The Office–by flickr user Rum Bucolic Ape

Income inequality, slow economic growth and wage stagnation have been hot button issues in recent years. Last month, the Obama administration did something significant about the latter, announcing an updated overtime rule that would make millions more eligible for overtime pay. Effective December 1, 2016, the new rule doubles the salary threshold—from $23,660 to $47,476 per year—under which most salaried workers are guaranteed overtime. The rule is expected to affect some 4.2 million workers, though whether it will benefit these workers (through increased wages) or possibly harm some of them (through lower base salaries and reduced benefits) remains to be seen. The implications for industry, however, are likely to be dramatic no matter what, especially for firms like publishing, fashion, media, consulting and yes, nonprofit arts organizations that have long relied on the willingness of young, ambitious employees to work long hours for little pay in exchange for a shot at the big time down the line. The shift might not be such a bad thing for the arts more generally, however. If nonprofits and businesses have less incentive to overwork low-paid employees, those employees will likely have more time for leisure activities, which could lead to a (further) boom in amateur arts participation and entrepreneurial arts ventures once this rule goes into effect.

Brazil Dumps, Then Reinstates its Cultural Ministry. Brazil has become a familiar character in the twenty-four hour news cycle in recent months, what with the impeachment trial of President Dilma Rousseff and a faltering economy, along with concerns about the zika virus in light of the upcoming Olympics (which is plagued with its own corruption and other scandals). The cultural sector had its fair share of drama this month after interim president Michel Temer, who replaced Rousseff in what many are calling a coup, announced a plan to subsume the Brazilian cultural ministry into the education ministry on May 12 as part of a broader effort to streamline the government. The plan immediately met with fierce opposition from Brazil’s cultural community. Artists staged occupations of government buildings across 11 cities and even music legends Erasmo Carlos and Caetano Veloso lent their support, giving a concert at a Rio de Janeiro protest on May 20. The pressure clearly worked; many credit artists with Temer’s reversal.

LISC Tries a New Model to Fight Gentrification. Adaptive reuse of abandoned spaces has long been a tried-and-true move in creative placemaking playbook, but concern has been growing about the gentrification effects of such policies in an era of increasing income inequality. The Local Initiatives Support Corp., a national nonprofit organization that has been investing in neighborhoods since 1982, has decided to try something different, committing $50 million to help prevent the gentrification many fear will be a byproduct of the redevelopment of Washington, DC’s 11th Street Bridge. The new park development along the Anacostia River–which has been likened to New York City’s High Line–is expected to increase adjacent property values, pricing out poorer residents who have long called the area home. LISC funding will support groups providing affordable housing, early childhood education, medical care, food support, arts education and other services near park site, in an attempt to preemptively ensure that poorer residents are able to remain in their communities. The park is slated to open in mid-2019, but LISC says it is committed to the project and to the price tag no matter the timeline.

Big Shifts in British Public Broadcasting. Last August, we reported on the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC’s) financial struggles–compounded by a trend towards internet media consumption–and noted that the government had appointed a committee to review the BBC’s Royal Charter. That charter expires at the end of 2017, and all agree the 94-year old company finds itself at a critical juncture. Much has changed in the decade since its charter was last renewed, and the BBC–which receives an outsize £5 billion in licensing fees, commercial and other income–is under close scrutiny. This month, culture secretary John Whittingdal unveiled the government’s plans for the BBC in a white paper. The main takeaways? An emphasis on greater transparency and fiscal responsibility, and a new board with government appointees (which some critics worry compromises the BBC’s journalistic independence from the government). The white paper also notes that it “welcomes the BBC’s commitment to develop and test some form of additional subscription services,” giving the corporation the green light to launch a Netflix-like paid subscription service. The uncertainty facing the BBC comes as the UK’s state-owned, commercially funded broadcaster Channel 4 held off a threat to sell off the government’s stake to the highest bidder, which was called off after outcry from channel representatives and the wider public. In many ways the BBC and Channel 4 will serve as a harbinger of other government-sponsored news organizations’ fates in the digital economy.

Kresge Pairs Health and Art & Culture Programs for Neighborhood Revitalization. Food and culture have always been closely aligned; this month, the Kresge Foundation took that relationship a few daring steps further by pairing up its Arts & Culture and Health Programs to launch Fresh, Local & Equitable: Food as a Creative Platform for Neighborhood Revitalization, or, FreshLo. This unprecedented program, which aims to strengthen economic vitality, cultural expression and health in low-income communities, will distribute nearly $2 million in grant funding in support of neighborhood-scale projects demonstrating creative, cross-sector visions of food-oriented development. The foundation seems to be onto something with the food+art thing: more than 500 organizations applied for FreshLo funding, and Kresge ultimately decided to fund six more grants than initially planned. Though the Kresge Foundation has a long history of tackling food deserts, this is the first time a national funder has intentionally integrated food, art and community to drive neighborhood revitalization at this scale.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Melanca Clark has been named president and CEO of the Hudson-Webber Foundation.
• Loren Harris has been appointed Vice President of Programs at the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
• Susan Delvalle has been named president and executive director of Creative Capital.
• Shannon Daut is the new Cultural Affairs Manager of the City of Santa Monica Community and Cultural Services Department.
• The Field Foundation of Illinois has appointed former Joyce Foundation culture director Angelique Power its new President.
• After a decade working with the Future of Music Coalition, CEO Casey Rae leaving to become SiriusXM’s director of music licensing.
• After seventeen years with The Association of Independent Music, Alison Denham is taking on a new, global role at Worldwide Independent Network.
• Artstor President James Schulman has joined the Mellon Foundation as a Senior Fellow in Residence at the Mellon Foundation.
• Acclaimed music and culture writer Sasha Frere-Jones has abruptly exited the L.A. Times after less than a year at the paper due to “ethical issues.”
• Local Initiatives Support Corporation seeks a Program Officer. Posted May 6; no closing date.
• Slover Linett Audience Research seeks a Vice President. Posted May 12; no closing date.
• Arts Consulting Group, Inc. seeks an Associate Vice President. Posted May 26; no closing date.
• Nina Simon’s Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History is hiring a Director of Development and Community Relations. No closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• Out west, a survey commissioned by the Oregon Community Foundation and the Oregon Arts Commission provides a snapshot of the state of arts education in Oregon. In Boston, the Boston Public Schools Arts Expansion released a case study on the successes of its work. And across the pond, a UK study reveals deep concerns about the future of arts education among those in the theater industry.
• A report from Lifetime Arts looks at arts education for the aging in America’s libraries.
• Diversity continues to dominate conversation the field. The Americans for Arts and National Endowment for the Arts (following up on the former’s cultural equity statement) released the results of their 2015 Local Arts Agency Census, revealing that taken a whole, the field could do a much better job of diversifying board and staffs. The website CNTRST calculated the total percentage of ‘whiteness’ in mainstream films, and found that white men take up twice as much space on the silver screen than they do in real life. A study commissioned by the professional association Directors UK shows that women make up just 13.6% of film directors in the UK; a percentage that has barely changed in the past decade. In more encouraging news, a study released by Asian American Performers Action Coalition show gains for minority actors in New York City: in the 2014-15 season, 30% of theater roles in NYC went to black, Latino and Asian-Americans. Related, Richard Florida shared the results of his research on the racial divide within the already-advantaged creative class.
• A new evaluation assesses the successes and impact of the New York Community Trust’s Edward and Sally Van Lier Fellowship over 25 years.
• Two interesting papers from Bridgespan this month. The first finds that funders’ reluctance to fully fund overhead costs prevents many nonprofits from maximizing their impact. The second argues that billion-dollar philanthropic investments in key areas could improve social mobility and revive “the American dream” for low-income families.
• A report on the first three years of the Taking Part survey’s longitudinal study (which has been conducting annual interviews about arts engagement with a group of 4,600 adults in England) reveals statistics on who attends the arts most often and why people stop engaging.
• A study commissioned by Intermedia Arts assesses the demand and availability of arts-based community development training and investigate how the benefits of Intermedia Arts’ Creative Community Leadership Institute could be made accessible for a broader range of communities.
• A report from the February 2016 Salzburg Global Seminar looks the role of the arts in advancing environmental sustainability.
• A study published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences suggests that creative individuals share more personality traits with psychopaths than their less creative peers do.
• A report from the UK calls for stricter rules for primary ticket selling sites, rather than harsher punishments for secondary sites. And it turns out, according to a survey of 18,000 people in 15 countries, that Shakespeare is far more popular in Brazil, India, China, Mexico and Turkey than he is in the UK.

A group of onlookers tours the plant in a detail of Diego Rivera’s Detroit Industry, the centerpiece of the Detroit Institute of Arts. The mural was completed during the city’s heyday as auto capital of the world. Photo credit: grifray

Since last May, the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) has been at the center of bankruptcy negotiations between the beleaguered City of Detroit and a myriad of creditors and pensioners to whom a staggering $18 billion is owed. When Kevyn Orr, Detroit’s state-appointed emergency manager, included the museum’s art collection among city assets available for possible liquidation, the suggestion that the artwork might be sold to satisfy creditors sent shudders through the art community. Could a world-class art museum, part of America’s cultural foundation, be raided, its cultural treasures sold off to pay the debts of its city? And what would that mean for other art institutions around the country?

The story has captured the attention of the powerful and common alike, with many weighing in on the whether the collection should or would be sold. But even before Emergency Manager Orr brought in Christie’s auction house in August to evaluate the art, a group of influential and deep-pocketed DIA supporters had begun to assemble. Federal bankruptcy mediator U.S. Chief District Judge Gerald Rosen gathered a group of national and local charitable foundations in November to brainstorm and discuss “out of the box” ways to prevent the DIA from being gutted, while still protecting city pensions. The result of Judge Rosen’s roundtable has been nothing short of extraordinary and could have long-term implications for the role of charitable foundations in the future.

Last month, a group of ten foundations with close ties to the city joined ranks to develop an unprecedented rescue plan. Led largely by the Ford Foundation, the consortium has pledged to give $370 million to the city pensioners’ fund under the condition that ownership of the DIA’s collection is transferred to a separate nonprofit organization, thus protecting it from the city’s creditors. With the foundations’ commitment in place, the State of Michigan has also stepped in with its own pledge of $350 million, pending approval by the Legislature. Governor Rick Snyder described the offer as a “settlement” rather than a city bailout and it comes with another caveat: pensioners must drop all lawsuits against the city.

The amount of money flowing in to save the DIA, largely from sources outside of Detroit, is breathtaking in its grandeur. The Ford Foundation’s pledge of $125 million is more than a quarter of its entire grantmaking budget in fiscal year 2012. In second and third place are the Kresge Foundation with $100 million (a whopping 70% of its 2012 giving) and the Kellogg Foundation at $40 million. These developments make for quite a story and may provide comfort to those who feel the 139-year old art museum should be left intact. And yet this sudden infusion of cash raises a number of important questions for the arts field and for the institution of private philanthropy alike.

For example, is the foundations’ commitment to the DIA a distraction from other, possibly better giving opportunities, whether in Detroit or elsewhere? Mariam Noland, president of the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan (CFSEM), reported receiving concerned calls from cultural organizations worried their usual grant funds would be diminished as a result of the foundation’s pledge. However, CFSEM and the other foundations claim they are working to ensure this does not happen, either by stretching their contribution payments out over 10-20 years or tapping into their own endowments – another questionable move. Several of the foundation leaders involved – Noland, the Kresge Foundation’s Rip Rapson, the Knight Foundation’s Alberto Ibargüen, and the Ford Foundation’s Darren Walker – wrote an op-ed for the Chronicle of Philanthropy defending their decision, writing, ”our support…aims to accomplish something even larger: helping a great city get back on its feet quickly and on course toward a better future.”

So just how far will the coalition go to protect the DIA from any long-term financial burden Orr tries to impose on it? Historically, charitable foundations like to avoid quick-fix approaches when it comes to supporting public institutions, favoring innovative policy reforms that promote social change instead. However, here, they are bargaining with Detroit’s pensioners, taking a risk, and potentially opening themselves up to a future of wheel-and-deal funding schemes. Indeed, some in the grantmaking world are already voicing concerns about the precedence of conditional giving being set and whether it “amounts to philanthropic coercion rather than generosity.”

Between the foundations and the state, the total amount put forward now surpasses the $500 million contribution requirement Emergency Manager Orr had originally placed on the DIA. And the museum just recently agreed to raise an additional $100 million itself over the next 20 years, bringing the grand total to $820 million – all of which would be disbursed to the pensioners’ fund. If all parties accept this amount and Orr’s plan, then the City of Detroit would immediately transfer ownership of the entire art collection and building to the DIA, the private non-profit that has actively managed it for decades, thereby bringing a swift end to an at times harrowing situation.

But how much danger was the DIA ever in, really? All of the drama of the past year notwithstanding, the DIA hasn’t had any ultimatums placed upon its collection by Judge Steven W. Rhodes, who is presiding over Detroit’s case in federal bankruptcy court. In December, Christie’s auction house completed its appraisal of roughly 2,800 artworks – comprised solely of pieces purchased with city funds so as to avoid any legal action by donors and their heirs. Christie’s estimated the art to be worth between $452-866 million, with a couple of standout pieces valued at nearly $150 million apiece. The assessment was not music to the ears of creditors, who—their hopes no doubt bolstered by multi-billion dollar speculations made in the media early on—accused the city and auction house of purposefully undervaluing the artwork. The consortium of European banks, bond insurers, Detroit retirees, and labor unions requested that an independent committee conduct a separate review of the museum’s full collection – approximately 66,000 pieces, 95% of which were donated or purchased with private funds. Judge Rhodes has since refused the creditors’ request, ruling that he doesn’t have the authority to permit an independent evaluation of the DIA’s entire holdings.

Rhodes has furthermore said he is seriously considering the formal opinion issued by Attorney General Schuette back in June, which declared that the DIA’s collection, though technically owned by the city, is held in a “public trust” and therefore off limits to creditors. If he does agree that the collection is held in a public trust, it would mean the artwork is legally off the negotiation table.

A couple poses in front of the south wall of Detroit Industry. To the left, images of fertility preside over the larger frescos depicting the auto assembly line. Photo credit: Lars K. Christensen

In the final days of 2013, I took a quick trip to Detroit to visit the museum in question, a reconnaissance mission to experience the day-to-day reality of the institution under threat. It was heartening to see that the DIA was absolutely packed with people on the Friday after Christmas. The clerk at the ticket desk informed me that there would be a live concert that evening in Rivera Court, the large atrium home to Diego Rivera’s masterful work Detroit Industry. Executed from 1932-33, the mural was gifted to the DIA by Edsel B. Ford himself. Unanticipated by Ford, however, was the artwork’s socialist overtones, which caused quite a stir at the time it was created. Sited right at the core of the sprawling museum, the mural depicts the auto industry and its workers as the “indigenous culture of Detroit,” using the literal representation of manufacturing to achieve metaphors of power and growth. From floor to ceiling, assembly line workers dominate the scene in numbers and fortitude, while images of fertility—fruits, grain, mothers, and infants—preside overhead. Standing there dwarfed and surrounded by its twenty-seven boldly painted fresco panels, Detroit Industry makes palpable the heart and soul of the once-thriving metropolis whose influence has extended far beyond its city limits.

Despite the very real concerns that have arisen over the philanthropic “rescue mission” to save the DIA, private donations, both large and small, continue to come in from around the world. It seems that, through its ordeal, the DIA has unexpectedly become the public face of the city of Detroit. Its recent plight is a symbol of the gradual destruction of a cultural and economic legacy rooted in the early years of the 20th century, the so-called American century. As the city painfully negotiates the resolution of the narrative at play in Rivera’s masterpiece, the rest of us are provided with an opportunity to reflect on that legacy – not just the art collection, but how an important American city came to be. It seems that by preserving one, the hope is we save the other.

• The dreaded sequester began Friday, affecting all federal accounts including that of the National Endowment for the Arts. The NEA will lose 5% of its budget, which works out to about $7.3 million. Grants and administration will be reduced by the same percentage. The reductions only apply through March 27, however, which is the date through which the federal government is currently funded. Congress has yet to pass a budget for Fiscal Year 2013, which we’re already almost halfway through. Let’s hear it for democracy!
• John Paul Titlow predicts that 3D printing will be the next big copyright battlefield – and the lines aren’t necessarily drawn where you think. (Here’s more from Public Knowledge.)
  
• “It’s true that without exposure to the arts, it’s difficult to develop an interest in them. But it’s also true that many of the people who had, say, music education back in the 1960s and 1970s are the same people who are not going to orchestra concerts today. Some arts organizations will have to confront the fact that their audiences are declining because of an irrevocable shift in the culture, rather than simply a lack of education.” Anne Midgette explores the recent resurgence of arts education in our nation’s schools. Here is more.

MUSICAL CHAIRS

• The Kresge Foundation has named Ariel Simon to the new position of chief strategy officer and deputy to the president. Simon formerly worked as a senior consultant in McKinsey’s social sector practice.

ALL ABOUT THE BENJAMINS

• Poncho, a Seattle public charity that raised money for the arts through galas and other special events, is closing its doors and donating its remaining assets to the Seattle Foundation.
  
• Interesting: in recent years, needy communities in the United States are receiving millions of dollars in aid from an unlikely source – the United Arab Emirates.

IN THE FIELD

• Should museums be looking outside the traditional pipeline for their management talent?
  
• Congratulations to Inocente, the first Kickstarter-funded movie to win an Oscar (for Best Documentary Short).
• Howard Sherman draws very appropriate attention to the lack of consistency in labeling the arts and culture in newspaper listings.
• The Met Opera, long criticized for astronomical ticket prices, is actually lowering them for next year – and not as an “accessibility” measure. Attendance is down, and leadership wonders if the opera’s much-ballyhooed cinema simulcasts are partly to blame.

BIG IDEAS

• I think local programming is one of the more underexplored areas of community engagement for establishment arts institutions – especially outside of major artist meccas like New York and LA. Oregon Arts Watch’s Brett Campbell considers.
• William Deresiewicz reconsiders the is-food-art debate – he had originally come out strongly in the “no” camp, and got, uh, creamed for it.

CONFERENCES AND TALKS

• The NEA’s Jen Hughes reports on a new white paper and symposium covering the emerging field of design for social impact.
• Keith Sawyer shares notes from a small conference on copyright and patent reform to which he was invited to contribute perspectives on creativity.

RESEARCH CORNER

• The Wall Street Journal performs an analysis of US Department of Education data, finds that “median debt loads at schools specializing in art, music and design average $21,576.” This compares to $19,445 for liberal arts colleges and $18,100 for research universities.
• Americans for the Arts is putting out a new ebook series on arts education.
• The IRS will more frequently publish data on which nonprofits have lost tax-exempt status.
• Now that everyone’s talking about walkability, more and more competitors to Walk Score are popping up. We already heard about Walk Appeal, a mostly theoretical innovation by urbanist Steve Mouzon. Now comes Walkonomics, created by Adam Davies, which uses an eight-factor index to judge walkability. The Atlantic Cities’s Sarah Goodyear has a review.
• Keith Sawyer reviews Bruce Nussbaum’s new book, Creative Intelligence.
• Can’t wait for this Barry’s Blogathon on arts research and data featuring some of the leading establishment names in the field.
• Nesta’s Hasan Bakshi explains the UK creative industry classification scheme and a fascinating critique that his organizations developed of the existing classifications. This is a dense read as blog posts go, but Sunil Iyengar helpfully puts it into simpler terms. The whole thing is essential if you do any kind of creative economy or creative industry work, but here are a couple of key quotes:
  

  “The annual DCMS Creative Industries Economic Estimates have shown that Gross Value Added (GVA) in [advertising, architecture, art and antiques, computer games, crafts, design, designer fashion, film, music, performing arts, publishing, software, and television and radio] has in recent years grown at twice the rate of other sectors, helping to raise their profile with policymakers.”

  After conducting sensitivity analyses and other validity checks, Nesta not only can locate those industries which employ creative workers at disproportionately high rates, it can also show how most creative workers are employed in non-creative industries.

  Importantly, our analysis also shows that there are serious misallocations in the DCMS classifications; this includes a definite group of industries, which DCMS does not currently treat as creative, but which have exceptionally high creative intensities, including ‘Computer programming activities’ (62.01) and ‘Computer consultancy activities’ (62.02), which between them account for over 400,000 people.

• Narric Rome tells us about where the arts fall in the federal government’s new tourism strategy.
• After threatening to cap the tax deduction available to donors as a means of raising revenue, the British government has abandoned the plan.

• Barely two years after changing things up last time, the Kresge Foundation has announced a further evolution of its arts grantmaking. Now, all of its considerable funding will be concentrated under the umbrella of “creative placemaking.”
• Kickstarter may be the big name when it comes to crowdfunding in the arts, but its $99 million in pledges last year is only a small fraction of the $1.5 billion crowdfunding platforms raised across all causes worldwide in 2011. And this interesting article argues that crowdfunding (the investing kind, not the donating kind) could create unaccustomed competition for venture capitalists. One observer notes that if every American set aside an average of 1% of their liquid net worth to invest in new ventures, the available capital for entrepreneurs would jump by a factor of 10.
• McKinsey & Co. has published a white paper on social impact bonds, which are currently being piloted in the United Kingdom.
• Is investing in art an asset class? Not yet, according to Felix Salmon, who picks apart a new “index” of artists’ market value put together by Artnet. It seems to me that the art market is not so different from the real estate market, and that investing in artists is rather like investing in a particular home builder. To make art a real asset class, someone would need to build the equivalent of real estate investment trusts (REITs) that buy up particular artworks and then sell shares in the collection. It would be an interesting experiment, no doubt.
• The Council on Foundations conference, an event that’s only open to grantmaking institutions, is becoming more transparent, with resources from the event becoming available online. One such resource is this report from Katherine Miller.
• The Cultural Data Project and Nonprofit Finance Fund are teaming up to offer a new Financial Health Analysis tool to arts nonprofits. When you submit your financials to CDP through the normal process, you’ll be presented with a report detailing your organization’s financial strengths and weaknesses. Congrats to Kim Cook and the other folks at NFF and CDP for what looks to be a useful resource.

• Next American City’s Diana Lind reports from the CEOs for Cities conference, hosted by the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati.
  

  It’s a nice unfiltered window into how the urban planning community views/engages with the arts: [T]here was…no one at all who left the reception on the lobby floor to explore the upper galleries (which were free to the public, by the way). It was just me and three security guards whose boredom was palpable….I went back downstairs where people drank beer and talked about how to make a better city. Somehow that disconnect, right there in the space, seemed like a perfect metaphor. Hundreds of people came to a contemporary art museum to talk about engaging the city’s art scene but missed all the art.

• FSG (the originators of the “Collective Impact” concept) explains how collective impact is like a symphony orchestra:
  

  “It is Sunday afternoon and the musicians have all convened to play a symphony. Indeed, they’ve even agreed to play a Beethoven symphony. But now imagine the following scenario: they have not actually agreed to which Beethoven symphony. None of them have any sheet music. And there is no conductor! This is the setting of isolated impact: wonderful individual efforts that don’t actually add up to a cohesive whole. A lot of noise, but no symphony…”

• The NEA has announced its first-ever round of research grants.
• Don’t miss this sponsored supplement to the summer 2012 issue of the Stanford Social Innovation Review, featuring reflections on evaluation and strategic philanthropy from five major foundations. And Grantmakers for Effective Organizations has just published a manual called “Four Essentials for Evaluation,” one of the readers for which was Jerome Vielman of Houston Arts Alliance.
• Surprise, surprise: self-publishing is a winner-take-all market too: “a survey of 1,007 self-published writers…found that while a small percentage of authors were bringing in sums of $100,000-plus in 2011, average earnings were just $10,000 a year. This amount, however, is significantly skewed by the top earners, with less than 10% of self-publishing authors earning about 75% of the reported revenue and half of writers earning less than $500.”
• We’ve had a strong sense for a while that walkable neighborhoods are more valuable, but just how much more valuable? A new study from the Brookings Institution looking at the DC area puts the price premium at up to $1200 per month. This will be something important to take into consideration when thinking about research studying the effects of creative placemaking: how can we disentangle the contribution of arts amenities when those amenities tend to cluster in areas with lots of other things that people find valuable as well?
• Richard Florida offers a defense of his economic theories against a critique of him on the Forbes website, which serves double-duty as his latest thinking on the composition of creative cities. At the end, he advocates for a both/and approach, encompassing investments in amenities with business-friendly practices. I’m not sure I buy that that’s “been [his] message all along,” but it does make sense – after all, while the “coolness” of a city’s reputation certainly factors in to many people’s relocation decisions, jobs do too.
• What would it mean to quantify the potential value-add to society of a third grade teacher?

The Kresge Foundation’s Arts and Culture program has an immediate opening for a program officer to assist in the design and implementation of the program’s national efforts to elevate the effective use of arts and culture in transforming and revitalizing communities. The program will focus on the themes of strengthening creative place-making, promoting arts as a vehicle of civic identity and engagement, and advancing sound capitalization principles within the arts and culture field. In addition to making grants, convening, commissioning and disseminating research, and participating in national networks, the program will also pursue opportunities to apply our social investment practice to these themes.

The Program Officer will join Kresge at an exciting time, becoming a member of a team with a new program strategy. Although the program’s broad themes and funding priorities are in place, there is considerable room for a talented individual to bring his or her informed strategic perspective to the program by developing new areas of emphasis, expanding our use of non-grant, social investment activities, deepening Kresge’s expertise within a particular niche, or otherwise strengthening the work.

The program aspires to position the Kresge Foundation as a recognized leader within arts and culture philanthropy by partnering effectively with other foundations and with the public, private, and nonprofit sectors, and by deploying our capital in innovative ways for the benefit of nonprofit organizations and the people they serve. We seek to hire an individual who will help our Arts & Culture team achieve that vision.

Deadline: November 7, 2011.

Associate Director of Program Strategies, Living Cities

The Program Strategies Cluster is responsible for the development and implementation of Living Cities’ substantive work. This work falls primarily into two categories: Research & Development, focused on advancing nationally significant innovation in areas including Education, Green Economy, Income & Assets, and Transit-Oriented Development; and The Integration Initiative, which provides $80 million in grants, below-market-rate debt, and commercial debt to five regions to help them tackle persistent barriers to opportunity for low-income residents, including education, housing, health care, transit and jobs.

Working under the leadership of the Director of Program Strategies and with an outstanding team of Program Associates and consultants, the Associate Director plays a pivotal role in driving Cluster operations while ensuring that Cluster activities are carried out in a manner consistent with Living Cities’ mission, strategic framework and organizational values.

No deadline provided.

Assistant Manager, Capacity Building, DeVos Institute of Arts Management at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts

The Assistant Manager, Capacity Building, will support all capacity building programs within the DeVos Institute of Arts Management. The Institute is dedicated to train, support, and empower arts managers locally, nationally, and internationally. This is a full-time position reporting to the Manager of the DeVos Institute. This position will also interact with the Director of the Institute, the Office of the President, and Kennedy Center senior staff.

Coordinate all aspects of producing capacity building seminars (logistics, development of internal and external materials, communication with participants and instructors) for the following programs (and future programs): Capacity Building Detroit; Capacity Building Grand Rapids; Capacity Building Miami; Capacity Building Orlando; Capacity Building Midwest; Capacity Building D.C. (Local); Capacity Building NYC; Capacity Building Culturally Specific; Upper Manhattan Empowerment Zone (UMEZ); Ford Foundation Next Generation Arts Spaces I & II.

No deadline provided.