Last October, a coalition of seven charitable organizations, including the Poetry Foundation, announced a new $50 million investment in the literary arts — the single largest funding initiative aimed at strengthening literary arts in the U.S. in decades. However, less than a month later, the Poetry Foundation quietly announced it plans to discontinue public programming in order to transition into its newfound role as a grantmaker.
Why must the Poetry Foundation’s aspirations as a grantmaker come at the expense of its staff and the broader literary community in Chicago?
As a writer, fundraiser and editor for a worker-led arts publication that has published poetry for more than a decade, I was excited by the prospect of increased funding for the literary arts. But I was simultaneously dismayed by the Poetry Foundation’s decision after it resulted in layoffs and the elimination of readings, workshops and a beloved book club.
While it’s exciting to see field leaders developing strategies to fund the literary arts, which historically received less than 2% of all arts grant dollars, grantmaking is often a cumbersome, lengthy process. Not to mention the Poetry Foundation’s current grant opportunities, as well as the new Literary Arts Fund, are exclusively available to poetry organizations, not individuals.
Discontinuing public programming eliminates a major professional opportunity and financial lifeline for poets outside of the foundation’s limited and competitive awards. For example, the foundation directly paid poets — many of whom were people of color, members of the LGBTQIA+ community and people with disabilities, among others.
And if leadership can remorselessly abandon public programming, what stops that leadership from limiting access to the foundation’s library (the Midwest’s only one dedicated to poetry) or eliminating Poetry magazine in the future?
The Poetry Foundation is no stranger to controversy. In 2023, more than 2,000 poets boycotted the foundation after the magazine silenced an anti-Zionist Jewish writer. Perhaps these cuts were a strategy to avoid future constituent criticism — swapping independent poets for timid grantees who are less likely to criticize the foundation for “fear of being ‘black-listed’ or de-funded,” as noted by respondents to a National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy poll.
In 2021, the foundation hired Chicago’s former commissioner of cultural affairs, Michelle T. Boone, as its new president and CEO and announced a three-year grantmaking strategy to support the literary arts in the U.S. She was likely tapped to steward this remarkable transition because she brought decades of grantmaking experience to the role. However, under the foundation’s new strategy, two longtime staff members were laid off.
Public program staff members — who have collectively nurtured poets and readers for decades — and writers who aspired to read at the Poetry Foundation’s storied River North location have little power to influence organizational strategy yet suffer the most. Were staff or participants and attendees of the Poetry Foundation’s public programs ever consulted on these transformative changes?
Nonprofit leaders often claim that dismantling long-standing programs with clear value for the field was their only choice to balance the budget. However, the Poetry Foundation, which was established through an extraordinary $200 million bequest from pharmaceutical fortune heiress Ruth Lily in 2001, is one of the most well-endowed literary arts organizations in the U.S. and could expand its role as a funder while continuing to be a space where poets and audiences gather in Chicago to enjoy poetry — if its leadership prioritized charity rather than austerity.
The foundation portrayed these layoffs and its decision to discontinue public programming after more than two decades as an unfortunate, but necessary, cost so that the foundation can redirect this funding to other poetry organizations. This is a false dilemma.
In the same announcement about elimination of public programs, the foundation emphasized its investment in the new Literary Arts Fund; notably, the foundation has not publicly disclosed how much it has committed to the fund. This is not uncommon rhetoric from nonprofit leaders who hope to deflect responsibility for potentially unpopular, harmful decisions; nevertheless it invites greater scrutiny to whether these recent layoffs and programmatic cuts were necessary.
Perhaps Poetry Foundation leadership is seeking to shrink expenses after transitioning to a non-operating foundation in 2022, to hit rather than exceed a requirement that the foundation distribute at least 5% of the average fair market value of its noncharitable use assets, such as its investments.
Such frugality is an industry standard, often defended on the basis it guarantees foundations distribute funds without jeopardizing their endowment and future grantmaking. And charitable gifts regularly have donor restrictions that require the funds to be managed in perpetuity. However, according to the foundation’s financial report, less than $5 million of the foundation’s assets have donor restrictions, meaning Lilly’s bequest was likely a no-strings-attached gift.
So, other paths forward were possible. The foundation could have increased its annual payout rate to 6% (or an additional $1 million a year) to maintain public programs while expanding its impact on the literary arts field. Such a strategy could be characterized as risky, potentially diminishing the organization’s long-term financial stability, yet the foundation’s current path prioritizes safeguarding assets to meet the challenges of an imagined future while cutting resources to poets, writers and cultural workers at a moment of extreme need.
Might the Poetry Foundation reconsider its decision to eliminate public programming?
After all, its events, not its grantmaking (which is largely invisible to most Chicagoans), earned the Poetry Foundation the title of “Best Poetry Organization” in 2024 — a title the organization proudly embraced. If the foundation is willing to rethink its decision with more consideration for the poets and workers whose livelihoods are at stake, perhaps it could earn the title of best poetry organization in Chicago again.
Riley Yaxley is a writer, editor and fundraiser based in Chicago.
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