Pandemic Relief for Arts and Culture Nonprofits: Resources with Messages

Abstract This paper examines access to and impacts of two COVID-19 federal pandemic relief initiatives. The Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) was a new program to help “small businesses” cover near-term operating expenses and incentivize employers to retain employees. Pandemic relief also included increased COVID-19-specific funding for the existing Emergency Injury Disaster Loan (EIDL) program. We frame our study with the Policy Feedback Framework to focus on how the policy design and implementation created resource effects and the messages nonprofits received when accessing the programs. We focus our study on the arts and culture sector, which was disproportionately impacted by the pandemic closures. We conducted an online survey of New York City nonprofit arts and culture organizations and semi-structured interviews with industry stakeholders six months into the pandemic closures. Survey results indicate that while the resource effects were mainly positive, the PPP implementation relied on a narrow conception of small businesses that did not align with nonprofit governance, arts and culture hiring practices, or revenue and expense models (negative interpretive effects). For those who accessed the PPP, its resource effects benefited the organizations in the near term. Few accessed the EIDL 30-year loan program mainly due to the financial risk of default. Nonprofit arts and culture organizations learned they must collectively advocate for inclusion in programs not adapted for their operating realities. After this study, the performing arts successfully advocated for a one-time $16.25 billion grant program titled the Shuttered Venue Operatrors Grant (SVOG). The lessons for policymakers are that 1) nonprofit governance structures are different from small businesses and 2) cookie-cutter approaches, like the PPP program design, create barriers for accessing resources.