“It’s made a night and day difference”

From unsung heroes of the blues to torchbearers of centuries-old gospel traditions, the musicians we work with enrich our lives and our nation’s culture – often in spite of poverty, illness, and other barriers to well-being. Our Sustenance Program provides grants and other assistance to our most vulnerable partner artists, making sure their day-to-day needs are met so they can sustain both their creativity and their health.

But we can’t meet needs that we don’t know about. To better understand the issues facing our partner artists, we conduct an annual Artist Survey each fall, reaching out to as many of them as possible to get a snapshot of their lives.

We conducted our most recent Artist Survey in fall 2025. In these interviews, Lucas Duffy (Artist Services Coordinator) asked Music Maker artists about all aspects of their health, wellbeing, and musical careers. Here’s what we found.

Our findings

Our Artist Survey primarily reaches senior artists who receive our monthly Sustenance stipends. These are the artists we serve who are in deepest need. They range in age, with 31% of this year’s respondents between 66-70 years old, 16% in their 70s, and 32% age 80 or older.

Among this group, we found that the average monthly income was only $1,447 per month, with some artists receiving as little as $272 per month from Social Security. Nearly half of respondents owned their homes, but more than half of these still carried a mortgage. Home repairs were a major struggle for these artists to afford: 58% reported structural issues such as problems with their roof and walls or mold.

Food insecurity is rampant, but only 21% receive SNAP benefits (food stamps). 68% reported that their bills exceeded their income in the past 90 days.

Our annual Artist Survey brings us a lot of data, but also an opportunity for deeper understanding of what a life steeped in poverty feels like.

Artists almost seemed surprised when Lucas asked whether they needed to ration their food portions to make their groceries last through the month, or whether they skipped monthly bills regularly, rotating which bill is bypassed so that service isn’t terminated (a practice known as “bill hockey”). They understand these practices as a “doesn’t everyone do this?” matter of course.

Senior artists must maintain these practices even with the $300-$500 of monthly aid that Music Maker provides. You can easily see how their fragile economic ecosystem would collapse without our support.

When Disaster strikes

Artists’ financial problems are not limited to senior citizens. Disaster can strike and disrupt people of any age. The Carolina Music Makers Fund, our Hurricane Helene relief program, was very active in the first half of 2025 as communities in western North Carolina continued to recover. Of the more than 75 Appalachian musicians we surveyed, 88% reported income loss due to Hurricane Helene. Nearly half had suffered damage to their homes, and 78% received no payments from insurance companies to cover the damage.

Music Maker made more than 90 grants ranging from $1,000 to $3,000 to help with home repair. We also provided many $500 performance grants to help revitalize the vibrant musical culture that is so deeply embedded in the North Carolina mountains.

Flexible aid for life’s curveballs

Our strategy of providing different kinds of grant funds gives us the flexibility to respond to artists’ needs as life’s curveballs come at them.

Monthly subsidy grants to artists keep groceries in the fridge and the lights on for seniors whose Social Security checks cannot be stretched to meet their daily needs. Our emergency grants are flexible enough to respond to the unexpected, from natural disasters to everyday crises like housing insecurity. When New Orleans blues legend Little Freddie King saw his rent double while recovering from a serious bike accident last fall, we helped him remain in his home.

This winter, we also introduced a new Lean Season grant program. These first-ever Lean Season grants were created especially for younger Next Generation Artists to help working musicians in the dead of winter – the toughest part of the year for performers. These grants went out to 27 Next Generation Artists who struggle to make ends meet in January and February when gigs dry up because audience members hunker down and stay home due to cold and bad weather.

One Lean Season grant recipient, Leyla McCalla, sent photos of her three adorable kids and wrote: “Thank you so much for your generous grant acknowledging my work. It was a welcome surprise at the end of an expensive year! I wish all artists had this encouragement!“

None of this would be possible without your support. Thank you for uplifting the unsung heroes of American music! With your help, we can continue serving these artists for decades to come.