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IndieSpace is excited to offer The Little Venue That Could Grant Program for the second time! Funded with the generous support of the Howard Gilman Foundation, The Little Venue That Could Grant Program was created to provide unrestricted general operating support to New York City based indie theater, dance, and multidisciplinary performance venues with expense budgets under $500,000. Due to size, fiscal structure, staffing arrangements, and unconventional leasing and ownership structures, these homes for artists are often excluded from city, state, and federal funding and may not meet financial thresholds to get significant support from private foundations. Despite this historical absence of consistent financial support and the growing affordability crisis in NYC, small-budget indie theater, dance, and multidisciplinary venues continue to play a critical role in the creative ecosystem by providing artists with affordable performance and presenting space.

Selected grantees will receive:

• Unrestricted grants of $10,000 per year, for two years, 2025-2026, which can be used to pay staff, rent, utilities, debt, or whatever your venue deems appropriate to help keep your doors open and thrive. 
• Professional Development services, valued at $5,000, which must be used for professional development services within the two years of the grant period. Recipients will receive a menu of offerings from which to choose after they are awarded the grant. 
• Automatic inclusion in IndieSpace’s FREE Advisory and Consulting program, providing access to experts and information throughout the lifetime of your space operation. 

Additionally, in order to acknowledge the labor of writing and submitting an application, IndieSpace has allotted a total of $5,000 to be split and distributed to each organization that submits an eligible and complete application. The total amount each applicant will receive will be determined once all eligible and complete applications have been counted.

Grantees will be required to participate in a short interim interview with IndieSpace staff at the one year mark in order to receive the second year of funding. An optional post-grant survey will be distributed to grantees at the end of the second year of the grant to learn about their experiences and needs for the future, and to help us gather information about why a program like this matters. 

Eligibility:

You are eligible to apply for this grant if:

• Your entity is an indie theater, dance, or multidisciplinary venue with a performance space 
• Your venue has at least one space with less than 99 seats
• Your venue has been in operation for at least two years, including 2025
• Your organization’s expense budget is $500k or LESS in your last completed fiscal year i.e. July 2023-June 2024 or Jan 2024-Dec 2024.
• Your venue is open and is in active use
• Your venue is rented or owned with a signed lease, license agreement, or deed. Please reach out to discuss if you have a non-traditional agreement with your landlord.
• Your venue is located within the 5 boroughs of New York City
• Your venue is a 501c3, fiscally sponsored by a 501c3, an S Corp, B Corp, LLC, or LLP
• Your venue IS NOT a direct annual Howard Gilman Foundation grantee. Current direct, annual Howard Gilman Foundation grantees are not eligible for this grant. If you are a recipient of other regrants funded by Howard Gilman Foundation, that is fine. If you have questions about your eligibility please contact your Howard Gilman Foundation program officer or hello@indiespace.org for more information. Venues who have received funding from IndieSpace through any of our other funding programs are still eligible to apply.
• Your venue IS NOT a previous recipient of The Little Venue That Could Grant. 

The application opens on Monday, July 7, 2025 at 9:00 a.m. and closes on Tuesday, September 2 at 11:59 p.m. We estimate the application will take about 1- 2 hours for you to complete. You are welcome to use the information you have already prepared for other applications to significantly reduce the time needed for completion! There is no character or word count minimum or maximum for any of the questions. We have made suggestions on the length to help guide your writing, but you are not required to meet those suggested word counts. Bullet points are welcome, as long as they answer the questions. Applicants who submit very long responses will not be favored over shorter, more concise answers; however, the Artist Committee reviewing your application will not be doing any research or additional information pulling to vet your application. So while concise is totally fine, do be sure to give enough information for the committee to properly review and score your application. We will not be evaluating the quality of your grammar, writing, or formatting. If it is helpful to you, we have created a sample application which you can review here. 

The Little Venue That Could will be using a weighted lottery system to determine grantees. Throughout the application, we will note what questions will add weight or not, which weights are determined just by information in the application, and which will be read and reviewed by a committee to determine weight. The lowest weight an application can have is 1, and the highest weight an application can have is 15. Priority in weights will be given to venues who are located in the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island; venues whose NEA funding was withdrawn or terminated; venues who were established by, for and are serving historically excluded artists; and who demonstrate values driven work through community impact, board and staff diversity and accessibility. ALL eligible applicants will be entered into the lottery, regardless of weight distribution. To ensure each discipline is represented in the recipient pool, IndieSpace reserves the right to award the grant to the top scorer in theater, dance, and multidisciplinary. 

You can submit your application in writing directly on Submittable, or if needed, an IndieSpace staff member can take your application orally over the phone or via a Zoom meeting. Closed Captioning and/or ASL interpretation can be made available for Zoom application intake if requested in advance. To sign up for phone or Zoom application intake, please email hello@indiespace.org. Applications can also be submitted during any of the open house events detailed below. 

Have questions? Two virtual open houses and one in-person open house will be held for you to learn more about the process and to ask questions. For details and to sign up visit www.indiespace.org

About This Grant:

As part of our Community Resource Program, the Indie Theater Fund has opened an Emergency Mental Health fund that will be awarding individuals $500 micro grants for indie theater makers to use toward therapy, medication, meditation classes, and any other mental health related costs. It is our hope that by providing this financial resource, we can help remove barriers that prevent artists from seeking and receiving the care, support, and information they need to care for their mental health. 

Who is Eligible?:

This application is open to any NYC-based Indie theater artist in need of mental health funds, even if you have previously been awarded this grant. Anyone and everyone is welcome to apply, but funds will be prioritized to BIPOC, Trans/Non-Binary, disabled, and immigrant artists.

Application Process: 

To apply for funds, please complete the application below. This application should take you 10 minutes or less to complete. If you have any questions about the application or need assistance completing the application via phone, please reach out to our Programs Manager at veshonte@indiespace.org

Payment Process:

Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis and reviewed by our staff on the last Monday of each month. You will receive a notification of your application status by the Wednesday of that review week. Eligible applicants will then be entered into that month's lottery*, with priority* being given to BIPOC, Trans/Non-Binary, disabled, and immigrant artists. Priority will also be given to applicants who have not been awarded with a previous Mental Health Microgrant.

Any eligible applicant whose number was not pulled will roll over into the next month's lottery. This process will continue each month until all applicants have received a grant. A max of $10,000 will be given out each month.

Randi and I are continuously working hard to advocate for and grow our new Mental Health initiative. Our goal is to be able to serve every artist in need of this funding, and though it may take time, we will continue to raise and allocate funds in order to do so. 

Please note that if you are an individual who has already received funding from us in 2023, you will be prompted to upload a W-9 into your application in order to receive funds again. If you need a blank copy of a W-9, you can download one here.

*We will be using the Random Picker software to run our grant lotteries. Screen recordings of each lottery will be made and are available to review by request. 

*Priority is given via a weighted lottery system. All applicants who identify as BIPOC, Trans/Non-Binary, disabled, and/or immigrant artists will be given a weight of 2. An additional point will be given to those who have not received Mental Health previously.  

*Starting with the January 2024 lottery, applicants will be able to receive the Mental Health grant no more than twice in a calendar year. Once you have received it twice, any subsequent applications will be declined. 

About The Emergency Grant:
The IndieSpace Emergency Fund provides grants to arts organizations who have experienced a sudden loss or unforeseen circumstance that will impact their ability to move forward with a production (i.e. broken equipment, an ill artist etc.) Emergency Grants are not available to fill a gap in your fundraising efforts.

Grants will occasionally be provided to individuals facing a hardship that doesn't fall within one of our other grant programs for individuals.

About the Loan Program:

The IndieSpace Loan Program is meant for those with emergencies that are temporary and where funds are anticipated. We are happy to offer loans with 0% interest and flexible repayment terms to be determined together. 

Who is Eligible?:
This application is open to any NYC-based Indie theater company or venue. Indie theater venues are considered theaters or performance spaces with 99 seats or less. Emergency grants are given on a rolling basis, however, we do prioritize funding to companies or venues that are BIPOC, Trans & Non-Binary, Immigrant, and/or Disabled/Deaf run and operated. Individuals may also apply for funds, but they are limited and are only given on a case by case basis.

Application Process:
To apply for funds, please complete the application below. We hope this application will not take a long time to complete. Please note that this application will require some documentation uploading as support to your application. Please have any of the following ready and on hand to submit, if applicable: insurance claim, production or operating budget, photos of space or production damage, etc.  

If you have any questions about the application or need assistance completing the application via phone, please reach out to our Executive Director, Randi Berry, at randi@indiespace.org.

Payment Process:

• Applications will be accepted and reviewed by our staff and board within 24hrs of receipt. We aim to respond with application status update by email and/or payment details within 2 days of your submission. Funds will be paid out via PayPal or check depending on what you selected in your application. Zelle and ACH are also an option that can be discussed via email once the grant is approved.

Additional Info:

• We can not guarantee a payout of the full amount requested in your application. Grants may equal up to 25% of the total in the Emergency Fund pool at the time of the application.
• Grants can not be made to an organization to fill shortfalls in organizational budgets or fundraising as this is an unfortunate circumstance that many in our community are facing and we do not have the resources to support everyone in this way. If you are unsure or have questions about the emergency you are facing and want to discuss eligibility, please email randi@indiespace.org