Call for applications: Business and Arts South Africa Supporting Grants 2021

The fund seeks to assist in activating sponsorship for a cross-section of creative projects anywhere in South Africa, by providing financial support to artistic endeavours in an already existing business and art partnership.

Application process

As a first step, interested applicants should submit a one-paged formal letter of interest, which should include the following:

• The cover name of the project.
• A brief description of the project.
• The name of the business sponsor.
• The nature of sponsorship the business is offering to the project (in other words, whether the sponsorship is cash, in-kind or both, and to what rand value). 
• The letter of interest must be accompanied by the business sponsor’s letter of endorsement.

The letter of interest should be submitted via email to sipho@basa.co.za. There is no deadline for submissions.

Afterwards, BASA will invite eligible applicants to complete a full online application. Preference will be given to projects that offer tangible benefits to their business sponsor(s). Since BASA is a membership organisation, preference will also be given to projects where both the arts organisation and business sponsor(s) are BASA members. Interested applicants can apply for membership here.

Criteria

A range of criteria will be considered, including but not limited to:

• The scale and impact of the project.
• Artistic merit.
• Feasibility.
• Contribution to social cohesion.
• The reach of the proposed project, all in relation to the funding available for disbursement.

“To date, BASA has disbursed in excess of R41 million [about $2.8m] to over 1 680 projects, which in turn have leveraged over R537m in sponsorship from the business sector,” BASA CEO Ashraf Johaardien said. “That equates to R13m of corporate support for every R1m of supporting grant funding.”

Note: BASA is extending an additional benefit to its current members, with a Zoom session intended to assist with their potential applications and attending to any queries they might have regarding the process. At the conclusion of the session, the recording will also be available on all BASA’s social media platforms, to support all interested applicants.

BASA Supporting Grants guidelines and eligibility are available here. All questions regarding this call should be emailed to Sipho Mthiyane at sipho@basa.co.za.

View the original call here.