For Funders + Councils
Ready to Redefine What Impact Looks Like?
We partner with arts councils and agencies ready to move beyond activity reports and lead a new era of arts investment—one driven by measurable, human-centered outcomes that prove the arts’ civic and social value.
The Return on Art™ Framework transforms how the arts are understood, funded, and championed by equipping organizations to measure what truly matters: the human outcomes that drive belonging, empathy, confidence, and job readiness.
When councils and funders adopt this approach, they do more than fund projects—they lead systems change.
Start the conversation across your community.
“When creativity meets data, outcomes become undeniable.”
Why It Matters
The arts deliver measurable outcomes that build stronger, more resilient communities.
Traditional arts funding has often focused on measuring outputs, such as activities and attendance.
Today’s councils and funders need proof of outcomes—clear evidence that investment in creativity strengthens human capacity and community resilience.
The Return on Art™ Framework provides the data, language, and strategy to demonstrate how the arts drive the same human outcomes that advance progress across every sector, including education, workforce readiness, mental health, and civic well-being.
What Funders + Councils Gain
Here’s how the Return on Art™ Framework equips funders and councils to invest with confidence.
1. Evidence of Impact
Move beyond economic data.
Measure outcomes like confidence, belonging, empathy, and connection through adaptable, validated data collection and analysis.
2. Language That Resonates
Translate creative outcomes into funder language.
Align arts investment with measurable progress in education, workforce readiness, mental health, and civic well-being.
3. Shared Framework
Unify funders, councils, and grantees around a common outcomes framework.
Build alignment through consistent data, shared learning, and collective storytelling.
4. Data Confidence
Use validated measures that meet funder standards.
Strengthen credibility and transparency with reliable, real-time reporting.
5. Community Narrative
Turn outcomes into powerful stories of public value.
Show how investment in creativity strengthens human capacity and community resilience.
Together, these five pillars demonstrate the measurable return on investment that creativity brings to every community.
“When decision-makers and civic leaders can see transformation, they invest in it”
How It Works
The Return on Art™ Framework provides councils and agencies a clear, measurable way to invest in creative work with confidence.
Step 1: Define Outcomes
Identify which human outcomes—confidence, collaboration, critical thinking, or belonging—align with your community goals and funding priorities.
Step 2: Equip and Align Your Grantees
Empower funded organizations to collect and report outcomes through validated frameworks. This creates consistent, credible data across your portfolio—giving you a clear picture of how the arts strengthen belonging, confidence, empathy, and connection in your community.
Step 3: Turn Outcomes into Community Strategy
Use aggregated grantee data to craft a unified narrative of your region’s arts impact. Turn outcomes into powerful evidence for annual reports, ROI briefs, and advocacy campaigns that demonstrate how the arts deliver measurable public value and community transformation.
Get the Pre-Advocacy™ Toolkit
Before asking for investment, you need alignment.
The Pre-Advocacy™ Toolkit helps councils and agencies strengthen the language, strategy, and outcomes framing that make arts impact measurable and fundable.
Inside, you’ll learn how to connect creative outcomes with the priorities that drive funding decisions—setting the stage for data-informed storytelling and sustainable investment.
What We Show
Shapes What They See
“Advocacy must shift from product and prestige to people and impact.”
Advocacy begins with what we choose to show.
When decision-makers and community leaders see who the arts reach and how they transform lives, investment becomes a matter of civic logic, not charity.
At Meleca Creative Advisors, we help councils and agencies reframe outcomes around measurable human change—providing stories and data that shift perception from arts as enrichment to arts as essential infrastructure.
This is how councils move from gatekeeping grants to leading community transformation.
Ready to Redefine What Impact Looks Like?
Lead the Transformation
Your Community Is Ready For
We partner with arts councils and agencies ready to move beyond activity reports and start framing impact through measurable human outcomes.
Through the Return on Art™ Framework, your community gains the strategy, language, and ability to operationalize impact, connecting arts investment to measurable social, workforce, and community outcomes.
As grantees learn the model and collect outcomes, your council gains portfolio-level data you can use to advocate with confidence to decision-makers, foundations, and civic partners.
“This framework changed how we evaluate and communicate our impact.
It finally gave our board the language to connect data to public value.”
Lead the Next Era of Arts Investment