Program Specialist, Archipelago, Fractured Atlas

Fractured Atlas is seeking a full-time Program Specialist for a newly-created position.  The Specialist will manage components of Archipelago, Fractured Atlas’s cultural asset mapping tool, along with the organization’s participation in the Initiative for Sustainable Arts in America.  This position reports to the Research Director.

This is an exciting opportunity to join a cutting-edge nonprofit organization working at the intersection of culture, technology, design, and data. The successful candidate will be a creative “doer” who takes pride in delivering to the highest standards of performance time and time again.

Deadline: January 2, 2013.

That’s the title of a new study published this month by Dance/NYC and produced by yours truly, with (lots of) help from Fractured Atlas Research Fellow Carrie Blake and Dance/NYC Director Lane Harwell. The study examines data from over 250 dance-related projects fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas, The Foundation for Independent Artists/Pentacle, New York Foundation for the Arts, New York Live Arts, and The Field. Building off of Dance/NYC’s previously released research, “Discovering Fiscally Sponsored NYC Dancemakers” also compares findings where possible to corresponding figures for nonprofit dance organizations,  as reported via the Cultural Data Project.

So what did we find? Not surprisingly, sponsored projects are for the most part quite small in scale. Aside from the Foundation for Independent Artists program, which is an unusual Model A full-service fiscal sponsorship that includes complete financial and payroll management, each fiscal sponsor’s projects averaged less than $16,000 in expenses for the most recently completed fiscal year. (Note that we had to work some statistical magic to get those figures from the available data, so they should be treated as estimates rather than hard counts. All relevant assumptions are included in the methodology section of the report.) It appears that in the New York dance world, at least, the grassroots level of the field is making heavy use of fiscal sponsorship.

According to figures self-reported by the sponsored projects, it also appears that the sponsored projects in the study group are more efficient than the corresponding nonprofits, by various measures. Compared to nonprofit dance organizations in all budget categories, sponsored projects spent the greatest share of their budgets on programs (83% vs. 72-83%), spent the least on fundraising for every dollar they raised (4 cents vs. 5-20 cents), and spent the least on marketing for every audience member they brought through the door ($0.28 vs. $0.53-$9.15). (The samples for these analyses varied according to which sponsors provided us with the relevant data; full details are in the report.) Furthermore, and perhaps most notably, the sponsored projects paid their artists proportionally more than nonprofits in the $25,000-$99,999 budget category: 48.6% to 32.2% of their budgets, respectively. Although the study was not designed to prove fiscal sponsorship’s value or lack thereof, it’s worth noting that these observations are consistent with one of the foundational theories behind fiscal sponsorship, which is that it saves small enterprises money and allows them to focus more of their energies on their programmatic work.

It should be noted that these findings come with some caveats. Most importantly, it’s difficult to know whether the differences noted above between the sponsored projects and the nonprofit organizations are more a function of corporate form or budget size. Due to the lack of representation of the smallest dance nonprofits in the Cultural Data Project, Dance/NYC had previously studied only nonprofits with budgets of $25,000 or more. By contrast, most of the fiscally sponsored projects under study had budgets falling under that amount. So we don’t know whether the sponsored projects seem more efficient because they don’t have to be nonprofits, or if there’s something about the under $25,000 budget range in particular that lends itself to greater efficiency – or both.

We are also dealing with incomplete samples for many of these analyses, due to the heterogeneity in data collection practices and standards among fiscal sponsors. The report includes a data collection comparison chart that details the overlaps and gaps between each sponsor’s data and the Cultural Data Project. Hopefully this resource can serve as a starting point for further collaboration.

Nevertheless, what “Discovering Fiscally Sponsored Dancemakers” does show is that fiscal sponsorship is a major force in the New York City dance world. Sponsored projects account for hundreds of distinct enterprises and at least $3 million in annual expenditures. They reach tens of thousands of audience members and serve something like a thousand artists (assuming a reasonable rate of overlap between projects). And remember, this is just in one discipline and one city of the country.

I hope more people will take advantage of the emerging data sets covering fiscally sponsored projects, one of the few windows we have into the poorly understood, creator-driven grassroots of the arts ecosystem. Fractured Atlas alone sponsors nearly 3,000 projects in all disciplines around the country, and we redesigned our annual report last year to better align with the CDP with exactly this sort of analysis in mind. The possibilities for better understanding our sector are just beginning to reveal themselves.

Further reading:

• Pia Catton, “The Nonprofit as Nonstarter,” Wall Street Journal
• Mike Keefe-Feldman, “NYC Dance Groups Eschew Nonprofit Model for Fiscal Sponsors,” Nonprofit Quarterly
• “Dance Groups Rethink Nonprofit Model, Report Finds,” Chronicle of Philanthropy
• Daniel Lehman, “For Dancers, Alternative Funding Model Replacing Non-Profits?” Backstage
• Alexandar Thompson, “Discovering Fiscally Sponsored NYC Dancemakers,” Live Arts Blog

Image by Nikita Kashner, Creative Commons license

So last week, I tried a little experiment. I’ve been wondering for a while what to do about my weekly series “Around the Horn.” It’s the only thing I write for Createquity that’s on a timed schedule (every Monday), and as I’ve cut back my level of writing somewhat due to my new job, I found myself questioning the future of the series. After all, the Around the Horn posts never seem to go anywhere after I write them, and I rarely get any kind of feedback in the form of comments or other reactions, so it was natural of me to wonder whether they were having any impact. So I decided I’d ask readers directly.

As I was putting the question to readers in my weekly missive, I came up with the idea of giving people a more formal way to respond than by just leaving a comment. And while I was at it, I figured I’d make it into a broader questionnaire about a number of issues I’d been wondering about with respect to the blog.  All told, I got 85 responses, which is about a 12-13% response rate depending on how many regular readers there are who are not formally subscribed to this blog’s feed. Respectable for an online poll – probably not a random sample, but I figure that’s okay since (a) I’m more interested in broad strokes of reader opinion than the exact numbers; and (b) the primary bias one would expect is that people who responded are more likely to care a lot about the site, and I’m more interested in their opinions anyway. (Sorry, anyone else who’s reading this…what can I say, you had your chance!)

Before I get into the numbers and the details, I want to offer a few topline takeaways I had from the process itself.

• This was the best idea I’ve had in a long time. Some of my good ideas take months to marinate in my head before they’re ready. This one, from coming up with the idea for the survey, to designing it in Google Forms, to finishing the post with the link to the published survey, came to fruition on a single Sunday evening. I think every blogger who’s serious about their craft should consider doing a reader poll like this one. I got so much valuable insight into readers’ thoughts that I never would have unearthed otherwise. And all I had to do was ask.
• Don’t use Google Forms for your polls. I mean, sure, it’s neat, and it’s a useful tool for other purposes (like Createquity Tipster). But Forms offers little of the analytical capability that comes with other survey sites like Qualtrics or even Surveymonkey. And at least in my survey, it’s tallying the responses to one of the questions blatantly incorrectly.
• “Other” is your friend. It doesn’t always result in the friendliest data, but qualitative responses add incomparable richness to survey results, and if you don’t give people a chance to share them you’ll miss out on a lot.

In fact, doing this survey was actually kind of therapeutic for me because of the completely amazing comments that people left. Here were some of my favorites:

This is the internet as it should be. Keep up the good work. I’m a newly-minted cultural industry consultant (and before that the exec director of a performing arts festival and ensemble-based experimental theatre company in Canada for eleven years). It’s things like Createquity that create a sense of substance, thoughtfulness and interconnectedness to our ‘sector’.

I only discovered Createquity in the last month, yet I already highly recommend and praise it to others. Not sure if my feedback is as important as the thoughts of a longtime reader, but it’s my lunch break and I’m devoting it to this survey regardless. [Wow! Eight more paragraphs of comment follow, including this:] Because of “Around the Horn” I have followed several links to incredibly helpful sources, news, and research. For example, this week’s link to the Kresge Foundation’s new Institutional Capitalization grant program was exactly something my organization was seeking…and you are the reason I got brownie points for bringing this to my higher up’s attention.

You and Paul Krugman (NYT) are my favorite feeds. [Holy crap! -IDM] I’m attending business school next fall, but plan to remain in the arts/nonprofit sector after graduating.  I find that your blog validates my own interests.  Your posts are not only professional and well-researched, but also full of personality and opinion.

I was going to put “never read anything by you again” but wasn’t sure you’d appreciate the joke.  -dad

So aside from finding out that I made somebody look good at work (sweet!), what else did I get from the results? Well, quite a bit actually.

I learned that most people don’t mind when I cross-post content here that I’ve written for other sites. Over 90% of people who responded to this question told me that they either didn’t care or hadn’t noticed when I do this.  A small minority said it bothered them a little, and only one person asked me to stop – and since that person said they don’t enjoy any of the content here, I’m not exactly sure why they’re reading me at all. This is good news for me since I am getting more offers to guest-blog for various one-off salons, online panel discussions, etc., and it’s great when that content can do double-duty.

I learned that people want more coverage of arts research on the site. Unlike non-arts philanthropy and economics, of which most people said the level of coverage was about right, 35 respondents wanted to see more arts research items as compared with only three who wanted to see less. This is interesting to me because when I asked about the Arts Policy Library, which is the Createquity feature that deals most directly with arts research, a number of people responded that they don’t read it. I also got a few admonitions to keep my posts short, which the APL essays most certainly aren’t. So I’m interested to know what people mean, or thought I meant, when they said they wanted more arts research coverage. Is it just keeping on top of newly published studies, reports, etc.? Or do you all want more of a synthesis, a meta-level guide to what’s out there? In any case, it’s good to know that this is a niche with, apparently, some unmet demand.

I learned that my current posting schedule is in line with people’s preferences. There was a considerable range on this question, but the average response was about twice a week, so that works out well. I think I can do that pretty sustainably.

I learned that a majority of readers want to see more state and local arts policy coverage. This was the most popular of the new ideas with 58% in support, followed by interviews at 44%, and international coverage at 36%. Only 28% want to see more posts by guest authors.

And finally, I learned that Around the Horn is actually the most popular recurring feature on the site. Out of 84 respondents, only one said they didn’t like it, and another nine said they don’t read it. That leaves a whopping 88% who gave it the thumbs up, more than the 70% who like the Arts Policy Library, 76% who enjoy New Blogs, and 63% who heart the conference live-blogging and wrap-ups. (Not surprisingly, my attempts to unload my own music upon an unsuspecting readership garnered the lowest marks, at 32%. Too bad guys, it ain’t lettin’ up anytime soon.)

And therein lies my dilemma. When asked for suggestions for Around the Horn, a majority of you, 54%, wanted me to “keep it going as is.” No one said I should dump it. Yet I realized after I did the poll that the reason I asked what to do about Around the Horn in the first place is because I feel keeping it as is is simply not an option. To be blunt about it, I don’t want half of all of my posts for Createquity to be link round-ups. It only serves to put ideas that have been smoldering in my head on a further back burner, and puts me in what I feel is a reactive stance relative to whatever conversations other people are having instead of giving me an opportunity to help move those conversations forward by generating fully original content. If I still harbored ambitions to write for Createquity every day, as I once did, I wouldn’t mind at all continuing Around the Horn the way it is. But for right now, I just don’t think that’s going to be realistic.

So what to do? Obviously, ATH fulfills a need out there. It’s not about the aggregation, it seems; many of you wrote eloquently that you enjoy my commentary and editorial selections, and wouldn’t want it to become just another link list or Twitter feed. So what I’m going to try to do is give you what you want in a way that works better for me. I’m not sure yet exactly what that way is going to be, as I think it’s going to take some trial and error. But I’m thinking I will probably experiment with several of these strategies and see what works:

• I’m going to liberate Around the Horn from its weekly rotation. I think at least half of my stress around ATH is simply the deadline, the feeling that I HAVE to keep it up no matter what. I’m going to try loosening up the schedule a bit and posting the round-ups whenever it seems appropriate and I have time. Hopefully that will help.
• I’m going to try to write more short posts reacting to items I read in the meantime. Since a number of people noted that it’s my commentary that they liked most about ATH, I will try to expand that a little and be more selective and purposeful about it. In the meantime, I will try to funnel stories and posts that I find notable but don’t have much to say about to Twitter, which is clearly built for that sort of thing, with possible re-posting to the blog.
• I’m going to experiment with crowdsourcing it — eventually. I think realistically it’s going to take a while to get enough of the right contributors on board to entrust a shared approach to ATH. If you’re interested in working on this with me, do get in touch; but for the rest of you, it’s probably going to continue to be a solo effort for the immediate future.

Anyway, look at that, it’s been another super-long post from Createquity – and this one was all meta, even! But seriously, thank you all so much for your support – it means the world to me to know that I’ve helped to make a difference in some of your lives with my writing, and I hope to continue to do so for a long time to come.

• My quick-and-dirty search found 138 nonprofit organizations in New Haven and immediate surroundings (East Haven, West Haven, North Haven, Hamden, Woodbridge, and Bethany) with arts or arguably arts-related programming. This included several that we don’t normally think of as “arts organizations” but who are nevertheless important to the arts infrastructure (such as Yale University or the United Illuminating Company Foundation).
• Of these 138 organizations, I found that just five accounted for 88.5% of the $5.6 million in private foundation arts grants recorded cumulatively by the Foundation Center to New Haven institutions in the years 2007 and 2008. (I took two years of data to lessen the risk of outliers skewing the numbers.) These five recipient organizations were the Yale Repertory Theater, the Long Wharf Theater, the New Haven Arts & Ideas Festival, the New Haven Symphony Orchestra, and Neighborhood Music School.
• Most of the private foundation money for the arts in New Haven comes from out of state. In fact, only 46% of New Haven arts grants originate locally.

I also plotted a map of the organizations as follows (thanks to the free service batchgeocode.com):

This is not high-intensity number-crunching, but it demonstrates how even a little bit of playing around with this stuff can help you see things you might not have seen before. I’m hoping to do a bit more of this kind of analysis going forward, so let me know if you have any requests.

[W]hat was missing from all of this was any discussion of the world in which these initiatives will have to be launched. And without that discussion, how can anybody know which of the many ideas presented are likely to work? Just imagine a commercial company making plans to promote a product. Wouldn’t they do market research? Wouldn’t they want to know what people think of the product, and what things about the product might (or might not) be appealing?

And yet here we have the arts — an endeavor that most people involved would think was far more important than a mere commercial marketing campaign — and all we bring to it is (forgive me) unfocused amateur enthusiasm. Organize a media campaign! Well, what’s it going to say? OK, fine, leave that to the professionals who’ll eventually run it. But if you yourself have no idea, how will you know whether the professionals will make sensible plans? (And, by the way, who’s going to pay for this campaign? It’s going to be expensive.)

Greg hits the nail on the head here, but it’s interesting to me that no one has asked an even more obvious question: did the “Got Milk?” campaign (or others like it) even work? Sure, it was witty and memorable and entered public consciousness and became parodied by everyone from Saturday Night Live to the New England Foundation for the Arts‘s Matchbook.org project, which asks on the front page, “Got Mariachi?” In a sense, as a work of art (as commercial ad campaigns go), it was very successful. But was it successful as a commercial ad campaign? Did it increase sales? Did it cause milk to be a greater, more meaningful part of people’s lives?

And the surprising answer is no! The Got Milk? campaign was introduced in October 1993. Consumption of plain (i.e., non-flavored whole, skim, and lowfat) milk in the US had been on a generally upward trend since 1987, peaking at 52.3 billion pounds in 1991. Yet during the heyday of the Got Milk? campaign in the mid-’90s, US plain milk consumption actually declined 2.3% from 52.2 billion pounds in 1992 to 51 billion in 1998, lower than in 1987! Worse, per capita plain milk consumption fell 6.7% during the same period. The Got Milk? campaign has continued running into the new millennium, and sales and consumption figures have only continued their decline, despite rising demand for flavored milk, cream, and yogurt. Now, obviously, it’s silly to conclude from this that one of the most successful ad campaigns in history is actually causing people to drink less milk. Rather, the lesson is that the societal forces and generational shifts that are causing people to drink less milk are too powerful for even the greatest ad campaign in the world to overcome.

I hope we think about this the next time we’re tempted to look to marketing or advertising as the answer to all of our problems as a field. To be sure, an ad campaign can work wonders in the right context and under the right circumstances. But advertising history is littered with high-profile failures, too. Another suggestion from the NPAC final session was “Establish a National Arts Day/Festival with free performances, open houses, and art-making opportunities.” But really, how many national what-have-you days/weeks/months are there already that we never hear about? Did you know that November is Celebrating Philanthropy Month, for example?

Do we really want to roll the dice with the limited resources we have as a field, essentially playing double or nothing? Or do we want to invest those resources more wisely, by investigating small changes that make a big difference?