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On May 2, arts organizations across Colorado received their dreaded late-night emails -- not wholly unexpected -- from the federal government, terminating grants recently awarded by the National Endowment for the Arts, effective at the end of the month.

By May 6 the Bonfils-Stanton Foundation, a Denver-based philanthropic organization, sent out their own email, promising $400,000 in "Rapid Response" grants to those impacted by the NEA withdrawals.

As a somewhat lean, regional foundation, Bonfils-Stanton was able to move more quickly than some of their philanthropic counterparts. In order to do so, they had to work backward, according to CEO Gary Steuer -- approving the fund first, then figuring out the details.

Arts and philanthropy have always moved in sync with each other. A 2023 study analyzed financial data for nearly 100,000 nonprofits and found that the arts in America are funded mostly through philanthropy and donations at all levels -- from individual art lovers to major, capital-F Foundations: the Ford Foundation, the Knight Foundation, the Dia Foundation and so on.

As the Trump administration continues to hack away its own arts and humanities departments -- including revoking grants for the National Endowment for the Arts and the National Endowment for the Humanities, gutting the Institute of Museum and Library Services, and eliminating all three agencies from the 2026 budget recommendation -- many organizations are turning to philanthropy to fill in the gaps.

For the most part, philanthropy is heeding those calls.

Immediately after the Department of Government Efficiency cut $65 million in support for state humanities councils, the Mellon Foundation jumped in with $15 million in emergency funding, including an automatic $200,000 for every state. The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and the Andy Warhol Foundation are jointly allocating $800,000 to make up for canceled NEA grants. And Bonfils-Stanton thumbed through 57 applications for its $400,000 fund.

But not everyone is sure that leaning this hard on philanthropy is a good idea -- including Steuer.

A 2019 report on public funding in the arts showed that the NEA distributed money across urban and rural areas more evenly than private foundations. Awards from the NEA reached 779 more counties in the country than awards from the top 1,000 private foundations, according to the report. Bonfils-Stanton, for its part, focuses on metro Denver communities.

"One of the things that we're particularly concerned about is the very biggest institutions are going to be able to weather this storm easily. They have large endowments, wealthy donors, access to high-net-worth individuals," Steuer said. "But smaller organizations, especially those serving historically marginalized communities, they have the double-whammy of being targeted by the administration and having less access to philanthropy and wealth."

Historically, philanthropy supporting arts and culture has skewed heavily urban. The 2023 study found that grant distribution is heavily influenced by geography and institutional prestige.

The 10 most "prestigious" institutions -- determined by a combination of expert perception and the market value of exhibiting artists -- received more than 1,000 grants each on average, while "lower prestige" institutions received a few hundred grants at the most, according to the study. The more prestigious institutions also had a broader geographic range of donors, where less prestigious institutions relied more heavily on local philanthropy.

Of the 22 NEA grants terminated in Colorado, 13 are for organizations in Metro Denver and Boulder, and nine are for organizations outside of that area. Those outside organizations are leaning on local supporters and niche fanbases to make up for the lack of federal funding.

Staff at Creede Repertory Theater are hard at work preparing for the summer season in the former boom town in southwestern Colorado. The season opened last weekend with "Xanadu."

Creede Rep, as it's known, won a $20,000 grant for the Headwater New Play Program, which consists of three interconnected projects: developing new works to highlight stories from the San Luis Valley; commissioning a bilingual musical for youth audiences; and developing a play for their annual "KID" shows, which focus on teaching essential skills to youngsters.

The theater is now asking local donors and rural-focused foundations to keep the Headwaters alive.

Government grants make up a percentage of Creede Rep's overall annual revenue, ranging from about 1.5% in 2023 to 14% in 2022. That funding has never eclipsed box office sales, which makes up about one-quarter to one-third of their income, or private contributions, which come in around 50% of overall revenue each year. The company reported $1.6 million in revenue in 2023.

"It's festival season. It's theater season. It's touring season. It's summer camp season," said Meredith Badler, deputy director of the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts. "In smaller communities, we're talking about big employers. During the summer season, the Creede Repertory Theater is the largest employer in the entire county." (It's worth noting that Creede is the only incorporated town in Mineral County.)

Emily Van Fleet, artistic director for Creede Rep, seemed cautiously hopeful in an email to The Colorado Sun. Rather than view their remote location as a drawback, they are leveraging it as a "destination arts experience," she wrote, and trying to attract funds from organizations that prioritize rural arts and community development.

Among the other rural awardees are the Tank Center for Sonic Arts, in Rangely, which scored a $15,000 grant to support its "Connecting Colorado" artist residency program, and the Fraser Valley Arts Center, awarded $10,000 to host a plein air painting festival. Both sites have annual revenue close to $100,000.

Within a few days of Trump's inauguration, James Paul, executive director of the Tank, knew he couldn't bank on that money anymore. On Jan. 27, the NEA grants were caught in the trillion-dollar funding freeze that lasted about 24 hours before a judge temporarily blocked the order. The whole ordeal gave Paul "a feeling that we weren't going to get the money."

So in March he reached out to the Tank's fundraising base -- "our fans," Paul said -- with a plea to replace the NEA grant.

"I expected to raise about $5,000," Paul said. They ended up pulling in $51,000, enough to fund the residency for the next two years.

Paul thinks that the turnout was equal parts support for the Tank, an empty steel water tank where people experiment with sound, and perfect timing.

"It was a cry of rage," Paul said. "One that's being tapped now across the country. I think people didn't have an outlet yet at that point."

He also pointed to the diversity of the Tank's funding community. Located in the remote town of Rangely on the Western Slope, it didn't become a "Center for Sonic Arts" until a group of Boulder artists converted it in the 1970s.

"It's kind of a beloved thing," Paul said, noting that money came in from all over the world.

"We're a tiny place way out in the middle of nowhere on the Western Slope," Paul said. "So it's kind of great we were getting federal recognition that way, but it's never been a big slice of our budget, nothing we can count on anyway."

Paul is more worried about grants to the umbrella organizations, like Colorado Creative Industries, the state-run arts department, that rely on the NEA to fund statewide programs like the Colorado Creates grants and the Folk and Traditional Arts grants.

"That money trickles down in ways that people don't see," Paul said. "We can replace the occasional federal grant, but we can't survive in an arts ecosystem that isn't supported by the federal government."

Bonfils-Stanton, and many of the artists they support, also anticipated the cuts. Trump proposed eliminating the NEA and NEH during his first term, but was blocked by bipartisan support for the agencies in Congress.

Trump's criticisms are rooted in decades-old conservative efforts in the 1980s and '90s to eliminate the agencies, and more recent assessments by conservative think tank the Heritage Foundation have suggested handing over arts and humanities to the private sector.

Bonfils-Stanton started holding informal listening sessions shortly after Trump's inauguration.

"That's where we learned, for example, that the Black Arts Festival in City Park was having trouble with corporate sponsors turning them down," Steuer said. "We were hearing those stories early on. But the other thing that we heard, and this frankly inspired and motivated us, was an incredible sense of resilience."

These sessions allowed Steuer and the foundation's board to act quickly once the NEA grants were terminated. However, he said he worries about feeding a narrative that federal funding can go away, and private funding will automatically step in.

The Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, which works closely with the state arts agency, Colorado Creative Industries, sent a survey to roughly 60 NEA grantees from the past few years. Twenty-five had responded as of Wednesday.

"Pulling directly from those responses, we heard that the NEA 'stamp of approval' helps attract private dollars," Badler said. "So I think investment (in the arts) has to be everything, everywhere, all at once. That's what it takes, that's the way that you get that return on investment."

The question of whether government grants attract private investment or crowd it out has been debated for years. Some studies show that public funding elbows out private donors; others show that public funding is leveraged to attract more money; and still others suggest that the philanthropic world includes a bit of both. So, everything, everywhere, all at once.

But Badler points to the mechanism by which NEA grants are awarded. "These are matching dollars," Badler said. "You have to raise dollars as a part of getting the grant. So (investment) is inherent in the mechanism."

There are also concerns about a pair of executive orders addressing diversity, equity and inclusion, which were briefly used against NEA grantees to withhold funding if organizations did not sign a contract stating their compliance. A preliminary injunction was issued to halt the compliance effort, but not before corporate interests took notice, Steuer said, pointing to a downshift in sponsorships for culturally specific festivals, like Denver's Juneteenth celebration and Pride Festival.

Christin Crampton Day, executive director of the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts, said she notices similar ripple effects in the arts and business communities she works with.

"Nobody wants to say the word recession," Crampton Day said. "But it's out there, we're seeing that behavior. We're seeing a softening of corporate support, certainly within sponsorships and memberships and marketing. Those things in the corporate environment are being pulled."

Crampton Day said she's heartened by Bonfils-Stanton's commitment, and nodded to the rollout of a citywide commitment to the arts in Denver, which Mayor Mike Johnston announced May 14. But she wants to see the foundation community follow Bonfils' lead outside of metro Denver, she said.

Meanwhile, Steuer said that the Rapid Response grants may only be a first step. During COVID-19, Bonfils-Stanton was part of a pool of foundations jointly contributing to an arts and culture relief fund. That's something they may replicate in the years to come, he suggested.

"One thing we've heard from the community is the sense that this is sort of a COVID-level crisis without a COVID-level response," he said. "With COVID, there was this huge problem, and the government was stepping in in a whole array of different ways to help. Now it's the government that's causing it, so they can't rely on federal support. That's the problem."