Portland Area Artists Covid-19 Emergency Fund

This fund has been created to help meet the growing needs for freelance/independent artists, in the face of COVID-19.

NOTE: The initial concept and project is being run by celebrated author and Seattle native Ijeoma Oluo who launched a relief fund for her city’s art community on Monday March 9th, 2020.

Thank you for applying for Portland Artists COVID-19 Emergency Fund!  Here are important things for you to note before applying:-

1. This fund is currently for freelance/independent artists residing in the Portland tri-county area only. The counties are Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington. This fund is not for arts organizations or nonprofits.

2. This fund aims to assist those who are facing guaranteed lost income in the next 90 days (March 18th 2020 - June 10th) due to:- 
A. Cancelling your artistic events (think gallery openings, performances, book readings, classes) AND/OR
B. Receiving cancellation notices for scheduled artistic "gigs." 

3. We are aware that there are variations to define the term "freelance/independent artist." So, if don't see your particular situation below and you identify as a freelance/independent artist please apply. Some of the ways we see this term defined:-
A. A practicing artist who tends to not be affiliated a full-time employee with an artistic organization consistently for income.
B. Often, at the end of the year, you have many 1099s because you do many, many gigs. You don’t have access to employee benefits (including unemployment).

We have come to see that Freelance/Independent artists tend to be paid in these ways:
-You are contracted for hourly work that is not consistent year-round (Eg. teaching artist at a school)
-You have paying students for workshops/classes
-You self-produce artistic events and sell tickets
-You get presented by arts venues based on competitive selection and therefore receive a one-time payment for your artistic work.

4. This fund will provide equal opportunity to all qualified individual artists regardless of race, ethnicity, national origin, citizenship status, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, age, religion. 

5. Our goal is to make disbursements once a week depending on funds received, starting the week of March 30th. 

6. If we need more information, we will email you to get that from you, so please provide an email address.

7. We want to help as many people as possible, this means that we will more than likely be unable to provide the full amount of larger requests. The amount we can provide is based on our donations received, the amount of requests we have, and the requests we project will come in the near future.