Based on ongoing financial and institutional support mainly from businesspeople and organizations in the Arab region, AFAC also aims at strengthening philanthropy for the arts, and works with the private sector to promote entrepreneurship in cultural and artistic productions.

The fund's activities are overseen by a Board of Trustees, headed by academic Ghassan Salamé[1] and run by a management team with former journalist Rima Mismar as Executive Director.

Since its launch, AFAC’s programs have steadily expanded to cover cinema, photography, visual and performing arts, creative and critical writings, music, documentary film, in addition to funding research, trainings and cultural events.

This constitutes a source of information on contemporary cultural trends in the Arab region, as well as on different forms of artistic production, social impact, geographic contexts, and relevant statistics.

As of 2022, regional projects have included Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.

Further, grantees of its Arab Documentary Photography Program[13] won the World Press Photo Contest Open Format (Africa) and the Premis Mediterrani Albert Camus[14] Incipiens Award.

[21] In a 2022 interview with the Lebanese newspaper L'Orient-LeJour, looking back on the first 15 years of AFAC's activities, executive director Rima Mismar described Beirut and the wider region as a place where "crisis is not the exception, but the norm".

Being directly confronted with the ongoing crises in the city and Lebanon at large, she maintained that the management of AFAC nevertheless is pursuing their strategic objectives to serve the whole Arab region.