• With a rare, wide-open mayoral race underway, Boston’s arts community has come together to assert some political sway of its own. The new advocacy coalition MassCreative organized a nine-candidate forum that actually pushed back a televised debate. The primary is today.
• North Carolina’s Randolph County just banned Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man from school libraries following a parent complaint that the novel is “too much for teenagers.”

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The Mrs. Giles Whiting Foundation welcomes Createquity’s own Daniel Reid as its new executive director and Courtney Hodell as director of the Whiting Writers’ Awards.
• The Ford Foundation announced Martin Abregú as its new vice president for the Democracy, Rights, and Justice program, and Hilary Pennington as the vice president of Education, Creativity, and Free Expression. Pennington, who previously led education initiatives at the Gates Foundation, will oversee all of Ford’s arts funding beginning October 1.
• Nearly a year after its prior president, Jeremy Nowak, resigned after eighteen months on the job, the William Penn Foundation has announced a search to fill its top leadership position, newly reframed as a “managing director.”
• John Palfrey, an expert on technology and civic engagement, is succeeding Robert Briggs as the new chair of the board of the Knight Foundation.
• G. Wayne Clough, who has served as the director of the Smithsonian Institution since 2008, will step down in October 2014.
• So long, Technology in the Arts blog; hello, Arts Management and Technology Laboratory. The rebranded/reimagined service from Carnegie Mellon’s arts management program will serve as “a research outlet for those working and learning in the arts management and technology sector,” and features interviews, case studies, research summaries, and more.

IN THE FIELD

• Nathan Zebedeo reviews Sarah Durham’s Brandraising: How Nonprofits Raise Visibility and Money Through Smart Communications for the (ahem) brand-new Fractured Atlas Book Club.
• Last week, Americans for the Arts hosted a blog salon focusing on arts education and the “trifecta of education accountability—standards, assessment, and evaluation.” The salon included a perspective from Createquity’s own Talia Gibas and a nice summary from Kristen Engebretsen, and touched on testing, teacher evaluation, the Common Core, and more.
• Speaking of accountability, Tennessee is rolling out an ambitious evaluation system for visual and performing arts teachers that relies on portfolios of student work. Teachers select samples they feel show evidence of growth over time, and submit them electronically for peer review. Time-consuming and complicated? Yep. Worth following? You bet.
• Udacity, a popular provider of online college-level courses known as MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), has announced the launch of Open Education Alliance, bringing together leading tech companies and educators to “bridge the gap between the skills employers need and what traditional universities teach.” Is there an Open Arts Education Alliance in the near future?
• The Detroit Free Press takes an in-depth look at the embattled Detroit Institute of Arts’s long and tangled relationship with its hometown, providing insight into the current threats of deaccessioning.
• Last Wednesday, September 18, #AskaCurator Day “connect[ed] experts in venues large and small directly to gallery and museum fans across the world, inviting both parties to take to their [Twitter] handles and ask each other anything they want.” You can catch up on the conversations here.

BIG IDEAS

• “Arts Dinnervention” participants Devon Smith and Laura Zabel each reflect on the recent WESTAF-supported discussion, which brought together twelve arts leaders to consider new solutions to old problems. While the convening did not result in a singular path forward, there was one notable consensus: “the arts are not in trouble, it’s the institutions that are failing.”
• The Dallas Morning News has taken a novel approach to hiring a new art critic to its staff, a position empty since 2006. The addition of Rick Brettell, an art history professor at the University of Texas, will strengthen the news org’s arts coverage and is the second time it has worked with UT to hire a local professor as a cultural critic.
• Is it ethical for arts funders to start what they cannot finish? Diane Ragsdale, one of the official bloggers at the upcoming Grantmakers in the Arts conference, has her doubts.
• How is an artist like a social entrepreneur? Laura Callanan explores the similarities at SOCAP13.
• If you’re looking for a dose of wisdom to go with your morning cup o’ joe, start here: an array of arts leaders including Roberto Bedoya, Janet Brown, Richard Kessler, Margot Knight, and Mara Walker reflect on what they have learned from their years in the field.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Break out the champagne – the arts have stagnated! Americans for the Arts’s new 2013 National Arts Index is practically identical to last year’s, following several years of steady decline. The study finds deeper reason for optimism in the wake of the Great Recession: over the last 10 years, total private giving to all charities and the total number of workers in all occupations have been strong predictors of the health of the arts sector, and both are up.
• Jon Silpayamanant digs into the WPA Federal Music Project with an annotated bibliographic timeline and argues the WPA, as well as the Federal Emergency Relief Administration that preceded it, were crucial to classical music during the Great Depression.
• Data on the relationship between cities’ aesthetics and economic health may be soon within reach thanks to Place Pulse, a project out of MIT that asks users to rank  photos from cities as more or less “boring,” “safe,” “lively,” etc.
• A new survey conducted by the Center for Effective Philanthropy catalogs concerns about foundations from non-profits: nearly half of the respondents felt that foundations are not aware of the challenges the respondents face, and more than two-thirds believe foundations fail to use their various resources to help nonprofits with their challenges. Commentators blame power dynamics and the “inherently self-serving” structure of foundations.
• Connoisseurs of fine wines and classical music may be dismayed over recent studies examining the complexities involved in critical judgement. Turns out that experts and amateurs alike are susceptible to everything from presentation, environment, and even price (gasp!) when it comes to evaluating quality.
• When faith and evidence collide, sometimes it’s faith that wins – at least when it comes to politics. See also Margy Waller’s Uncomfortable Thoughts piece for Createquity from back in the day.

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.

• The Detroit Institute of the Arts, having convinced residents in three counties to pass a property tax supporting the institution in exchange for free admission, is facing a lawsuit on the basis that the deal doesn’t include special exhibits.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Richard Dare, the head of the Brooklyn Philharmonic (previously profiled here on Createquity) and controversial blogger, has taken the top post at the New Jersey Symphony Orchestra.
• Glenn Lowry, the famously well-compensated director of the Museum of Modern Art, has been elected to the board of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

IN THE FIELD

• RIP Orchestra Nova, a 29-year-old chamber orchestra in San Diego.
• Ouch: the locked-out St. Paul Chamber Orchestra recorded a nearly $1 million deficit last season, its first in a decade. Looks like Sarah Lutman got on the lifeboat just in time.
• The Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University is hosting what looks like a bangup creative placemaking symposium on April 12. And Man About Town Michael Hickey reports on a creative placemaking panel he moderated in New York City.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Interesting and entertaining perspective on collective impact and the need to support direct-service and backbone organizations simultaneously, with response by FSG’s Emily Gorin Malenfant.
• More examples of transparency in action: Kevin Bolduc and the Center for Effective Philanthropy are revamping their flagship product, the Grantee Perception Report, in response to feedback from customers – and blogging about the process.
• Peter Singer (author, The Life You Can Save) on donating to the arts:
  

  “Philanthropy for the arts or for cultural activities is, in a world like this one, morally dubious,” he writes in his book.

  He has heard two counterarguments repeatedly since the book came out in 2009. One points to the work that, say, art museums do with disadvantaged children. “I can see how that would be a worthwhile thing to do,” he said. “I’m not sure how well it compares with saving kids from dying from diarrhea or malaria.”

  Then, there are the crumbling buildings again. “I’m certainly not suggesting that when the roof of the Met starts to leak that you don’t repair it,” he said. “But I would not give a penny to the Met to buy another painting.”

BIG IDEAS

• Clayton Lord (can I still call you Clay?) is upping the ante with a couple of recent blog posts about support for the arts at the federal level, including this lovely graph showing the NEA’s appropriations history in real and nominal dollars along with percentage of the budget and party in control of the White House and Congress. It seems that who has the House of Representatives may be a bigger driver of the NEA budget than previously acknowledged. Be sure to check out Clayton’s analysis of framing vis-a-vis the charitable deduction as well.
• Meanwhile, the “new models”/future of the arts discussion is flaring again, with a post by Michael Kaiser spurring another round of response by Diane Ragsdale and Adam Huttler, and lots and lots of discussion in the comments.
• Watch a museum exhibition go up before your eyes (in slow motion) at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History. Also: Attendance is not the only measure of demand, museum version.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), an annual survey of arts training program graduates, has published “Painting with Broader Strokes: Reassessing the Value of an Arts Degree,” a supplementary report on the 2010 survey results by Danielle Lindemann and Steven Tepper.
• Maribel Alvarez offers a review of Maria Rosario Jackson’s latest for LINC, “Developing Artist-Driven Spaces in Marginalized Communities.”
• The James Irvine Fund has released a report on the its Arts Innovation Fund grants (undertaken under its previous program strategy last decade), conducted by Slover Linett Strategies. The report is accompanied by a nifty tablet-friendly interactive highlighting key findings.
• The Future of Music Coalition is leveraging its Artist Revenue Streams data to engage in some mythbusting regarding how musicians make (or don’t make) money.
• Arts education data in Los Angeles shows a complex picture of trends over the past 15 years.
• Wow. Did you know that more than half of the US patent lawsuits in 2012 were brought by “non-practicing entities” – also known as patent trolls? These companies obtain patents with no intention of actually using them for inventions, but instead to “threaten young companies with lawsuits as soon as they obtain funding; or hamstring older companies, forcing them to divert cash into costly licenses for absurd patents rather than pay for costly defenses in uncertain, patent-friendly jurisdictions.” Good to know for anyone (such as Richard Florida types) relying on patents issued as a measure of innovation. Yuck.
• As mentioned here previously, the Twin Cities is currently suffering a symphony drought, with both the Minnesota and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras shut down in the midst of labor strife. This probably isn’t the most empathetic response imaginable, but my first thought upon reading the headline “Orchestra fans getting restless” in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune was, wouldn’t this be a great natural experiment for measuring the value of orchestras to a community? I mean, you don’t realize how much you appreciate something until it’s gone, right? The evidence presented in the article suggests that some audience members are finding substitutes (“a few classical groups have noticed a spike in ticket sales”), but a substantial number are staying home. Independently organized concerts by locked-out members of the Minnesota Orchestra are selling out quickly, though obviously in an environment of substantially reduced competition. I could imagine all sorts of possibilities – a rare economic impact study that actually takes into account opportunity costs, for example, or a more scientific survey of orchestra subscribers to find out what they’re doing with themselves at night.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Congratulations to Arts Marketing blogger Chad Bauman, who returns to Arena Stage as Associate Executive Director only a few months after leaving for a position at the Smithsonian. Chad had previously been Arena’s Director of Communications.
• …and to San San Wong, who is relocating to Boston to join the Barr Foundation as that institution’s first full-time Senior Program Officer in the Arts, following a turbulent last year as Director of Grants for the San Francisco Arts Commission.
• Congratulations to Doug Borwick as he transitions out of the presidency of the Association of Arts Administration Educators and  retires from his post at Salem College in order to begin a new life as an entrepreneur and consultant.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Congratulations to ArtPlace’s latest round of grantees, all 47 of them. In its second round, ArtPlace distributed $15.4 million to projects in 22 states. The press release emphasizes some of the more rural and/or unexpected recipients of the grants, and there are certainly some of those. Perhaps the most eye-popping choice is a $250,000 award to a museum in down-on-its-luck Eastport, ME – population 1,331 and a six-and-a-half-hour drive from the nearest city of more than 100,000 people.  Nevertheless, the geographic restrictions of certain foundations participating in the coalition are evident in the list of grants, more than three-fifths of which went to recipients in Alaska, California, Miami, New Orleans, the Detroit metro region, Minnesota, New York City, and Philadelphia.
• The latest numbers are in from Giving USA, and charitable donations went up 4% in 2011 (slightly under 1% in real dollars), to just shy of $300 billion – still well off the 2007 peak. Arts and culture organizations received $13.12 billion of this amount, or 4% of the total, and the trendlines were consistent with overall giving.
• We all know about artists using crowdfunding to support their work, but what about fans using it to commission artists? Andy Baio reports from personal experience.
• The New York Times runs down the various forms of emergency relief available to artists, somehow without once mentioning MusiCARES.

IN THE FIELD

• The Saint Paul Chamber Orchestra, despite its innovative audience development efforts, is facing a deficit this year of up to $1 Smillion.
• Is the “Emerging Leader” moniker a term of empowerment or of exclusion? Barry Hessenius argues for the latter; Stephanie Evans Hanson responds. This is a complicated subject, partly because I suspect that the idea of “emerging leaders” is more helpful to the goals of the movement than is the “emerging leader” designation for individual arts professionals. But more on this later.
• Etsy is now a certified B corporation.

BIG IDEA CORNER

• Don’t miss this six-part blog post by Center for Effective Philanthropy President Phil Buchanan giving a full-throated defense of the nonprofit sector against those who idealize “business thinking.” Phil holds a Harvard MBA, so it’s not like he doesn’t know whereof he speaks.
• The Future of Music Coalition’s Joe Silveri makes the case for a global music registry.
• Lucy Berhnolz and Patrick Hussey wax eloquent on the massive potential for data to change the way we live and work.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Americans for the Arts released its long-awaited follow-up to Arts & Economic Prosperity III, and — wait a sec — the economic impact of the arts went down?! From $166.2 billion to $135.2 billion? Supporting 26% fewer jobs? It’s true. While organization expenditures remained more or less constant in 2010 (when the study was conducted) compared to 2005, audience spending dropped like a stone due to the recession’s influence. Unfortunately, the results underscore the downside of relying on this particular argument to advocate for the arts, as the economic impact narrative to date had been all about more, more, more: the arts are a growth industry, so you should support them! Now it’s, the arts are shrinking, so you should….still support them? My previous review of AEP III is here. Meanwhile, Catherine Brandt has an entertaining account of enforcing the embargo on the AEP IV results.
• In other research from Americans for the Arts, Randy Cohen details a couple of novel ways of understanding the competitive environment for arts organizations in a region through the Local Arts Index: millennial share and the four-firm concentration ratio.
• Which neighborhoods in the US are gentrifying the fastest? Here is one estimate by the Fordham Institute, which names such surprising cities as Oklahoma City, Chattanooga, and Roanoke VA among the leaders. But Matt Bevilacqua at Next American City takes issue with the methodology of that analysis, which uses an increase in the share of white, non-Hispanics as a proxy for gentrification.  Bevilacqua makes the case that in certain cities such as Washington DC, people of color can be the agents of gentrification as well. While I don’t disagree with Bevilacqua’s point, it underscores the need for a clearer sense of what we actually mean when we invoke the g-word. Because honestly, my sense from hearing lots of people talk about this issue over the past few years is that most have a pretty clear picture–some might say stereotype–in their minds of what gentrification looks like, and to them it looks like  “white people moving in.” Rightly or wrongly, it seems like Fordham’s proxy measure is pretty faithful to this idea.
• Fascinating: some university researchers are turning to Amazon’s Mechanical Turk to find psychology test subjects and survey respondents, in order to avoid the “WIERD” (from Western, Industrialized, Educated, Rich, Democratic societies) bias inherent in using college students for that purpose. There’s even a whole blog about using experimental methods on crowdsourced populations.

ETC.

• This beautiful Father’s Day tribute from Rocco Landesman brightened my day when I read it, as did the photos of Fred Landesman’s gorgeous paintings. Well worth a read.

Research Fellows, Fractured Atlas

Fractured Atlas is seeking Summer 2012 research fellows to play key roles in mission‐critical research initiatives. We’re seeking individuals with a background or interest in the arts who are prepared to bring hard‐nosed quantitative analysis skills to creative and strategic challenges in our field. If you get your kicks from creating awesome‐looking spreadsheets that actually work, are a social scientist ninja‐in‐training, or fancy yourself the next Alan Brown (or Nate Silver) in ten years, you might be just the kind of nerd we’re looking for.

Deadline: April 20, 2012. (Note: Fractured Atlas has a summer marketing fellowship available as well.)

Executive Director, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy

Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy (EPIP) develops extraordinary new leaders to enhance organized philanthropy and its impact on communities. EPIP was founded in 2001 by a small group of young foundation professionals and individual donors who sought to work and learn with peers in order to transform philanthropy and confront generational issues, using a social justice lens.

The Executive Director will lead the fulfillment of EPIP’s vision and mission in a truly creative, dynamic, and forward-thinking fashion. The Executive Director is the leader of the organization both publicly and inside the organization, and, as such, is at once a highly visible advocate for emerging professionals within the social sector and an effective project manager who ensures that the work of EPIP is done efficiently and well.

Deadline: April 5, 2012.

Director of Evaluation and Knowledge, REDF

REDF’s Director of Evaluation and Knowledge leads the strategy and implementation of REDF’s evaluation and knowledge initiatives. The seasoned professional REDF seeks will have opportunities to launch new knowledge and performance management practices at REDF, influencing the work of social entrepreneurs and venture philanthropists across the U.S. and beyond. The Director of Evaluation and Knowledge ensures the quality, relevance, and coordination of REDF’s ground-breaking measurement practices, and serves as a REDF evaluation and knowledge “champion” both internally and externally.

No deadline provided. REDF (Roberts Enterprise Development Fund) is a thought pioneer in performance measurement frameworks for the social sector, particularly SROI (Social Return on Investment).

National Director, YouthTruth, Center for Effective Philanthropy

The Center for Effective Philanthropy (CEP) is a nonprofit organization focused on the development of comparative data to enable higher-performing funders. YouthTruth, a CEP initiative, is a national survey project that gathers comparative feedback from the ultimate beneficiaries of education reform efforts — students — about what is and isn’t working in their schools. YouthTruth then shares students’ feedback with school leaders, district/network leaders, education funders, and students themselves to enable more informed decisions in pursuit of better long-term outcomes for youth. CEP is seeking a highly motivated, strategic, and entrepreneurial National Director to lead YouthTruth through its next phase of growth. The Director will be responsible for the strategic and operational leadership of the project and ensuring that YouthTruth achieves the goals outlined in its sustainability plan – particularly its revenue and efficiency improvement goals over the next four years. Key responsibilities of this role include: marketing YouthTruth and representing the project publicly, overseeing district and state recruitment efforts nationally, leading efforts to innovate the way YouthTruth does its work, and guiding the overall implementation of the project. Reporting to the President of CEP, the Director will be a member of CEP’s senior leadership team, lead a bicoastal (San Francisco and Boston) team of six high performing staff, and collaborate closely with staff in other departments, including Research and Assessment Tools.

No deadline provided. Cool opportunity with a cool org to use data for the greater good.

• The National Endowment for the Arts has spearheaded the formation of a new coalition of private funders to support its creative placemaking agenda. Called ArtPlace, the collaboration features Carol Coletta as its fearless leader, and has the backing of such significant national funders as the Ford, Knight, Kresge, Rockefeller, and Mellon Foundations. Grants and a $12 million loan fund are administered through the Nonprofit Finance Fund, a nonprofit lender and financial consulting organization. ArtPlace has already made a set of 34 grants in “record time” totaling $11.5 million to a range of projects in the Our Town vein (including one to Coletta’s former employer, CEOs for Cities, in an cool-looking collaboration with GOOD Design.). Thankfully, after a closed-door process for this first round, ArtPlace is opening up next year’s grants through a letter of inquiry which is due November 15. Coletta has more at the Art Works blog.

PHILANTHROPY

• A couple of weeks ago, Sean Stannard-Stockton asked a seemingly innocent question: who should be the Hewlett Foundation’s next president? I was surprised to see Sean wrote a follow-up in which he shares that “emails I’ve gotten from very senior members of the philanthropic community – people whose opinions I respect very much – suggest that my hosting this discussion is far more controversial than I might have guessed.” Apparently, according to these Very Senior People (none of whom, Sean notes, are Hewlett employees), speculating about who might ultimately be the driving force behind the distribution of hundreds of millions of tax-exempt philanthropic dollars a year should be off-limits to plebes who are not on the Hewlett Foundation Board. Thankfully, Sean elected not to listen to this silliness and has gone ahead and published the suggestions that have come in, which include some very interesting names.
• Speaking of Hewlett, Emiko Ono will be the new Program Officer for the Foundation’s Performing Arts Program, replacing Marc Vogl. Ono was Director of Grants and Professional Development for the Los Angeles County Arts Commission.
• Duke’s Fuqua School of Business has announced a first-of-its-kind “Initiative on Impact Investing.” Officials at the school’s Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) will be developing a new course, case materials, and working with practitioners to explore impact investing in more depth in an academic setting.
• Ouch: the Center for Effective Philanthropy reports that community foundation leaders are far less strategic in their work than their rhetoric would suggest. In particular, “CEOs who are strategic in their donor work focus explicitly on how donor contributions will benefit the community. In comparison, nonstrategic CEOs focus on how donor contributions will continue to flow to the foundation.”

IN THE FIELD

• After a decade of planning and building, Kansas City’s $326 million Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts has opened – one of the last products of the performing arts building boom of the 1990s-2000s.
• Doug Borwick, the Association of Arts Administration Educators president who has a new blog on ArtsJournal called Engaging Matters, writes a love letter to the much-missed Community Arts Network.
• And here’s an inside look at Yerba Buena’s personalized membership program, YBCA: YOU, with more from Borwick.
• Words I’d never thought I’d write department: congratulations to Philly’s Mural Arts Program, which landed a cover story…in AAA New York Car & Travel magazine!
• Composer Nico Muhly offers an insider’s perspective on the byzantine restrictions faced by orchestral composers seeking access to recordings of their own work.
• Sally Gaskill, who runs the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project at Indiana University, interviews Angela Myles Beeching, director of the Center for Music Entrepreneurship at Manhattan School of Music, about preparing musicians for careers outside the academy.
• And speaking of professional training degrees for artists, excuse Poets & Writers magazine for trying to give people some sense of how to choose a creative writing MFA program. According to an angry group of writing faculty, the fact that the rankings take financial aid too heavily into account is enough to break out the pitchforks.

THOUGHT BUBBLES

• A very interesting interview with John Kreidler about his cultural policy simulation game, Medici’s Lever.
• Cool true-life story of the birth of an internet meme, conceived by the arts blogosphere’s own Chris Ashworth.
• Clay Lord offers a rare look at the neuroscience of audience response to theater.
• Arlene Goldbard offers her vision of how the arts could play a role in a new stimulus.
• Plagiarism appears to be on the rise in the internet age, even among doctoral students: a study of 120 dissertations in psychology turned up instances of plagiarism (defined as using 10 or more words from another source verbatim without attribution) in a shocking 80% of them. If even the future teachers are plagiarizing, what does that mean for the long term trend?
• Surprise, surprise: when you raise prices 60%, you might lose some customers.
• Two months ago, shoemaker Converse opened up a free recording studio in the ultra-hip neighborhood of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. The New York Times spends a day there talking to the artists taking advantage of the service. A competitive process is used to identify musicians, and as with Kickstarter’s “Projects We Love” (see below), artists are chosen “less for their talent than for their viral energies — their presence on MySpace or Facebook, their hustle in pursuing their careers.”
• I found this live improvised playwriting experiment between Neil Labute and Theresa Rebeck kind of cool, despite the hokey setup.
• I’ve never understood why anyone would want a tattoo, but it seems buyer’s remorse is at an all-time high. Unfortunately, tattoo-removal-seekers are finding that it’s not so easy to turn back time.

RESEARCH CORNER

• In connection with the Artist Revenue Streams project, Future of Music Coalition and the Field are co-hosting (along with a boatload of other organizations including Fractured Atlas) a workshop for musicians on “accounting for creatives” in NYC on Monday, September 19. Check the link for info.
• Nice to see an organization that just released a research report (the Center for Effective Philanthropy, in this case) openly discussing how response bias might have affected the results. We need to see more of this kind of transparency in reporting research results.
• I was intrigued to hear of the formation of a new music research and composition e-journal series on the Social Science Research Network database, led (mostly) by Boston University faculty.
• Andrew Taylor points us to a new book by the Curb Center’s Steven Tepper on protest and the arts.
• Two economists estimate the “psychic value” of a work of art (as distinct from its investment value) at 28% of its overall price.

LOOKING BACK

(the following are some “retro” links from the past 12 months that for one reason or another didn’t make it into the around the horn wrap-ups the first time around.)

• Joshua Phillips lays out a very serious and detailed proposal (and justification) for a public policy game show.
• It’s not too often that I see a coherent conservative case against arts funding, but here’s an example for those who might be curious. Main arguments: the evidence of the arts’ economic impact is flimsy, and government funding makes for worse art.
• It was hard to suppress a wry smile upon learning that Leona Helmsley’s precious dog Trouble, to which she left $12 million in her will (disowning two of her grandchildren in the process), has passed away. The funds held in Trouble’s trust have reverted to Helmsley’s charitable foundation, which is one of the largest in the world.
• Wondering where our nation’s sudden income inequality came from? Since 1992, super-wealthy Americans’ effective tax burden has plummeted by more than a third. Over the same time period, the effective tax rate for all taxpayers has dropped only 6%.
• Is subway pop-up theater the new flashmob-chorus/dance/opera-in-a-mall?
• I found this quote worth mulling over, from the NYTimes Magazine’s writeup of Kickstarter last month:
  

  I sat in on a meeting where the [“Projects We Love”] newsletter picks were made. During the half-hour or so Strickler and the team discussed the choices, I was struck by how often they talked not about the projects but about the pitches. “His video is so boring.” “What are the rewards?” “Why is this cool?” They were focused on the project ideas through the filter of “the Kickstarter project” as a form. “We have values,” Chen told me, and they boil down to prizing creators who respect its proc­ess. They favor creators who think through the rewards for backers, get the word out and engage an audience. In other words, the process doesn’t shape the aesthetic. It is the aesthetic.

• Earlier this month, the University of Chicago hosted a symposium on the subject of “The Future of the City: The Arts.” An all-star lineup of speakers and presenters attended. Here are wrap-ups from Joan Shigekawa (Senior Deputy Chairman, National Endowment for the Arts) and Shannon Litzenberger (Metcalf Arts Policy Fellow, Toronto Arts Foundation).
• ARTSBlog featured dispatches from the Americans for the Arts Annual Convention all last week. Several plenary sessions are also available for viewing.
• Devon Smith, Clay Lord, and Gus Schulenberg report from  TCG’s 50th Anniversary conference.
• After years of beating around the bush, the League of American Orchestras is finally standing up and declaring a crisis in the field. Watch Jesse Rosen’s remarks at the “Red Alert!” plenary session at this month’s conference here.
• MASS MoCA, New England Foundation for the Arts, and Berkshire Creative teamed up to host a reprise of last year’s Connecting Creative Communities conference. View the presentation materials from that event.
• The Ford Foundation hosted the social-justice-oriented “Fresh Angle on the Arts: Reimagining Culture in a Time of Transformation” back in May, and has video from the sessions here.
• Jeff Raikes (CEO, Gates Foundation) was interviewed by Nadya Shmavonian for a plenary session at May’s Center for Effective Philanthropy Conference. Watch and read about the conversation here.
• Going back to the University of Chicago, Tara George shares her notes from what looked like an awesome CultureLab convening in April.

[UPDATE: And speaking of panels, I’ll be on this one in New York on Wednesday, June 29. Join ELNYA for a conversation about numbers and why they get us excited….uh, really, really excited.]

• Remember that debate a while back about whether video games qualified as art? Well, the NEA just declared it over by including support for “digital games” in its new Art and Media program.
• To Scott Walters’s everlasting chagrin, however, the NEA is still providing funding to organizations in New York, LA, and Chicago disproportionate to the population level. Scott has more here and here. I think this is helpful and important analysis; the one thing to keep in mind is that it focuses only on grants in one discipline of one round of one the NEA’s grant programs.
• The Library of Congress, in partnership with Sony Music, has unveiled a “National Jukebox” of early sound recordings – and it got a million page views in the first 48 hours.
• Kudos to the Future of Music Coalition for staying on top of the potential implications of the AT&T/T-Mobile merger for artists. And speaking of mergers, don’t miss FMC’s collaboration with Fractured Atlas looking back at the Live Nation/Ticketmaster merger, one year later.
• A window into Finnish cultural policy.
• So now Congressmen want to micromanage the Smithsonian’s gift shops?

COMINGS AND GOINGS

• Rahm Emanuel has announced that Michelle T. Boone, formerly of the Joyce Foundation, will serve as the next Commissioner of the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events.
• Marc Vogl is out as program officer for the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, and in as executive director of the Bay Area Video Coalition.
• Heather Hitchens has quit as director of the New York State Council on the Arts to take the top job at American Theatre Wing, which presents the Tony Awards. NYSCA’s budget has declined from $55 million to $35 million over the past four years.
• Blueprint Research + Design, a major consultant to foundations, is being bought out by Arabella Philanthropic Investment Advisors. As part of the transaction, Blueprint founder Lucy Bernholz will become a half-time managing director of Arabella, spending more time on writing and in her partnership with Stanford’s Center for Philanthropy and Civil Society.
• The Sloan Foundation, whose main focus is science and technology, is now getting into arts funding.

MULTI-PART BLOGSTRAVAGANZAS

• ARTSBlog has a great-looking discussion on tap this week about new business models, the 501(c)(3) legal form, and potential alternatives. The lineup of bloggers is stellar, including Diane Ragsdale, Adam Huttler, and Janet Brown.
• The indefatigable Barry Hessenius was blogging up a storm earlier this month at the 98th Arizona Town Hall focusing on arts and culture. The convening, which included addresses from Marian Godfrey and the suddenly ubiquitous Rocco Landesman, comes at a poignant moment for the state, given recent cutbacks in public funding for the arts in Arizona. Here are Barry’s reports from Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, and the final wrap-up. There’s also a 268-page background report in case you’re looking for some further light reading.
• The staff at GiveWell, the charity rating agency, spent three months living and working in Mumbai last year. They have now posted thoughts and impressions from the visit, which provide an interesting check against their working assumptions going in. Here are the notes from staff members Holden Karnofsky, Elie Hassenfeld, and Natalie Stone, as well as thoughts on evaluating local charities in India.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The long-awaited Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) study has finally been published. The press release puts a positive spin on the findings, noting that 92% of alumni of arts training programs who responded to the survey have work (of any kind) and that two-thirds indicated that their first job after school was a close match for what they wanted. However, I’m more intrigued by the stat that only 57% of the over 13,500 respondents have ever been a professional artist, and only 41% currently are (keep in mind that most of the survey pool graduated within the past five years). We’ll be taking a closer look at this one.
• Meanwhile, last August, student loans surpassed credit cards as the largest source of debt in the US.
• The NEA has a new research note applying data from the American Time Use Survey to the performing arts industry.
• At ARTSBlog, Lynne Kingsley reports on the unequal distribution of arts education programs by discipline (a lot more visual art and music than theater or dance). And Tim Mikulski shares recommendations from the new report on arts education from the President’s Committee on the Arts and Humanities.
• The Alliance of Artist Communities has a new study on support for dance through artist residencies.
• Rosetta Thurman reports on a new study of perceptions of diversity in the nonprofit workplace.
• Americans for the Arts aren’t the only ones doing economic impact estimates. Google says that it benefits the American economy to the tune of $64 billion – in pure profits. Take that!

CONFERENCE CRANNY

• The Cultural Policy Center at the University of Chicago has been on fire lately, and held a great-looking Emerging Practice Seminar last month. Materials from the session (including lots of video!) are available here.
• Matthew Guerrieri provides a dispatch from the Rethink Music Conference in Boston.
• Beth Kanter reports from the Center for Effective Philanthropy Conference.
• Trista Harris has video from the “Philanthropy On Trial” event at the Council on Foundations Conference.

TRENDWATCHING

• Wow. For the first time since 1992, the rate of television ownership in American households has declined. To 97%.
• Crowdfunding isn’t just for donations and loans anymore; MicroVentures is now taking tiny equity investments for new startup companies.
• The Daily Beast on Amazon.com and the future of book critics.
• Composer Jeff Harrington offers a personal history of his reliance on free content distribution as a career strategy, and relates it to the issue of class in the arts.

ETC.

• Really fascinating indictment of today’s urban planning field and the (unintended) legacy of Jane Jacobs.
• Barry Hessenius interviews Kristen Madsen, Vice President of the GRAMMY and MusiCares Foundations.
• I have to say (and no, I am not being paid for this), I am so glad I signed up for the free trial of the New York Times’s digital subscription service sponsored by Lincoln when I had the chance, and I will certainly be renewing when it runs out. Without it, I’d be missing out on great reporting like this piece on a “pop-up” restaurant that served a six-course lunch to a dozen passengers on the L train, and this exposé of some shady-sounding business practices on the part of Columbia Artists Management promoting foreign orchestras who aren’t what they seem.

Research Manager, Center for Effective Philanthropy

CEP is currently seeking an experienced and dynamic Research Manager to lead and support multiple quantitative research projects. With responsibility for designing, executing, analyzing and writing research projects, the Research Manager will manage complex projects designed to provide information related to the performance assessment of philanthropic foundations. Additionally, the Manager will collect and interpret large sets of data using a variety of analytical and statistical methodologies. This position will be responsible for providing guidance to junior research staff in research methodology and analysis as well as reviewing findings and presenting results for both internal and external constituencies. Reporting to the Vice President – Research, the Manager will be a senior member of the research team and will work collaboratively within and across departments.

Responsibilities will include but are not limited to:

• Manage or support all aspects of quantitative research projects related to the performance assessment of philanthropic foundations, including the conceptualization, design, analyses and presentation of results
• Design survey instruments and research questions, as well as conduct interviews to collect research data
• Plan, conduct and interpret the analyses of large-scale (100-1,000+ sample) datasets using a variety of methods, such as t-test, chi-square, analysis of variance and linear regression
• Review findings and author reports in partnership with the Vice President of Research. Contribute to strategic decisions related to the framing of reports
• Ensure that research projects meet department and organizational standards, and are completed in a timely manner
• Provide coaching, mentoring and training to junior staff on all aspects of the research process. Contribute to the continued learning of the research team
• Present research internally and externally, including representing CEP at local and national speaking engagements and conferences

Qualifications/Requirements:

• At least two years of research experience in roles demanding exceptional analytical skills
• Demonstrated experience with quantitative methodologies, including t-test, chi-square, analysis or variance and linear regression. Knowledge of advanced statistical methods preferred
• Demonstrated experience developing surveys and interview protocols
• Excellent project management skills, with the ability to work collaboratively in teams and manage multiple projects with complex deliverables in a fast-paced environment
• Excellent attention to detail and organization skills, with a focus on accuracy
• Aptitude for learning new methods of analysis and data-analysis programs
• Experience mentoring or teaching research and data analysis skills
• Belief and interest in the work of the nonprofit sector and the effectiveness of foundation philanthropy

• Advanced degree in related field (e.g. economics, education, sociology, political science, psychology, sociology). Doctorate preferred

CEP is based in Cambridge Massachusetts, with a second office in San Francisco, California. This position is located in CEP’s office of about 25 staff in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

To Apply:

Please upload a resume and thoughtful cover letter, outlining how your skills and experience meet the qualifications of the position and stating how you heard about this opportunity, in Word format and addressed to Ellie Buteau, at http://jobs.cgcareers.org/application.aspx?id=1741. Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Note: CEP is also hiring a Research Analyst and Director of Communications at the same link. It’s a fantastic organization.

State Programs Associate, National Assembly of State Arts Agencies
(note: this job has a deadline of yesterday, but it’s still up on their website – might still be worth a shot if you have your materials ready to go.)

NASAA is recruiting a state programs associate to document the variety of strategies that state arts agencies use to advance the arts and to serve the public and state government. The individual in this position:

• researches state arts agency programs, policies, services and special initiatives;
• analyzes information to identify trends and exemplary practices; and
• communicates information to multiple audiences.

Responsibilities include:

• Conducting qualitative research (including interviews, document analysis, literature reviews and mining website and newsletter resources)
• Cataloging state arts agency grant guidelines into a national database
• Writing articles and reports
• Answering information requests
• Maintaining website resources on key issue areas
• Creating tables, charts and graphics
• Securing and organizing important documents (such as advocacy tools, impact reports and strategic plans)
• Assisting with projects that facilitate member dialogue and information exchange

This position requires both research and communications expertise. Qualifications include:

• Bachelor’s or master’s degree
• At least one year of full-time work experience
• Qualitative research and analysis experience
• Superior writing and verbal communications skills
• Ability to distill complex material
• Keen attention to detail and accuracy
• A commitment to public-sector service
• Fluency with MS Word and Excel are required. Experience with MS Access and Adobe products is desirable.

This is an excellent early career opportunity for candidates interested in research, philanthropy, government or policy analysis as well as the arts or humanities. Experience with associations, government, journalism, legislative research or grant seeking is a plus.

This is a full-time position, including benefits. NASAA’s offices are located in downtown Washington, near Metro. Apply by February 14, 2011. Send a letter of interest, a resume and a writing sample to nasaa@nasaa-arts.org with “SPA Search” as the subject line. Please state in your letter where you found this job posting (name of website or job board). No faxes or phone calls, please. EOE.

NASAA is also looking for interns.

Director of GrantCraft, Foundation Center (NY Office)

Summary

The Foundation Center, the nation’s leading authority on philanthropy, seeks a dynamic, entrepreneurial and creative individual to direct the Center’s efforts to empower philanthropic foundations with the knowledge tools they need to be more strategic. First and foremost among these is GrantCraft—a project of the Foundation Center and its partner the European Foundation Centre (EFC)—designed to provide “practical wisdom for grantmakers”.

Reporting to the President, and working closely with the Foundation Center’s senior management team and our partners at the EFC, she/he will inspire, motivate, and lead a small but high-performing team overseeing the execution of the plan for GrantCraft: oversight of the GrantCraft web site, creation of various training guides and other assets of GrantCraft, and new and ongoing product development and other content creation for GrantCraft. In addition, the Director will work with foundations, donor coalitions and foundation affinity groups to help meet their needs for custom knowledge services that facilitate cooperation and working at scale on important social, environmental and economic issues.

The Director will participate in overall Center planning activities and interface with other departments on a regular basis and will be a member of the Center’s senior staff and may take on other responsibilities as needed. Of particular importance will be understanding other Center products and services created for grantmakers and maximizing the synergy between GrantCraft and those areas of the Center. The Director will also work closely with the Development department on fund raising and grants administration for GrantCraft and other knowledge services efforts.

This is a very public facing role and requires consummate customer relations skills.

Key Responsibilities

The Director of GrantCraft will have ongoing responsibility for the following:

• Execution of the overall vision and strategy for GrantCraft
• Work with our European Foundation Centre partner to develop and maintain specific operating plans with specific milestones, goals, objectives and resource commitments
• Work with organizations in other regions of the world interested in translating/adapting existing GrantCraft content and/or producing new, culturally-relevant material
• Oversee the main GrantCraft website working with Center web services team
• Oversee GrantCraft products and services, content creation and production, working with Center design staff and other outside consultants
• Work with the Educational Services department to offer webinars and train the trainer events around GrantCraft materials related to core competencies of the Foundation Center
• Work with Regional Associations of Grantmakers and other philanthropy-support groups to produce guides and other content appropriate to the training needs of their constituents
• Attend conferences and exhibitions to promote GrantCraft where deemed necessary
• Work with the Center’s Marketing and Communications department to promote the GrantCraft brand via social media and other means to expand the user base
• Manage all data licensing and other intellectual property considerations for GrantCraft working with other Center staff and Center attorneys
• Work closely with foundations around the globe to understand their knowledge management needs as they move to collaborate with other foundations, governments and the private sector
• Working closely with the Foundation Center’s Business Development Unit, design custom web portals, data visualization tools and other services designed to meet foundation knowledge needs.

Ideal Experience

The Director of GrantCraft should have the following experience and qualifications:

• Eight to ten years experience working in philanthropy as a grantmaker and in donor collaboratives
• Demonstrated success working in a collaborative fashion across organizations
• Extensive knowledge of the grantmaking communities, and knowledge of current trends in fundraising, philanthropy, nonprofit management, and knowledge management
• Demonstrated ability to cultivate and build relationships with partner organizations; success in attracting financial resources for various endeavors; the credibility and experience to connect an organization like the Foundation Center to resources and opportunities
• A record of success in working with teams of diverse, strong, creative people to achieve common goals; ability to work effectively with staff in other departments and with peers in other organizations
• Excellent writing, analytical and verbal presentation skills; skill in handling multiple projects and deadlines simultaneously; ability to plan, organize, budget, and follow through with senior management.

Personal Characteristics

Ideally the individual should be:

• Committed to and passionate about the Foundation Center’s and GrantCraft’s mission and purpose
• Excited about the power of data, research, knowledge and web-based technologies to transform the practice of philanthropy
• Able to manage effectively in a fast paced environment, be extremely well organized, clear thinking, and decisive
• A doer, with strong leadership and management ability; one who understands the subtleties of working with, as well as motivating and directing, a diverse group of personalities and cultural backgrounds; a skilled listener, able to consider multiple points of view
• A builder of relationships, who is engaging and persuasive; a skilled networker, who can enthusiastically represent the Center to important constituencies
• Capable of fostering a team-based work environment that models core values of respect and appreciation of diversity
• Experience living and working outside of the United States strongly preferred; fluency in languages other than English preferred
• Willing to travel on a regular basis, as needed, including internationally.

Background on the Foundation Center

Founded in the mid-1950s, in the midst of McCarthyism, the Foundation Center opened its doors to the public with seven thousand records on American foundations stored in file cabinets. Since that time its product line has evolved from print resources to CD-ROMs to a database containing some 2.3 million grants and over 100,000 U.S. grantmakers. Its website receives over 50,000 visits daily. The Foundation Center’s most popular searchable database Foundation Directory Online currently has over 11,300 paid subscribers and is used by thousands of individuals each year free of charge at the Center’s five locations and at its 450 funding information centers (public libraries, community foundations, and community colleges) spread across the U.S., Mexico, and, most recently, Korea, Nigeria, Brazil, Australia and China. A newly developed companion mapping tool,Philanthropy In/Sight, contains not only this data but a growing body of foundation and grants data from around the world. This global data platform for philanthropy will soon be available for free at these 450 sites, as well.

Beyond these services, the Foundation Center also conducts robust research studies annually, both original and commissioned, on foundation funding trends, and operates an online news service dedicated to philanthropy http://foundationcenter.org/pnd/, a highly blog a highly bloghttp://pndblog.typepad.com/pndblog/, and a searchable online database of more than 5,000 publications supported by foundation grantshttp://foundationcenter.org/gainknowledge/pubhub/. More recently the Center has launched a web site devoted to foundation transparency, http://glasspockets.org and a website targeted to grantseekers, www.grantspace.org.

Under new leadership since late 2008, the Center has begun a new and innovative chapter in its history and has issued a strategic plan for its future. This plan has as one of its central tenets an effort to build tools for donors of all kinds, both locally and globally, in order to increase understanding of the impact of philanthropy, facilitate collaboration among donors, and gather more and better knowledge about global philanthropy. One important piece of the plan is the recent acquisition of GrantCraft, formerly a project of the Ford Foundation, by the Center in partnership with the European Foundation Center. During 2011, the Center will be integrating this project into its suite of products and is searching for a Director to lead this effort.

About GrantCraft

GrantCraft was originally created in 2001 as a project of The Ford Foundation. The goal was to increase the collective knowledge of the field and improve the practice of philanthropy by gathering and sharing thoughtful information about the craft of grantmaking.

GrantCraft’s signature approach has been to tap the “practical wisdom” of experienced grantmakers from a diverse group of foundations. Since its inception GrantCraft has grown to become a valued resource for learning and sharing grantmaking strategies in the U.S. and in other countries. GrantCraft has produced more than 30 guides, myriad online surveys and other reports, and brought that content to life through workshops and original teaching material and case studies. Its highly popular web site provides free access to these guides in downloadable versions and also sells hard copies of the same material in an online store.

Other

The Center offers a competitive salary and an excellent benefits package. The Center is an equal opportunity employer.

Additional Information

A parallel position is currently available at the European Foundation Centre, in Brussels, Belgium, the Foundation Center’s partner in GrantCraft. The position description for this position can be found at http://www.efc.be/AboutEFC/Pages/StaffPosition.aspx.

To Apply

Interested candidates should submit a cover letter, resume and salary requirements to:

Dee Dee Dickey
Director of Human Resources
The Foundation Center
79 5th Avenue
New York, NY 10003

E-mail: jobs@foundationcenter.org (Please put the title of the position you are applying for in the subject line.)

For more information on positions available at the Foundation Center please visit our website:http://foundationcenter.org/about/jobs/

See a related story about GrantCraft here.