About Us

A huddled group of animated people lit up on a stage

Independent Arts & Media believes that diverse voices and free expression are a cultural necessity. Through a combination of personalized attention, professional expertise, and an active network, we provide fiscal sponsorship services to support our Affiliate Projects. For over 20 years, for more than 200 organizations and projects, IAM has been a partner in bringing powerful works to our community.

To independent artists, journalists, and media producers, we offer fundraising, accounting, and professional development services, delivered with flexibility and personalized attention. With our support you can focus on your vision rather than administrative tasks.

To foundations and donors, we match your dedication to creative expression and critical thought by connecting you with our community of dynamic artists and meaningful voices. Working together, we help democratize the world of art and media when it is needed most.

Our History

Founded in 2000, IAM built a vibrant array of accessible, affordable media and arts services for producers in the San Francisco Bay Area. Early programs included fiscal sponsorship, the award-winning journalism project Newsdesk.org, and public events such as the annual Expo for the Artist & Musician. While independently managed, these programs shared core values of free expression, public participation and informed, civic dialogue.

From 2000 to 2010 the Expo for the Artist & Musician served as a signature organizing and connection event for the Bay Area creative community and beyond, bringing in participants from as far away as San Diego, Portland and the Sierras.

Newsdesk.org pioneered coverage of important but overlooked news about the energy industry, public health, and more. In 2010 Newsdesk.org won a Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Award for Excellence in Journalism.

Over the years IAM would go on to provide fiscal sponsorship to over 200 programs and producers that share our Mission. These programs have won distinguished awards and served crucial roles in empowering community participation in local culture and community.

IAM currently supports over 100 affiliate projects dedicated to non-commercial work in media and the arts, including publishing, theater, dance, music, visual art, film and video, journalism, history, and public-events production. 

Democracy Needs Independent Voices

Democracy is more than political parties, opinion blogs, and long lines at the local polling station. Democracy is a conversation, one that’s going on all the time – an exchange of ideas, perspectives, experiences and information about our world and how we want to live in it.

Independent Arts & Media exists to broaden and deepen that conversation.

We support art and media culture-makers whose important work doesn’t fit within the commercial mass-media formula – and whose innovations are below the radar of the big nonprofit institutions.


Read More About IAM's History Here

Photo courtesy of PianoFight