Director & CEO, Canada Council for the Arts

The Canada Council for the Arts is a federal Crown corporation created by an Act of Parliament in 1957 “to foster and promote the study and enjoyment of, and the production of works in, the arts.” To fulfill this mandate, the Council offers a broad range of grants and services to professional Canadian artists and arts organizations in dance, music, theatre, visual arts, writing and publishing, media arts and integrated arts.  It also promotes public awareness of the arts through its communications, research and arts promotion activities.  The Canada Council Art Bank, the Killam Program of scholarly awards, and the Canadian Commission for UNESCO are administered through the Council.

The Council is looking for a visionary leader who can guide and mobilize the organization to successfully implement the objectives laid out in its 2011-2016 Strengthening Connections Strategic Plan. With an exceptional ability for cooperating creatively and effectively with a highly committed Board of Directors in accomplishing the mission of the organization, the selected candidate should have an enviable reputation in the Canadian cultural community, based on the quality of past achievements and superior professional integrity.

No deadline listed. Salary is $210,600 to $247,700 (in Canadian dollars, of course). The Council is also looking for a Secretary-General for the Canadian Commission for UNESCO.

Program Associate and Software Developer, Fractured Atlas

Fractured Atlas is seeking a full-time Program Associate. This position will provide administrative support for our core member programs and services. It is an entry-level position that involves a great deal of front-line customer service. We have over 30,000 artists in our membership nationwide who come to us daily for guidance, assistance and support.

Deadline: January 15 for the Program Associate position and none listed for the Software Developer. The PA position pays $40k.

Executive Director, Communications Network

Over the past two years, the Communications Network Board – composed of communications leaders from the nation’s top foundations – developed and approved a strategic plan designed to take the Network to the next level.  Building on a string of successful years in membership, fundraising and programming, the Network seeks to maintain its core strength among its foundation-based membership while gradually expanding to draw in leading nonprofit communication professionals.  We envision an organization that becomes a hub of excellence in the realm of nonprofit communications – an important constituency not presently served by existing networks – and that draws on the experience and commitment of communications professionals working not only for foundations, but for other leading nonprofits.

No deadline. An interesting setup where the ED works from anywhere with the support of an association management firm in Naperville, IL.

Program Manager, Newman’s Own Foundation

Newman’s Own Foundation is currently seeking a smart and dynamic professional to serve as its first Program Manager to develop and lead these two exciting programs within the Encouraging Philanthropy focus area. Reporting to the Foundation’s Managing Director, the Program Manager will play an integral role in building and implementing every aspect of these programs, enabling the Foundation to bring the organization’s commitment to philanthropy to life. This is a fantastic opportunity for a visionary with experience creating, managing and driving high impact programs forward.

No deadline.

Social Media Strategy Researcher and Consultant, Philanthrogeek

Philanthrogeek is hiring! We are looking for an established or aspiring social media professional to work with our team on an exciting new contract with a major foundation. This is a part-time (approximately 20 hours/week) contract position for February and March of 2014. Our new business is growing, and the right person can grow along with us, starting with this opportunity.

Deadline: Hurry up, because it’s tomorrow, January 13! Not an arts gig per se, but your would-be boss is on the boards of the National Association for Media Arts & Culture and the Seattle chapter of the Awesome Foundation. Plus, the “major foundation” in question is indeed major, maybe even (ahem) the major-est one there is.

Special Projects Associate, Foundation Center

As a member of the Glasspockets team, the Special Projects Associate is responsible for helping to create Glasspockets’ content and blog coverage of transparency and accountability in the philanthropic sector. Working closely with the Manager of Glasspockets, his/her responsibilities include canvassing a range of foundation web sites and media outlets for news of interest to Glasspockets audiences; writing and formatting blog posts; developing proposals for Glasspockets support, and working with other members of the Glasspockets team to enhance and update the Glasspockets web site. As a member of the San Francisco team, the Special Projects Associate is also responsible for assisting the Director of the SF Office with proposal development, reports to donors, and other special projects as assigned.

No deadline. The job is part-time, 15 hours a week.

• In a major victory for New York’s arts education advocates, Mayor Bloomberg signed a bill requiring the city’s department of education to report on the availability and accessibility of arts education in each of its schools. This annual report will make public the degree to which schools meet current instructional requirements in music, dance, theater, and visual art. This wasn’t an aberration for Bloomberg, whose legacy after three terms as mayor includes an impressive record of support for the arts.
• Meanwhile, arts groups prepare to woo his successor, Bill de Blasio, who has followed national precedent and failed so far to appoint a new Commissioner of Cultural Affairs. Some speculate – or simply hope – that he will apply his populist spirit to the culture sector.
• Reversing an earlier position, the United States Copyright Office now recommends that visual artists receive a portion of profits when their work is resold. Congress hasn’t taken up resale royalties for visual artists since 2011, when a bill sponsored by Representative Jerrold Nadler failed to gain traction.
• ‘Tis the season of Top Ten Lists, and The Future of Music Coalition has a comprehensive roundup of 2013’s music and technology policy developments, including Congress’s ongoing review of the Copyright Act, a changing of the guard at the FCC, and the looming court decision in the momentous net neutrality case between the FCC and Verizon.
• Construction for major government-supported art facilities in Abu Dhabi — including sparkly new Guggenheim and Louvre campuses — is booming on the backs of migrant workers from Pakistan and Bangladesh, many of whom had to pay a recruitment fee to work on the projects and now toil under atrocious conditions. The International Trade Union Confederation is urging western museums to step in, and a coalition of artists and activists has formed to support the workers.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Steven Tepper, research director of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) and associate director of Vanderbilt’s Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy, is the new dean of Arizona State University’s Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• George Zimmerman is once again in the media spotlight for selling a painting he made on eBay. The patriotically themed piece sold for $100,099.99, prompting outrage from some and a web-sale response by artist Michael D’Auntuono. In a move the artist calls “hypocritical,” D’Auntuono’s attempt to sell his response piece, and donate part of the proceeds to a charity advocating for crime victims, was censored by the auction website for violation of eBay guidelines.
• Acknowledging that less than 5 percent of its grants for repertory development have gone to women over the last quarter century, Opera America is launching a grant program targeting female composers.

IN THE FIELD

• Is Facebook’s new donate button “good, bad, or ugly” for nonprofits? Beth Kanter argues it does more harm than good, and rallies for a Facebook Ad Grants program similar to Google’s.
• In its quest to make culture “the spirit and soul of the nation,” China opened more than 450 museums in the last year alone, bringing the total number in the country to nearly 4,000.
• Did you finish 1984? New all-you-can-read book services are compiling data on not just what we read but also how quickly we do it, how long we linger over which passages, and whether we finish specific books. (Turns out people are more eager to learn how biographies end than business books.)
• Mara Walker, chief operating officer for Americans for the Arts, reports on her experience as the only American participant at this year’s International Arts Leadership Roundtable, organized by the Hong Kong Art Development Council.

BIG IDEAS

• You’ve Cott Mail readers offered bold predictions for the arts in 2014: ballet will relocate to London, we’ll all stop saying “outreach” (but do it more in our communities), and new artist-led theater collectives will rise up to seize the means of cultural production, among other prophecies.
• The Wall Street Journal’s Terry Teachout, meanwhile, predicts audiences’ growing “on-demand” mentality will continue to spell trouble for nonprofit theater companies, and urges them to embrace and market the “intimacy [of the] small scale, handmade art form.”
• In an interview with Barry Hessenius, WESTAF Executive Director Anthony Radich unpacks his longstanding call to “reimagine” state arts agencies (i.e., embrace more flexible staff structures and find ways to get “free from the negative undertow of state restrictions while retaining that still-important connection to the state government”) and offers insight on the future of state support for the arts.
• Providence, RI has acknowledged how much the city’s future depends on its four main nonprofit higher-ed institutions: Rhode Island School of Design, Brown University, Johnson & Wales, and Providence College. Financially reliant on an industry that isn’t requited to pay local taxes, the city of Providence has negotiated an attempted economic revitalization plan that has the schools make sizable contributions to the city in exchange for sweetened deals on land usage and campus expansion.
• Createquity’s own Talia Gibas lays out three different conceptions educators, artists, and advocates draw on when they talk about “STEAM” as the intersection of the arts with science, technology, engineering, and math. She argues that art may primarily represent aesthetics and design, curiosity, or creativity, and that there are important differences among the three.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Foundation Center’s annual “Key Facts on U.S. Foundations” report is out in time for the New Year. Giving is on the rise: the approximately 82,000 foundations in the U.S. gave $45.9 billion in 2010, $49.0 billion in 2011, and an estimated $50.9 billion in 2012. The report also breaks down the largest grants by the largest foundations for 2011 by issue, geography, and a host of other dimensions, revealing among other things that the top 1% of recipients captured half of these grant dollars.
• The McKnight Foundation has released its findings in a study it conducted, with help from the Center for the Study of Art & Community, on artists supported by its fellowship program since its establishment in 1982. The study asked artists six questions that gave them an opportunity to “reflect on the environment, conditions, and motivations that affect their work.”

• The even playing field that is the Internet might be about to tilt in the favor of the powerful, in this case AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, and the like. Net neutrality is in the hands of the DC Circuit Court.
• The National Initiative on Arts & the Military has released a new advocacy white paper on arts and health in the military context, just as the NEA has announced that it will expand its Creative Arts Therapy Program through a new three-month pilot at the Department of Defense’s Fort Belvoir Community Hospital.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Ralph Remington is stepping down as the NEA’s Theater/Musical Theater Director to become the western regional director and assistant executive director at Actors Equity Association. He had been at the NEA since 2010.
• Los Angeles has a new mayor, and will soon have a new head of cultural affairs. Olga Garay-English, who served as Executive Director of the city’s Department of Cultural Affairs since 2007, announced she is stepping down January 4.
• Kenneth Foster, former Executive Director of the Yerba Buena Center for Arts, has kicked off his tenure leading the new Arts Leadership Program at the University of Southern California and offers some words of wisdom on how funders can best serve the performing community, and why  “best practices” aren’t all they’re cracked up to be.
• Continuing a string of recent layoffs of classical-music radio staff, Houston’s KUHA has cleaned house. The station claims that the move will actually lead to more coverage of local arts groups.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Consider arts crowdfunding thoroughly kickstarted. Crowdfunding raised more than half a billion dollars for the performing and recording arts last year, almost 20% of the total money raised for all purposes through crowdfunding platforms, according to industry research. Lucy Bernholz is interested in investigating the small but increasing role U.S. foundations seem to be playing in driving this trend.
• Risë Wilson, the new Director of Philanthropy at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, makes the case – and offers a model – for arts grants as risk capital in an interview about the Foundation’s SEED grant program.
• Like many other downtowns, Philly’s is booming these days. But residential developer Carl Dranoff attributes the revitalization of the South Broad Street area to the Avenue of the Arts project, and insists that “anyone who says it would have happened anyway has a very short memory.”

IN THE FIELD

• In his coverage of last month’s 2013 Future of Music Summit for the Chicago Tribune, Greg Kot describes a frustrated yet resolved music industry, “Music is generating a ridiculous amount of money, none of it flowing to the people who create it.” Check out the write-ups from day one and day two.
• Nina Simon responds to the backlash that her novel programming at the Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History has generated in recent months locally and, to a lesser extent, nationally. The contention is that encouraging active participation so strongly erodes the traditional museum environment of quiet contemplation, distracting the MAH from its historical charge. Simon argues that the new approach allows for both kinds of experiences, while “balancing priorities, embracing creative tension, including diverse voices, and staying true to our mission.”

BIG IDEAS

• The ambitious Sustain Arts project aims to bring the wonders of Big Data to the cultural sector over the next three years, ultimately strengthening the nation’s cultural infrastructure. The first wave of work is happening now in the San Francisco and Detroit regions; Marc Vogl, Bay Area Field Director of the initiative, explains what he’s up to and how Bay Area folks can get involved.
• New Bonfils Stanton Foundation president Gary Steuer weighs in on the “is ‘innovation’ a nefarious buzz-word” debate (which is really the ongoing argument over how funders find the sweet spot of nurturing, not hindering, their grantees) and provides other thoughtful comments on the recent National Innovation Summit for Arts + Culture. (All 27 talks from the Summit, by the way, are now available online.)
• Google has launched Helpouts, a service that provides live on-demand chatting with experts in fields ranging from the arts to cooking and electronics. Udi Manber, VP of engineering, believes Helpouts will offer users a more “precise” mode of online learning.

RESEARCH CORNER

• WolfBrown is out with a multi-pronged report on how to engage college students in the performing arts. It includes case studies of best practices and a survey of student attitudes toward the performing arts across seven different schools.
• The Wallace Foundation has released new research on the challenges of after-school arts programs in low-income urban neighborhoods. The study draws on hundreds of interviews with young people, their families, program leaders and others to provide some answers, including ten principles for developing effective programming.
• More evidence that art therapy helps patients with Alzheimer’s.
• Elizabeth Merritt reviews a new report from European consultancy Arup on Museums in a Digital Age.
• The U.S. may be out of UNESCO, but the work continues: the international cultural agency and the United Nations Development Program have just released a Special Edition of the United Nations Creative Economy Report concluding that world trade of creative goods and services more than doubled from 2002 to 2011, to $624 billion. Unlike the 2008 and 2010 editions, many of the case studies and recommendations this time around focus on the role of culture in sustainable development at the local level, especially in poorer countries.
• So many charts, so little time! The Foundation Center has launched the eminently clickable Foundation Stats, where you can find “the answer to almost every basic statistical question about the collective work of U.S. Foundations.” Emphasis on the “basic” here, but as an added bonus the data is open and free. Meanwhile, A new report from the Foundation Center, Media Impact Funders, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation shows that foundations are stepping up in a big way to support traditional media organizations struggling to adjust to the digital age.
• As cultural asset mapping projects continue to gain popularity, this quick overview of where to get spatial data, and what you can do with it, is particularly timely. And speaking of cultural asset mapping, Philadelphia’s massive CultureBlocks initiative is barely six months out of the gate and there is already an academic paper on it.

• Glenn Beck is at it again: the right-wing broadcaster recently attacked the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture along with the Imagining America initiative on his Internet show, The Blaze. Far from a government agency, the USDAC is a “citizen-powered” art project that hasn’t received any public funding to date. Not one to be deterred by facts, Beck claims the two groups are “America’s newest propaganda machine” attempting to “rewrite our history.”
• The Metropolitan Museum of Art has signed a new lease with the city of New York that clarifies the museum is allowed to charge a suggested admissions fee, and added fees for special exhibitions. A lawsuit filed earlier this year alleged that the Met’s previous lease with the city required the museum to be free to the public five days a week.
• Cultural policy researchers in England are crying foul over Arts Council England’s “long-standing bias” toward organizations based in London, which receive a whopping 82% of funding, and asking it be redistributed proportionally to the population across the country.
• A number of theaters in upstate New York are concerned about the possible opening of several casinos in the area and the potential impact on booking major performers and retaining audiences. The advocacy group Upstate Theaters for a Fair Game is seeking protections from the state to “‘establish a fair and reasonable partnership” between the casinos and the local market.

IN THE FIELD

• The Museum of Modern Art sure is committed to staying on top of digital trends in education: it jumped on the MOOC train early, and now has a new partnership with Khan Academy.
• Two Latino theater companies in New York, Pregones Theater and the Puerto Rican Traveling Theater, are getting set to merge with the help of Time Warner and the Ford Foundation. The two performing ensembles will retain their original names under the new organization, but will share resources.
• The Theater for a New Audience has moved into its first permanent home after spending the last 34 years producing shows in a variety of rented spaces around Manhattan. City planners view the completion of the newly constructed theater as “the capstone” to a downtown Brooklyn cultural district long in the making.
• What’s going on with the Brooklyn Philharmonic? The NYC-area orchestra made a splash back in 2011 with a daring programming strategy focused on marrying classical music with other more widely popular genres as well as local composers and artists. But all the positive press and attention the new direction received apparently wasn’t enough to stanch the organization’s financial bleeding.
• While the debate rages on over whether Spotify is good or bad for musicians, YouTube muscles in on its territory by planning a subscription service that would give users on-demand, ad-free access to music videos on their mobile phones.
• Musicians of the Charleston Symphony Orchestra recently voted to break from their local union chapter of the American Federation of Musicians in an unprecedented industry move. The decision was reportedly motivated in part by the “understanding that to be successful as an orchestra in the future, [they] need more flexibility, they need to be nimble, and…unions sometimes get in the way of that.”

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• With 71 percent of projects getting funded (compared to the 43 percent average), the dance community boasts the highest proportion of successful Kickstarter campaigns. Theater clocks in at second place with a 64 percent success rate.  Is this evidence that arts orgs are reaching new supporters – or just swapping money back and forth between their friends?
• Pop quiz: which nonprofit group has successfully  “reduc[ed] its reliance on foundation funding, buil[t] new revenue sources” and is “constantly experimenting and challenging assumptions around who their audience is and what they care about”? Nope, not the arts — nonprofit news outlets.

BIG IDEAS

• Barry Hessenius’s Arts Dinner-vention has wrapped, and the edited video has been posted in seven installments; GIA collects them all on one convenient page. The conversation among some of the leading lights of arts administration explores ideas for the future across three areas: the role of the community, new format and delivery mechanisms, and the artist’s role and artist ecosystems.
• Say you didn’t require a project budget as part of that RFP. What’s the worst that could happen? Michelle Williams calls for grantmakers to trust the artists we work with, and she catalogues some innovative ideas from the GIA 2013 conference.
• Scott Walters has a new blog series examining the history of the regional theater movement by riffing on Todd London’s An Ideal Theater: Founding Visions of a New American Art. London, incidentally, delivered what reads like a doozy of a talk on innovation at the recent National Innovation Summit for Arts + Culture.
• Michael Kaiser’s latest book, The Cycle: A Practical Approach to Managing Arts Organizations takes an optimistic look at the difficult and delicate task of building an arts organization that is effective and strong enough to last.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The National Endowment for the Arts is offering a $30,000 prize for an interactive application that will “make the rich content of the 2012 [Survey of Public Participation in the Arts] more accessible to the public through a series of interactive, visually appealing, and easy-to-use data visualization tools.” Submissions are due February 3.
• A new study by On the Move examines how European cities support “cultural mobility” – the ease with which artists and cultural professionals engage outside their home region.
• In an effort to increase both convenience and access to data on the nonprofit sector, major players Guidestar and the Foundation Center have entered into a strategic partnership meant to “support the field in new and innovative ways.”
• The Whole Schools Initiative in Mississippi reports that 5,000+ students participating in an arts integration program performed significantly better on fourth and fifth grade state assessments than their peers.
• For its Arts, Culture and Audiences week, the American Evaluation Association highlighted assessment practices in arts education with a series of blog posts stressing that assessments can be “hands-on, active learning experiences for students.”
• York University and the National Ballet School in Toronto are partnering to conduct a pilot study with the hopes of providing scientific evidence of the positive mental and physical effects of dance on people with Parkinson’s disease.
• Grantmakers in the Arts’s ongoing research into support for individual artists has generated a crop of admirably detailed case studies of how a nonprofit grantmaker, state agency, private foundation, and family foundation select recipients for their awards to individuals.

Under the direct supervision of the Director of Arts Disciplines Division, the Head of the Theatre Section manages the successful delivery of large and complex programs and activities; leads a staff of twelve employees (includes eight direct reports); develops, administers and monitors the Section’s budget; develops policies,  programs and initiatives to enhance Canada Council’s role in the development of Canada’s artists and arts organizations; consults with and evaluates the needs of artists and arts organizations; monitors and evaluates the effectiveness and completeness of existing programs; promotes and ensures fair and equal access to programs by all qualified artists and arts organizations; contributes to the strategic planning as well as short- and long-range development of the Canada Council; develops and maintains strong working relationships with a broad and diverse group of stakeholders; and performs other related duties.

Deadline: September 11, 2013. Salary range is $104,600-123,000 (in Canadian dollars of course).

Director of International Data Relations, Foundation Center

The new Director’s responsibilities include increasing the Center’s data on international foundations through the cultivation of new and existing partnerships. As many countries lack data infrastructure or government mandated reporting, strategic partnerships with philanthropic associations and networks will be necessary to meet the Center’s goals. Tasks will include researching the climate of philanthropy in targeted regions, developing strategic data partnerships, optimizing systems for collecting and storing data in multiple languages and currencies, and structuring international data in a way that can be aggregated, compared, and researched. The Director will also be expected to work closely with colleagues across the Center and throughout the global philanthropic sector to ensure international perspectives are woven into the Center’s taxonomy and data structures. Innovative problem solving and strategic thinking are essential for success in this position.

No deadline.

• The Future of Music Coalition has a great roundup of takeaways from a recent congressional hearing on copyright law and the technology sector. Big ones include the very different challenges posed by copyrights versus patents, and that for the most part, technology companies don’t see copyright restrictions as stifling their ability to innovate.
• A new arts center in New York City (and the whopping $50 million in city capital funding that’s making it possible) has Mayor Bloomberg’s fingerprints all over it.
• Reason #22 to think twice before moving into a glass house: the New York State Supreme Court has ruled that a artist was well within his First Amendment rights when he took and then exhibited photographs of his neighbors — including two small children — inside their glass-walled home from across the street. Upon recognizing their images in an advertisement for the upcoming exhibit, the neighbors had attempted to sue the artist for invasion of privacy and emotional distress.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Katy Locker will join the Knight Foundation as its Detroit-based program director; she is currently VP of Programs at the Detroit-based Hudson-Webber Foundation. In an interview with former ArtPlace CEO Carol Colletta, she lists the arts as one among several “levers to continuing Detroit’s turn around.”
• Lisa Hall will become VP for Programs at Houston Endowment. She comes from YES Prep Public Schools, where she was VP for Talent Support and General Counsel.
• KPAC, a classical radio station in San Antonio, has cut its five local hosts to reduce costs and will use a syndicated service from Minnesota. The station has offered the hosts part-time work; so far, only one, Dierdre Saravia, has accepted.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Newly-appointed Ford Foundation President Darren Walker offers three lessons on philanthropy: collaborate broadly, as the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation did in the Harlem Chlidren’s Zone; invest in due diligence into grantees to ensure leaders are both passionate and adequately supported by their organizations; and recognize that the kinds of metrics used to measure success in business won’t apply in many philanthropic contexts.
• Grantmakers in the Arts continues to take a more activist stance regarding cultural equity. Earlier this summer, the entire GIA board of directors underwent two days of anti-racism training led by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond. A similar two-day workshop (though led by a different group) will be offered to grantmakers attending this year’s GIA conference in October.

BIG IDEAS

• Organized labor is declining, the nonprofit sector is expanding, and two may well meet in the middle. Employees at a homeless service nonprofit in San Francisco successfully unionized in June, signaling what might be the beginning of a broader trend.  And while unions have been getting a bad rap recently this article points out that “the mission-driven nature of nonprofits can prove to be an asset in providing an alternative model to the us-versus-them framework adopted in most private sector organizing.”
• Angie Kim shares two great examples (both arts-related) of nonprofit membership associations, typically ill-equipped to drive sector-wide change, assuming a leadership role at the risk of alienating members or compromising revenue streams.
• Half of Barry Hessenius’s “Dinner-vention Party” guests offer their thoughts on how the arts can address declining audience numbers and shifting participation in truly new ways. This first batch includes “briefing papers” by Laura Zabel, Kimberly Howard, Clayton Lord, Margy Waller, Tamara Alvarado, and Nina Simon.
• What happens when video-game designers become auteurs? In the case of Thatgamecompany’s Jenova Chen, the artists reworks his art many times before releasing it to get the “emotional impact right,” his company goes bankrupt as the project runs over schedule and over budget – and the final product becomes a critical darling, breaks sales record, and wins its creator a $5.5m venture-capital investment.

IN THE FIELD

• A new movement in the architecture and design field builds on LEED certification’s environmental standards, and calls for a triple-bottom-line approach that takes social factors into account as well.
• Amazon has launched Amazon Art, a partnership with more than 150 galleries that allows you to browse, purchase and review (or faux-review) fine art much as you would a kitchen appliance. At least one blogger isn’t impressed, noting, “Much as I admire [Amazon’s] shipping practices… why compete in a market where an awesomely speedy physical delivery network means next to nothing?” Speed might not matter here, but access to artwork—especially for people who don’t live in major urban centers – might.
• The community-supported agriculture model is being transferred to the arts in cities including Pittsburgh, St. Paul and Flint. Most of them are visual art-specific, with at least one performing arts version as well. And they never have to worry about getting too much Swiss chard…

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP) has updated its annual survey of arts alumni. SnaapShot 2012 presents the results in attractive infographics, and SNAAP’s 2013 annual report interprets the data. The theme of the report is inequalities among graduates of diverse backgrounds. Findings include a lack of access to networks among black and Hispanic arts alumni, which disproportionately discourages these alumni from becoming artists; and persistent pay gaps between male and female graduates.
• The Australia Council for the Arts has released a new study of the Australian arts sector in 2012. The report is bullish: attendance at arts events is up by about 3.5%; box office across genres was up 16% (only theater box office declined); and private sector contributions held steady.
• GlobalGiving, GuideStar, the Foundation Center, and TechSoup are collaborating to create an international registry of philanthropic entities. The project, funded by the Hewlett and Gates Foundations, will develop a system of unique identifiers and establish a database for information like the nature and location of philanthropic work.
• A new paper from Yuan Ji, an attorney for Wilson Sonsini and recent Yale Law School graduate, examines the conversion of Burning Man from for-profit to nonprofit status.
• Do copyright laws “make books disappear”? A researcher examines the numbers of books available in print over the last two hundred years, and finds they tend to vanish quickly, only to reappear later when they fall into public domain.
• A new study found that undergraduates tended to like the paintings of the critically-respected 19th-century artist John Everett Millais more with repeated exposure – but they liked the work of the popular but less canonical Thomas Kinkade less the more they saw of it. This is in tension with previous research into the “mere exposure effect” that found that  familiarity just about always breeds affection, even for lesser Impressionists.

• The NEA has unveiled a new four-point plan for its arts education program, and Kristen Engebretsen has the details.
  
• Yo-Yo Ma gave this year’s Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy at Arts Advocacy Day, and you can watch the video here.
• Fascinating account of the Norwegian jazz scene and how government funding for the arts, at its best, can create an environment rich in experimentation and possibility: “Ambitious ideas aren’t crushed under the weight of impracticality before they can grow and take shape.”
• Wise words from Charlie Jensen about the many forms of arts advocacy:
  

  While it’s true that responding to threats to arts and culture funding, unfavorable legislation, or moves to otherwise impede our ability to serve our communities is a true emergency, it is about 5% of work we need done. Let me say it again: it’s a critical 5%. But it’s 5%. The real work of advocacy—to extend the metaphor, the verses of our song—is already happening, every day, in each of our organizations. It’s happening on Facebook and Twitter, when your staff answer phones, when the curtains go up or the lights come down or the performers take their places or the doors open or the first words are sung or spoken. It’s happening when your patron or audience member has a positive interaction with a member of your staff.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation president Thomas C. Layton is retiring after serving at the helm for 38 years. Stacie Ma’a, a fresh face at only 14 years of service, will replace him. The Gerbode Foundation supports the arts and other causes in the San Francisco Bay Area and Hawaii.
• The Foundation Center is expanding Lisa Philp’s Stategic Philanthropy team, hiring Viviana Bianchi as director of partnerships and Jen Bokoff (a self-described “data nerd”) as director of GrantCraft.

IN THE FIELD

• RIP Gainesville (GA) Symphony Orchestra.
• Did you know that some hotels have artist in residence programs? Britain’s Telegraph offers a round-up; they range from the earnest (two months of free space for artists selected by peer panel at the Gershwin Hotel in New York) to the self-congratulatory (fashion illustrator David Downton painting celebrities at Claridge’s in London).
• In an op-ed for the New York Times, Authors Guild president Scott Turow chronicles the industry disruption that has buffeted professional authors thanks to the advent of ebooks and digital technology more generally. It’s strikingly similar to the story of the music industry.
• Is Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood (recipient of an ArtPlace grant) an example of creative placemaking run amok?

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Bill Gates does an Ask Me Anything (AMA) over at Reddit.
• Just when I thought the academic publishing model couldn’t be any more perverted, I learn that they charge authors like Michael Rushton (who already contribute their work without payment or royalties) nearly $3000 for the “privilege” of making their articles available in an open-access journal. Holy crap!
• Wow, no one can say Colleen Dilenschneider isn’t audacious. The Gen Y social media and museum marketing consultant reveals that she has made “a few five-figure gifts this year, as well as several four-figure and three-figure gifts” but recounts an array of frustrating experiences she’s had dealing with the organizations who have been the recipients of her largesse. A worthwhile, if slightly maddening, read.

BIG IDEAS

• DC’s National Building Museum is hosting a series of programs under the banner of “Culture as Catalyst.” The museum’s Scott Kratz and Martin Moeller provide background for the series and video of the first two sessions at this ArtsBlog post.
• In a long post for the Atlantic, Derek Thompson considers New Orleans’s attempt to reinvent itself as America’s next great innovation hub. His comments about the grand experiment in public education made possible by Katrina’s destruction may be of particular interest to arts educators.
  
• Fascinating article on BuzzFeed, a website best known for hyper-shareable content like “The 40 Best Animal Cuddlers of All Time” but which also features a crack political and investigative reporting team led by former POLITICO blogger Ben Smith. Founded by Jonah Peretti (who was previously responsible for much of The Huffington Post’s success as well as the infamous blackpeopleloveus.com), Buzzfeed eschews the usual banner ads and subscription fees in favor of viral advertorials that are all but indistinguishable from the virtual candy normally on offer. It is news source and ad agency in one, and doesn’t apologize for blending the two. It’s undeniably a new model for supporting journalism, but can it work? One clue might be found in this paragraph:
  

  Peretti rejects the notion that the news operation he has built is, as he has put it, “a hood ornament to lend the site prestige.” It was a business calculation that, somewhat to his surprise, pushed BuzzFeed in the same old-media editorial direction he once chafed at during his time at the Huffington Post. Journalism has clickable appeal on Twitter and brings the kind of readers preferred by premium advertisers. He likes to say that journalism works best on social networks with “scoops and quality reporting,” not aggregation. But the head of BuzzFeed’s data-science department frankly told me that the company has found it to be extremely difficult to make a news item go viral.

RESEARCH CORNER

• A new meta-analysis from Chinese researchers suggests that listening to music can counteract insomnia.
• UNESCO has a new monograph out on measuring cultural participation.
• Arts Diplomacy Network is “gathering financial, program, and other information from diverse sources to…enable researchers to analyze how much money is invested in international arts exchange by U.S. organizations and in what regions they are working.”
• NYC Commissioner of Cultural Affairs Kate Levin dishes about her department’s use of data in a short video at the NCAR blog.
• Sunil Iyengar summarizes a research study looking at the effect of music-making on “gene expression pathways” in heart disease patients.
• Why you don’t need a Ph.D. in statistics to be a data scientist.

• As you know, there was an election last week, and Barack Obama won it. Thankfully this means that Barry Hessenius’s worst fears about the NEA likely won’t be realized, but Barry does have some useful advocacy advice that is worth a read regardless of the outcome. Ted Johnson has a helpful pre-election analysis of issues relevant to Hollywood in the election. Americans for the Arts has been active too: Jay Dick offers a post-election advocacy to-do list, and the Arts Action Fund offers a thorough roundup of the election results and their implications. Among the lesser-known developments include the fact that many moderate Republican legislators in Kansas who stood up for arts funding in that state lost their primaries to more conservative challengers; similarly, several pro-arts Republicans in Congress have either retired or lost their seats, further polarizing the parties in their orientation toward arts funding. On the plus side, two cities – Portland, OR and Austin, TX – passed pro-arts ballot measures.
• The final version of the Chicago Cultural Plan has been released – with a new arts education plan for Chicago Public Schools to boot.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• RIP Walter Carsen, one of Canada’s most prominent arts philanthropists.
• This is a truly thorough overview of the arts funding ecosystem in metropolitan Atlanta, both past and present. A must-read if you have any plans to work in the arts there.
• The Knight Foundation is stepping up its commitment in Detroit with a $20 million round of grantmaking.
• If you work for an arts funder and you’re reading this, can you do me and the entire world a giant favor and make sure your organization is giving the Foundation Center your grants data? They are making it easier and easier to participate, and it ultimately helps researchers like me make sense of the arts funding landscape. You can help them refine their grants taxonomy as well.

IN THE FIELD

• Orchestral musician labor disputes are in the news again, and nowhere is the hotbed hotter than in freezing Minnesota, where both the Minnesota and St. Paul Chamber Orchestras face work stoppages. Eric Nilsson says neither side is fully accepting reality, and even the Minneapolis City Council is getting involved. Both groups have canceled performances through the end of 2012, and musicians are starting to look for jobs elsewhere. Meanwhile, the Spokane (WA) Symphony is on strike and canceling performances.
• I’m intrigued by this announcement of SphinxCon, a new diversity summit organized by Sphinx, a Detroit-based organization dedicated to cultivating more musicians of color in classical music. Aaron Dworkin and company have managed to pull together a pretty incredible speaker list pairing (mostly white) arts service organization leaders with a largely non-white group of artists, academics, and other perspectives. Who knows if it’ll lead to anything, but it seems like the ingredients for a real conversation are there.

BIG IDEAS

• I can’t emphasize enough how important this 282-word blog post from Adam Thurman is. Adam has a gift for concision, and his three-part distinction between making art, making money doing art, and making a living from art is essential for artists and policymakers alike. And speaking of Adam’s genius, this post on arts marketing (featuring the memorable quotes, “[Y]ou are probably ok with whatever you did last night.  Maybe you watched TV, maybe you read a book, maybe you got drunk and did lines of cocaine.  Whatever you did, you were ok with it.” and “The reality is that if these [new] audiences never come your way they will be fine.  You, on the other hand, will be in serious trouble.”) is well worth a read too.
• Stephanie N. Stallings thinks jazz could use some binders full of women and speculates that hip-hop has overtaken it as America’s greatest cultural diplomacy tool.
• Over at Next American City, Neeraj Mehta considers the “who” of creative placemaking (as in, “who benefits?”).
• So Google’s getting into the virtual museum business now?
• Online higher education banned in Minnesota, then reinstated.
• Chad Bauman writes eloquently on the symbiosis between an arts community and its local newspaper – and what it means that so many of those newspapers seem to be hanging on by a thread.
• Eric Booth submits a lengthy dispatch from the first international Teaching Artist Conference in Oslo.

RESEARCH CORNER

• A new report from Emerson College’s Center for the Theater Commons, authored by Diane Ragsdale, examines the relationship between nonprofit and commercial theater.
• Chorus America has released its Choral Operations Survey Report for 2012.
• I’m looking forward to seeing the results of what looks like a very strong study being undertaken by the LA Philharmonic, USC, and Heart of Los Angeles to investigate the impact of early childhood music training. Meanwhile, a just-released report from Carnegie Hall and WolfBrown examines the potential for music to make a difference in the juvenile justice system.
• If you’ve ever doubted me that logic models matter, check out this analysis of the difficulties faced by One Laptop Per Child, a hugely ambitious, billion-dollar initiative to develop and distribute low-cost laptops to schoolchildren in developing countries. The passage below is an eloquent depiction of how failing to think through the details of a strategy can mean its doom:
  

  Doing an end-run around lousy infrastructure and poorly-trained teachers might actually work with the right support to guide the child’s learning. Unfortunately, Negroponte has also stated that you actually can give a kid a laptop and walk away.

  According to Jeff Patzer, a former OLPC intern, that’s precisely what they did in Peru. Hardware degraded faster than expected, and OLPC allowed Peru to build its own branch of the system software that was incompatible with patches. Interns were not prepared to educate teachers, and teachers were not prepared to use the XO to teach students.

  “The only thing that happens is the laptops get opened, turned on, kids and teachers get frustrated by hardware and software bugs, don’t understand what to do, and promptly box them up to put back in the corner.” Patzer explained.

ETC.

• Joe Queenan on having read more than 6000 books. My favorite part of this column is the fact that, because it’s in the Wall Street Journal, his offhand mention of Williams Sonoma is accompanied by its latest stock quote.

• Two bills under consideration by Congress would adjust the music licensing rates paid by internet streaming radio services like Rdio, MOG, and Spotify to match what cable and satellite providers pay.

IN THE FIELD

• Artists often neglect to realize that crowdfunding campaign money isn’t free – in addition to the fees you have to pay Kickstarter or one of its competitors like Indiegogo or RocketHub, the perks offered to donors often cost money as well. This handy web toy from Reuben Pressman helps you think through how much money you really need to raise if you’re thinking about starting a Kickstarter campaign (or really any crowdfunding operation).
• Still not seeing a ton of post-recession nonprofit mergers, but here’s one in New York City: the Urban Arts Partnership has acquired the operations of the Manhattan New Music Project, which had recently won several large Department of Education grants for arts residencies for special-needs students.
• Nina Simon takes on public voting for winners in art competitions, noting that only a small percentage of those eligible actually take the time to vote. She sees positive implications for engagement but possibly negative ones for artistic integrity; I see further evidence for the need for a hybrid approach.
• Typical: just as games (including video games) are being touted as the next big new thing in arts circles, in the rest of the world their business model is collapsing.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Barry Hessenius has a short interview with Regina Smith, Senior Program Officer for Arts and Culture at the Kresge Foundation and Board Chair of Grantmakers in the Arts.

RESEARCH CORNER

• Creative placemaking giant ArtPlace has been busy lately. Now accepting applications for its third round of grants (letters of inquiry are due tomorrow, November 1 UPDATE: deadline has been extended to Monday, November 5), the funding collaborative released a short thought piece detailing thirteen “principles for successful creative placemaking” in late summer.  And earlier this month, ArtPlace “soft launched” its vibrancy indicators, a research effort accompanying its two-rounds-and-counting of creative placemaking grants. While the indicators aren’t totally done yet – data points covering value creation and racial/economic diversity have yet to be fully defined or published, and a promised website showing vibrancy in various corners of the country has not yet materialized – these two documents provide the most detail available to date on ArtPlace’s efforts to understand and measure creative placemaking. Andrew Taylor and Linda Essig offer initial reviews, and stay tuned to this space for more in-depth analysis from a special guest.
• The fall issue of the Grantmakers in the Arts Reader has a very interesting feature taking a look back at historical research studies that, in the opinion of guest editor Alexis Frasz, deserve a second look. One of the studies in question is a re-release of 1988’s “Autopsy of an Orchestra: An Analysis of the Factors Contributing to the Bankruptcy of the Oakland Symphony Orchestra Association” by Melanie Beene, Patricia Mitchell, and Fenton Johnson, now available for the first time in digital format. Each study comes with two responses, one from an “established” and one from an “emerging” grantmaker. Other studies (re)considered include Gifts of the Muse (Createquity’s take here), “Art and Culture in Communities: Unpacking Participation,” “Crossover: How Artists Build Careers Across Commercial, Nonprofit and Community Work,” and “Champions of Change: The Impact of the Arts on Learning.”
• WolfBrown researcher Jennifer Novak-Leonard declares crowdfunding the fourth mode of arts participation (the other three being arts creation/performance, arts engagement through media, and attendance at arts events). Quoth she: “I also suggest that this information [about the relationship between crowdfunding activity and other modes of arts participation] would be valuable to each of the platforms currently helping crowd-funding grow and thrive. This is a shameless pitch to these platforms to engage in dialogue with me about how to get this research effort underway… ideally in a timeframe that would inform and expand the conversations that will begin in 2013 as we begin to see the results from the 2012 [Survey of Public Participation in the Arts].”
• The Foundation Center’s march toward establishing a data standard for grants continues, with 15 foundations now having signed on to share their grants data publicly via the Glasspockets website. Among the arts supporters participating in the initiative are the Annenberg, Getty, Hewlett, MacArthur, and Rockefeller Foundations.
• The UK’s Mark Robinson offers his take on the NEA’s new “system map” and research agenda, “How Art Works.”
• Cool social network visualization here: the Seattle Band Map illustrates connections between musical acts via shared band members or project collaborations.
• Direct mail advertising campaigns are getting a bad rap, and research shows that they’re surprisingly effective at reaching consumers, says TRG’s Will Lester.
• William Baumol has a new book out summarizing his decades of thinking on cost disease. Joe Patti has more.
• “Back in 2001, when it started, economists would not have predicted Wikipedia’s success; nor can they really explain it now.“
• Great Q&A with Nate Silver (one of my blog heroes) about his upcoming book about forecasting. A couple of choice quotes:
  

  Q. When predictions involve human ‘systems’ & behavior (social, economic, political etc) that are by their very nature ‘adaptive’, how do you deal with the tricky “Heisenberg Principle” — like effect where the very act of predicting itself becomes a factor that adds information that alters the system and influences individual and/or collective behavior? –John

  A. This is a gigantic problem. In the book, we discuss how consumers, politicians, and businesses make plans based on economic forecasts that can have a host of problems. We also look at how this manifests in disease modeling. If you accurately forecast a very bad flu, it may cause people to stay home, which is good but cancels your forecast. But, the forecast served its purpose because it made people aware of their circumstances.

  and

  Q. What’s your assessment of economics as a discipline, judged in terms of its ability to make politically useful predictions? For example, can economists predict with any reliability what the economic impact of a tax cut or a government spending program will be? –Dan Schroeder

  A. The view of macroeconomic prediction in the book is pretty harsh. Economists have shown no real ability to predict a recession more than six months out. See the Wall Street Journal panel that predicted there would be no recession in December, 2007. It’s hard to measure the economy. Revisions can be as substantial as 5% in some quarters. Therefore, it is hard to predict and judge what the right policy is and what the implications of any policy are. So, we should be skeptical of anyone who predicts the impact of policy with a high degree of certainty. Humility is key.

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.