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The purpose of the 2015 Local Arts Agency (LAA) Census was to characterize the different ways that LAAs perform their vital roles in every community. LAAs share the goals of enabling diverse forms of arts and culture to thrive locally, ensuring broad accessibility to the public, and building healthier communities through the arts. The census provides details about LAA staffing and oversight, services and programs, partnerships and collaborations in the community, grantmaking, diversity within staff/volunteers/board and diversity in programming, marketing and communications practices, arts education, services for the military, and operating revenues and expenditures, and more. For a more detailed listing of question groups, please refer to the Description of Variables below. This study contains data from the two forms of the surveys (Full and Abbreviated--a subset of the Full survey). These surveys were distributed online to 4,377 individual Local Arts Agencies in the United States which were known to Americans for the Arts in 2015. A total of 1,127 LAAs responded to the census survey. 641 submitted the Full survey; 486 completed the Abbreviated survey. The overall response rate was 26%. The data is contained in two separate datasets comprising results from the two surveys. The Full Survey (dataset 1) contains data from the 641 respondents who completed the long survey. The Combined Surveys (dataset 2) contains responses from both the 486 respondents of the abbreviated survey as well the corresponding 641 responses from the full survey for a total of 1,127 respondents. The rate of response from large and mid-sized LAAs was very high, while small and volunteer-driven LAAs were underrepresented in the survey respondents.

Each year, Grantmakers in the Arts (GIA) partners with Foundation Center and the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA) to research and report on national public and private arts funding trends. A major ten-year study was completed in 1993 and updated in 1995, 1998, and 2003. Since then, GIA has published annual update to this research in the Reader and on its website.

Available through DataArts, the Arts Vibrancy Index (AVI) contains data and findings of the role that arts and culture play in a city's livability and social cohesion. The National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) studies such connections between arts and cultural organizations and their communities. They combine data from nonprofit arts and cultural organizations with data for the communities in which they reside. In linking the data courses, NCAR identifies factors that affect the health and sustainability of arts organizations. NCAR realizes that each of the factors from the ecosystem included in the Arts Vibrancy Index report has an influence on a variety of financial, operating, and attendance outcomes for arts and cultural organizations. The findings are shared regarding the operating and community characteristics that drive performance - and how they affect performance - in the NCAR reports. The data that NCAR integrates for AVI report typically come from numerous sources. Organizational data that forms the basis of the Arts Dollar measures are from the Internal Revenue Service, DataArts' Cultural Data Profile, and Theatre Communications Group. Community data that forms the basis of the Arts Provider measures are from the Internal Revenue Service and the Census Bureau, which is reported by county, zip code, and census tract. State funding data is from the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies and Federal funding data is from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Institute of Museum and Library Services. The AVI reports are used by arts leaders, businesses, government agencies, funders, and engaged citizens to better understand the overall intensity and capacity of the community's arts and culture sector. Communities use the AVI and related data to benchmark themselves against an aspirational set of communities and understand what sets them apart by examining the underlying dimensions of demand, supply, and public support for arts and culture.

The Creative Community Index, a research initiative produced by Cultural Initiatives Silicon Valley, measured cultural participation and creativity in the Silicon Valley in 2002 and 2005. The first wave of the study, in 2002, consisted of two surveys: one survey measured the breadth and frequency of cultural participation by residents of Santa Clara County, and another survey gathered a range of data about the current health and vitality of nonprofit arts and culture organizations in the region. The second wave, in 2005, surveyed Silicon Valley residents, nonprofit cultural organizations, local area leaders, and local artists. The Survey of Silicon Valley Residents [2002] surveyed 361 adult residents of Santa Clara County, California in January and February 2002, and the Survey of Silicon Valley Residents [2005] surveyed 1,007 adult residents of Santa Clara County, California in April 2005. Respondents for both years were asked about their behavior and beliefs regarding arts and culture in their community. The Survey of Cultural Organizations [2002] collected data from 135 organizations in 2001. The organizations were asked a series of questions about their artistic products and programs, organizational capacity, and funding sources in an effort to gather a range of data about the current health and vitality of nonprofit arts groups in the region. The Survey of Silicon Valley Leaders [2005] surveyed adult residents of Santa Clara County between March and April 2005. The survey asked former and current members of American Leadership Forum-Silicon Valley about their organization's ability to attract and retain creative workers to Silicon Valley, as well as their participation, as an individual and with children, in arts and related activities.

SMU DataArts hosts the Cultural Data Profile (CDP), an annual online survey collecting detailed financial, programmatic, and demographic information from cultural nonprofits, which they use to apply for funding to multiple grant programs. SMU DataArts also integrates surveys from national arts service organizations into a unified platform, streamlining data collection and providing more reliable, standardized data. Participating organizations, including those in broadcast, media, literary arts, education, museums, performing arts, and advocacy, report detailed information on revenues, expenses, marketing, balance sheets, investments, attendance, programming, staffing, and volunteers. This results in a comprehensive longitudinal dataset essential for research and advocacy, supporting the evidence-based demonstration of the arts' value and impact. SMU DataArts provides data in various formats, from raw datasets for research to custom analyses and reports. Cultural Data Profile datasets can be requested for the past five completed fiscal years for $750, with discounts for academic use. The available datasets include: the National Dataset (all available data for broad analysis), the National Trend Dataset (for consistent trend comparisons across organizations), and the Most Recent Fiscal Year Dataset (a snapshot of the latest fiscal year). Customization and aggregate data services are available for additional fees. For more details, view the data dictionary here and the Cultural Data Profile questions here. Contact research@culturaldata.org for customization or further inquiries.

CultureBlocks is a free online mapping tool that provides simple access to a robust, spatial database of Philadelphia's creative and cultural resources on the neighborhood level. CultureBlocks can be used for decision making, policy development, research, planning, marketing and investment. This web tool is designed to assist people and organizations such as city officials, arts and culture managers, creative businesses, tourism and marketing officials, students, researchers, real estate developers, economic development professionals, and funders in their work. Citizens are invited to use this tool to learn more about Philadelphia and its creative sector. The team behind the tool consists of The City of Philadelphia's Office of Arts, Culture and the Creative Economy (OACCE), The City of Philadelphia's Department of Commerce, the Reinvestment Fund and the Social Impact of the Arts Project (SIAP) at the University of Pennsylvania's School of Social Policy and Practice. SIAP and the Reinvestment Fund also made use of the associated database to develop an index of social well-being for the city of Philadelphia, described in linked working papers.

DataArts, formerly the Cultural Data Project, was founded to bring the language and leverage of data to the business of culture. The Cultural Data Profile (CDP) is DataArts' flagship service, which thousands of cultural nonprofits use annually to report their financial and programmatic information. The Cultural Data Profile (CDP) is a detailed online survey of financial, programmatic, and demographic information that cultural nonprofits fill out once annually, and use to apply for funding to multiple grant programs. Other organizations provide data as part of integrated surveys administered by national arts service organization partners. This data powers a suite of business intelligence reports which cultural leaders use to better manage their organizations. It also contributes to a robust, national data resource for research and advocacy.

In 2015 Ithaka S+R surveyed the grantees of the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs (DCLA) and received demographic data on staff and board members, as well as questionnaire responses about initiatives and barriers to diversifying staff and boards. The invitation to participate in the survey was sent to the executive directors (or equivalent) of the 1,061 DCLA Capital Fund recipients for fiscal year 2016. Survey participation was a requirement for funding eligibility for fiscal year 2017. Representatives from the responding organization filled out spreadsheets on staff demographics. The spreadsheet results are compiled in the Demographics File which contains information on staff race, ethnicity, gender, disability status, and age. In addition, there are variables on staff members' roles in the organization such as employment status, job level, decade hired, job type, and discipline. The Demographics File contains 14 variables and cases on over 48,000 staff members The Survey File contains grantee organization representatives' responses to the DCLA questionnaire on diversity engagement, barriers and initiatives. This file contains 993 cases and 62 variables.

The Exempt Organization Business Master File Extract (EO BMF) contains cumulative information on exempt organizations. The EO BMF data are the most recent information the Internal Revenue Service has for the exempt organizations. Data are extracted monthly from the IRS's Business Master File. The files are available and divided by region and by state. State and region are determined from the filing address and generally represent the location of an organization's headquarters, which may or may not represent the state(s) in which an organization has operations. Records are sorted by Employer Identification Number (EIN). There is one file for each state, the District of Columbia, and Puerto Rico, and one file for International (non-domestic) organizations. There are four region files: Region 1: Northeast Area - Includes Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey Region 2: Mid-Atlantic and Great Lakes Area - Includes Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, District of Columbia, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Michigan, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Nebraska, South Dakota, North Dakota. Region 3: Gulf Coast and Pacific Coast Area - Includes Tennessee, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Missouri, Arkansas, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, Idaho, California, Oregon, Washington, Alaska, Hawaii Region 4: All Other Areas - Includes International and all others. The EO BMF data contain information about exempt cultural organizations, such as museums, zoos, planetariums, libraries, art exhibits, and cultural performers. The IRS exempt organization data have been accumulated since the inception of the tax-exempt statutes. A determination letter is issued to an organization upon the granting of an exemption and is considered valid throughout the life of the organization, as long as the organization complies with the provisions of its exemption. If an organization's exemption is revoked, an announcement to inform potential donors of the revocation is published in the Internal Revenue Bulletin. In addition, the organization's name is removed from publicly accessible venues, including this file. A list of recent revocations may be found online. NOTE: Split-interest trusts are no longer included in this database. For further information on the EO BMF data, including the organization codes and fields covered, please see the EO BMF web pages.

The Information on Artists series, conducted by the Research Center for Arts and Culture at Columbia University, studied American artists' work-related human and social service needs in 1989, 1997, 2004, 2007, 2008, 2011. The initial study (1989) included artists from ten cities: Boston, Cape Cod, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco and western Massachusetts. The 1997 wave was conducted in four of the original cities: Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St. Paul, New York, and San Francisco. The 2004 wave consisted only of artists in the San Francisco Bay area and included a longitudinal component. The 2007 wave provides the first needs assessment of aging artists in the New York Metro Area. The mailed surveys asked questions about artists' work-related, human and social service needs, including health coverage and insurance, life insurance, retirement plans, credit, live/work space, legal and financial service expertise/needs. Like its predecessor Information on Artists III, Information on Artists IV (2011 waves): Still Kicking tries to understand how artists are supported and integrated within their communities, and how their network structures change over time and to understand how performing artists mature into old age-artistically, emotionally, financially and chronologically. The number of respondents across the data files ranges from 56 to 2,101.

National and Local Profiles of Cultural Support collected data on public and private support for professional nonprofit arts and cultural organizations in three ways: a national mail survey of a random sample of arts organizations on their sources of revenue, more detailed mail surveys of the identified universe of arts and cultural organizations in ten specific communities, and in-person and telephone interviews with local government officials regarding public agency support (both financial and in-kind) in these ten communities. The ten communities are as follows: Amery, Wisconsin; Cleveland, Ohio; Los Angeles, California; Miami, Florida; Montgomery County, Maryland; Nashville, Tennessee; New Orleans, Louisiana; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Providence, Rhode Island; and San Jose, California. A collaborative effort of Americans for the Arts and the Arts Policy and Administration Program at The Ohio State University, the study was supported by The Pew Charitable Trusts and local arts agencies in ten communities across the country. The National Survey collected data from professional nonprofit arts and cultural organizations on 22 revenue items for fiscal year 1998, across four categories--public contributed income, private contributed income, earned revenue, and interest and other investment income. Developed in close collaboration with the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), the survey was designed to facilitate comparisons with currently available data on the nonprofit arts, particularly data sets from arts service organizations and NCCS data sets based on IRS Form 990 data. The Local Government Support Survey involved semi-structured interviews with local officials in non-arts government agencies across 13 service areas in the ten communities profiled in this study. Among the agencies represented in these service areas were Administrative Services, Community Planning/Economic Development, Convention and Visitors Bureau, Parks and Recreation, Public Works, Police/Public Safety, and others. Two sets of interview forms were used, one to document the agency's mission and level of current and future arts involvement and a case form to document specific instances of arts support. Further, the Local Surveys, conducted in each of ten communities, collected data from professional nonprofit arts and cultural organizations on a battery of revenue items for fiscal year 1998, across four categories-public contributed income, private contributed income, earned revenue, and interest and other investment income. Developed in close collaboration with the National Center for Charitable Statistics (NCCS), the surveys were designed to facilitate comparisons with currently available data on the nonprofit arts, particularly data sets from arts service organizations and NCCS data sets based on IRS Form 990 data. The number of respondents across data files ranges from 7 to 796.

The National Cultural Districts Exchange provides a portal for accessing information on cultural districts in the United States. Cultural districts are defined as well-recognized, labeled areas of a city in which a high concentration of cultural facilities and programs serve as the main anchor of attraction. They help strengthen local economies, create an enhanced sense of place, and deepen local cultural capacity. The Nation Cultural Districts Exchange website provides tools and resources to help guide the development and advancement of Cultural Districts. The portal is provided by Americans for the Arts. The portal offers tools and resources for the following areas: Cultural Districts Basics Developing a Cultural District Advancing a Cultural District Profiles of Cultural Districts Cultural Districts Research Cultural Districts Issue Briefs Of particular interest to those involved in the arts are the phone survey results from 42 cultural districts in the United States which can be found on the Cultural Districts Research link and the Cultural Districts Interactive Map which provides data on over 300 cultural districts in the United States.

The Performing Arts Research Coalition 2002: Household Surveys is a collaborative effort of five national service organizations in the performing arts. Residents of ten communities were surveyed on a series of topics related to attendance at performing arts events. The ten communities surveyed were: Alaska, Cincinatti, Denver, Pittsburgh, Seattle, Austin, Boston, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Sarasota (FL) and Washington D.C. Questions were asked regarding rates of participation, the perceived value of the performing arts to individuals and to communities, and barriers to greater attendance. Among other criteria, these communities were selected as study sites because of the presence of financially and managerially strong local arts organizations and because at least three of the five disciplines encompassed by the participating national service organizations were represented in each area. The five participating service organizations in the PARC project were the American Symphony Orchestra League, the Association of Performing Arts Presenters, Dance/USA, OPERA America, and Theatre Communications Group. The project was coordinated by OPERA America, with research guidance from the Urban Institute, and supported by a grant from The Pew Charitable Trusts. A total of 8,161 respondents in 10 communities completed telephone interviews in 2002 and 2003. PARC data include administrative surveys, audience surveys, subscriber surveys, and community/household surveys.

The 2021 Profile of Arts Incubators is a comprehensive survey developed by the Arts Incubation Research (AIR) Lab at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) to benchmark the budgets and programs of America's arts incubators. The survey was conducted by the Americans for the Arts during September and October 2021. The survey collected information about the participating art incubators' programs, financials, and operating procedures. It also focused on the program delivery implications for arts incubators in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as issues of access and equity. Visit the Americans for the Arts website to access a summary of the aggregate national findings from the survey based on 146 survey responses, as well as an interactive map of arts incubators, detailed data tables, infographics, and other resources. Users can also view a photo album of selected incubators and their creative spaces. The survey responses were collected from arts organizations that (1) have a primary purpose to serve as an arts incubator, or (2) have at least one program/component that serves as an arts incubator for the community it serves, or (3) offers funding that supports the delivery of and/or participation in arts incubator programming (but does not actually provide incubator programming).

For over a decade, the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) has gathered, analyzed, and reported on survey data from arts and design graduates of degree-granting, postsecondary institutions to understand the professional experiences, educational satisfaction, and personal fulfillment of these alumni. These data have informed scholarly insights about many topics including needs for expanded curricula; the value of paid internships and other co-curricular pursuits; inequalities in arts training and careers; and entrepreneurial traits of artists. In addition, data gathered through SNAAP assists government entities, funding organizations, and arts leaders in making investment decisions in education, training, and resource allocation. The SNAAP website offers publicly available reports and presentations on the SNAAP survey and insights its data offer. The first national SNAAP survey administration occurred in fall 2011 and was repeated in 2012 and 2013, creating a database of nearly 100,000 respondents. SNAAP's second three-year cycle took place in 2015, 2016, and 2017. The latest SNAAP survey was administered in 2022 and incorporated notable updates to its sampling and questionnaire. Over 61,000 alumni responded to SNAAP's 2022 survey administration, resulting in nearly 300,000 alumni responding since SNAAP's inception. Technical documentation for the 2022 survey administration is slated for public release in late 2023. Citations for data from earlier survey administrations: Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (2017). SNAAP 2015, 2016, and 2017 Combined Data. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research. Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (2013). SNAAP 2011, 2012, and 2013 Combined Data. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Center for Postsecondary Research.

Conducted by the Urban Institute, the Survey of Arts and Cultural Organizations [2000] was part of a series of surveys evaluating the Community Partnerships for Cultural Participation (CPCP) initiative. In the CPCP initiative, a total of ten community foundations around the country received grants from the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund to induce more people to attend arts and cultural events, encourage people who attend to contribute their time and money as well, and attract people who do not usually attend. The Urban Institute was commissioned to evaluate the initiative through surveys of households and organizations in five of these communities. The Survey of Arts and Cultural Organizations [2000] recorded operating characteristics, performance/exhibition venues, audience expansion and diversification strategies, and organizational partnerships of government or not-for-profit art and culture organizations in five geographic areas: the Kansas City metropolitan area; Humboldt County, California; Silicon Valley, California; Southeastern Michigan; and Boston, Massachusetts. From February 11, 2000 through May 1, 2000, a total of 553 interviews were completed with not-for-profit or government organizations across all five geographic areas.

Commissioned by the American Music Center (AMC) and the American Composers Forum (ACF), the two largest composer service organizations in the nation, the Research Center for Arts and Culture examined how composers create their work within the broad new music landscape. As RCAC's Taking Note is the first known national study of living American composers, the research methodology broadly included 90 interviews with composers and field experts from around the country, a national online survey returned by 1,347 respondents, focus groups, and a series of in-depth investigations into innovative resources available to composers. The report includes insights into composers' work, business practices, income, affiliations, collaborations, diversity and education along with extensive discussion on the opportunities and challenges facing the field of new music. Additionally, RCAC posits a series of recommendations for how composers' work may be better employed within the American musical ecology and provides a series of spotlights showcasing the work of organizations breaking new ground for composers in the United States.