Recommended NEA Advocacy Talking Points

Please use the below points as an aid in training Board and staff members about how funds from the National Endowment for the Arts affect the U.S. economy, aid arts non profits, and leverage additional funding.

• The nonprofit arts industry generates $166.2 billion annually in economic activity, supports 5.7 million full-time equivalent jobs in the arts and related industries, and returns $12.6 billion in federal income taxes. Measured against direct federal cultural spending of about $1.4 billion, that's a return of nearly nine to one.

• Grants through the NEA are widely distributed to strengthen arts infrastructures and ensure broad access to the arts. 

• The NEA distributes 40 percent of its program dollars to state arts agencies, on the condition that each state devotes its own appropriated funds as well.

• In partnership with the NEA, state arts agencies awarded 24,000 grants to 18,000 organizations, schools, and artists in more than 5,100 communities across the United States.

• Federal funding for the arts leverages private funding. The NEA requires at least a one-to-one match of federal funds from all grant recipients—a match far exceeded by most grantees.

• On average, each NEA grant leverages at least seven dollars from other state, local, and private sources. Private support cannot match the leveraging role of government cultural funding.