For Greater Atlanta is a storytelling series celebrating the Community Foundation for Greater Atlanta’s 75th anniversary. Each story revisits a defining moment or movement in Atlanta’s history, exploring how the Foundation partnered with donors, nonprofits and community leaders to help the region meet the moment and build the greater Atlanta we know today.

By the early 1990s, Atlanta was emerging as a cultural capital. The city’s creative identity was being shaped not only by its largest institutions, but by theaters, dance companies, music organizations, galleries, and other independent arts groups bringing creativity into communities across the region.

Yet philanthropic resources were not reaching all of those organizations equally. Much of Atlanta’s arts funding was concentrated among large institutions, while smaller and mid-sized organizations often operated with fewer resources and less financial stability.

For Atlanta’s creative community to flourish, more of the organizations shaping its cultural life needed the opportunity to thrive. That’s the crucial role generosity helped to fill.

Investing in the Organizations Behind Atlanta’s Creative Identity

Key Moment: Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund (1993)

In 1993, the Community Foundation created the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund in partnership with the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce to strengthen small and mid-sized independent arts organizations. Over the past three decades, the Fund has evolved to meet the changing needs of Atlanta’s arts community. 

Initially, the Fund focused on project-based capacity-building grants designed to help arts organizations strengthen their operations and build long-term sustainability. Following the Fund’s transition away from the Chamber, its approach expanded to include general operating support, which became an increasingly important part of its grantmaking strategy.

This shift toward unrestricted funding gave organizations greater flexibility to direct resources where they were needed most, whether strengthening day-to-day operations, supporting programming or expanding community engagement.

Over time, philanthropic partners, including the Robert W. Woodruff family of foundations, invested significant resources in the Fund. During its first 25-plus years, it awarded more than $14.5 million through hundreds of grants.

But its impact went beyond the dollars invested. The Fund recognized that a thriving arts community depends on organizations of many sizes, disciplines, and perspectives. Supporting that ecosystem meant helping more Atlantans experience the breadth of creativity their region had to offer.

Sustaining Creativity Through Difficult Moments

The importance of that long-term investment became especially clear when Atlanta’s arts organizations faced periods of economic disruption.

Arts organizations can be particularly vulnerable during downturns. Performances are canceled, ticket revenue disappears, and organizations that already operate with limited reserves can quickly find themselves at risk.

During those moments, philanthropy became a tool not simply for expanding the arts, but for helping sustain them.

Key Moment: Covid-19 Arts Recovery (2020)

That need became especially urgent during COVID-19, when theaters went dark and arts organizations across Atlanta suddenly lost critical sources of revenue.

The Community Foundation and its philanthropic partners responded with relief and operating support, with increasing attention to organizations founded or led by Black, Indigenous, and other people of color.

The goal reflected the same principle that shaped the Arts Fund from the beginning: Atlanta’s cultural strength depends on a creative community in which many different organizations and voices have the opportunity to contribute.

Helping Atlanta Meet The Moment

For more than three decades, the Metropolitan Atlanta Arts Fund has reflected a belief that Atlanta’s creative identity belongs to all of us.

It is shaped by the large institutions known around the world AND the smaller organizations creating extraordinary work in neighborhoods and communities across the region. It lives in theaters, galleries, performance spaces, and gathering places where people encounter new ideas and experience stories different from their own.

For donors, investing in the arts is an opportunity to help sustain that creative ecosystem. 

In the early ‘90s, meeting the moment meant recognizing that a thriving arts community doesn’t happen by accident. It requires organizations and audiences to invest in artists’ ability to create, and flexible philanthropic support that gives organizations the stability to take creative risks and continue contributing to the cultural life that makes Atlanta distinctive.

That legacy continues to this day.

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Keep the Giving Going.

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