. Initiatives with an intersectional and intentional focus on gender justice, LGBTQIA rights, disability, democratic fairness, pluralist values, and economic justice are prioritized.

The following work is not eligible for Pop Culture Collaborative grants:

• Initiatives outside of the United States.
• Projects that have a narrative change focus but do not incorporate pop culture strategies.
• Projects not designed to reach mass audiences of at least 1 million people, or to create infrastructure or research insights that will support projects that reach this scale.

We typically do not fund:

• Production costs for movies, television, or digital video (with the exception of rapid response grants). We are able to fund projects focused on content development and distribution.
• Long-form or short-form documentary films. We occasionally support innovative mass audience campaigns associated with nonfiction content in our effort to support new audience engagement models.
• Communications work (talking points, pitching and media coverage, social media) unless it is directly integrated into a cultural strategy campaign.