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Minnesota Film, Video and Digital PRODUCTION GRANTS

THE PROGRAM

In the most recent rounds, the Minnesota program has received between 30–55 applications per round.

Because not all applicants request the same amount of money, the number of projects the panels can support changes from one year to the next. In recent years, 5–8 grants have been provided each round in Minnesota.

The Foundation has supported film projects since its founding in 1964. Please find information about Jerome-funded projects in the Past Grantees section of our website.

The grantee search can also filter by year and by Minnesota and/or New York City.

ELIGIBILITY

No, it is too early for you to apply. We hope that you will apply after completing your first project if you are then still eligible and interested in support.

Please first complete the eligibility questionnaire to make sure you eligible. Completing that questionnaire will clarify whether you meet our eligibility requirements. We also urge you to attend an information session. If you still have questions, please contact Jerome staff prior to applying.

Additionally, you should consider your production timeline. You will need to receive the funds and begin production within the 17-month grant period from November 11, 2021 through April 13, 2023.

You will also want to consider the Foundation’s program schedule. Project applications in this program will next re-open in 2023. Remembering that this project will be funded only once, is now the optimal time for you to apply?  Would you be more competitive with better work samples, be able to confirm more accurately your costs and still fall within our early career definition in 2023 and therefore should wait? Or conversely will you have moved past our early career definition or be so close to completion of the project by then that you will have only incidental costs remaining and therefore should apply now?

Whichever decision you make will not impact your ability to apply for a 2023 Jerome Hill Artist Fellowship, if you are then still eligible.

The Foundation supports directors working in multiple genres, and given our value around innovation and risk, applauds experimentation. The Foundation understands that you as an artist might change direction and interests in your career. The challenge for panels in such a situation is being able to appreciate whether you have the skills and experience to move into a new form. It is important for you in your application to “connect the dots,” helping the panel appreciate how the past work should inspire such confidence that you can move in new directions. You should direct the panel’s attention to relevant elements that would inspire this confidence in the Work Sample Context fields for each of the work samples. You should also explain what groundwork has been laid, what skills have been developed, and/or what motives impel you to undertake this new direction. We strongly encourage you to answer the optional question in the application, “If this project is different than your past projects, please share your plan for moving in this new direction.”

The Foundation’s goal is to serve a spectrum of artists typically in their 2nd to 10th post-student (if applicable) year of creative practice as a director. We want to serve directors with some track record of creating and presenting full work (not beginning directors), and who are NOT at a point in their careers where they receive consistent development and production opportunities and significant recognition, awards, and acclaim (not mid-career or established artists).

The Foundation in specific circumstances is intentionally flexible to a degree at both ends of this time range. Some directors may experience enormous success and move past early career status well before their 5th year or 10th year. The numbers of opportunities afforded to other directors may differ significantly based on discipline, race/ethnicity, class, gender, physical ability and geography among other factors. Consequently, some directors may be past their 10th year and still be on the spectrum of early career status. If you have received significant support in the past or if you are past your 10th year, you should consult with Lann Briel before April 1 to verify your eligibility before you submit an application

Yes, but please pay special attention to the following factors to make sure the application is eligible.

  • You and your co-director(s) must have completed at least one project together as a directing team and must be sharing the responsibility of directing the proposed project. All of the work samples must be directed by the directing team that is applying. Projects completed individually or co-directed with anyone outside of the current co-directing team are not eligible to submit as work samples and will not be considered.
  • If the co-director team includes both New York City and Minnesota applicants, the application should be filed in the state where the majority of the team will be living at the time the grant is awarded in October 2021. If the co-director team is evenly split between New York City and Minnesota artists, the application should be filed in the program where the team will spend the majority of its working time together.

Please note that the New York City and Minnesota programs have a number of differences and different FAQ’s: if you find you should apply in NYC, please be sure you read all of those materials, including those guidelines and that FAQ.

Producers, writers, crew, or actors who do not also share responsibilities in co-directing and in sharing final creative control will not be recognized as a co-director and may not be named as applicants.

No, with two exceptions.

All three residency requirements must be met by your current residency—not by your family’s place of residence or your birthplace (e.g., if your family lives in Minnesota or you were born here, but now are a resident of another state, you may not apply).

  1. you filed your federal taxes for 2020 as a Minnesota resident,
  2. you still reside in Minnesota at the time of application and
  3. you will still be residing in Minnesota when the grant is awarded in October 2021.

All applicants who do not meet all three of these conditions will be deemed ineligible. However, there are two exceptions:

  • EXCEPTION #1: COVID-related temporary relocation (for artists who were Minnesota residents in 2019, relocated in 2020 because of COVID but intend to return to Minnesota in 2021): If you filed your federal taxes for 2019 as a Minnesota resident, have spent most of 2020 away from Minnesota because of COVID-related circumstances (whether economic or medical) but plan to re-establish residence in Minnesota before July 1, 2021, you may apply.
  • EXCEPTION #2: Exceptions for artists who are relocating to Minnesota from prior established residence in New York City. If you filed federal taxes for 2019 as a NYC but will not file federal taxes for 2020 as a NYC resident (apart from those citing the COVID exception above) you are eligible to apply, if and only if, you have moved or will move to Minnesota from New York City. If you are planning to move to Minnesota from New York City before October 2021, you should apply in the Minnesota program and not in the New York City program. Please note the grant guidelines for MN program are different than those for the NYC program.

Yes, if you have established your primary residency in the state of Minnesota, are still a resident at the application deadline and plan to continue to be a resident in Minnesota through 2023.

Anyone who has an SSN (social security number) or an ITIN (Individual Taxpayer Identification Number) is eligible to apply—this includes DACA recipients and most types of VISA recipients. Individuals who do not have an SSN or an ITIN are not eligible to apply.

Only directors may submit applications and receive funding from the Foundation.  While grantees may use funds for productions costs, fees to actors, producers, writers and crew, etc., the applicant must be the film director(s). Actors, producers, writers and crew may not submit their own applications.

No. The program only supports independent work directed by the applicant. This type of work cannot be proposed as the basis of a project for which funding is requested.

However, you may submit music videos, studio, commercial, industrial and work-for-hire as a work sample if and only if you had full creative control over the projects.

No. This program’s exclusive focus is moving image media, which includes narrative, experimental, documentary, and animation.

Yes. The panels have shown a great willingness to take on controversial subject matter and recommend grants to the Foundation’s Board.

Yes, non-traditional venues are not an issue for the Foundation—in addition to work screened in movie theaters, festivals or broadcast channels, ranging from commercial to public access, the Foundation also supports online distribution/presentation. The Foundation does not, however, support media work that is part of an installation/exhibition, unless the work is designed to be screened, broadcast or distributed as a film, video or digital production.

No, the program will only provide one grant per project.

Absolutely. That said, if your project has been rejected by two or more different panels, you are strongly advised to seek feedback and counsel from staff before applying with the same project yet again.

No. This is an individual artist grant program and the application must come from you, not from an organization. If you are selected for a grant, funds must be distributed directly to you as an individual or directly to your single-proprietor LLC (if relevant).

Yes. However, you may not use funds from the Fellowship and from this project grant to support the same costs that are supported by that Fellowship.

THE APPLICATION

No. Only work samples from projects that you directed may be submitted. If you do not have at least one completed project that you have directed, you are not yet eligible to apply for Jerome support.

The Foundation does not support first time filmmakers and prioritizes support for those filmmakers who demonstrate the capacity to complete at least one project.

Resumes are a critical component of the evaluation. Resumes that are incomplete or confusing can lead the panel to reject your application, even before reviewing other parts of the application and your work samples. For specific information on what the resume must contain, see the “Application Criteria” page for details and links to samples.

While the online system does allow you to exceed written and video samples/narrative limits, you are strongly discouraged from doing so. We require panels to review only the amount of material captured in the suggested limit fields. Past panels have often interpreted excessive explanations as an indication of lack of focus. Additionally, in a discipline where the ability to present “the pitch” is an important professional skill, panels expect you to be able to offer condensed, precise presentation as part of your viable professional skills.

No. You may submit only one application per round, regardless of the number of projects you may be working on in the potential grant period. You may not submit an application for a Production Grant and an application for an Artist Development grant. If you submit an application as an individual, you cannot apply separately with a co-directing team, and no members of a co-directing team be a part of more than one application. If you submit more than one application or if your name appears as an applicant in more than one application, all the applications you submitted and in which you are named will be deemed ineligible.

No. The review process begins immediately after the deadline.

No. Panels are asked to make their judgments based on the work samples and materials as provided in the application. We believe the benefit these letters may offer is outweighed by the burden they place on you to request them, references to write them, and staff or applicants to make sure they have been submitted.

Only if you are a finalist and discussed by the full panel. We ask busy professionals in the film, video or digital production arts world to serve as panelists and to review many applications before identifying those artists they want to consider finalists to be discussed at the full panel meeting. Asking them to provide written critiques of each individual applicant they review would impose an enormous burden on their time and might compromise the quality of the panelists willing to serve.

At the panel meeting, staff take notes during discussions and subsequently provide feedback to the finalists who are discussed. You can indicate in the application whether you would like to receive that feedback if you are a finalist.

We will not, however, be able to offer non-finalists feedback on their applications, beyond a general sense of the meeting itself and general trends of what made applications more or less competitive. If you are not selected for a grant, your rejection letter will specify whether you were a finalist or whether you were removed from consideration before the full panel met.

We know that the community of artists can be a small one, and we are diligent in ensuring that no one with a conflict of interest is part of the decision-making process on an application with whom they have professional or personal relationships. That said, professional relationships have been damaged when someone perceives that they have been rejected by a panel that included someone they thought was a supporter, even though that person was not allowed to be part of the decision-making process.

Past panelists have also expressed a preference to be protected from direct lobbying, mailings, personal appeals and/or receiving additional materials that can be sent their way when their role as a panelist is known.

We have, therefore, made a conscious decision to protect the confidentiality of panelists—a decision affirmed by the Foundation’s Board of Directors, which is comprised of a majority of artists, women, and people of color. In assembling a panel, we work hard to capture the diversity of each field, in terms of identity, aesthetic expression, the many genres within a particular field, understanding of and relationship with early career artists, and geographic location.

At the same time, we want to ensure your confidence in the panels and their qualifications to consider artistic work.  We therefore periodically post a comprehensive list of panelists we have used for past selection processes in multiple programs, even while we do not link a specific panelist to a specific program or year. The panel composition changes annually, so knowing the identity of the panel in a given year does not provide insight into who will serve in the next round.

Many artists have told us that seeing the roster of the grantees, not of the panelists, is the most helpful information in deciding whether they wish to apply again in a future round. Past grantees may also be viewed on our website.

Panels are constructed to include leaders in the film, video and digital production field based in Minnesota as well as those working within the national sphere. All panels are constructed to ensure that no single race or ethnicity constitutes a majority or even half of the panel.

BUDGETS

Yes. Your fee is an allowable grant expense as long as the amount you request is not already being paid by other funders or supporters, and your fee can be included in the budget as part of the application.

Any budget, large or small, qualifies. You are expected to submit a fundraising plan for their project. For larger budget films, it is helpful to reference the funding levels for your past films as an indicator of your ability to secure the funds needed to produce the project.

Yes. It is rare that a Jerome grant will be able to cover all production costs. When assessing feasibility, panelists look for evidence that you have thought about where the remaining potential income will come from. We ask you to include both committed and pending income sources in the project budget you upload to the application (noting whether they are secured, pending, applied for but not yet confirmed, or yet to be requested). The application gives you the opportunity to explain your plan and any contingencies.

Panels recognize that Jerome funding can, on occasion, be the first confirmed funding for a project and can then help secure or leverage additional funds. Secured funding, therefore, is not required. At the same time, panels are charged with investing grant funds in viable projects that are likely to move forward. Providing a list of other secured and/or potential funds gives the panel an indication of how realistic your planning for the project has been and how likely the project is to move forward. Projects with no backup funding sources or with inflated or unrealistic expectations about other contributors are unlikely to fare well in the review process.

GRANT PAYMENTS

No. Eligible costs must be incurred after the grant is awarded.

If you receive a grant, you will be required to sign a grant agreement with the Foundation and (if you receive less than you requested) submit a revised plan outlining intended use of grant funds before money can be released. We anticipate first funds will be distributed no earlier than November 11, 2021, and all eligible costs must be incurred to be performed and paid after that date. Payments are made through direct deposit. Typically, the time necessary to process the contract and establish a direct deposit account takes a minimum of three weeks. The Jerome Foundation’s payment dates are the third Mondays of each month, excepting April when no payments are made. For the sake of planning, applicants should not expect to receive funds before November 11, 2021 at the earliest.

Yes, these grants are considered taxable income by the Internal Revenue Service.   In addition, grantee names and city of residence are required to be listed in the Jerome Foundation’s annual tax return, which is a public document and is posted on the Foundation’s website. If grantees prefer, a P.O. Box may be provided in addition to a home address for the purposes of public reporting.

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