This workshop, open to artists working across all disciplines, will help you gain confidence in your fundraising and proposal writing abilities by providing a solid road map to begin the process. We’ll review the specific components of a proposal, how to convey ideas visually and strike a balance between the big, broad brushstroke ideas and small details that make your project come alive on the page. We’ll also cover the most common mistakes made when writing grant fundraising proposals and how to avoid them. A central goal of the workshop is to gain an understanding of how to incorporate fundraising and proposal writing into your artistic practice so that it becomes an organic step in moving your current and future projects forward.

This five-week workshop will be hands-on and is for artists who have a project in development and are ready to start the grant application process. The class will meet for three 2-hour sessions with Tracie in the Creative Capital office and in-between these sessions, participants will meet in groups to share their work and provide feedback to one another. There will also be time for a one-on-one meeting with Tracie to review your writing. A full schedule is available below.

By the end of the workshop, you should come away with a comprehensive framework for proposal writing as well as an initial draft proposal and a sense of confidence and direction to move forward.

Workshop Dates

• Monday, January 28, 6:30-8:30PM: In-person Workshop #1
• Week of February 4: Group meets independently
• Monday, February 11, 6:30-8:30PM: In-person Workshop #2
• Week of February 18: Individual meetings with Tracie
• Monday, February 25, 6:30-8:30PM: In-person Workshop #3

About Tracie Holder
Tracie Holder is a filmmaker, consultant, producer and film funding specialist. She is a 2016 Sundance Creative Producers Fellow, teaches at the New York Film Academy and leads workshops in the U.S. and abroad, tutors and serves on juries at international pitching and training sessions. She is widely regarded as a “go-to” person and all-round resource for artists seeking U.S. funding having raised more than $2.4 million for her own projects from a mix of government funders, private foundations and individuals. Clients include: Documentary Campus, European Documentary Network, Scottish Documentary Institute, Lisbon Docs, DocNomads, Firelight Media, Active Voice, DOC NYC, Creative Capital, Unions Docs, and the Made in NY Media Center, among others. Holder was a longtime consultant to Women Make Movies and most recently was the Development & Funding Strategist for Abby Disney’s Fork Films. She is a former board member of NY Women in Film & Television and Manhattan Neighborhood Network, and grant panelist for national and local funders. Holder is the co-producer/director/writer of Joe Papp in Five Acts, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival and will broadcast nationally on PBS/American Masters in 2019. Her producing credits include Grit, co-directed by Academy Award-winner Cynthia Wade and Sasha Friedlander, Executive Producer, Abby Disney (Hot Docs 2018 and POV broadcast 2019); A Place of Absence and The Quiet Zone both in production. She is currently developing Will of the People, a feature documentary about two rival productions of Macbeth in New York City in 1849 that led to a riot in which twenty-two people were killed and marked the first time in U.S. history in which American troops fired on American citizens.