The Arts and Education Council (A&E), with generous support from the Arthur and Helen Charitable Baer Foundation, announces stARTup-StL, an online crowdfunding platform to suppport arts and cultural projects in the St. Louis area.

Evolving from A&E's previous crowdfunding site, power2give.org, stARTup-StL provides teachers, artists and cultural organizations a platform to post and promote projects in need of funding: connecting directly with donors interested in supporting compelling projects they are passionate about. stARTup-StL makes posting, donating and promoting projects convenient and engaging. There are no fees to use the site and project posters receive all funds raised.

As a chief advocate and funder for the arts in the bi-state St. Louis area, the Arts and Education Council is responsible for managing the stARTup-StL platform and guiding project posters in promoting their campaigns. Donors can easily support and share projects they are passionate about, becoming advocates for positive growth in their communities.

The first campaign to launch on stARTup-StL was The Phaedra Phestival, a collaborative project between theatre companies ERA, Poor Monsters, SATE and YoungLiars. The three-day “Phestival” was an experimental and collaborative performance and fundraiser that took place in August in support of the theatre companies’ 2016-17 seasons, funding artists, designers, space rentals and other expenses. Contributors to the campaign received benefits ranging from Phestival admission to “Phaedra’s Pholio,” a prop used in the three nights of performances.

MindsEye also ran a campaign on the site to support its new program offering audio descriptions for local theatre productions. Funds were matched by Lighthouse for the Blind - St. Louis.

Current Campaigns include LIT in the LOU: Kids BookFest and Adult Pub Crawl, the Art Education Fund and the Strings Attached Project. 

To donate to live campaigns, visit KeepArtHappening.org/stARTup-StL. On the home page, visitors can view the campaigns and sort by the dollar amount raised, the percent of their goal funded and time left in the campaign. Clicking on a campaign brings the user to a more detailed description of the project and benefits of donating. Here the user can donate to the campaign, a fully secure process managed by A&E.

As a project of A&E, a 501c(3) organization, donations to campaigns are tax-deductible. If projects are not fully funded when it expires, the posting organization will still receive the funds for the project. 

Campaigns can be created for projects in the greater St. Louis bi-state area. Campaign posters must be nonprofits, school art programs, individuals with a business license as artists or startups with a 501c(30 fiscal sponsor. 

To learn more about stARTup-StL, visit KeepArtHappening.org/stARTup-StL. For social media updates on current and new stARTup-StL campaigns, follow the Arts and Education Council on Facebook and Twitter.