Hey, remember Chase Community Giving? And Pepsi Refresh? And the American Express Members Project?

The social-media-driven, crowd-powered giving initiatives promised to “redefine corporate philanthropy” and were frothily hailed as a “taste of things to come” just a short while ago. American Express had gotten the trend started back in 2007 with the Members Project, a campaign that drew hundreds of thousands of AmEx cardholders to sign up, nominate and vote for recipients of a couple million dollars in grant funds. Chase upped the ante in late 2009, announcing a partnership with Facebook whereby nonprofits would compete for votes via the social media platform. Whoever got the most votes – and, in the process, recruited the most Facebook fans for Chase – could receive grants of up to $250,000. And Pepsi followed in 2010 by famously foregoing its traditional Super Bowl ads, spending the $20 million budget instead on a year’s worth of grants to ideas in six categories (including arts and culture), all of which would be determined by the frantic votes of fans. Shortly afterwards, American Express revamped the Members Project via a new collaboration with TakePart, a social action network linked to the hit documentaries An Inconvenient Truth and Food Inc.

All three of these and similar initiatives sought to use emerging digital technologies to devolve the power of the corporate purse to the populace, ostensibly under the banner of corporate social responsibility (but funded, especially in Pepsi’s case, primarily with marketing dollars). It wasn’t long before such contests made their way into the daily lives of nonprofit administrators, including arts organizations. As far as philanthropic innovation was concerned, it seemed like it was all anyone could talk about.

That was four years ago. If you haven’t heard anything about these initiatives recently, it’s not a coincidence. It’s because they all appear to be dead.

Pepsi Refresh seems to have had the best-attended funeral, with a well-trafficked media news site pointing out that the soda giant “let its much-vaunted social impact initiative…quietly fizzle away” in 2012.

A key factor in this shift? Business realities. While the Pepsi Refresh Project was running, Pepsi had consistently been losing market share and volume, leading to a humiliating drop to lowly third place behind Coke and Diet Coke. Add to that widespread investor pressure on CEO Indra Nooyi to focus on driving core businesses, and the handwriting was on the wall.

Members Project has gone the way of the dodo more quietly. No official announcement could be found on the web about the project’s demise, but the official TakePart website wants no part of the action, and the Facebook page it points to instead hasn’t been updated since April 2012.

Chase Community Giving’s fate is a bit murkier. The brand’s Facebook page is still active, with an impressive 3.7 million fans. But the posted content consists exclusively of fluff such as “Use your Chase debit or credit card to purchase Beyoncé and JAY Z’s #OnTheRunTour benefitting the Shawn Carter Scholarship Foundation.” The latest announcement I could find of any actual grants awarded was, again, from 2012 – a year when Chase had received reams of bad press for alleged cheating and unscrupulous behavior on the part of contestants and organizer alike. It seems likely the bank finally decided that it wasn’t worth the trouble.

So there you have it. Crowdsourced corporate philanthropy died a year and a half ago, and no one seems to have noticed. What does it mean? Well, to me, it’s a depressing reminder of the tension that exists between corporate philanthropy and corporate goals. Remember, these projects were supposed to be a marketer’s dream, tapping into the idealism and digital savvy of the Obama generation. But either that generation wasn’t that idealistic after all, or the annoyances created by the competition for votes overwhelmed any positive vibes generated by the often modest amounts awarded.

Business school types, at least the kind of folks who were in school with me half a decade ago, really want to believe that profits and virtue go hand in hand – the old “doing well by doing good” mantra. I mean, who wouldn’t love to have your cake and eat it too? Surely such opportunities exist here and there, but if you believe the efficient market hypothesis, if there were vast money-making opportunities involving grants to nonprofits hiding in plain sight, someone would be taking advantage of them already. I suspect that if corporations genuinely care about “doing good” for the world, they’re going to need to separate that agenda out from the profit-maximization mandate, as much as their shareholders might resist. On the plus side, our long national nightmare of annoying solicitations from everyone you know to vote for projects every day for a month seems to be over – for now, at least.

• A lot of people are talking about the news that Detroit’s emergency fiscal manager is exploring whether the city-owned art on display at the Detroit Institute of Arts (which I visited for the first time just a few weeks ago) can be considered an asset in the event of a municipal bankruptcy. I will be shocked if anything like this actually happens, but in the meantime it’s provoking some rare discussion of deaccessioning in mainstream media space. See Tegan Kehoe’s recent piece on Createquity for more on the ethics and debate around deaccessioning.
• Wondering what to make of the IRS nonprofit oversight controversy? The Nonprofit Law Prof Blog has a good overview of commentary and analysis from lawyerly circles.
• A new paper by Roger Colinvaux examines the US tax deduction for charitable giving and comes to many of the same recommendations for reform as John Carnwath in his article on the subject for Createquity. Speaking of charitable giving deductions, countries in Europe that have similar legislation are finding that they have to extend the benefits to other member nations of the European Union, whether they want to or not.
• Next City takes a look at the record when it comes to the subsidies cities pay to Bass Pro retail stores (over $500 million to date!) in hopes that they will generate jobs. (It’s not good.) I’m kind of mystified as to why there isn’t more of this kind of before-and-after analysis of these kinds of policy interventions – it seems like rather fertile ground.
• The NEA Art Works blog has a nice interview with Maryland governor Martin O’Malley.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Congratulations to Denise Montgomery, the new executive director of the San Diego Commission for Arts and Culture.
• Joanna Woronkowicz is moving on from the Office of Research and Analysis at the National Endowment for the Arts to become an associate professor in the Indiana University School of Public Affairs working under Michael Rushton, and offers a farewell post in which she touts the idea of an interdisciplinary research cabal focusing on cultural policy.

BIG IDEAS

• Dallas is making a big play to put itself on the world cultural map. Led by Maxwell Anderson, who is the head of both the Dallas Museum of Art and the Dallas Arts District, Dallas officials have launched a new network of “global” cultural districts to be managed by Adrian Ellis of AEA Consulting, assembling an advisory board including representation from New York, Amsterdam, Berlin, and Hong Kong…and lots and lots of people from Dallas.
• Congratulations to Mediuum, a digital marketplace for visual art, which has won the first Creative Arts Competition prize as part of MIT’s $100k Entrepreneurship Competition for student entrepreneurs. The Creative Arts Competition is awarded for the “innovative use of the arts as a core component of business plans.” (h/t Joe Patti)
• Asking funders to be less insular may be a familiar refrain, but no one can articulate the case quite like Arlene Goldbard, and she does so again in a recent doozy of an essay. Meanwhile, Linda Essig has a review of Arlene’s new book, The Culture of Possibility.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• “So, yes, it’s party time in the world of social impact investing.  But it’s a potluck my friends, and you’d better know what dish [you’re] bringing.” Michael Hickey talks turkey about money you have to pay back.
• Corporate giving is back on the rise, according to a new report from the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy.
• The President/CEO of the New York State Health Foundation offers some perspectives on risk taking at the foundation level.
• Real estate in Detroit is so cheap, it only takes $142,000 to save a historic rock venue from being auctioned and get one of its theaters named after you.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Good rule of thumb for aspiring grad students (especially in the humanities): the more specialized your degree, the more useless it is. Sadly, specialization seems to be the prevailing trend. The University of Nottingham is blazing the trail of single-genre music studies with a two-year course in heavy metal studies. By the way, a study from 2004 indicates a negative correlation between a graduate degree and earnings for jazz players.
• Back when it was super popular, I though Myspace would be an incredible data source for researchers on the music industry. Myspace has largely fallen by the wayside in that regard, but two sociologists from the University of Chicago managed to grab a complete dataset back in 2007 and it’s now showing up in Richard Florida’s blogs.
• According to a new study, people of color tend not to move as much as whites and to stay close to home when they do, which perpetuates spatial inequality.
• A new meta-analysis of studies of art therapy on cancer patients indicates that “the benefits tied to creative arts therapies were small, but similar to those of other complementary techniques such as yoga and acupuncture.” And another study says don’t trust those correlations between music education and SAT scores – smarter students are more likely to take music classes, but that doesn’t mean music classes make you smarter.
• The study of diversity in Bay Area theater that Clayton Lord has been blogging about for a while is finally out; an abbreviated version of the executive summary is here. Five-word version: all the stereotypes are true.
• Sentences to ponder: “Voting is just another survey without individual consequence.”
• First there was Dance Your Ph.D., and now we have JoVE, the Journal of Visualized Experiments – “the first and only PubMed/MEDLINE-indexed, peer-reviewed journal devoted to publishing scientific research in a video format.” ArtScience ascendant!

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT

•  At the end of April, the City of Philadelphia unveiled a free online tool called CultureBlocks for “research, planning, exploration and investment” in creative placemaking. Gary Steuer, the Chief Cultural Officer of the City of Philadelphia, gives an inside look at the tool, and the Philadelphia Inquirer has more on how it can be used.
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art is returning two statues to Cambodia, where they were determined to have been looted from. Tess Davis, a researcher on Cambodian antiquities, told the New York Times, “The Met Could have treated Cambodia’s request as an obstacle. Instead, the museum recognized it as an opportunity to set the moral standard for the art world.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Jeremy Nowak, the co-founder and former CEO of  The Reinvestment Fund in Philadelphia, was named the interim Director of ArtPlace, a collaboration of organizations focused on creative placemaking.
• Tim Mikulski, the current editor of ARTSblog, is leaving Americans for the Arts, and posted a warm farewell. (ARTSBlog really flourished under Tim’s leadership, and he’ll be missed. -IDM)
• The Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council’s new Research and Policy Director David Pankratz, who came to the organization and the city at the beginning of this year, offers his thoughts on Pittsburgh as a dream city for the arts policy enthusiast. Read David’s guest post for Createquity on creative placemaking here.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• The Doris Duke Charitable Foundation has announced its 2013 Doris Duke Class of Artists. The Doris Duke grant includes up to $25,000 for audience development and up to $25,000 for personal reserves or creative exploration during retirement.
• New Music USA has announced changes to its grantmaking strategy, uniting five  programs into one flexible fund targeting a wide range of music projects.
• You may have noticed that a new model of TV programming has emerged in the last ten years — dark, gritty shows — but shows like The Sopranos and Breaking Bad are the product of a new model behind the scenes, as well, one that pay networks are better positioned to use, according to a New York Times article last week. YouTube just announced that it is piloting a system in which 30 channels will offer paid subscription access to additional content. I wonder whether these channels will find the same advantage pay networks on TV have, or whether paid YouTube will fizzle as a latecomer competitor to Netflix and Hulu Plus.

IN THE FIELD

• After a 191-day lockout, the musicians of the Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra finally ratified a three-year contract. However, the Minnesota Orchestra’s season has been canceled, following an ongoing labor dispute.
• Finding ways around traditional funding and production models is also one of the goals motivating a growing movement of a very different kind — public libraries as performance venues. By bringing in artist talks, concerts, and comedy acts in the evening, libraries become more of a community hub, while the performers get a place to share their most expressive works, away from the pressure to bring in big ticket sales that they find at many venues.
• The 9/11 museum has decided to charge a mandatory admission fee when the museum opens next year, citing high security costs and questioning whether a donation-only model would support them after the first year. Not directly in response, but on-topic, Jim Undercofler wonders aloud why contributed revenue is considered less stable or predictable than earned revenue.
• The Rio Theater, a beloved mom-and-pop cinema in Monte Rio, California, recently raised $63,993 in a Kickstarter campaign to switch to digital projection and stay open in the face of rapid technological change.
• “How do you reconcile the desire to be inclusive with the practical imperative to target?” asks Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History director and Museum 2.0 blogger Nina Simon. She’s referring to museum marketing and mission, but it can apply to any organization striving for community relevance. Her answer is “social bridging,” deliberately creating programs that appeal to and “matchmake” unlikely segments of the population.
• The Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York recently surpassed 500 members, many of whom are young metropolites. The New York Times provides a style-section type look at who these people are and what goes on at their gatherings.
• A growing number of business colleges and schools are using art as a teaching and learning tool, and some are amassing important collections of modern and contemporary art. Meanwhile, MIT is teaching young people computer programming as a thinking tool, with some artistic results.
• Dayton, Ohio may soon be the home of two separate museums dedicated to funk, leading some to speculate whether it can support two of them.

BIG IDEAS

• In an interview Laura Zabel, director of Springboard for the Arts in St. Paul, talks about the new CSA (Community Supported Art!) supporting health care for artists rather than health insurance for artists, and other projects. She says, “In the work we’ve done in the Central Corridor we have seen that artists can see the opportunity in a challenge… and have nuts-and-bolts skills that can draw people, attention, and dollars to a place.”
• In a new book, Jaron Lanier asks, “Who Owns the Future?” and presents a manifesto for an economy in which the middle class is supported by micropayments for all data we create online, from tweets to purchasing decisions. For a summary, see Evgeny Morozov’s skeptical review in the Washington Post.
• How can foundations become leaders in their communities? The Center for Strategic Philanthropy and Civil Society has just published an essay on how the one group has done it,  Changing the Game: Civic Leadership at The Boston Foundation, 2001-2012, authored by the president of The Boston Foundation.

CONFERENCES AND TALKS

• In New York on May 23, and in Berkeley on June 2, Author Arlene Goldbard will give book talks to launch her two new books: The Culture of Possibility: Art, Artists & The Future, a collection of short essays on the potential for positive social outcomes through art and creativity, and The Wave, a novel set in a future in which the hopes and predictions of The Culture of Possibility have come true. Goldbard presents both books on her blog, and last week, Barry Hessenius interviewed her on his blog (parts I, II).

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Center for Effective Philanthropy’s experiments with a tool called Strategy Landscape have drawn to a close (at least for now; they are considering re-releasing it open-source) and Kevin Bolduc shared some lessons learned from the project on their blog.
• The National Center for Arts Research has a short summary of the implications of the Nonprofit Finance Fund’s 2013 State of the Nonprofit Sector survey.
• The Centre for Economics and Business Research has released a report demonstrating the economic benefits of the arts and culture on the UK.
• The European Expert Network on Culture has released a report on strategies for export and internationalization of cultural and creative industries in the European Union. Find a brief summary here, and the report here.
• Pacific Standard Magazine reports on two studies that suggest musicians — or at least men holding guitars — are more attractive to women than non-musicians. I’d like to see more scientific (and less heteronormative) studies, but it’s an interesting theory.

Here’s an excerpt:

What changed me the most [at business school] was the exposure to an endless panoply of other areas of human life beyond contemporary classical music. Sure, I learned about assets and liabilities and how to read a cash flow statement, but I also learned about the auction for 3G wireless ranges, competition between Target and Wal-Mart, why Turkey is an emerging power player in the Middle East, and how colleges and foundations manage their endowments. […]

In the course of this sudden immersion into what the rest of the world thinks about and does on a daily basis, I came to realize that my former existence had been focused like a laser on about 0.00001% of everything that matters. It was like the veil had been lifted on my life: the choices I faced when I voted in an election or needed to buy produce or searched for an apartment to rent or, yes, chose a graduate school had all been determined by somebody, or more often a collection of somebodies acting in somewhat predictable ways. It became clear to me that I was never going to have control over my own destiny unless I had the capacity to see and understand the external forces that were influencing my circumstances. And if that’s true for me, it’s true for you, too. So here are a couple of vignettes from my own journey into the belly of the capitalist beast, which I offer in the hopes of connecting my experiences (and perhaps some of yours) to the bigger picture. After all, we are just variations on a theme.

Read the rest over at NewMusicBox.

We’re looking for a few individuals with a background or interest in the arts who are prepared to merge for-profit business acumen with non-profit ideals.  These interns will work under the guidance of the senior staff to craft comprehensive business plans and software development functional specification documents that include financial projections, marketing strategies, growth targets, and service portfolio changes.

From the job description:

Fractured Atlas is seeking interns to help produce business plans for several of our programs and technology initiatives. Interns will work in teams and be assigned to a single program or initiative (e.g. open-source software, cultural asset mapping, healthcare, fiscal sponsorship, etc.)…Since you will be called upon to craft a holistic plan, you should be comfortable with, at the very least: business-level strategy, corporate finance/budgeting, project management and marketing. These positions will require stellar interviewing skills, a knack for researching, the ability to make connections between seemingly unrelated things, and a talent for breaking complex concepts into easy-to-understand language…The position also requires a high degree of professionalism and poise, as interns will be interviewing high-level

“movers-and-shakers” in the cultural and technology sector.

• During the first panel, “Leveraging Resources Across Sectors in the Field of International Development,” the Millennium Challenge Corporation’s Franck Weibe had some absolutely scathing criticism for philanthropy’s collective inability to talk about failure. “We fail a lot” in international development, he said; “it’s kind of shocking.” Furthermore, he continued, program officers who don’t admit how often they’re failing are “part of the problem.” “It’s amazing how often donors continue to fund things that they know are failing!” Instead of “failing better,” he suggested, “how about let’s just not fail as often?”
• Later in the same panel, Olivia Leland from the Gates Foundation put forth a rather mind-boggling concept: should there be a market for donors just like there is one for charities? In other words, a mechanism by which donors would compete with each other for the privilege of donating to a particular nonprofit? I have no idea how such a thing might work in practice, but it’s intriguing to me for its potential to equalize the power dynamic and give definition to what it means to be a “good” donor.
• Apparently the name Socially Responsible Investing (or SRI) isn’t good enough anymore; some folks want to call it Sustainable and Responsible Investing. Is there a Hall of Fame for the most overused buzzwords of the decade, and can we make “leverage” and “sustainable” the inaugural inductees?
• During the second panel, “Alternative Investment Strategies,” I enjoyed this tidbit from Laura Berry, executive director of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility: apparently, a group of small community investors predicted the subprime mortgage crisis all the way back in 1993, but their calls for concern were (of course) ignored. Just goes to show once again how much there is for Wall Street to learn from nonprofits. Now, there seems to be a convergence from both sides, with anti-corporate types recognizing how much their lives depend on the general health of the economy, and some in the business community beginning to question whether unfettered capitalism is really the answer.
• Gara LaMarche, president and CEO of The Atlantic Philanthropies, gave a great keynote speech (though one that seemed a bit tangential to the conference theme) on manifesting social justice in philanthropy. He correctly pointed out that too often organizations focused on social justice in the community are blind to similar issues present closer to home, i.e., in their own workplace. He advocated for a tough line on board members who fail to carry their weight or exercise their duties, noting that a failure to crack down on such negligence is a tacit admission on the part of leadership that the mission of the organization isn’t important enough to risk a little social awkwardness. He also identified a need for management consultants who have the cultural sensitivities necessary to work effectively with the nonprofit sector, but shared that after a certain point, he doesn’t think additional compensation of highly-paid execs makes a difference in the quality of people you are able to attract to the sector. I enjoyed perhaps most of all the list of his top 10 management tips, which I will reproduce for you below:
  1. The lower down the management structure, the more likely the person is to know what’s going on.
  2. Don’t think you’ve heard what people are thinking just because you asked them.
  3. Don’t assume that people heard you just because they were in the room.
  4. Lead with your voice and passion.
  5. Admit your mistakes.
  6. There’s no such thing as a secret. If one other person knows, most likely someone else does too.
  7. Celebrate and acknowledge others’ contributions.
  8. Communicate – err on the side of telling people what’s going on.
  9. Respect the personal sphere.
  10. Invest the time to help people grow into their jobs, but cut your losses if it’s clear it’s not going to work out.
• Much of the final panel, “Frameworks for Strategic Philanthropy,” focused on the role of evaluation and assessment at the leadership level in foundations and philanthropic organizations. There was much hemming and hawing about how this is a “sadly complicated” issue, but LaMarche (who served as one of the panelists after his keynote) offered an alternative perspective: apparently, some of his friends are active in the conservative philanthropy community. One time he asked one of these friends whether these (historically very effective) conservative foundations make much use of evaluation. The response was, “no, not really – we pretty much just turn on the TV.” Point taken.

One last overall observation: it was interesting to compare this experience to my two previous go-rounds with the Yale SOM Philanthropy Conference. To be honest, I felt impatient with some of the conversations this time around – as in, “we’re still talking about this?” But I think that may have to do less with the conversations and more with me; I’ve immersed myself in these discussions over the past year and a half to such a degree that my subjective standard for what constitutes a “new” insight is far higher than it once was. For example, two years ago I probably would have been shocked at Melissa Berman’s observation that 80% of total giving is done either through reputation or affiliation (i.e., you know the person who asked you), or one of the other panelists’ complaint that grant reports are sometimes not even read by foundation staff, but on Friday my reaction was more or less, “yeah, tell me something I don’t know.” I think this is the danger of being present in a conversation for a long time: you forget what’s obvious and not to the people around you. Certain things, basic facts, probably just need to be hammered home over and over again before we’ll start to see any kind of change – no matter how boring it might get in the meantime for the insiders.

• Arts community consultant Arlene Goldbard has launched a new website that synthesizes the conversations that came out of the May 12 meeting between arts activists and the White House. The site provides an opportunity to get involved if you like.
• Our good friend Adam Forest Huttler of Fractured Atlas is interviewed by CultureBot’s Andy Horwitz.
• Our other good friend, Alex Ross of The Rest is Noise fame, has packed up shop and re-opened at the New Yorker‘s website. The blog is called Unquiet Thoughts and is better than ever.
• Friend of the arts Rocco Landesman, better known as Chairman of the National Endowment of the Arts, is everywhere this week after laying low for his first couple of months on the job. First, he gave the closing keynote at the aforementioned GIA Conference, the full text of which you can read at his blog. Oh, and second, he (or rather, the NEA) has a blog! Third, he’s going on a six-month tour across the USA looking at how “Art Works” (the NEA’s new slogan) works in downtown communities, kicking off, of course, in Peoria, IL. And he has interviews in the LA Times and Variety. Unstoppable!
• The Great Recession continues to take a toll, even at the top. The Wallace Foundation announced, while GIA was in mid-conference a borough away, that it would be laying off 15 members of its 51-person staff, including two in the arts program.
• Hells yeah! The Chronicle of Philanthropy linked to me!
• New models R us! Chris Ashworth opens up the discussion with a proposal to increase access to the artist and the artist’s process for $$$. Scott Walters comes out with his own paradigm that brilliantly blurs the lines between producer, presenter and community center, and adds some inspiration from a Danish health club to boot. Great stuff.
• Isaac asks theaters, “Do you actually want younger audiences, or do you just want their money?” Great question. Also in the social media outreach vein, check out Beth Kanter on the subject.
• Turns out a Carnegie Hall propmaster made more than a half-million dollars last year, with several of his cohorts close behind. The general phenomenon is not new, but the size of the paycheck is. Leonard Jacobs asks so what? Well, this is why I continue to be unconvinced that unions and nonprofits make for a good mix. Carnegie makes a good chunk of its money from charitable sources, and the thought that taxpayer, foundation, and individual funds are essentially lining the pockets of the already-well-to-do, whoever they are, doesn’t exactly sit well. I would imagine that there are quite a few stagehands in NYC who would be perfectly willing and capable of doing a fine job for Carnegie Hall for less than $530,444, don’t you?
• Two new publications of note: first, two grad students on all-ages music spaces and their role in the community (haven’t read the whole thing yet, but what I’ve seen looks very promising); second, Animating Democracy takes it to the next level with a mapping initiative.
• Did you know that Andrew Taylor’s MBA in arts management at the University of Wisconsin is free? I didn’t until this week, when I met a 2007 graduate from the program at GIA who is now Director of Research for the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. Check it out, emerging leaders! In other MBA news, apparently social entrepreneurship is ascendant because of an “underlying sense of guilt about what happened during the crisis.” You don’t say.
• Are we ready for lifelogging?
• We’ll know we’ve made it when the arts are part of visions of the future like this one.

Untitled — photo by flickr user Ginny

As regular readers are aware, I completed an independent study on public policy and the arts for my business school program in the second half of the spring semester. What you might not have realized is that four of my recent mega-posts on this blog were actually written as assignments for that class: Deconstructing Richard Florida, On the Arts and Developing Communities, Reconstructing Florida, and On the Arts and Sustainability. Forcing myself to read the wealth of background material that went into those posts was an incredibly helpful, if challenging, exercise, and it’s one that I hope to continue in the future (more on that later this week). In the meantime, here’s a summary of my most important takeaways from my studies so far:

• The most robust evidence for the economic impact of the arts appears to be the relationship between the density of artistic activity and rising real estate prices in an area.
• There is some evidence for a connection between concentrations of artists and overall urban economic growth, but it is much weaker and the causal relationship has not been firmly established.
• Almost everyone who does or researches community cultural development for a living seems to think that networks of small, community-based arts organizations are more effective in building social, civic, and economic capital in cities than mammoth, flagship institutions. I have not seen much research to back up this opinion, with one exception: two studies show that community-based organizations, especially those with culturally-specific programming, appear to do a much better job reaching very poor neighborhoods than flagship institutions.
• Generally speaking, the more that the arts can be brought out of their shell and into broader, ongoing community stakeholder discussions, the more that both the arts and the community will benefit.
• The internet, while making it possible for more people than ever before to reach an audience and establish a public identity, may at the same time be making it harder for artists to make a full-time living from their work over the long term. Reconciling these two impacts might well be one of the major challenges of policymaking in the 21st century.

If you have any interest in following along with my studies, and learning a lot more about arts policy in the process, I’ve reprinted my syllabus for you below. (Note: I ended up going beyond the syllabus in a number of instances in order to write the essays linked above; you’ll find additional articles referenced there.) You might also check out this collection of cultural policy course syllabi on the (now archived) Community Arts Network website.

SYLLABUS

Unit I: Exploring Creative Class Theory
Richard Florida, The Rise of the Creative Class, chapters 1-2, 5, 12, 16-17
Michigan Economic Development Corporation, Michigan Cool Cities Survey: Summary of Findings

Unit II: Creative Class Theory Revisited: Critical Responses
Rise of the Creative Class, chapters 4, 13-14, appendices A-C
Ann Daly, “Richard Florida’s High Class Glasses”
Florida, “Revenge of the Squelchers”
Mark Stern and Susan Seifert, Knight Creative Communities Initiative (KCCI) Evaluation: Final Report
Stern and Seifert, From Creative Economy to Creative Society
Assignment: Hyperlinked essay on Richard Florida

Unit III: Cultural Palaces vs. Watering the Grassroots: Two Conflicting Strategies
Rise of the Creative Class, chapter 10
Hilary M. Ballon, “How the Arts Transformed an Urban Landscape,” New York Times 6/8/03
Gene Sloan, “Lighting the Way in Kansas City: Modest Metropolis in the Midwest is Undergoing a Mighty Renewal,” USA Today 8/17/07
Stephen C. Sheppard et al., Culture and Revitalization: The Economic Effects of MASS MoCA on Its Community
Stern and Seifert, Cultivating “Natural” Cultural Districts

Unit IV: Art and the Community
Robert LaLonde et al, Mapping Cultural Participation in Chicago
Stern and Seifert, Philadelphia and Camden Cultural Participation Benchmark Project
Anja Wodsak et al, Building Arts, Building Community: Informal Arts Districts and Neighborhood Change in Oakland, California
Michael Powell, “A Condo Tower Grows in Brooklyn,” Washington Post 2/21/07
Assignment: Hyperlinked essay on Community-Based Arts Development

Unit V: Cultural Facilities and Creative Solutions
Duncan Webb, Demand Analysis of Small-Scale Cultural Facilities in San José
ERA Architects Inc. et al, A Map of Toronto’s Cultural Facilities: A Cultural Facilities Analysis
Jeffrey Spivak, “The Artist Dividend,” Urban Land July 2007
Simon Houpt, “Artists’ Home Finds Unlikely Saviour,” The Globe and Mail 3/24/08
The Reinvestment Fund, Crane Arts: Financing Artists’ Workspaces (note: TRF’s Don Hinkle-Brown wrote in to suggest this document instead)
Webb Management Services et al, New Haven Cultural Facilities Master Plan (hard copy only)

Unit VI: The Economic Context of the Arts
Ann Markusen et al, Crossover: How Artists Build Careers across Commercial, Nonprofit, and Community Work
William J. Baumol and William G. Bowen, Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma, chapter 7
Chris Anderson, The Long Tail, chapters 2, 8
Charles Leadbeater and Paul Miller, The Pro-Am Revolution
Kevin Kelly, “1,000 True Fans,” The Technium blog 3/4/08
Assignment: Hyperlinked essay on the Arts and Sustainability

Unit VII: Towards a Healthy Arts Ecosystem
Julia F. Lowell, State Arts Policy: Trends and Future Prospects
Susan Christopherson, Creative Economy Strategies for Small and Medium Size Cities: Options for New York State
Mt. Auburn Associates, Utilizing Tax Incentives to Cultivate Cultural Industries and Spur Arts-Related Development
Tom Borrup, The Creative Community Builder’s Handbook, chapters 2-3
Assignment: New Haven Arts Policy Brief

In the late 1990s, the Wolf Organization (predecessor to the company now known as WolfBrown) completed a regional cultural plan for greater New Haven. The plan was extraordinarily ambitious, recommending a total of 27 strategies under ten general goal headings. While some of the recommendations were followed, including the completion of a cultural facilities feasibility study by a group including Duncan Webb, the establishment of more robust communication channels between different city agencies and entities, and the establishment of the Greater New Haven Arts Stabilization Project, the substantial cumulative investment required (totaling an incremental $2.2 million a year) proved too big a challenge for many of the biggest ideas. (The cultural facilities plan, meanwhile, called for an investment of $261 million, including the construction of a new 2300-seat performing arts center downtown.)

In my paper, I argued that three key factors held back the further development of New Haven’s arts resources in the decade since the completion of the plan, factors which are now exacerbated by the current recession. They are:

• Undercapitalization of philanthropic resources. Looking at Foundation Center data, I found that more than half of private foundation support for New Haven-area arts activities came from outside of Connecticut in 2007 and 2008 (mostly from New York). Furthermore, 88.5% of these grant funds were concentrated with just five institutions out of more than 100 arts and culture organizations I identified in the area: the Yale Repertory Theater, the Long Wharf Theater, the New Haven Arts & Ideas Festival, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and the Neighborhood Music School. With no anchor private-sector employer to collect and distribute wealth to the local area, the mechanisms for increasing the level of local philanthropic support for the arts are limited.
• The Yale factor. New Haven is blessed with having one of the greatest research universities in the world in its midst, including its four professional arts schools, but the city’s arts community does not benefit from this resource nearly as much as it could, due to low visibility of non-Yale cultural events on campus. Furthermore, when graduates leave the area (as most do), New Haven loses the opportunity to benefit from their wealth-generating potential. In short, its best prospective engine for opportunity creation keeps leaving because of a lack of opportunity.
• Living in the shadow of New York. Having America’s largest city a commuter train ride away makes it hard for New Haven to compete on its own terms. This applies to artistic talent and audiences every bit as much as employers. Artist networks organize around star economies, which means that non-world-class cities find themselves at a disadvantage.

To address these issues, I recommended the following strategies:

• Conduct aggressive outreach to university communities. Two benefits to this: in the short term, it drives more ticket purchases and participation from the student community in local happenings; in the long term, it helps develop a cultural connection to New Haven that might be influential in convincing some of them to stick around after their studies are finished. For the universities (especially Yale), it makes sense to play along because of their interest in promoting New Haven to prospective and current students as a fun, attractive, interesting place to be.
• Work to build cultural capacity in underserved communities. Right now, most of the mainstream cultural activity going on in New Haven, as is true in many places, is concentrated downtown and in the affluent suburbs (but mostly downtown). New Haven has a very complicated history of class and race relations, and the arts are by no means separate from that legacy. There are, however, a few organizations in the area (such as our friends at Music Haven) that work to integrate town and gown in meaningful ways. By encouraging greater concentration of resources in such directions, the New Haven arts community could build a broader base of political support over the long term for public support of the arts, which at the moment stands at a meager $25,000 for the local office of cultural affairs. Not to mention that it’s a good thing to do in general.
• Partner with other creative economy initiatives in Southern Connecticut. Rather than trying to be in competition with NYC, I suggested that New Haven try to be in symbiosis with it – the northeastern anchor of the metropolis. I theorized that New Haven would benefit from the (meaningful) rebranding of the stretch of Connecticut shoreline from Greenwich to Union Station as a “cultural corridor,” due to the beneficial clustering effects of creative economies. Unlike in New Haven, there is a lot of private wealth concentrated in places like Norwalk, Stamford, and Westport, but unlike those places, New Haven has a head start on cultural infrastructure. Finding a way to combine forces, then, would probably help New Haven’s arts community more than hurt it.
• In the meantime, lower costs. Given that we’re in a recession and steps to increase the supply of resources available to the arts will all take time, the arts community should take a look at ways to increase efficiencies and thereby lower the costs of making or presenting art for everybody. The main techniques that have caught on in other areas include the creative use of tax incentives to drive clustering and innovation, reappropriation of unused space for temporary or permanent artistic use, and collaborations such as sharing mailing lists or office space (or back office functions altogether). I also suggested instituting a micro-granting program for individuals or very small organizations with the goal of encouraging continued activity in the sector during the recession.

• This is crazy: everybody’s favorite government bailout recipient, insurance giant AIG, is seeking control of a “$490 million charity endowment,” also known as the Starr International Foundation, so that it can pay bonuses to managers. Not only do they want their hands on the endowment, they are actually suing to recover $27 million in grants distributed during the past three years. What despicable bastards. (Note to arts peeps: the Starr International Foundation appears to be a different entity from, though associated with the same benefactors as, the more familiar Starr Foundation that gave $22 million to arts organizations in 2008.)
• Well, thankfully not all corporations are evil: charitable giving remained surprisingly resilient in 2008, despite 68% of surveyed companies reporting drops in profits, according to the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy. (We’ll see what happens in ’09.)
• Either 13 or 14 charges have been dropped from the increasingly ridiculous-looking vandalism suit against Shepard Fairey, the artist best known for creating the “Hope” Obama poster.
• On the heels of my “Lessons I Learned in Business School” post from last week, Seth Godin shared the results of his own experimental alternative MBA program.
• Thinking about starting a business of your own? Check out this interesting taxonomy of 6 advisor archetypes. The descriptions apply pretty well to board members for nonprofits, too. (h/t Tony Wang)
• This economy’s so bad, even the trustafarians are hurting.
• The 60 arts activists who visited the White House last month have published a report on the conversation. And Chorus America is out with a new report of its own on the impact of choral singing in the USA. The study estimates that nearly 43 million Americans sing in choirs of one kind or another.
• This is the most awesome wedding invitation you’ll ever see. (h/t @lisa_hoang)
• Tired of all this Twitter talk? Well here’s something you can complain about. A new study finds that men are much more likely to follow other men on Twitter, even though men and women tweet at similar rates. Also, it seems 90% of the content is generated by 10% of the users, though using this to claim that Twitter is “useless” is dubious at best (lookin’ at you, New York Metro).
• Great profile of the Dirty Projectors in the New York Times. If you’ll forgive me an “I knew him when” moment: I booked Dave Longstreth to play a short solo set back in 2002 as part of a little conference-cum-concert I put together as a senior in college that was designed to look at convergences between popular and contemporary classical music. Dave, who was a freshman at the time, led everyone out of the concert hall and took us up to the top of a nearby stairwell, where he strummed his guitar and howled a song (I think about birds) in his beautiful, hollow tenor as we all stood on the stairs below and watched him. Always an original.