So, a few weeks ago while we were working on this project, I asked Adam Forest Huttler to post a question on the Fractured Atlas blog asking what types of bills artists find difficult to pay — either because of fundraising restrictions or because they’re just too expensive. My basic goal with this was toRead More
What Do I Mean By An Artistic Marketplace?
In a recent post here, I threw around this idea of an artistic marketplace, as distinct from the market itself. I had thought I came up with the idea in one of my Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy posts from last year, but perhaps not surprisingly, I discovered that Adam Forest Huttler had articulated it muchRead More
Around the horn: hope we make it out of here alive edition
Boy, I picked a hell of a year to graduate, didn’t I? I’ve been hearing and reading rumblings all week about how the economy is in a really scary place right now, and blog headlines like “Europe’s entire banking system on the edge of the abyss” don’t do much to put one at ease. SoRead More
Thoughts on “Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy”: Lessons from my Summer Internship
As the twenty or so regular readers of this blog will note, I debuted Createquity last October with a rather brash six-episode litany of “Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy” in the realm of the arts. I say brash because, at the time, I had no experience running a philanthropic program; all I had were my outsiderRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part VI – The Philanthropist as Speculator, Not Gatekeeper
For this sixth and final post in this series, I’m going to wax philosophical for a bit here and talk about values. Everybody knows that philanthropy in the nonprofit sector, and the arts in particular, is a big deal. Leaders of most nonprofit organizations spend the bulk of their professional lives worrying about where (figurativelyRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part V – Meeting the Artists Where They Are
To view the rest of this series, click here. One of the memes that’s been coming out of the “best practices” camp for philanthropists the last few years is that organizations need more general operating support, rather than the project support that many funding entities are accustomed to providing. The advantage of general operating supportRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part IV – Funding Activity, Not Individuals
To view the rest of this series, click here. For years, artists have complained about the National Endowment for the Arts’s 1996 decision, under pressure from Congress, to eliminate individual artist fellowships (except for literature). Nevertheless, it seems that a number of local and private arts agencies and foundations have instituted programs in the pastRead More