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!

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation seeks a Program Associate in the Performing Arts Program. The position reports to the Program Officer and requires close collaboration with two other Program Associates and an Administrative Assistant.

Responsibilities may include, but will not be limited to the following:

• Conduct proposal review for music-related grants, including financial and project budget assessment.  Assist Program Officer in communication with grantees to guide them throughout the proposal revision process.
• Monitor grantee performance, including careful review of all reports, financial information, and other communication with directors and primary investigators.  Perform related follow up.
• Monitor grant management issues, including modifications, matching payments, etc.  Draft official correspondence with grantees regarding such grant matters, in coordination with other Foundation departments.
• Assist program officer in preparing and proofing docket summary recommendations, including relaying financial assessments, and generating special reports to the Trustees and Executive Staff.
• Participate in meetings with current and potential grantees and partners administering regrant programs and prepare detailed notes for the record.
• Assist with program schedule planning and budgeting.
• Conduct research in connection with current and new initiatives.
• Attend performing arts events and conferences.
• Help plan and coordinate arrangements for on-and off-site meetings.
• Help maintain files within the department and in the Foundation’s file room.
• Respond to general inquiries and requests for information.
• Stay current in arts-related news and trends in the performing arts field.

No deadline.

Arts Management Consultant, Webb Management Services

Webb Management Services is a management consulting practice dedicated to the development and operation of cultural facilities and organizations. We are a New York City-based firm, but our practice is national in scope.

 We are currently seeking a project manager to work on (and eventually lead) feasibility studies, business planning and strategic planning.  Clients include municipalities, arts organizations, foundations, developers and educational institutions.  Candidates should have extensive experience with and knowledge of arts facilities, programming, marketing, administration, finance and cultural policy.  Several years of professional experience in the performing arts industry is required.  A graduate degree in arts administration or an arts-related field is preferred.  Research, finance and technology skills and experience are a plus.  The position requires energy, flexibility, travel, public speaking, research, analysis and writing.

Please email a one page cover letter along with a one to two-page resume in PDF format to info@webbmgmt.org

No deadline. I know the folks at Webb quite well and they would make excellent colleagues.

Executive Officer, International Fund for the Promotion of Culture, UNESCO

UNESCO’s International Fund for the Promotion of Culture is recruiting an Executive Officer, to be based in Paris. The International Fund for the Promotion of Culture (IFPC) promotes: cultures as sources of knowledge, meanings, values and identity; the role of culture for sustainable development; artistic creativity in all its forms, while respecting freedom of expression; and international and regional cultural cooperation. IFPC is looking for an Executive Officer to work in its Paris office, with the overall task of ensuring the implementation of the Decisions of the Administrative Council, and manage on a day‐to‐day basis the Secretariat of the International Fund for the Promotion of Culture.

Deadline: October 28.

Grants Program Officer, Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County

The Grants Program Officer is responsible for providing oversight for the Arts and Humanities Council of Montgomery County’s (AHCMC)’s grant making program, in addition to administering the various grant award and related roster processes. The Grants Program Officer is also responsible for acting as a positive public figure for AHCMC and the grants  program, and for creating an environment wherein applicants, potential applicants, grantees and the community perceive AHCMC as being both a leader and resource for the arts and humanities community.

No deadline, but the position starts on January 2, 2013. Salary is $45,000-55,000.

Knowledge Officer, Community Foundation for Greater New Haven

The Community Foundation for Greater New Haven, the region’s largest grantmaker, is seeking a qualified candidate for a professional position in the Grantmaking and Strategy Department. The Community Foundation’s mission is to create positive and sustainable change in Greater New Haven by increasing the amount of and enhancing the impact of community philanthropy.

Deadline: November 9.

Senior Research Analyst, Standards and Measurement, Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy

CECP is seeking an articulate, personable, and insight-driven Senior Research Analyst to oversee the organization’s annual corporate philanthropy benchmarking initiative and to represent CECP as an eminent expert on emerging trends in corporate giving. Specifically, the Senior Research Analyst will manage the full lifecycle of CECP’s Corporate Giving Standard (CGS) survey, which is widely accepted as the industry’s leading survey of corporate contributions among Fortune 500 firms as well as by industry and national press. Reporting to the Director and working alongside a fellow Senior Research Analyst focused on a parallel project related to global measurement, this position will be accountable for annual data collection, trend analysis, report authorship, valuation guidance, and client support. The ability to find the story within the data; articulate it in presentations, media interviews, blogs, and a written report; and work closely with giving officers to understand their day-to-day issues and assist them in putting the findings to use in a practical manner are all at the heart of making the most of this exciting career opportunity.

No deadline.

Philanthropic Services Program Manager, Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University

Philanthropic Services seeks a full time Program Manager to manage The Grantmaking School’s projects. We are looking for candidates who have experience managing multiple projects, excellent written and verbal communication skills, and a strong knowledge of the philanthropic sector. The successful candidate will assist in overseeing the scheduling of annual courses, work closely with regional association and foundation partners, and conduct professional presentations.

Deadline: October 31. Salary $40,000-55,000. The position is located in Grand Rapids, MI.

Program Manager, Association of Small Foundations

The Association of Small Foundations (ASF), the largest membership association in philanthropy, seeks a Program Manager for the Educational Programs Team of its Member Services Department. This Program Manager position is ideal for someone with a desire to apply their demonstrated volunteer management, educational program development, and project management experience to a national membership association working to enhance the power of philanthropy. The Program Manager is responsible for piloting and managing ASF’s local engagement initiative, which in 2013 includes 30-40 peer-learning and connecting programs in targeted cities across the country. A cornerstone of the initiative is working in close collaboration with ASF member leaders and volunteers, colleague organizations, and funding partners. This position is also responsible for strengthening and coordinating ASF’s strategy for general member engagement and volunteer management.

Deadline: October 26.

Call for Artists, Creative CityMaking, Intermedia Arts

Intermedia Arts, a nonprofit arts center in Minneapolis, MN, is seeking four artists to participate in Creative CityMaking, a new partnership with the City of Minneapolis that fosters collaborations between local artists and City planners to develop fresh and innovative approaches for addressing long-term transportation, land use, economic, environmental and social issues facing Minneapolis.

Creative CityMaking will embed four artists in the Planning Division of the Minneapolis Department of Community Planning and Economic Development (CPED). Their collaborative talents and work will be showcased throughout the year at community meetings related to city planning projects, citywide community events, and will culminate in a public exhibition and forum at Intermedia Arts. In addition, artists and planners will come together throughout the year in a series of participant convenings, where they will share ideas, learnings, successes and challenges.

Deadline: October 24 (tomorrow). Thanks to Sharon DeMark for the tip!

“It’s not pure altruism,” says David Nicholas, a media director at BP. “Sponsorship can bring benefits to our reputation.” Even the negative publicity doesn’t seem to bother him.”Everyone has a right to protest – at least it gets people talking about BP!” But he denies that the company is trying to maintain an acceptable face. “If you want to try to put an artsy face on a roughneck in overalls, I leave that to you.”

Marco Compagnoni, a senior partner at the City law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges, says objecting to big business sponsorship is “absolutely bonkers” but he rejects BP’s assertion that it’s for employee benefits. “It’s not done for the perks. Law firms aren’t munificent, activities like that are for marketing and keeping close to clients to help your business. We are doing an evening at the Leonardo and one at the Hockney because it’s a good atmosphere to talk to clients. It’s not to be nice.”

One of the most common conservative objections to government support for the arts, one that is sometimes voiced by liberals as well, is the potential for giving up undue influence and control (particularly over content). That’s never made much sense to me, because the fact is that so long as art requires significant subsidy from non-artists in order to happen, whoever’s providing that subsidy has the power to meddle unhelpfully in the artist’s affairs. So it’s really just a question of who you trust most – and least – to keep a safe distance. Is it big corporations or the government? Depends on whose government you’re talking about, I suppose. I’ll take a sponsorship from BP over one from Hu Jintao any day. The system we use in the United States – with its decentralized marketplace of tax-advantaged private foundations and individual donors making up the vast majority of subsidy – is extremely labor-intensive to maintain, but it may be the best we can do for freedom of expression.

On to the news:

YOU’RE FIRED

• The orchestra world has been shaken to the core this month. The largest institution yet to face such troubles, the Philadelphia Orchestra, has filed for bankruptcy (the restructuring kind, not the “we’re throwing in the towel” kind). On the one hand, I am sure that the Fabulous Philadelphians’ financial troubles are very real. On the other, it does strike me as curious not only that (as others have noted) an organization with a $140 million endowment would file for bankruptcy, but that the move precedes the announcement of a $160 million fundraising campaign to save the orchestra. Andrew Taylor digs into the bankruptcy filing docs.
• The Syracuse (NY) Symphony Orchestra has filed for Chapter 7 (we’re throwing in the towel) bankruptcy, after canceling the rest of its season a week earlier. Looks like it’s lights out for this one, not to mention the SSO’s 95 musicians and staff.
• Albuquerque’s New Mexico Symphony has filed for Chapter 7 as well. 80 musicians and staffers will lose their jobs.
• On the plus side, the Detroit Symphony musicians are back to work, albeit six months later. The new three-year contract calls for 25% cuts in salaries (to $79,000 base pay, hardly slave wages) and additional funds available for optional community-service work. The orchestra’s size will be reduced from 96 to 85 musicians.
• The artistically successful but financially troubled Intiman Theatre  in Seattle has cancelled the rest of its season due to money problems. Its artistic director, Kate Whoriskey, has now left as well.
• The Baltimore Shakespeare Festival is kaput after 17 years in operation, making it the second major Baltimore arts organization to fold since the start of the Great Recession (after the Baltimore Opera). The article contains this quote that would make Tyler Cowen smile: “‘We started as a non-Equity company, and if we had dropped our contract, it would have cut our costs,’ Toran said. ‘But that’s exactly what we weren’t going to do. You want to pay your actors, just like you pay lawyers and doctors and teachers. Our goal wasn’t survival at any cost.'” So because they wanted to pay the actors so badly, they decided to give them fewer work opportunities?
• The New York City Opera, two years after spending the 2008-09 season inactive and raiding most of its endowment to stay alive, is facing a possible strike and the delay of its season announcement for next year.
• Pittsburgh arts groups are exploring increased collaboration as a survival strategy.
• Meant to write about this a while ago, but Pepsi Refresh has relaunched with a different process and set of rules after complaints of gaming the system last year.

I QUIT

• Ellen Rudolf is stepping down as longtime director of the Surdna Foundation’s Thriving Cultures Program, which she had initiated with the foundation 17 years ago.
• Jeremy Nowak, a noted advocate for the power of the arts in revitalizing communities, will no longer be the President and CEO of The Reinvestment Fund – for good reason: he’s about to become the new head of the William Penn Foundation. (via GIA News)
• Nina Simon, author, blogger, and museum design consultant extraordinaire, is quitting her consulting and speaking business to be the new Executive Director of the Museum of Art & History at McPherson Center in Santa Cruz, CA. Thankfully, she is not quitting her blog.

SHOW ME THE MONEY

• Whoa…a donor’s estate in Bermuda is withdrawing an £82 million donation to Switzerland’s Lucerne Festival for no reason at all, apparently.
• Chad Bauman riffs on the recent cuts to DC’s Arts and Cultural Affairs Commission from a marketer’s perspective.
• Michael Kaiser takes a dim view of the trends in corporate giving to the arts. Here are some numbers from the Foundation Center.
• Americans Gave a Lot Less in the Recession Than Experts Predicted, reads the Chronicle of Philanthropy headline. Among other things, this story is a pretty big black eye for Giving USA, the annual report on individual giving that had estimated that donor activity was holding steady or barely dropping during the same period.
• Meanwhile, foundations gave (slightly) less in 2010 than 2009, despite the fact that their assets increased by 5%.
• Why don’t more foundations publicly explain the rationale behind their gifts?
• It looks like the growth of new 501(c)(3)s has finally slowed (and the numbers will actually drop considerably once the IRS releases the names of the nonprofits whose status it has revoked as a result of nonfiling). Of course, this hasn’t stopped composer Philip Glass from founding a new festival in Carmel Valley, CA.

SHOW ME THE BIRTH CERTIFICATE

• My colleagues at Fractured Atlas have a new publication laying out what the health insurance reform law means for artists.
• A new publication from the Boekman Foundation in Amsterdam: Cultural Policy Update. And check out this fab cultural policy blog salon put together by my friends at Emerging Arts Professionals – San Francisco Bay Area, featuring an admirably diverse range of voices.
• Not surprisingly, the social media cognoscenti are all abuzz about the new report from the Knight Foundation, “Connected Citizens: The Power, Peril, and Potential of Networks.” Beth Kanter is all over it here.
• CEOs for Cities reports on the residential clustering patterns of the “young and the restless” – college educated 25-34-year-olds. Seems cities’ “close-in neighborhoods” are more important than ever.
• Partners for Livable Communities reports on strategies for arts organization outreach to senior and immigrant audiences.
• Shannon Litzenberger is back with a massive report on cultural policy in the Windy City.
• Won’t you help Devon with her epic Facebook experiment? (It begins tomorrow.)

SEE YOU IN COURT

• David Byrne has come to a settlement with former Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who had used the Talking Heads song “Road to Nowhere” without permission during Crist’s unsuccessful campaign for Senate last year. (Seems a rather auspicious choice, no?) The settlement terms apparently included Charlie recording this apology video, which actually almost makes me feel sorry for him.
• Matthew Guerrieri reports on a dispute between the Music Publishers Association (UK) and the International Music Score Library Project.

BEAUTY CONTESTS

• Bubble sort as demonstrated by Hungarian folk dance.
• Eric Whitacre is back with the Virtual Choir 2.0, this time performing his “Sleep” and featuring over 2000 performers. Sounds great, but fair warning: the video is even cheesier than in the last one.
• To draw in new audiences, an orchestra plays for cows.
• I find a lot of public art less than inspiring, but I have to admit, this is pretty awesome:
  

  After more than a decade of disagreement, Berliners have settled on a monument to celebrate German reunification and the 1989 peaceful revolution: a giant, rocking dish.

  The 55-metre, 330-tonne glittering steel wing can hold up to 1,400 people at any one time, but it needs at least 20 people to get it moving.

  The monument to unity is called Citizens in Motion, and is apparently all about people coming together. If you want to make it move, you have to get a group together and all go in a particular direction.