I’m going to let you in on a little secret (okay, maybe it’s not such a secret): for the better part of the past decade, I’ve been fascinated with arts philanthropy. Ever since I was a low-level staffer in the development department of the American Music Center, I wanted to know why grantmakers made theRead More
Miami Beach, DC
After a brief respite this summer, I’m back on the speaking/conference circuit and looking forward to seeing some new places and new folks! In a couple of weeks, I’ll be livin’ the dream and presenting at the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference about our work with ArtsWave in Cincinnati. October 14-17 Grantmakers in the ArtsRead More
Fictional Foundation Fun, part IV
This week, I’ve been writing about the Ortiz Foundation for the Arts, a mock $800 million foundation based in New York, for which I designed a strategic plan along with four of my business school colleagues. Yesterday, I wrote about two of OFA’s programs, Building Infrastructure and Supporting Start-Ups. In this final segment, we’ll exploreRead More
Fictional Foundation Fun, part III
So, a few weeks ago while we were working on this project, I asked Adam Forest Huttler to post a question on the Fractured Atlas blog asking what types of bills artists find difficult to pay — either because of fundraising restrictions or because they’re just too expensive. My basic goal with this was toRead More
Fictional Foundation Fun, part II
So, yesterday we took a look at the $800 million Ortiz Foundation for the Arts (OFA), a hypothetical new organization focusing on promoting cultural vitality in New York City. After some discussion, we settled on a mission statement as follows: The Ortiz Foundation for the Arts (OFA) works to foster the visual, musical, theatrical, andRead More
Introducing a new $800 million arts foundation
Oh, if only if it were a real $800 million arts foundation! Instead, I refer to the Ortiz Foundation for the Arts, a project for my excellent Philanthropic Foundations class that just wrapped up last week. As anyone who’s read my Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy series knows, I’ve been interested in foundation strategy as itRead More
Thoughts on “Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy”: Lessons from my Summer Internship
As the twenty or so regular readers of this blog will note, I debuted Createquity last October with a rather brash six-episode litany of “Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy” in the realm of the arts. I say brash because, at the time, I had no experience running a philanthropic program; all I had were my outsiderRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part III – (Dis-)Economies of Scale in the Arts
Note: This is the third of a multipart series on the arts and philanthropy. I hope these ideas are of interest and welcome suggestions and feedback. To view the rest of this series, click here. When we left off last time, I was advocating for funding agencies to adopt a spirit of experimentation in theirRead More