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Arts giving divides people. Some see culture as a basic part of a good life and a shared inheritance; others think every dollar should go where it saves the most lives. Both sides make serious points, so they are set out here side by side before the practical questions.

The case for, and the doubts

Where that leaves a donor: if your single goal is to prevent the most death and disease per dollar, arts charities are unlikely to be the answer, and it is honest to say so. Many people give for several reasons. Within the arts, the strongest cases are preventing irreversible loss and widening access; the weakest is adding prestige to institutions that are already well funded. The same 2017 study found that organizations focused on communities of colour made up about a quarter of US arts nonprofits but received 4% of foundation giving.

Do the arts improve health?

What the review found

A 2019 scoping review for the World Health Organization, covering more than 900 publications, found the arts can play a role in preventing ill health, supporting child development and wellbeing, and helping people manage conditions such as mental illness, dementia and other long-term illness, and at the end of life.

What its critics found

A 2021 critique in Cultural Trends pointed out that the review did not appraise the quality of the studies it included, grouped very different activities together as “arts”, and in places rested on a handful of studies. The authors concluded that whether the arts can substantially improve population health is “yet to be demonstrated”. The fair summary is that there are many promising findings, especially for mental health and wellbeing, but strong trial evidence is thinner than the headlines suggest. Prefer programmes that say what they aim to change and measure it.

What is being lost: a dated record

Loss of culture rarely makes headlines one event at a time. Taken together, the record of the last few years looks like this:

• 2013: a Library of Congress study found that only about a quarter of American silent feature films survive complete, and only 14% in their original form.
• 2015: Australia’s National Film and Sound Archive warned that magnetic tape had to be digitized by 2025 or be lost, as playback machines, spare parts and skilled engineers disappeared.
• 2022 to 2026: UNESCO’s count of verified damaged cultural sites in Ukraine rose from 53 in April 2022 to 175 by August 2022, when religious sites made up the largest group, and to 523 by March 2026.
• 2024: English councils’ spending on culture and leisure was reported to be £2.3 billion lower in real terms than in 2010/11 (Local Government Association). Berlin cut its 2025 culture budget by about €130 million, roughly 12%, and Italy’s government proposed cuts to the culture ministry’s heritage protection budget for 2025 to 2027.
• 2025: the Theatres Trust listed 43 UK theatres at risk, citing council budget pressure, unsafe concrete and high repair costs. In the United States, the National Endowment for the Arts terminated many grants in progress, and the President’s budget proposed abolishing the federal arts and humanities endowments.
• 2026: Congress rejected that proposal and kept the NEA and NEH at US$207 million each for the year. Private giving to arts, culture and humanities in the United States rose in 2025, according to Giving USA.

The picture is mixed rather than a single collapse: public money has fallen sharply in some places, while private giving has grown. The Regional Theatre Survival Fund pays for the repairs, accessibility works and energy-saving upgrades that keep small theatres open.

Why archives have a deadline

Film, audio and video are physical objects that decay, and the machines needed to play older formats are disappearing. Australia’s film and sound archive has since said that, with proper storage and the machines and parts it has sourced, it expects about another ten years of digitization work: the 2025 “deadline” was a target, not a cliff. The lesson for donors is that preservation work is urgent but not hopeless, and that it is done in a particular order:

1. Digitize what is unique and most at risk first, before the tape or film fails.
2. Keep the originals in cool, stable storage, because a digital copy does not replace them.
3. Catalogue the material, so people can find it.
4. For community collections, return copies to the communities they came from, on terms they agree.
5. Plan to move digital files to new formats over time, so they stay readable.

The Indigenous Cultural Heritage Fund digitizes recordings, film and photographs of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture and returns copies to communities, and the Independent Film Preservation Fund supports the restoration and digitization of aging film, including lesser-known films and amateur footage, at the Cineteca di Bologna’s L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory.

Where an arts gift goes furthest

Because so much arts money goes to a small number of large institutions, an extra dollar usually matters more at smaller organizations and in programmes that widen access. In practice that means:

• Access: free or reduced entry tied to income, as in the Public Museum Access Fund for families receiving food assistance, and physical access such as ramps, lifts and hearing loops in small theatres through the Regional Theatre Survival Fund.
• Irreversible loss: recordings, films and sites that will be gone if no one acts, from Italy’s small unlisted historic places through the Historic Preservation Trust to archaeological sites in Bulgaria.
• Skills that would otherwise die out: apprenticeships that pass on a craft and help it earn a fair income, such as Bedouin weaving through the Traditional Crafts Preservation Trust.
• Talent that money would otherwise keep out: loans of fine instruments and scholarships for gifted young musicians whose families could not afford them, through the Community Orchestra Fund.

Every Arts, Culture & Humanities cause we list

Each cause names the organization that receives the grants and when our team last verified it. Open a cause to see what it pays for, or donate directly.

Common questions

Do these causes fund big national museums?

Mostly not. They focus on smaller theatres, local museums, archives, unlisted historic sites, craft apprenticeships and access programmes, where a gift is more likely to make a difference.

Is heritage protection in war zones included?

Not directly. Most war-damage response is led by governments and UNESCO. The causes here fund conservation, digitization, access and skills programmes, not the repair of war damage.

Can I fund a particular artist?

No. Our causes fund programmes run by verified partner organizations rather than individual artists.