National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts

The National YoungArts Foundation or YoungArts (previously the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts, or NFAA) is an American charity established in 1981 in 1981 by Lin and Ted Arison to help nurture emerging high-school artists. The foundation is based in Miami, Florida, and alumni of the program have included Kerry Washington, Viola Davis, Nicki Minaj and Doug Aitken.

Ted Arison wanted to bring the arts to the city where he built his successful company. In 1981 Arison gave $5 million, an unprecedented sum, to launch the National Foundation for Advancement in the Arts.

YoungArts nominates up to 60 candidates for consideration as U.S. Presidential Scholars in the Arts following participation in YoungArts week.

The YoungArts application consists of ten disciplines across the visual, literary, design and performing arts:

Several documentaries have been produced highlighting this unique program and its extremely talented award recipients. Most notably, Rehearsing a Dream, produced by the Simon and Goodman Picture Company, was nominated for the Academy Award for Documentary Short Subject. A documentary television series entitled YoungArts MasterClass, in which program alumni are teamed with famous mentors, is in its second season on HBO. YoungArts has developed a study guide, based on the HBO series, for high school teachers with Teachers College, Columbia University.

Every YoungArts winner becomes a part of the ever-growing YoungArts alumni community, an artistic family of more than 20,000 alumni. YoungArts increasingly makes open calls to alumni to provide fair opportunities and inclusion in its programming and events.

YoungArts has an endowment of $42 million. Its $6 million annual budget is expected to increase as much as 40 percent as its operating expenses grow.

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