Patricia Barber and Sonny Rollins received Guggenheim fellowships as individuals. As I've written since the start of this exchange, fellowships are a way to support individuals, there's no need for a non-profit structure, just an application that gets all the way through the process. On the other hand, it's extremely unlikely in the current funding climate that an organization will be very successful in receiving grants if the organization isn't a well-run non-profit business. It's not simply a matter of the Arkestra showing up for gigs on time more often than they did in the past. Virtually no granting agencies will provide funding for arts organizations that are not standard non-profits with a 501c3, board of directors, staff, business structure, budget review process, audits, long-range plan, etc. The less like that the Arkestra is, the less they're likely to receive grant support from ANY institutional sources. This has absolutely nothing to do with the relative value of the Arkestra, & it's not about need. No responsible funding agency is going to give money to an arts organization that doesn't look like it can handle it. There's no state constitution in the US that will allow public arts funding agencies to give grants to an arts organization that's not a non-profit. Nearly every governmental arts funding agency has additional limits on the structure of the organizations they can support. Very, very few private funding agencies will do this in very rare cases. Some individuals with deep pockets who also don't care about the tax advantages for charitable contributions will support organizations that aren't non-profit, but the individual has to really love the work. Every funding organization, whether it's public or private, will go over panel comments and let you know what looked good and bad about an application package. This information is worth as much as a grant award, cause with it, an organization can learn how they can make their approaches more effective. If the Arkestra is unable to become a non-profit organization that looks like it has the ability to sustain itself as such (& again, this is a lot more than just being less flakey than the band used to be under Sun Ra), there's virtually no chance that the organization will receive funding from granting organizations. If you want to help the Arkestra out, help them put together a board and staff that will look like it has a chance of sustaining the band, help them identify funders that might be more appropriate sources of support. Unless they have a stable non-profit business structure together, complaining about the Arkestra not getting grants isn't much different than complaining about them not getting air play on country stations. Or you can try to find a rich fool who'll throw money at the band regardless of what they do. -- Herb Levy P O Box 9369 Fort Worth, TX 76147 herb@eskimo.com