Our Non-Profit organization, The International Foundation of Arts (TIFOA), is interested in addressing societal issues partially regarding the “usefulness of the arts”

with funding in the arts, specifically for supporting emerging (recently graduated) artists and mid-career artists. However, we are currently facing funding challenges.

We would like to collaborate with students to find, complete, and submit grant applications to organizations whether they be commercial organizations,

benefiting from the ideas and skills of artists, or non-profit organizations supporting or wishing to support the artists.

This will involve several different steps for the students, including:

• Familiarizing themselves with our vision statement and our Art Talent Management project we have defined.
• Developing a needs statement that characterizes the community problem and justifies the need for our project and funding.
• Identifying potential sponsors and funding opportunities that are a good fit for our organization and project.
• Improving the clarity and persuasiveness of our company's grant proposal writing.

Bonus steps in the process would also include:

• Education of fine art, and groups of business students, who are participating in the project, as an educational business tool which include multiple human relationship the skill sets.

Tasks learners will need to complete:

·      Tasks and deliverables needed to achieve the project goal.

• 1.  A market analysis report identifying the classes of experts needed to be contacted to coalesce the project.

o  2.  A landing page for a website.

• 3. Developing conversational and negation skills with the identified individual experts necessary to build the project.
• 4. Identifying and developing specific language tools for communication in the “business of art”.
• 5. Working with the individual students in the separate teams required for the project.
• 6. Recognizing that this project employs building a template for building a business.

By the end of the project, students should demonstrate:

• Understanding of our organization’s values and purpose
• Understanding of the global project
• Identification of potential sponsors and funding sources
• Recommendations for improving our grant proposals

Bonus steps would include:

• Defining new community projects with appropriate scopes

Final deliverables should include

• A 10-minute presentation.
• A slide deck specifying the steps and procedures within the steps to build, complete, and accomplish the project.
• A list identifying organizations (principal, name, email address, telephone number) to approach for the grant.
• A letter of request for the grant.
• A reply form from the candidate granting organization specifically explaining why or why not a grant is/will be funded.
• This can be in the form of an internet reply.

Students will connect directly with us for mentorship throughout the project. We will be able to provide answers to questions such as:

Our mission and vision statement: TIFOA's purpose is to bring awareness and education to visual artists, currently focusing on painters and augmented reality film makers, to support, educate, and empower arts and artists to understand and apply business principals and actions to their art form. (TIFOA promotes international arts cooperations.)

• Our community projects, (we have no previous grant applications).
• Input on choices, problems or anything else the students might encounter.
• My art (pracko.com) and international (LinkedIn: Bernard Pracko) empreneurship backgrounds.
• Materials we have already collected for pitch deck presentation.