Pop-Up Grants

Pop-Up Grants is sponsored by Pop Culture Collaborative. This opportunity supports mission-aligned projects and measurable outcomes.

Grantmaking - Pop Culture Collaborative The Pop Culture Collaborative supports the growth of a pop culture narrative change field capable of inspiring most Americans—including our leaders and icons—to navigate their lives as pluralists, actively engaged in the hard, delicate, and ultimately, joyful work of belonging—and even thriving—together in justice.

Our grantmaking approach reflects our belief that pop culture stories and experiences have a critical role to play in helping people discover, experiment with, and embody pluralist identities, behaviors and norms.

Grants are awarded to United States–based nonprofit organizations, for-profit companies, and individuals (with fiscal sponsorship) working to drive transformative experiences for mass audiences (i.e., more than 1 million people) through pop culture stories, media, and social networks.

These include initiatives focused on the development and distribution of content, design of audience engagement strategies, and the creation of immersive narrative environments through cultural, narrative, and behavioral change approaches. Major Grants range from $20,000-$100,000 over 12 months and $100,000-$200,000 for multi-year grants.

The Pop Culture Collaborative has three grantmaking areas: Infrastructure Grants can support new and/or established initiatives, organizations, or companies that are working to advance long-term narrative change goals and/or to build the pop culture for social change field or support emerging and timely initiatives and experiments at the intersection of pop culture and social justice. Please read our Infrastructure Grants Guidelines.

The Becoming America Fund brings together a network of entertainment, philanthropic, cultural strategy, and social justice leaders who spend two years together creating and distributing content that immerses millions of people in a vision of the pluralist society we are becoming. Rapid Response Grants support projects that respond to and/or quickly anticipate peak and timely cultural moments.

Rapid response grants can be requested and are approved year-round. Rapid Response grants are available up to $100,000. Please read our Rapid Response Grants Guidelines.

Pop Culture Collaborative grantee partners are strategizing, creating, and collaborating to increase the American public’s yearning for a pluralist society rooted in justice.

These grantees are most often working in one or a combination of these sectors: social justice movement building, entertainment and/or the arts, advertising and brands, journalism, academia, digital content (online and/or video), science and/or technology, immersive and/or experiential media, and/or pop culture communities (e.g., fandoms). That said, we welcome relevant ideas and approaches from any sector.

In partnership with the Pop Culture Collaborative, our grantees: Commission and/or develop creative work that excavates and illuminates who we are as a nation and who we yearn to become. Build critical pieces of new and evolving narrative infrastructure, and establish and/or strengthen field-based networks. Produce groundbreaking culture change research, including audience research and industry research.

Design and/or implement long-term mass audience narrative and culture change strategies that sit at the intersection of pop culture and social change, particularly those that emerge from collaboratively designed narrative systems.

Develop and/or advance innovative mass audience activation initiatives and campaigns that seek to transform toxic narrative environments into ones powered by pluralist mental models, behavioral norms, and cultural values. Submit an Idea for Consideration The Pop Culture Collaborative accepts proposals by invitation only.

We have created a simple process for potential grantees to self-evaluate whether they are a match with the Collaborative’s goals and guidelines, and if so, to submit an idea for our consideration. It is important to note that an idea submission is not a proposal. The Collaborative will respond only to idea submissions that the staff team has reviewed and deem a potential match.

STEP 1: Please read our grants overview page as well as the Pop Culture Collaborative’s Infrastructure and/or Rapid Response grant guidelines. STEP 2: Read our Grantmaking Frequently Asked Questions . STEP 3: Take our brief self-assessment quiz to see if your project idea and/or organization is a good match for the Collaborative’s goals and guidelines.

STEP 4: Submit your idea through our submission portal if you believe the idea is a match for the Collaborative’s goals and guidelines. Please note that this is not a proposal but a brief opportunity for the Collaborative to learn more about your work. We appreciate you sharing your vision and creativity with us!

PROGRAM AREA 1: Artists Advancing Culture Change The Pop Culture Collaborative provides grants to artists and organizations or companies that support artist cohorts, from various disciplines, locations, and industries to bring their artistic vision to mass audiences, while also contributing to field-wide efforts to build public yearning for a pluralist America.

We seek to create a large, networked community of artists who believe that their creative work and leadership have the power to inspire millions of Americans to actively co-create a pluralist society. Areas of interest include: Supporting artists and cultural organizations to conceptualize, develop, and produce creative works that can help build public yearning for pluralist culture in America.

Supporting artists to gather for shared learning, networking, community-knitting, and power-building, especially spaces that bring artists into direct and meaningful connection with frontline activists and culture change strategists.

Helping artists and organizations develop the methodology, networks, infrastructure, pipelines, and leadership skills needed to redistribute access and power in their respective industries to historically excluded communities.

PROGRAM AREA 2: Building the Pop Culture for Social Change Field The Pop Culture Collaborative supports artists, activists, strategists, researchers, and other practitioners in the entertainment, social justice, and philanthropic fields to build a robust pop culture change field capable of achieving widespread narrative and cultural change at scale.

Together, they can form narrative networks that have the knowledge, connections, skills, and infrastructure that can align and create transformative narrative environments in our society. Areas of interest include: Creating resources and/or infrastructure that support the design, testing, and/or activation of long-term pop culture strategies.

Developing, testing, and strengthening partnerships among artists, the entertainment industry, and social justice movements via convenings, cohorts, campaigns, and/or programs.

Designing, testing, and/or advancing narrative infrastructure (convenings, emergent technologies, community knitting spaces, and programs) that create access and long-term career sustainability for the next generation of pop culture–focused strategists, campaigners, and artists.

PROGRAM AREA 3: Culture Change Research The Pop Culture Collaborative supports grantees to unearth new data, develop analysis, and share insights with and among entertainment, social justice, and philanthropic sectors in order to inform content development, advance cultural strategies, and activate collaborations in the pop culture for social change field. Areas of interest include: Audience Research.

Research that helps the field understand who the people in key audiences are, what motivates their beliefs, (e.g., media, culture, family, economics), and how their beliefs compel and shape their behaviors. Industry Research.

Research that delves into the ecosystem of a specific field of cultural production (e.g., television industry, music industry, or sports broadcasting industry) to inform and/or activate short- and long-term culture change strategies. Impact and Evaluation Research.

Research that examines and analyzes past and current pop culture change experiments, campaigns, and/or partnerships; utilizes formal evaluation and longitudinal impact methodologies to understand impact; and/or leverages trend tracking and analysis to make sense of current narrative environments and cultural norms, or anticipate future patterns in pop culture content creation, consumption, and engagement.

PROGRAM AREA 4: Movement-Led Pop Culture Narrative Strategies The Pop Culture Collaborative supports social justice organizations and initiatives to design, coordinate, and activate long-term narrative change strategies at the pop culture (mass audience) level. Areas of interest include: Design and implementation of multilayered culture change strategies, including content/story strategy design and audience experience design.

Reimagining and testing new roles and relationships between the social justice and entertainment fields to advance the development of narratives, story creation, and audience activation opportunities. IMAGE DESCRIPTION : A black-and-white portrait of a person with long wavy hair wearing glasses, standing in front of a grid-patterned metal screen. Their gaze is direct and steady.

Text overlaid on the image reads “PAOLA MENDOZA, Voice of the Disappeared” on neon yellow and black banners.