CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Wendy Hickey founded ArtPop Street Gallery in Charlotte 10 years ago and says 2024 has been one of the hardest years to run a nonprofit.
"It's a challenging year," Hickey said.
Julie Campbell helps run SHARE Charlotte, a local organization that works with more than 700 area nonprofits.
"I think all nonprofits are being affected," Campbell said. "Particularly this year there are a lot of obstacles."
Hickey founded ArtPop to help make sure artists get paid and that the city has access to free art.
Her organization works to help artists get paid for their work and makes sure the Charlotte community has free and easy access to art.
"We've paid local artists over $700,000 – if that wasn’t going into artists pockets, you’re gonna feel that," Hickey said.
She worries because donations have been slow to come in this year and she's concerned about staying afloat. Some of their artists say they are already feeling it.
"I’d say we're at 20 percent this year of what we have been historically," Hickey said.
"ArtPop, it’s meant everything, my first paid fashion project was with ArtPop," Que Blankenship, one of ArtPop’s artists, said.
Before that, she says she never got paid for her work and she worries other Charlotte artists could face that if donations continue to stall.
"It's very disheartening honestly," Blankenship said.
Terri White is the President of the Charlotte Museum of History and they’re having the same problem. The museum has been forced to cut programming.
"Part of it is just the economy," White said. "Inflation has impacted everybody if you are barely getting mortgage paid or barely feeding family you don’t have the same discretionary income."
Julie Campbell says many nonprofits are struggling this year for that reason and others.
"Companies, corporations that give to nonprofits have become laser-focused on funding priorities-trying to make a deeper impact," Campbell said. "The second thing is we’re in an upcoming election and because of uncertainty and turbulence of markets donors become more conservative."
And that could have lasting impacts across our area.
"The impact would be that we wouldn’t be here anymore," Hickey said.
One of the other things Campbell says is happening is that big companies are getting very specific with their grants and funding to nonprofits. If a nonprofit doesn’t align with their specific mission, they’re out of luck.
ArtPop's big annual fundraiser is coming up this weekend. The 11th annual UpCycled Fashion Show highlights local designers. You can get tickets here.