We’re building a coordinated network of venues and arts organizations to establish cultural spaces as recognized emergency response assets, accessing infrastructure and resilience funding currently unavailable to the sector. This working group will develop shared strategies, tools, and collaborative grant applications to position arts venues as fundable community resilience infrastructure.

We’re convening venue operators, festival producers, and arts leaders to develop coordinated strategies for resilience hub positioning, share assessment tools and best practices, explore collaborative grant opportunities, and build the documentation needed to establish formal partnerships with local emergency management. Regular virtual meetings begin in January to shape this emerging model together.

The #ReadyWhen Model

The U.S. recorded 28 billion-dollar disasters in 2023, while emergency management agencies face staffing shortages. Climate and infrastructure funding is expanding as FEMA grants more responsibility to states and localities, but most venues can’t access it: under most arts and cultural grant funding models, organizations are positioned as vulnerable cultural assets needing protection rather than latent emergency response infrastructure.

It’s already difficult times for small and medium-sized venues: 64% of independent stages operated unprofitably in 2024, squeezed by inflation, rising insurance costs, centralizing audience preferences, and artist fees. With disasters increasing in frequency and intensity, the vulnerability only compounds: 40% of all businesses don’t reopen after disasters, and 75% without continuity plans fail within three years. A 2016 survey of performing arts organizations found that 70% lacked disaster plans and 73% had no continuity of operations plans, leaving most venues at high risk of disruption.

Here’s what emergency managers don’t always yet see: every concert, every festival, every performance is a controlled emergency. The systems venues use to safely manage large and mass gatherings—incident command structures, crowd flow management, medical response coordination, communications protocols—are identical to disaster response operations, just deployed under different circumstances. You already possess what emergency managers need most: community trust, strong outreach networks, and a calendar of events that creates built-in training and coordination opportunities. Your events might be part of the spirit of your entire neighborhood; your collections and venues might house cherished historical objects as well as generations’ worth of memories. These are invaluable cultural assets. They’re also operational infrastructure for community resilience.

That’s why the #ReadyWhen model proposes a strategic repositioning for arts and cultural organizations: your venue is already a latent asset for your community’s disaster readiness and emergency response. This isn’t about adding programs—it’s about strengthening and formalizing the crowd management, logistics coordination, and crisis response skills you already use to safely convene mass gatherings, and documenting and networking those capabilities with local or regional emergency management. By investing in strengthening your preparedness, you’ll build the missing infrastructure—safety plans, trained staff, documented protocols—that transforms experiential capacity into fundable emergency response capability.

The benefits start in blue sky days: enhanced accessibility, clearer communication protocols, stronger staff coordination, and more systematic risk management. Studies estimate that every dollar invested in preparedness returns $13 in avoided disaster costs. Along the way, you’ll be positioning your organization to be #ReadyWhen it matters most: bringing people together through art, music, food, and festival, whatever lies in our future.

Guiding Questions

For venues considering applying for infrastructure or disaster capacity-building grants, here are a few considerations to guide your planning:

Capacity building vs. documentation

Do you have current emergency action plans, trained staff conducting regular drills, and documented protocols? If not, this is the first institutional infrastructure to build. In other cases you may simply need to document and formalize existing knowledge in alignment with public safety and emergency management standards.

What infrastructure can you provide?

Map specific capabilities: shelter capacity, power backup systems, water distribution capacity, communications equipment, accessible facilities, supplies storage. Emergency managers prioritize organizational training policies and general capabilities over individual credentials. Our Resilience Self-Assessment is coming in January to help jumpstart this process! Sign up for updates to learn when it’s live.

Take the Resilience Self-Assessment

Which grant mechanisms match your readiness?

Infrastructure grants require demonstrated capacity. Climate resilience funding looks for extreme heat mitigation or disaster response capabilities. Security grants need threat assessments and hardening plans. Match your application to your actual documented capacity—or use smaller planning grants to build toward larger infrastructure investments.

Who’s in your network?

Are other venues, arts organizations, or festival producers in your area working on resilience planning? Coordinated applications that show distributed geographic coverage and complementary capabilities strengthen the case for investment, especially if you are already coordinating across sectors with emergency management or public health partners.

Funding Opportunities

As FEMA devolves more responsibility to states, watch for emergency management (EM) capacity grants, pre-disaster mitigation programs, and local resilience planning initiatives. The opportunity exists now because both emergency management and arts funding are being radically restructured. Venues that document capacity and build EM partnerships before others position themselves for infrastructure investments that most cultural organizations aren’t thinking about, or can’t access.

Here are a few of the state and national programs we’re tracking:

California Nonprofit Security Grant Program (CSNSGP)

Federal funding administered through California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services. Supports physical security enhancements for nonprofits at high risk of violent attacks. Requires threat assessments and target-hardening strategies.

California Proposition 4 Climate Bond ($10B)

Historic climate resilience infrastructure investment focused on extreme weather mitigation, wildfire prevention, safe drinking water, and community resilience. Arts venues can position for funding through extreme heat response capacity (cooling centers), disaster response infrastructure, or climate adaptation improvements.

Opera America Civic Practice Grants

Supports professional company members developing civic engagement programs that serve communities beyond traditional performances. Grants fund accessible programming, inclusive events, and community-building initiatives that could integrate preparedness components.

New York State Arts & Cultural Organization Funding ($80M)

Governor Hochul’s initiative providing capital and operating support for nonprofit arts and cultural organizations statewide. Builds on existing NYSCA programs with emphasis on organizational resilience and community infrastructure.