May 2025 Funding Opportunities: Grants for Writers, Artists, Small Businesses, and More!
50+ Exciting awards for a Spring filled with goals achieved.
With warmer weather soon upon us and flowers and trees blooming, we look forward to sunnier days ahead! 🌺🌸
So far in May, we’ve found (81) grants totaling approximately $816,174. Plus, there are still (117) grants with April deadlines, too.
Click here for our April 2025 grant list - we are adding more funding opportunities weekly.
April 2025 Funding Opportunities: Grants for Artists, Small Businesses, Filmmakers and More!
Spring is on the horizon, and with more daylight hours, we can feel the stirring of new and exciting days ahead!
Grants For Creators is a reader-supported newsletter that shares grants and other funding opportunities for creatives, small business owners, and entrepreneurs within the United States. Readers like you keep this resource afloat, and we are so grateful for your support.
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Our grants list is chronologically ordered from May 1st to May 31st.
To help you save time, we also call out who grants are for in the titles and we’ve included a summary below.
We will continuously share more May grants as we find them.
Be on the lookout for our weekly emails with updates (typically on Mondays).
AI Policy: #28
Artists: #3 (Cuban Descent), #27, #31, #35, #28, #38 (Philadelphia), #42 (Native), #43 (Minnesota), #46, #54, #55 (Tulsa), #59 (Nevada), #60, #63(Early Career), #68 (Native)
Authors/Writers: #4, #5 (Nonfiction), #9, #21 (New York City), #23, #26 (Arts), #41, #56 (Women), #62, #64, #65 (Black), #67
Climate Critical Fields: #47 (Massachusetts)
Curators: #66 (Korean Heritage)
Entrepreneurs: #12 (Black), #15, #33, #52 (Philadelphia), #70
Filmmakers: #6, #10, #13 (Short), #24 (California), #53 (Documentary)
Folklife Apprenticeship: #22 (Virginia)
Humanities: #2 (Missouri), #50 (Vermont), #51
Jewelry Artists: #1 (Emerging)
Journalists: #7, #8 (Midwest), #25, #30, #32 (College Students), #48, #71, #72, #73, #74
Mixed Media: #14
Music Production: #18 (New York City)
Nonprofits: #11 (Connecticut), #29, #34 (Washington State), #39, #49 (Maine), #57, #69 (Colorado)
Performance Artists: #20 (New York City)
Photographers: #44, #45
Poets: #21 (New York City), #36, #37
Researchers: #31
Small Businesses: #16, #40 (New York City), #61 (Women-Owned)
Theater Arts: #17
Visual Artists: #19 (New York City), #58 (Emerging)
[NEW FEATURED] The 2025 Sports Photography Grants - For Emerging & Early Career Photographers
This opportunity supports emerging and early-career sports photographers. Seven photographers will be chosen to receive $5,000 grants for career development and an expenses-paid trip to the 2026 DPPF Sports Photography Gathering. Photographers with more than 3 years cumulative paid professional sports photography experience are considered beyond the scope of the DPPF’s programs.
Deadline: May 1, 2025
[FEATURED] The Reading Frederick Douglass Together Grant - For Massachusetts Nonprofits
This $2,000 grant supports public readings and discussions of Frederick Douglass's famous Fourth of July address, "What to the Slave is the Fourth of July." It is available to all nonprofits in Massachusetts.
Deadline: May 2, 2025
[FEATURED] Shore Scripts Finishing Funds Grant - For Filmmakers
Have you already finished your short film but are looking for financial support to complete it? Shore Scripts finishing funds offer a $4,000 cash grant to help finish your film, project, and career guidance with producer Maria Garcia Turgeon, a film festival strategy package with Kimberly Browning, production support and script development from the Shore Scripts team, a completed film sent to relevant industry rosters, and the Shore Scripts film festival guidebook PDF.
Deadline: May 2, 2025
[NEW FEATURED] PEN America’s U.S. Writers Aid Initiative - For Authors, Poets & Journalists
This opportunity is part of the PEN America Writers Emergency Fund, which offers grants for writers facing acute financial need following an emergency in the United States. The Initiative is intended to assist fiction and nonfiction authors, poets, playwrights, translators, and journalists in addressing short-term financial emergencies. To be eligible, applicants must be professional writers based in the United States and demonstrate that this one-time grant will be meaningful in helping address a short-term emergency situation. The fund is limited, and not every application can be supported. The exact funding amount is not disclosed.
Deadline: May 2, 2025
[FEATURED] National Geographic's Spatial Thinking: Inspiring Action through Place-Based Solutions Fund
This funding opportunity supports projects identifying a challenge related to a specific place and its unique conditions. It leverages an educational solution using spatial thinking to enable people to act on behalf of the planet and its people. All topics related to National Geographic’s focus areas—ocean, Land, Wildlife, Human Histories and Cultures, Planetary Health, and Space—are encouraged and will be considered. Additionally, they reserve a portion of the grant awards within this funding opportunity for project ideas related to freshwater in a specific place. Funding ranges from $20,000 to $100,000.
Deadline: May 5, 2025
[FEATURED] Artistic Production Grants - For Artists
This opportunity aims to support innovative and impactful art projects that go beyond the traditional museum or gallery setting. This program provides funding to support the production and exhibition of new artistic commissions. Funding ranges from $25,000 to $100,000 per project, with grants at the highest level of funding reserved for permanent or long-term installations or newly commissioned works that may be gifted to a U.S. public collection.
Deadline: May 15, 2025
[FEATURED] Arts Project Grants - For Vermont Nonprofits
This opportunity supports nonprofit organizations, municipalities, and schools in their efforts to add vibrancy to Vermont communities through projects that provide equal and abundant access to the arts. Grant awards range from $1,000 to $4,000.
Deadline: May 20, 2025
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