BIPOC Arts Organizations Average Lower Levels of Working Capital Overall

2019 Key Takeaways, BIPOC-Serving Organizations*

• Overall, organizations that serve general audiences had higher average working capital than BIPOC organizations. However, averages are again skewed high by a few large organizations that possess a lot of liquid capital and that do not self-identify as BIPOC-serving.
• When we look at the median, or midpoint in the range, rather than the mean, we see a different story. A majority of BIPOC organizations were more liquid than most non-BIPOC groups: 2.1 months for BIPOC organizations and 1.2 months for non-BIPOC.
• The median small organization in both cohorts had 3 months of working capital. Median WC decreased for both cohorts with size. However, the majority of medium and large BIPOC organizations had more liquidity than their non-BIPOC peers, with the gap increasing with organization size. See our white paper, Buffering Against Uncertainty, for more details.
• (Note: This analysis includes 322 BIPOC organizations and 702 non-BIPOC organizations.)

*We identified organizations as BIPOC-serving for this study based on their response to the following questions in SMU DataArts’ Cultural Data Profile (CDP): Does your organization primarily serve a particular racial/ethnic group? If yes, primary racial/ethnic group served? We have chosen to use the terminology “BIPOC-serving organizations” and “BIPOC organizations” for brevity, with recognition that any attempt to speak of a variety of heritages and cultures as a group is fraught with imperfection. These terms refer to organizations that self-select as primarily serving Black or Indigenous communities or people of Asian, Hispanic/Latinx, Arab, or multiracial descent.