The Little Venue That Could Grant Program
A Grant Program for New York City Based Indie Theater, Dance, and Multidisciplinary Performance Venues
Application Opened: July 7
Application Deadline: September 2
About the Program:
IndieSpace is excited to offer The Little Venue That Could Grant Program for the second time!
Funded with the generous support of the Howard Gilman Foundation, The Little Venue That Could Grant Program was created to provide unrestricted general operating support to New York City based indie theater, dance, and multidisciplinary performance venues with expense budgets under $500,000. Due to size, fiscal structure, staffing arrangements, and unconventional leasing and ownership structures, these homes for artists are often excluded from city, state, and federal funding and may not meet financial thresholds to get significant support from private foundations. Despite this historical absence of consistent financial support and the growing affordability crisis in NYC, small-budget indie theater, dance, and multidisciplinary venues continue to play a critical role in the creative ecosystem by providing artists with affordable performance and presenting space.
Selected grantees will receive:
Unrestricted grants of $10,000 per year, for two years, 2025-2026, which can be used to pay staff, rent, utilities, debt, or whatever your venue deems appropriate to help keep your doors open and thrive.
Professional Development services, valued at $5,000, which must be used for professional development services within the two years of the grant period. Recipients will receive a menu of offerings from which to choose after they are awarded the grant.
Automatic access to IndieSpace’s FREE Advisory and Consulting program, providing access to experts and information throughout the lifetime of your space operation.
Additionally, in order to acknowledge the labor of writing and submitting an application, IndieSpace has allotted a total of $5,000 to be split and distributed to each organization that submits an eligible and complete application. The total amount each applicant will receive will be determined once all eligible and complete applications have been counted.
Grantees will be required to participate in a short interim interview with IndieSpace staff at the one year mark in order to receive the second year of funding. An optional post-grant survey will be distributed to grantees at the end of the second year of the grant to learn about their experiences and needs for the future, and to help us gather information about why a program like this matters.
Eligibility:
You are eligible to apply for this grant if:
Your entity is an indie theater, dance, or multidisciplinary venue with a performance space
Your venue has at least one space with less than 99 seats
Your venue has been in operation for at least two years, including 2025
Your organization’s expense budget is $500k or LESS in your last completed fiscal year i.e. July 2023-June 2024 or Jan 2024-Dec 2024.
Your venue is open and is in active use
Your venue is rented or owned with a signed lease, license agreement, or deed. Please reach out to discuss if you have a non-traditional agreement with your landlord.
Your venue is located within the 5 boroughs of New York City
Your venue is a 501c3, fiscally sponsored by a 501c3, an S Corp, B Corp, LLC, or LLP
Your venue IS NOT a direct annual Howard Gilman Foundation grantee. Current direct, annual Howard Gilman Foundation grantees are not eligible for this grant. If you are a recipient of other regrants funded by Howard Gilman Foundation, that is fine. If you have questions about your eligibility please contact your Howard Gilman Foundation program officer or hello@indiespace.org for more information. Venues who have received funding from IndieSpace through any of our other funding programs are still eligible to apply.
Your venue IS NOT a previous recipient of a The Little Venue That Could Grant.
How to Submit Your Application
The application opened on Monday, July 7, 2025 and closes on Tuesday, September 2 at 11:59 pm.
We estimate the application will take about 1-2 hours for you to complete.
You are welcome to use the information you have already prepared for other applications to significantly reduce the time needed for completion! There is no character or word count minimum or maximum for any of the questions. We have made suggestions on the length to help guide your writing, but you are not required to meet those suggested word counts. Bullet points are welcome, as long as they answer the questions. Applicants who submit very long responses will not be favored over shorter, more concise answers; however, the Artist Committee reviewing your application will not be doing any research or additional information pulling to vet your application. So while concise is totally fine, do be sure to give enough information for the committee to properly review and score your application. We will not be evaluating the quality of your grammar, writing, or formatting. If it is helpful to you, we have created a sample application which you can review here.
The Little Venue That Could will be using a weighted lottery system to determine grantees. Throughout the application, we will note what questions will add weight or not, which weights are determined just by information in the application, and which will be read and reviewed by a committee to determine weight. The lowest weight an application can have is 1, and the highest weight an application can have is 15. Priority in weights will be given to venues who are located in the Bronx, Queens and Staten Island; venues whose NEA funding was withdrawn or terminated; venues who were established by, for and are serving historically excluded artists; and who demonstrate values driven work through community impact, board and staff diversity and accessibility. ALL eligible applicants will be entered into the lottery, regardless of weight distribution. To ensure each discipline is represented in the recipient pool, IndieSpace reserves the right to award the grant to the top scorer in theater, dance, and multidisciplinary.
You can submit your application in writing directly on Submittable, or if needed, an IndieSpace staff member can take your application orally over the phone or via a Zoom meeting. Closed Captioning and/or ASL interpretation can be made available for Zoom application intake if requested in advance. To sign up for phone or Zoom application intake, please email hello@indiespace.org. Applications can also be submitted during any of the open house events detailed below.
Have questions?
Two virtual open houses and one in-person open house will be held for you to learn more about the process and to ask questions.
Prospective applicants interested in attending an open house must RSVP by emailing hello@indiespace.org at least 24 hours before the open house. Requests for reasonable accommodations must be submitted via email to hello@indiespace.org at least 5 business days before the open house.
In-person Open House:
Thursday, July 24, from 1-3:30pm
Signature Theatre Lobby, SigSpace: 480 W 42nd St, New York, NY 10036
Accessibility: ASL interpretation can be made available upon advance request.
The venue entrance is on the ground floor. You need to tell security that you are visiting the lobby to co-work with IndieSpace. There are two elevators to take you to the lobby on the second floor. The second floor has accessible bathrooms with ramps that are divided by gender, but there is signage that you are welcome to use whichever bathroom feels right for you. There are chairs with no arms and various couches for seating. Masks are optional in this space.
Virtual Open House:
Wednesday, August 6 from 10-11am, EST, via Zoom
The Zoom link will be provided to those who RSVP.
Accessibility: Auto closed captions will be made available via Zoom Captions. ASL interpretation can be made available upon advance request.
Virtual Open House:
Monday, August 25 from 6-7pm, via Zoom
The Zoom link will be provided to those who RSVP.
Accessibility: Auto closed captions will be made available via Zoom Captions. ASL interpretation can be made available upon advance request.
Can’t join an open house? No worries! You can submit any questions you may have directly to IndieSpace staff or sign up for a one-on-one call via phone or Zoom by emailing us at hello@indiespace.org.
Application Review Process & Program Priorities
What is a weighted lottery?
In alignment with our values of non-merit based grant making and access for everyone, IndieSpace uses a lottery system for a majority of our funding programs. At times, a weighted system is implemented for organizations or artists that meet certain criteria that have been prioritized for a specific grant program, for example, geography, demography, need, etc. This grant will use a weighted system, whose priorities are outlined below. Throughout the application we will note what questions will add a weight or not and which weights are determined just by information in the application and which will be read and reviewed by a committee to determine weight. Regardless of the weights distributed per applicant, all eligible applications will be entered into the lottery.
All complete and eligible applicants will receive a unique lottery number to preserve their anonymity. We will use the Random Picker software to run our grant lotteries. Grant recipients will be determined by the lottery software and not IndieSpace staff or the committee. Screen recordings of the lottery will be made available to review by request after program grantees have been announced.
What are we prioritizing with the weights?
Applications will be weighted on a variety of priority areas. Priority in weights will be given to venues who are located in the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island; venues who were established by, for and are serving historically excluded artists; and who demonstrate values driven work through community impact, board and staff diversity and accessibility.
Points will be assigned as follows:
All eligible and completed applications receive one (1) point.
Venues who are located in the Bronx, Queens, and Staten Island will each receive one (1) additional point.
Applications may receive additional points based on the priority areas below as determined by the review committee. These are sample questions the reviewers will be using to assess your application and assign points. Points will be assigned for each of the four priority areas (0: does not meet; 1: somewhat meets; 2: definitely meets, 3: exceeds):
Community Impact: Who is the community that you serve? Help us learn about who they are (i.e.: demographics, roles as art workers, geography, number of artists served). How does your venue interact with those artists and the community you work within?
Diversity, Equity, & Inclusion: Is your venue founded by, led by, and serving Black, Indigenous, people of color;d/Deaf; disabled; transgender/gender non-conforming; non-binary; and/or immigrant arts workers? What are your values of equity and inclusion and how do they show up in your programming and productions? How are they showing up in your staff and board? How do you act on your values? How is your organization working towards making changes that reflect your values?
Paying Arts Workers: Are you committed to paying arts workers a living wage and if so, how do you do that? If you’re unable to pay arts workers a living wage at this time, how are you otherwise compensating them and/or working towards being able to pay them a living wage?
Accessibility: Is your venue compliant with the Americans with Disabilities Act? If your venue is not compliant, please share details on why and what your venue is doing to address that. What are other ways your venue makes its physical space, operations, and/or programming accessible to d/Deaf and disabled people? For more context and detail on what Accessibility and Access means to IndieSpace check out our working guidelines here.
The minimum number of points an applicant can receive is 1. The maximum number of points an applicant will receive is 14. Total points will be determined by taking an average of the entire committee’s scores per applicant. A reminder that regardless of the number of points assigned, all complete eligible applicants will be submitted for consideration to the lottery.
What is the review committee?
The review committee will include six (6) indie artists/workers and venue operators who have a demonstrated commitment to serving indie artists, represent the demography of NYC, and have an ongoing relationship to IndieSpace. IndieSpace staff will select the artist committee in conversation with its Board of Directors and select venue operators who will not be applying for funds. Committee members will be vetted for conflicts of interest. They cannot currently be related to, working in, contracted through or on the board of any of the applying entities to be eligible to serve. Each member of the artist committee will be compensated $500 for the time they dedicate to review and weigh applications. Please note the review committee does not make any recommendations for funding or select final grantees. All grantees are selected through the lottery system.
The full list of artist committee members will be announced along with grant recipients.