We were chosen for the PIVOT Grant!
In great news for the El Rey rehabilitation project and our organization overall, Common Area Maintenance has been selected as a recipient of a PIVOT grant from the City of Seattle.
Overseen by the Office of Arts & Culture, the PIVOT grant program seeks to help support organizations that are growing or otherwise experiencing major transformations. The fund from the grant will help CAM and more than a dozen other organizations around Seattle become more sustainable and resilient, providing funding to make changes and future-proof models so that grantees can more effectively weather challenges in the future.
We are honored to be among the recipients of these grants - the cohort receiving funding includes some of the Seattle arts and culture nonprofits that we’re perennially astounded by, including Hugo House, Tasveer, Wa Na Wari, and many others - see the program’s homepage here for more details about the grant and the cohort we’re part of.
For CAM, this unrestricted grant of $100,000 annually for 2026 and 2027 will help to support the team of people that has built CAM into the organization it is today. It will also allow us to add new staff roles that will support CAM’s growing purview and portfolio. Both of these elements will be key to keeping CAM sustainable as we pursue a project in the El Rey that is larger in scope than anything we’ve taken on previously.
While the new funding is a huge material benefit, being selected for a PIVOT grant is about more than the financial benefit CAM will receive. As part of this cohort, CAM representatives will spend the next two years working alongside other grantee organizations, benefitting from their resources, knowledge, and experience while sharing our own in kind.
Participating alongside other PIVOT grantees will help CAM accomplish its longstanding goal of creating strong networks of arts organizations across Seattle while challenging the idea that each of these great groups is in competition with one another. Building and supporting a city-wide arts community is not a zero sum game. It’s one where we can all win, strengthening the position of each organization by acknowledging and embracing the connections between them.
Grants like this one mean a ton to small, volunteer-powered teams like CAM’s. We’ve done a lot with a little for a long time, and while we’re nothing but proud of what we’ve accomplished and how we’ve gone about it, it’s thrilling to have that work recognized by funders. With meaningful financial and networking support supplementing CAM’s existing model of getting things done through creativity, dedication and doggedness, the ceiling on what we can accomplish now looks a lot higher.
As high as that ceiling can get with the support of funders like the Office of Arts & Culture, it’s still supported - like everything we do - by a passionate base of volunteers and donors.
Learn how you can join, support, and get involved today, and follow us on Instagram and LinkedIn to stay up to date on what CAM is doing and how you can help.
