City of Atlanta, Office of Cultural Affairs

Camille Russell Love

When the mayor dropped his nearly 600-page, $539.8 million proposed spending plan at the end of last month, he voiced his intention to fund "vital cultural arts programs." Which sounds promising, if vague, especially because the city of Atlanta's Office of Cultural Affairs is lumped under the Parks & Recreation umbrella. The budget document, while colossal, doesn't offer an itemized spending breakdown by office.

I spoke with OCA Director Camille Russell Love yesterday to find out how 2013 was shaping up fiscally, and the news, it turns out, is pretty good. The proposed budget includes a $250,000 bump for OCA that will go directly toward grants and increase the awards pool from $470,000 to $720,000. OCA also received refunding for a current staff position on top of the $250,000.

"I know that the mayor wanted to do more, but the fact that he did anything, to me, is great news," Love says. "We don't anticipate that there would be any opposition to the increase from city council. We're working with the hope that it'll be approved and we can move forward to make more money available to arts organizations, community organizations doing arts projects, and individual artists."

$100,000 of that quarter mill will be used as seed money for a new small-grant matching program the office plans to initiate in September. Since last summer, Love and OCA have been developing an online fundraising tool modeled after the Kickstarter -like power2give , a program that's had great success in Charlotte and Miami Love says. Initially, OCA will offer $2,500 matching grants for 40 different projects by Contracts for Arts Services grantees.



"It's a tool that presents low-cost projects that artists and art organizations need funding for, like costumes or a set builder," Love says. "It is a way that we anticipate we can tap into a potential donor base that hasn't been tapped before and those are individuals who can't give $5,000 but maybe could contribute $100 or maybe $20."

If successful, Love plans to make it a quarterly fundraising cycle and expand the participation beyond the Contracts for Arts Services awardees. To make that plan financially viable, OCA will have to line up other sponsors to fund future rounds of grant matching.