nasaa-arts.org

NASAA stands for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. It is a national membership and service organization for state arts agencies—the public bodies that fund and support arts across U.S. states and jurisdictions. If you work for, fund, research, or partner with a state arts agency, NASAA is the hub for shared research, advocacy, events, and peer connection.

What NASAA Is

NASAA is the national organization that serves state arts agencies. Its stated purpose is that "state arts agencies help people and places to thrive by strengthening our economy, our schools, our communities and our connection to each other."

It is not itself a grantmaking agency for individual artists. Its role is to support the state agencies that do that work—through research, advocacy coordination, professional events, and a directory of the agencies themselves.

Who It Serves

• State arts agency staff and leaders — the primary audience, connecting peers across states.
• Policymakers and advocates — who need data and arguments for public arts funding.
• Researchers and partners — looking for reports on arts funding, health, aging, and the creative economy.

What the Website Offers

NASAA's site organizes its work into a few clear areas:

Featured reports and resources

The homepage highlights several current items, including:

• State Arts Agency Legislative Appropriations Preview, FY2027
• Promoting Statewide Strategies in the Arts and Health: Highlights & Recommendations, plus a companion guide
• FY2026 State Arts Agency Revenues Report
• Cross-Sector Collaborations and Creative Economy State Profiles
• Vital & Vibrant Creative Aging Toolkit
• A Statement on Proposed Elimination of the National Endowment for the Arts

How to Use It

1. Find your state agency — start with the State Arts Agency Directory if you need contact or program information.
2. Look up funding data — the annual State Arts Agency Revenues Report and the FY2027 appropriations preview are the relevant starting points for budget and legislative questions.
3. Follow policy developments — the Advocate section carries Federal Updates.
4. Stay current — you can subscribe to NASAA Notes, the organization's newsletter, via its subscribe page.

A Note on Access

The site includes Log In and My NASAA options, indicating some content or member features may sit behind an account. Pricing for membership or subscriptions is not stated on the pages reviewed here, so check directly with NASAA if cost matters for your situation.

NASAA (the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies) publishes research and practical resources organized around a set of recurring topic areas, including arts and health, creative aging, the creative economy, evaluation and performance measurement, federal reporting, funding, grant making, strategic planning, and structure. If you are trying to decide which NASAA materials are useful to you, the fastest approach is to start from the topic that matches your role — policymaker, state arts agency staffer, researcher, or advocate — and then look for the specific report or toolkit within that category.

Main research categories

NASAA groups its research resources under these headings:

• Access for All — broadening participation in the arts
• Arts and Health — statewide strategies connecting arts and health
• Ask NASAA — a query service for research questions
• Best Practices — documented approaches from state arts agencies
• Creative Aging — arts programming for older adults
• Creative Economy — the arts as an economic sector
• Evaluation and Performance Measurement — how agencies measure results
• Federal Reporting — reporting requirements and guidance
• Funding — how arts funding works
• Grant Making — grant program design and administration
• Strategic Planning — planning processes for agencies
• Structure — how state arts agencies are organized

These categories sit alongside NASAA's advocacy resources, so research and advocacy are presented as connected rather than separate: the research informs the case that state arts agencies make to legislators and the public.

Representative reports and tools

Several named publications appear on NASAA's site and are worth knowing by title:

The pattern here is useful: for major topics, NASAA often publishes both a full report and a shorter highlights or guide version. If you need a quick orientation, the highlights or guide is the efficient entry point; if you need detail or citations, go to the full report.

How research connects to advocacy and practice

NASAA's structure suggests a deliberate flow from evidence to action:

1. Research establishes what is happening — revenues, appropriations, participation, economic contribution.
2. Best practices and toolkits translate that into replicable approaches.
3. Advocacy resources, including federal updates, use the research to support positions on arts funding.

So if your goal is to make a case for arts funding, the revenues and appropriations reports are the factual backbone, while the advocacy section supplies the framing. If your goal is to run a program, the toolkits and best practices are the more directly usable materials.

Finding the right resource by topic

NASAA's site organizes these materials under a Research menu with the categories listed above, plus an "ALL Research Resources" view. To use it efficiently:

• Identify your topic from the category list (for example, creative aging or the creative economy).
• Check whether a full report, a highlights document, or a toolkit exists for that topic — the naming usually signals the depth.
• Use Ask NASAA if your question does not map cleanly onto an existing publication; it is positioned as a research query service.
• For funding and legislative questions, look at the appropriations preview and revenues report first, since those are the recurring annual publications.

One practical note: NASAA also offers a subscription to its newsletter, NASAA Notes, which is how new reports and updates are announced. If you want to track new research as it is released rather than searching for it later, subscribing is the mechanism the site provides.

NASAA (the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies) states the case plainly: state arts agencies help people and places thrive by strengthening the economy, schools, communities, and people's connection to one another. That single sentence is the organization's core argument, and it maps to four distinct claims you can check against NASAA's own research and reports.

The four claims NASAA makes

NASAA's homepage presents the value of state arts agencies as a four-part proposition:

The wording matters. NASAA does not argue that state arts agencies exist mainly to fund individual artists or single events. It argues they are statewide institutions whose work shows up in economic development, education, and community life at the same time.

Why the state level is the unit of analysis

NASAA is an organization of the state arts agencies themselves, not a funder that gives grants directly to artists. Its research library is organized around the questions those agencies face: funding, grant making, strategic planning, structure, evaluation and performance measurement, and federal reporting. That structure tells you what the "matter" claim is really about — the state agency is the mechanism through which public money and policy reach arts activity across a whole state.

Two practical consequences follow:

• Policy and appropriations are the leverage point. State arts agencies depend on legislative appropriations, so their health is a budget question as much as a cultural one.
• Services are statewide by design. A state agency's grant programs and initiatives are meant to reach beyond a single city or institution.

The evidence NASAA points to

NASAA maintains a research section that supplies the supporting material for the value argument. The categories listed there include:

• Access for All
• Arts and Health
• Best Practices
• Creative Aging
• Creative Economy
• Evaluation and Performance Measurement
• Federal Reporting
• Funding
• Grant Making
• Strategic Planning
• Structure

Two current items are especially relevant if you want the argument in documented form:

• FY2026 State Arts Agency Revenues Report — the recurring picture of how much money state arts agencies receive.
• State Arts Agency Legislative Appropriations Preview, FY2027 — a forward look at the appropriations environment.
• Promoting Statewide Strategies in the Arts and Health: Highlights & Recommendations and the accompanying guide — an example of NASAA arguing for cross-sector work at statewide scale.

There is also a State Arts Agency Directory and a set of State Arts Agency Innovations profiles, which let you see the argument applied agency by agency rather than as an abstraction.

What this means if you are trying to decide something

• If you want to know whether your state funds the arts, the appropriations preview and revenues report are the documents to read, not the mission statement.
• If you want to find the agency in your state, use the State Arts Agency Directory.
• If you want examples of what agencies actually do, the Innovations profiles and the Creative Economy state profiles are more concrete than the "why it matters" framing.
• If you are looking for a grant, note that NASAA itself is a membership and research organization for state agencies; grant funding flows through the individual state arts agency, not through NASAA's homepage.

One caveat worth stating: NASAA's "why it matters" language is advocacy as well as description. The four-part claim is the organization's position, and the reports above are where you would go to test how well the numbers support it.

NASAA (the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies) maintains a State Arts Agency Directory that lists the official arts agency for each U.S. state and jurisdiction. Use it when you need to confirm which organization is your state's recognized arts agency, get its contact information, or verify its official status before applying for a grant or partnership. The directory lives under the "About State Arts Agencies" section of nasaa-arts.org.

What the directory is for

State arts agencies are the public bodies that fund and support arts activity in each state and jurisdiction. NASAA describes their role this way: they "help people and places to thrive by strengthening our economy, our schools, our communities and our connection to each other."

The directory is the fastest way to answer three practical questions:

• Which agency serves my state? Each state and jurisdiction has one designated arts agency.
• How do I reach it? Entries give you the official contact route rather than a third-party listing.
• Is this the official body? Because NASAA is the membership organization of these agencies, its directory is a reliable way to confirm official identity.

How to reach the directory

1. Go to nasaa-arts.org.
2. Open the About State Arts Agencies section (it appears in the main navigation and is grouped with related pages such as "All About State Arts Agencies" and "State Arts Agency Innovations").
3. Select State Arts Agency Directory.
4. Find your state or jurisdiction in the list and open its entry.

Expected result: you land on your state's agency listing with the information needed to contact it or verify it.

How the directory is organized

The directory is organized by state and jurisdiction, so you navigate by location rather than by program or topic. This matters because NASAA's other resources — research areas like Arts and Health, Creative Aging, Creative Economy, Grant Making, and Federal Reporting — are topic-based, while the directory is the location-based entry point.

If you are not sure which agency covers you (for example, if you live in a state whose agency has a name that doesn't include "arts"), start from the directory rather than searching the site, since the directory is the authoritative location index.

What to do with an entry

Once you have your state's agency, typical next steps are:

• Contact them directly about grants, programs, or eligibility questions.
• Cross-check official status if you received a solicitation and want to confirm the sender is the recognized state agency.
• Follow their funding cycle — NASAA's own materials track state arts agency revenues and legislative appropriations, which is useful context when you want to understand your agency's budget environment.

Common snags

• Confusing NASAA with your state agency. NASAA is the national membership organization; it does not award your state's arts grants. The directory points you to the agency that does.
• Looking for the directory under Research or Advocacy. Those sections hold topic resources and federal updates. The directory sits under "About State Arts Agencies."
• Assuming one entry covers a region. The directory is organized by state and jurisdiction, so find your specific location rather than a nearby one.

Related NASAA resources

If your goal goes beyond contact information, NASAA publishes material that pairs well with the directory:

For staying current, NASAA offers a subscription to NASAA Notes, its news channel, via the "Subscribe to NASAA Notes" page.

NASAA Notes is the newsletter of the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), and the site provides a dedicated subscription page at nasaa-arts.org/subscribe-nasaa-notes/. If you want NASAA's recent news, event announcements, and research releases delivered to you, subscribing through that page is the direct route. If you only need occasional updates, you can instead browse the Recent News, Events & Seminars, and Research sections of the site without subscribing.

What NASAA Notes Is

NASAA Notes is listed under the site's Recent News area, alongside the rest of NASAA's news output. It functions as the organization's news and updates channel rather than a research archive — research reports, revenue reports, and toolkits live in separate sections (Research, and the report pages linked from the homepage).

The site's own navigation groups content into these areas, which is a useful map of what you can expect to hear about:

How to Subscribe

1. Go to the subscription page: https://www.nasaa-arts.org/subscribe-nasaa-notes/.
2. Complete the subscription form on that page to sign up for NASAA Notes.
3. Expect the newsletter to carry news items and announcements of the kind featured on the homepage — for example, the FY2027 State Arts Agency Legislative Appropriations Preview, the report and highlights on Promoting Statewide Strategies in the Arts and Health, the FY2026 State Arts Agency Revenues Report, and the Vital & Vibrant Creative Aging Toolkit.

The site does not state a subscription price on the pages reviewed, so treat cost and any access conditions as unconfirmed until you see them on the subscription page itself.

Other Ways to Follow NASAA Without Subscribing

• Recent News: read NASAA Notes items and other announcements directly on the site.
• Events & Seminars: check Upcoming Events, the NASAA Events Calendar, and the NASAA 2026 Learning Series for scheduled programming.
• Research: browse the research topic pages for reports and toolkits as they are published.
• Advocate / Federal Updates: follow federal policy updates if that is your main interest.
• Log In / My NASAA: the site offers account login and a "My NASAA" area, which suggests some content or services may be tied to an account. The pages reviewed do not specify what an account unlocks.

Practical Notes

• The site includes a Language Display control, so the interface language can be adjusted.
• NASAA also provides a State Arts Agency Directory if your goal is to reach a specific state agency rather than follow national news.
• If you are unsure whether NASAA Notes is the right channel, match it to your need: news and event announcements → NASAA Notes; data and reports → Research; policy → Advocate.