It’s almost as though there’s really no reason for the federal government to be involved in art education grants at all.

Let’s say you wanted $140,000 to fund an art education program for people with dementia and special needs at a museum in the Hamptons on Long Island. How would you go about doing it?

You could, as has been the practice for many years, get a grant from the federal government. That grant is funded by some combination of tax revenue and borrowing, spreading the $140,000 in costs very thinly over the U.S. population. Random people from Winston-Salem to Walla Walla each contribute some fraction of a penny to the program without realizing it. They also fund thousands of other grant programs in communities around the country without realizing it. The money comes with a bunch of strings attached about how it can be used. You have to do a bunch of government paperwork to prove to faraway bureaucrats that you are spending the money in accordance with their rules. Now, with Republicans in Washington, D.C., targeting grant programs like this one for cuts, you have to wonder whether the money will be there next year.

Or, you could look around, realize you’re in the Hamptons, and just ask the rich people who live there for some money.

That’s what the Parrish Art Museum did this year, according to reporting from the New York Times. “Federal support for the arts has become unreliable, and tapping just a little bit more of the immense wealth in the Hamptons could make or break an institution,” the story says.

The Parrish is located in Water Mill, N.Y., (where Huma Abedin and Alex Soros got married; average home value: $4.56 million) and holds an annual fundraising dinner where it normally raises about $1 million to cover a significant portion of its budget. This year, it was concerned that the $140,000 it was getting as a federal grant might go away because of those evil Republicans. So they took it upon themselves to raise more money.

The tickets to the fundraising dinner cost between $2,000 and $3,000. It also raised money from sponsorships and an auction. It featured a dance troupe and drivable replicas of historic cars. Dinner was “charred New York strip steak with cauliflower soubise and marbled potato fondant, followed by tiramisù topped with caviar-like pearls of espresso and served in fancy tins.”

The NYT included this incredible quote: “‘They’ve really upgraded the quality of the show,’ said Mark Fehrs Haukohl, an art collector who uses the title ‘sir’ and was wearing a purple double-breasted suit jacket.”

And, lo and behold, they raised $1.4 million, more than making up the difference from the disappearing federal grant.

Now, if they wanted, they could give the extra money to another art museum that is losing its grant and wasn’t able to raise as much. Better yet, the rich people gathered there who care so deeply about art could band together and create their own private fund for art education programs nationwide. In fact, such organizations already exist, and they have thousands of avid donors.

It’s almost as though there’s really no reason for the federal government to be involved in art education grants at all when there are already people who are willing and able to donate their own money to take care of these programs. Because the federal government can get money only by taking it from others, voluntary donations cut out the bureaucratic middleman in Washington. Just like PBS and NPR, art museums can and should learn to succeed without federal money.