The LA County Arts Commission utilizes data from a variety of sources to evaluate and improve our programs and to understand the status of the local arts ecology. Some of this data is collected directly from our grantees, sometimes through our partnerships with organizations like Data Arts (formerly the Cultural Data Project, or CDP).

In our study of Salaries in Nonprofit Arts Organizations in LA County, for example, we learned that nonprofit arts organizations in the County paid $266.6 million in salaries to the equivalent of 4,650 full time staff in 2011. The average salary per full time employee was $57,345.

Thanks to data provided by our grantees and others to the CDP, we have good estimates of the median salaries earned by LA County arts nonprofit employees in a variety of arts disciplines, as the figure below shows.

In another example, OGP staff analyzed grant applications for 2014-15 and uncovered the following major themes: 

• Organizations are exploring and deepening their relationships with their community and neighborhoods, through engagement activities and site-specific works.
• Organizations are starting to focus on growth rather than survival.
• There was an increase in organizations working with emerging artists and providing opportunities for new artists and composers.