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The Philadelphia Cultural Fund has announced one of its largest disbursements of grants to arts and culture programs, totaling $5.6 million to 322 organizations.
The money came from the city of Philadelphia’s 2025-2026 budget, which increased its annual allotment for the arts to $5 million, and from the William Penn Foundation, which committed $8 million to a multiyear Community Impact Grant program.
The funding round does not reflect Philadelphia’s current fiscal year 2027 budget that went into effect July 1, which reduced the amount of money for the arts to $3.5 million.
Cultural Fund Executive Director Gabriela Sanchez said this round of grants is the most given by PCF and the first to represent changes to the PCF’s funding process. She said she is reorganizing the fund to distribute grants more equitably, to more organizations.
“We’ve been reimagining and testing things out while trying to hold on to the historical practice this organization has done, which has lent itself to be trust-based in so many ways,” Sanchez said.
Sanchez said the combination of public and private money was used to develop a two-tier granting model. The city’s $5 million allotment funded the Arts and Culture grants, which awards $12,875 to nonprofit or fiscally sponsored programs with a budget of $3 million or less.
That eligibility cap was raised from a previous $1.5 million to make more mid-sized organizations eligible, such as the Chestnut Hill Conservancy, which conserves and celebrates the history and architecture of Chestnut Hill and the lower Wissahickon watershed. With assets of about $2 million, the conservancy had never before been eligible for the PCF grant.
“This investment recognizes that preserving history, architecture, landscapes, and community stories is an important part of Northwest Philadelphia’s cultural life,” Executive Director David Gesst said in a statement.
The second tier of PCF’s granting model is the Community Impact Grants funded by the William Penn Foundation, intended for smaller organizations with an annual budget of less than $500,000. The pool of applicants came from the Art and Culture grantees, who went through a secondary review process to determine 140 Community Impact grantees.