Arts advocacy and the National Endowment for the Arts: Forging an effective partnership

Arts organizations need government funding to accomplish their role in the society successfully. They have promoted the need through arts advocacy. The purpose of this study was how arts advocacy has supported the National Endowment for the Arts in order to understand the importance of advocacy to arts funding in the United States. Before the NEA was established, a few legislators and presidents tried to create federal funding for the arts. Since the NEA was formed, most chairpersons of the NEA have taken active arts advocate roles. In late the 1970s, several national arts advocacy organizations were established, and they made every effort to preserve the NEA when several crises struck the arts community in the 1980s and 1990s. Through these crises, arts advocacy organizations realized they needed (1) a united voice and (2) grassroot advocates. Now, they collaborate with each other and educate at grassroot levels to be effective arts advocacy.