Thousands of Art Nonprofits Command Billions in Assets. A New York Conference Sheds Light on an Under-Studied Sector

Spanning the globe, there are uncounted thousands of nonprofit arts organizations, with varying missions, budgets, and staff sizes. While there are many regular reports that cover the art market and the museum world, it may be that private arts foundations are less studied, perhaps partly because they are so varied. 

Clare Hindle and Meagan Ryan, cofounders (with creative director Hilary Wolfe) of the Stoa Foundation, released an inaugural report this winter and have organized conferences to pin down and study these varied organizations, and to bring them together for mutual assistance. Hindle started out at Sotheby’s, later directed the Cass Sculpture Foundation in Sussex, England, and was director of World Art Foundations, a global network for private art foundations. For her part, Ryan brings varied experience, including fundraising at the San Francisco Art Institute and in the medical research field, consulting to arts nonprofits, and running the Bay Area’s Kramlich Art Foundation. 

Arts nonprofits as a group may not easy to define, but Hindle and Ryan’s report describes them as mission-driven, nonprofit, or charitable organizations committed to supporting art and artists, primarily within the visual arts, through activities that generate public value. They may or may not have a physical space, public programming, or fundraising arms. Stoa has mounted two conferences, in Paris during Art Basel 2025 and in Venice during the opening of the 2026 Biennale, and now will have its third and largest gathering, from September 15–17, in New York. They will also launch a new survey for nonprofits that will feed into another report.

The lineup for the summit is rich with respected professionals, including philanthropist Sarah Arison of the Arison Arts Foundation; Simon Castets, head of the Keith Haring Foundation; Deana Haggag, director of arts programs at the Mellon Foundation; Patton Hindle, director of arts at the Knight Foundation; artist Julie Mehretu, cofounder of upstate New York artist residency program Denniston Hill; and Legacy Russell, executive director and chief curator at New York venue the Kitchen. They will wrestle with topics like artist-founded nonprofits, community-building through art, and value-driven investing.

The inaugural Stoa report, with an introduction by journalist Charlotte Burns, surveyed nonprofits in 17 countries, among them Paris’s Kadist, the UK-based Yinka Shonibare Foundation, Arkansas’ Art Bridges Foundation, Brihatta Art Foundation in Dhaka, Toronto’s Lassonde Art Trail Foundation, Maryland’s Glenstone Museum, Chicago’s Terra Foundation for American Art, and Beijing’s UCCA Center for Contemporary Art. Among the findings were that some 67 percent of them have collections. Half have an operating budget off less than £1 million ($1.4 million), but some 70 percent award prizes and grants. Despite their huge value in the aggregate, many are small, with half of them operating with five or fewer staff.

“Private art foundations are among the most varied organisations shaping the art ecosystem today,” Burns writes, “yet perhaps the least understood.” They steward billions of dollars in assets and number in the tens of thousands, with about 14,000 art foundations making grants to arts and culture nonprofits, and some 446 private museums. 

Hindle and Ryan talked with ARTnews via videoconference about the breadth of Stoa’s member organizations, the ways that collectors are thinking long-term about their holdings and what they can offer the public, and what’s on the agenda at this week’s conference. Days one and two were sold out when we talked, while some seats were still open for day three.

Tell me about the genesis of the of the organization. What was the spark that led to Stoa?

Hindle: We’ve both worked in art foundations, and we realized that there’s a huge void, that there aren’t resources for leaders of art foundations. It’s a field that has so much rich activity, and there’s so much peer exchange that can be developed. We saw an opportunity to create a trusted global network supported by data-driven resources and exclusive tools that would help challenge the status quo and and think about new solutions for old problems.

Ryan: We’re very fortunate in that we didn’t realize realize how much appetite there was. We knew we needed something like this. We knew among our peers and and our friends that this would be something that would attract people. But people from 33 countries on five continents have participated.

What were some of the key takeaways from your earlier conferences, and how did those help shape the upcoming one?

Hindle: We have six pillars, which covered governance, collections, artistic programs, financial resilience, public engagement, and operations, and that fed into the structure of the convenings that we’ve held so far. You will have seen in the report from how governance was raised, and when we had our first symposium in Paris last year we had some phenomenal speakers. One of our favorite things to do is to listen to our members, how they describe the challenges they’re facing, and how they are managing them. Stewarding their collections was was very much on the top of the agenda for Paris.

Ryan: The overarching takeaway is that all of these discussions continue to feed and shape our program. Being about a year and a half old, I would say the learning curve has been steep but tremendously rich. The takeaway for me would be that we understand much more about what this sector needs and are building our program to be responsive and to build on each conversation. So from Paris, the transition from ownership to stewardship has been a big conversation, and we continue to maintain that thread in follow-up roundtables and closed-door workshops, so that we can go deeper and unearth not just challenges but also the trends, solutions, how are people creatively addressing the problems that they all share.

As you note, the landscape of arts nonprofits is extremely varied. Is it difficult to bring them together under the same roof? 

Hindle: Actually, it’s very easy, because it doesn’t matter whether you’re an artist-led foundation or a collector-led foundation or even a corporate foundation, you still have to grapple with issues like governance, collection management, artistic programs, or financial resilience. We’ve already witnessed exciting new partnerships that have come from bringing different organizations together—loans that weren’t necessarily thought of before, or partnerships in terms of residencies, or cross-border activities, which are so vital in the current landscape.

The Stoa conference joins a rich landscape of similar convenings, like Talking Galleries, which looks at the art market, and the Aspen Ideas Festival, which unites people from business, tech, media, public policy, and more. Even MCH Group, Art Basel’s parent company, will reportedly launch a Miami event, the Jupiter Festival, which is “all about the future of content.” Now come the Stoa symposia, with their distinct focus. Where do you see Stoa fitting in to this landscape?

Ryan: What sets us apart and drives our program in a different direction is that we really want to focus on more than just the convening and having people in the room for a conversation. We’re very committed to moving beyond the conversation, for example with our resource library. We document everything, and then we package that into a digestible publication which is then shareable, so that if you couldn’t be in the room, you learn from what was shared and surfaced. And it is accessible at any point across your journey. If you’re a collector considering establishing a foundation, if you are looking at succession planning, if you are looking at opening an artist residency, at any of those points along your journey we’d like to have a resource for you.

Many of these foundations are no doubt started by the kinds of major collectors ARTnews surveys each year in our Top 200 collectors list. What are some of the things that distinguish them from other members, and what are some of the things that they that they have in common with other with other members?

Hindle: We were looking at the list when we first started thinking about establishing Stoa. But private art foundations are private. People don’t always shout about it from the rooftops. When you look down the list of the Top 200 collectors, there are far more foundations than first meets the eye. And they’re phenomenal organizations. I think 10 or 15 years ago, private art foundations were in an ivory tower. They were open by appointment or they were quite elitist, and and they still are to a certain extent. But we have dramatically seen a civic change. This community cares about the the fact that collections aren’t always behind locked doors. They are actively being shared and collectors and philanthropists are thinking strategically about what support that they want to give. 

Ryan: We’ve spoken with so many collectors and we are with them on their journey as they transition from just a collection to something that they steward and then to something that they prepare a future for. Wherever you are on that journey, it’s important to recognize that collectors are themselves having to ask questions and make decisions. 

Some collectors have come under scrutiny for marketing their foundations as public institutions and perhaps even earning tax benefits meant for nonprofits but actually keeping their collections very private. Do you think they are to any extent reacting to public scrutiny as they form public foundations? 

Ryan: I would say that there are probably so many that are doing such great work, but doing so perhaps more privately. What we’re trying to do is amplify that and elevate that part of the conversation rather than scrutinize and criticize. There are untold billions of dollars that we can’t name that are coming from these collectors, these founders, these arts philanthropists, that are going directly into supporting the global art economy. We really want to think about who they are and what they’re doing outside of their public presentation of their collections.

Hindle: We’re all about peer exchange. When you look at cities across Europe, they have different foundations, whether it’s Paris, with a lot of corporate foundations or London, where there are more collector-led foundations, on a day-to-day basis the landscape is changing at great speed and we’ve experienced how our cohort is sharing the journeys that they have so that people aren’t having to recreate the wheel. They’re learning from one another.