Audience Development Grants, offered from 2002 to 2017, helped Professional Company Members and their partners develop new and deeper relationships with audiences around the productions of new or infrequently performed American operas.

Audience Development Grants were discontinued in 2017 in order to offer Civic Practice Grants. They were supported by OPERA America’s Opera Fund, which was launched by the National Endowment for the Arts, with support from The Helen F. Whitaker Fund, Lee Day Gillespie, Lloyd and Mary Ann Gerlach, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, and The George Cedric Metcalf Charitable Foundation.