This is the third in my series of posts designed to introduce you to the various wonderful sites on my blogroll. Last spring, I expanded my reading list significantly and added a number of sites that dealt more specifically with arts management and philanthropy. All of the sudden, I was much more informed about the latest thinking in those fields and found checking my RSS reader a much more time-consuming exercise than in the past.
Advance the Arts
Not too long after I started Createquity, I was poking around Google and noticed that a site with the mysterious title “wg test blog” had picked it up and added it to the blogroll (in fact, it was the first blog to hand Createquity that honor). Turns out it was the pre-release of the James Irvine Foundation’s Advance the Arts blog, which is part of its Communities Advancing the Arts initiative. (Communities Advancing the Arts is an effort to work with community foundations in California to promote sponsorship of the arts from individual donors.) AdvancetheArts.org shares “on-the-ground knowledge, resources and experiences among those working to grow local funding for the arts.” The blog has a good round-up of arts-related news and commentary, though I hope the administrators will see fit to include more “on-the ground experiences” of the participants in the CAA initiative itself; I believe it would be an interesting and unique perspective to add to the conversation.Birdwoman: The Art of Kaetlyn Wilcox
Kaetlyn Wilcox is a wonderful artist based in the Boston area who I’ve been privileged to get to know over the past year. Her “virtual artist’s journal” features a lovely pictures of her artwork in progress and plenty of insightful reflection about the artistic process. She also gives Createquity props in the blogroll. Yeah Kaetlyn!Mind the Gap
My good friend and former co-worker Molly Sheridan finally acquired a blog last year, after holding forth for years at NewMusicBox, Symphony Magazine, the Carnegie Hall podcasts, and Time Out New York. Hosted at the ArtsJournal conglomerate, Mind the Gap serves up lots of questions about music, intellectual property law, politics, and other pressing matters with a heavy shot of irony.PhilanthroMedia
Last April was when I really started getting into philanthropy blogs for the first time. PhilanthroMedia is one of these, and one with some mystery to it at first. Is it its own company? What is its agenda? The six main contributors seem to hail from a hodgepodge of backgrounds including GivingNet and Swarthmore College. Dig a little further and you’ll find founder Susan Herr’s profile, which states that PhilanthroMedia “works with foundations, associations and nonprofits to advance ideas that matter using new media tools including blogs, audio/video podcasts, and social networks.” Yale SOM grad Tim Walter (Association of Small Foundations) is a guest contributor.Resources for Emerging Arts Leaders
This blog by Sarah McLellan (this Sarah McLellan, I wonder? Inquiring minds, etc.!) discovered me in April via my live-blogging of the Yale SOM Arts & Culture Conference. I was quite impressed with it at that time, as it boasts some really intelligent writing and she’s funny to boot. Alas, aside from a single post a few months ago from fellow contributor Morgan Lindsey Tachco, REAL has been mysteriously silent since July.Tactical Philanthropy
Sean Stannard-Stockton’s blog is one of the most important in philanthropy today. Recently, he led a something of a crusade on behalf of a struggling nonprofit called FORGE as a sort of grand experiment in transparency during crisis; thanks in no small measure to his efforts, the organization has (for now) staved off financial disaster. He makes incredibly cogent arguments that I usually find myself agreeing with — and unlike some prominent bloggers, he’s just as compelling in person. He was kind enough to make the long trip across the country to speak at the Yale SOM Philanthropy Conference and did an awesome job. He even got Paul Brest to blog!The Chronicle of Philanthropy
The Chronicle is as essential reading for philanthropy and nonprofit professionals as ArtsJournal is for the arts world. Every business day I get 10 new articles in my inbox containing important new info on stuff like the Madoff scandal or the new administration’s plans. There is a ton of other info on this site and it can be hard to navigate directly, so I recommend signing up for the RSS feeds or the email updates.BONUS! Program Notes
This was the official blog of the National Performing Arts Convention, which I attended in June 2008. It’s dead now, but all of the original entries are still up there and some of it makes for interesting reading. I found the contributions by “MOJO” particularly entertaining.