The Paul Angell Foundation has ignited possibilities through partnership since our founding in 2011. In that time, our grantee partners have helped people and communities rise, performing arts thrive, and our oceans flourish. We’ve also grown rapidly in recent years following the passing of our founder, Charles T. Angell, who left much of his assets to the foundation. That growth has allowed us to expand our grantmaking, our team, and our potential for deeper impact.

Earlier this year, our staff and Board of Directors underwent a foundation-wide strategic planning process to ensure our growth becomes enduring and transformative support for our grantee partners and our sector. Over the past 10 months, we’ve engaged external consultants, considered potential approaches with our board and team, and gathered input from our broader community. We’re grateful to everyone who helped shape our foundation’s new strategy, and we look forward to sharing it in full soon.

Today, we’re excited to share a key piece with our community: our new Performing Arts Strategy.

When Paul Angell’s first Board of Directors came together with the goal of helping people and communities thrive, their shared backgrounds and interests pointed them toward the performing arts. They knew, as we still do, that the arts have the power not only to delight but also to inspire, connect, and heal. In 2011, the same year of our founding, we supported our first 25 grantee partners in the performing arts through a total of $407,000 in grants. As our Foundation has grown, so has our Performing Arts program. In 2025, we provided $20.2 million in grant funding to our grantee partners in the performing arts.

Our new Performing Arts Strategy explains how we’ll use our expanding capacity to ensure not only that artists and arts organizations thrive, but also that the entire performing arts sector endures. That includes narrowing our geographic focus to Chicago, amplifying sector-building initiatives across the country, and broadening how we define the performing arts. Grantee partners impacted by this geography change have already been notified, and we look forward to supporting them through this transition.

Sharing this strategy now means we can begin putting it into action in December, when our April grantmaking cycle opens.

Igniting Possibilities Through the Arts

The goal of our Performing Arts program is to help build an equitable and sustainable arts sector that enriches our lives, uplifts artists, and tells the stories of who we were, are, and can become. To achieve that goal, we’ll fund organizations sparking new possibilities, driving lasting change, and sustaining the sector across three new priorities:

Artistically Vibrant Chicago: We’ll support organizations making Chicago a model city for the arts, where performing arts organizations are abundant, equitably resourced and sustainable, with the freedom to create dynamic, innovative, and resonant works of art.
Community Learning and Healing: We’ll strengthen schools, communities, and arts-centered organizations working to ensure all Chicagoans can learn about, participate in, and connect through the arts.
Strengthening the System: We’ll uplift efforts to create a flourishing local and national arts sector, where artists can build sustainable careers and organizations at every level are coordinated and resourced to support and produce impactful art, now and for generations to come.

Within each priority, we’ve identified distinct focus areas that will bring specificity to our support moving forward.

Explore Our New Priorities & Focus Areas >

Our Performing Arts team is grateful to the many arts leaders and community partners who helped shape our strategy. We look forward to bringing our strategy to life alongside many of our long-time grantee partners and organizations new to the foundation who are already sparking change.

Vanessa Dalpiaz
Program Associate

Guillermo Muñoz Küster
Program Officer

Dei Nikoi
Program Officer

Mignon Stewart
Director of Performing Arts

Audra Yokley
Senior Program Officer

New Funding Opportunities

In addition to sharing our strategy, we’re eager to put it into action.

April Grantmaking Cycle

Community Learning and Healing: Grant Inquiry Form Open Now

Our April grantmaking cycle will focus on Community Learning and Healing. If you haven’t partnered with us before and your work aligns with our Community Learning and Healing priority and focus areas, we invite you to submit a grant inquiry form, available on our Performing Arts program page.

Submissions received by Tuesday, November 24, will be considered for our April grantmaking cycle. We’ll reach out by December 7 if we’re able to extend an invitation to apply.

Learn About Community Learning & Healing >

Current Grantee Partners

All current grantee partners eligible for our April grantmaking cycle are welcome to apply. Our Performing Arts team will be in touch soon to discuss the new strategy, and which priority best aligns with your work. We’ll reach out to grantee partners reapplying for future grantmaking cycles in 2027.

Share How You’re Sparking Change

Beyond our April grantmaking cycle, we look forward to learning about the many arts organizations driving change across our priorities. We invite performing arts organizations we haven’t yet partnered with to review our new priorities and focus areas and submit a grant inquiry form if their work aligns. We’ll review and, if there’s a fit, reach out to learn more and discuss a possible invitation to apply for a future grantmaking cycle.

Learn About Our New Priorities >

Moving Forward

This is the beginning of a new chapter for our Performing Arts program and for our entire foundation. We still have a lot of learning and building to do, and we’re committed to learning alongside our grantee partners and our community.

Thank you to our grantee partners and our community for walking alongside us. We’re grateful for all that we’ll learn and accomplish on this new journey together.

To possibility,