The hall is filled for the concert of the Netherlands, by flickr user Alessandro Grussu

One of Createquity’s primary areas of investigation centers on disparities of access to the benefits of the arts: we believe that large numbers of people face barriers to participating in the arts in the ways they may want to. Not only are those people unfairly missing out on opportunities for a higher quality of life, but the quality and diversity of the cultural products and experiences available to the rest of us – and to our descendants – suffer as well.

Why We Care

In our view, a healthy arts ecosystem maximizes the arts’ capacity to improve the lives of human beings in concrete and meaningful ways. While the evidence base for the benefits of the arts is continually developing and evolving, we feel that participation in the arts offers value to a large majority of human beings, and that arts participation (especially more active forms of participation such as creation or performance) can be deeply consequential, even life-changing. While we do not assume that everyone will or needs to benefit from having the arts in their lives, we do believe that the only way to determine who can gain the most is through widespread and varied exposure to the arts. Thus our model of a healthy arts ecosystem envisions a basic level of access to the arts for everyone.

Furthermore, we believe that opportunities requiring an investment on the part of society – like preparation toward being a professional artist – should be distributed as fairly as possible, by prioritizing those who would create the most value for others through their participation. Thus, when we speak of “access,” we do not just mean opportunities to experience art as an audience member; we also include access to artistic training and related resources.

Below we outline what arts research has shown us about the broad frame of arts participation, encompassing who participates, their motivations and barriers – and what we can do to identify disparities of access and close the gaps.

What We Know

… about the role of economic disadvantage in mediating access to the arts:

Research data paints a consistent portrait of lower participation by people with lower incomes and less education (low-SES) in a wide range of artistic activities – including not just attending classical music concerts and plays but also less “elitist” forms of engagement like going to the movies or dancing socially. (Indeed, surveys show that education is the strongest factor in determining arts engagement rates – more so than income, race/ethnicity, geography, or other demographic variables.) This is despite the fact that low-SES adults, on average, have more free time at their disposal. While cost is a sometimes a barrier to participation, it isn’t the only one: if we could somehow make it so that low-SES adults were no more likely to decide not to attend an arts event because of cost than their more affluent peers, it would likely not greatly change the socioeconomic composition of audiences.

With that in mind, free admission is not a silver bullet to reducing barriers to participation and increasing access. In the museum world, available research suggests free admission doesn’t do much to engage underserved audiences, and communication strategies play a more crucial role than price itself driving attendance patterns.

What about active arts participation (i.e., performing or making art as opposed to passive audience engagement as a spectator)? Research shows that active arts participation is also strongly correlated with education: in other words, while less-educated adults are more likely to sing to themselves or dance with friends than see the opera, the same is true of people with college degrees and well-paying jobs. The evidence for a relationship with income is less clear – data we’ve uncovered from United States indicates that so-called “informal” arts activities do not see proportionally more participation from low-income adults, but research from the UK shows lower-income adults actually engage more when you isolate art-making.

A major contrast to this dynamic is television. The for-profit commercial TV industry is far more effective than subsidized nonprofit arts organizations at engaging economically vulnerable members of our society. Not only do low-SES adults watch more TV, low-SES adults who don’t attend arts events watch even more TV than low-SES adults who do.

… about motivations and barriers to arts participation:

Motivations to participate in the arts vary greatly between different people for different types of cultural experiences. In one survey, more than half of attendees of performances such as music concerts say they went to see a specific artist; less than a tenth of attendees of art exhibits said the same, instead citing a desire to learn something new.

For “interested non-attendees” at arts events, barriers for participation include time, cost, transportation, and social support. Nearly half blamed a lack of time as a reason, almost 40% cited cost, 37% indicated difficulty in getting to the venue, and 22% didn’t have anyone to go with.

Despite a strong interest in arts participation, many retirees, empty nesters and older adults in poor health are disproportionately missing out. Among the chief factors keeping them home: transportation issues (difficulties in getting access to the venue) and social isolation (not having someone to go with). Meanwhile, the opportunity to socialize is paramount among motivators for participation among seniors. These findings are of particular concern given that there is a healthy body of evidence expounding on the benefits of arts participation for older adults.

… about how to measure engagement:

There are many ways to define arts participation, and broadening the definition can be revelatory. Providing an open-ended query about interviewees’ creative activities opened up the playing field about what could and should be considered in a study on “The Cultural Lives of Californians,” which helped to reflect a much broader range of arts participation than even the national Survey of Public Participation in the Arts.

Different results between these similar surveys might be explained by a range of other factors, including data collection methodology and sampling. The SPPA was part of a larger survey led by the U.S. Census Bureau – the Current Population Survey (CPS) – and respondents agreed to participate without knowing they would be asked about their arts engagement habits. By contrast, “The Cultural Lives of Californians” synthesizes lessons from a statewide telephone survey that transparently communicated its interest in people’s cultural lives, so people who engage more in cultural activity may have been more likely to respond.

What We Don’t Know

Using the broadest definitions, we can confidently say that most people do participate in arts and culture – it’s just that not everybody participates in the range of activities that intersect with the work of nonprofit arts organizations. Many people get their primary cultural fix from things like listening to the music soundtracks of popular TV shows or attending their child’s band rehearsal – activities that do not involve the nonprofit sector at all. The big unanswered question: would nonprofit arts organizations offer a better or more varied type of experience for the people who aren’t currently being reached by them? Does watching a popular television program like Empire foster the same benefit to those audience members that attending a live stage play does? And if it does, what is the policy justification for subsidizing the cost of providing the latter, but not the former?

Our research has revealed several other “known unknowns,” including:

• Are arts organizations that are relatively free of commercial considerations – i.e., having to constantly fundraise, trying to sell tickets, aiming for a blockbuster – able to take more artistic risks? Do they create and offer a greater variety of programs that provide more value for more people?
• What strategies have been most effective in attracting “interested non-attendees,” and why? Are any of these scalable solutions that could ultimately serve a greater proportion of the population?
• What is the real value of infrastructure – i.e., funding, formal organizations, etc. – in contexts and locations that have historically flourished without it? What strategies are most appropriate to support arts participation in settings that are infrastructure-poor, but culturally rich? Who is best positioned to carry out those strategies?

What You Can Do With This Information

Questions to consider and actions to contemplate:

For arts administrators and artists

• How can you connect to leisure activities that people already engage in, particularly near-universal ones like watching television? Although you might view the couch as competition, it is also a potential connection point.
• How can you ramp up the social component of the experience, either through communications and marketing, or through adjusting programming or setting?
• What are ways you might address barriers such as transportation for audience segments that may not have easy access to their own?
• If your goal is to make your work more relevant and accessible to a socioeconomically diverse audience, consider that a blanket free admission policy may not yield the results you’re looking for.

For funders

• How might you support an ecosystem that recognizes a broader range of activities in its definition of arts and cultural participation? Are you unintentionally privileging certain modes, venues, genres, and cultural traditions in your current programming?
• Commission research to promote greater understanding of the benefits to audiences of different types of arts participation (particularly broken down by sectoral context – i.e., for-profit vs. nonprofit), and the distribution of those benefits across different populations and places.
• Be wary of supporting audience engagement programs that rely on free or reduced prices as the primary strategy for expanding access.

For researchers

• Ask questions about arts participation broadly, avoiding the term “arts” if possible, and encourage open-ended responses to get the fullest picture. “The Cultural Lives of Californians” shows how being expansive in defining arts activities, even letting the respondent lead the conversation, allows for a richer and more nuanced picture of participation.
• Engage in research about the benefits of different kinds of arts participation, especially as it relates to nonprofit arts organizations as providers.

Resource List

Why Don’t They Come (2015)
It’s not just the price of admission that’s keeping poor and less-educated adults away from arts events.
This article explores arts participation rates of people with lower incomes and less education; motivations and barriers among participants; the realities of television engagement; and where we can go from here.

One Size Fits All Does Not Fit “The Arts” (2015)
An NEA report looks at motivations for and barriers to arts attendance.
In probing the motivations of “interested non-attendees” – people who expressed participatory interest in arts events but did not follow through – this report reveals barriers including cost, convenience, and time; it also reveals cultural patterns across artistic disciplines.

Learning from “The Cultural Lives of Californians” (2015)
A survey of Golden State residents reveals lessons in arts participation and how we measure it.
With its broad scope in defining arts activities and use of open-ended prompts, this survey shows the range of ways Californians engage with culture and the significant effect of age on art-making (as distinct from attendance of arts events).

Taking Art Into Their Own Hands (2016)
Audiences who won’t visit your museum may be enthusiastic amateur artists in their spare time.
This article indicates that arts participation is strongly correlated with education, but not with social class or social status – and active participation in art-making is actually inversely associated with income.

Capsule Review: Taking Charge at Museums (2017)
A research study on the effects of charging or not charging for admission on attendance, visitor experience, and funding among UK museums.
This study explores the differences between museums that charge and those that don’t, and emphasizes the importance of effectively communicating changes in charging policies.

Arts Policy Library: Cultural Engagement in California’s Inland Regions (2012)
A survey of rural and suburban populations exposes participation in a broad range of cultural activities.
Among other things, this study shows that while the home is a hugely important setting for arts engagement, funders and nonprofits have virtually ignored it as an arts space.

Arts Policy Library: 2008 Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (2012)
A summary, history, and analysis of the influential NEA survey.
This article traces how the SPPA survey tracked various kinds of arts participation for both audience members and creators.

Arts Policy Library: Gifts of the Muse (2009)
A close look at the implications of a far-ranging report on the benefits of the arts.
Gifts of the Muse laid out one of the first frameworks for understanding the effects of arts participation, as well as the evidence supporting that theory.

The Myth of the Transformative Arts Experience (2010)
If we are searching for a life-transforming experience at an arts event, we may have come to the wrong place.
This essay explores the idea that we often place overly high expectations on the effects of the average encounter with art.

Negro Ensemble Company National Tour, 1968, by Philip Mallory Jones

In Createquity’s vision of a healthy arts ecosystem, each human being today and in the future has an opportunity to participate in the arts at a level suited to that person’s interest and skill. Accordingly, it’s important for us to understand the ways in which the current arts ecosystem falls short of this ideal, in particular by failing to include everyone equally or give everyone a fair shot at the opportunities they deserve.

Why We Care

In the United States, a long history of cultural equity activism has drawn attention to ways in which the essential infrastructure of the arts sector – in particular, the nonprofit arts funding system – was originally shaped by and for wealthy, white patrons. The lingering effects of this history are evident today in the disproportionate incidence of organizations celebrating European art forms among the largest-budget institutions in most metropolitan areas.

Createquity’s informed hypothesis is that wealthy donors, who are disproportionately white, continue to influence the art that organizations produce/present, prompting those organizations to cater to donors’ personal preferences and tastes rather than those of the broader community. These patrons also influence the decisions of numerous public and private funders, resulting in ongoing disproportionate subsidies to large institutions founded by people of European descent. The cascading effects of this imbalance are many, potentially decreasing access to meaningful arts experiences and opportunities to make living as an artist for people of color and other marginalized groups.

What We Know

In the United States, a wealth of data supports the notion that the nonprofit arts sector suffers from a lack of racial and other forms of diversity, particularly among larger-budget institutions working in European art forms. Approximately 84% of curatorial, educational, and leadership jobs at art museums are occupied by white people, while 92% of board members at orchestras are white. According to the Foundation Center’s 2015 Foundation Giving Forecast Survey, more than 92% of arts foundation presidents and 87% of arts foundation board members are white. This lack of diversity extends to top leadership in commercial arts industries as well, and acting, directing, and other opportunities in Hollywood disproportionately favor white men.

Meanwhile, giving to nonprofit arts organizations appears to be highly stratified, with just 2% of arts organizations in the United States receiving more than half of total contributed income. In addition, there are clear signs that current funding patterns disfavor people of color, rural communities, and low-income neighborhoods.

From “Not Just Money” by Helicon Collaborative

Knowledge of this nature can establish the existence of a problem, but in order to use research and evidence to help our sector move forward, we must have a clear, and shared, understanding of what cultural equity success looks like. And therein lies the rub: the further we delved into the literature around cultural equity, and the more we consulted experts and connected with some of the activists who precede us, the more we came to realize that shared understanding simply doesn’t exist.

That there are different visions for cultural equity is clear. Where exactly the lines are drawn, however, is somewhat less so. There is an inherent difficulty in examining positions forged through dialogue via documents authored by a few, and any attempt to develop a taxonomy will have its flaws. But in our own conversations, we found it helpful to divide the visions for success we were reading and hearing from advocates into four archetypes: Diversity, Prosperity, Redistribution, and Self-Determination.

• Diversity: The one thing that everyone in the cultural equity conversation seems to agree on is that so-called “mainstream” institutions are far too homogeneous. The “Diversity” vision for cultural equity seeks to rectify this, calling for these institutions to become more reflective of the communities they serve. Conversations about diversity have tended to focus first on audiences, then on programming, and finally on leadership.
• Prosperity: The Prosperity vision takes Diversity’s belief in the power of organizational scale and applies it to institutions started and led by artists of color. These institutions follow the standard model of nonprofit growth, with an eye toward long-term sustainability. An underlying assumption of Prosperity is that large, established institutions of color will last longer, and thus provide more benefit to society over many generations.
• Redistribution: Redistribution favors a larger pool of recipients for contributed income, focusing on the full ecosystem of individuals and institutions that comprise a community; by contrast, the Diversity and Prosperity both embrace an institution-centric frame and the standard market dynamics of the nonprofit arts sector, in which a small number of high-profile institutions dominate.
• Self-Determination: The Self-Determination theory of cultural equity is the most radical departure from the status quo. It calls for full participation in and expression of cultural life for marginalized communities through models that are organic to those communities, and that look beyond established nonprofit arts funding and advocacy tactics.

What We Don’t Know

The existing research leaves several key questions unexplored, the answers to which would help the field direct future efforts to advance cultural equity more strategically.

• How does the level of exposure to and/or interest in arts careers and arts administration jobs differ across race and other demographics (e.g. income, education)?
• What are the ingredients of a cultural experience that people find valuable? Are those ingredients consistent across demographics? Are the demographics of the staff (artistic, programming, and administrative) and board at arts and cultural organizations predictive of a) the demographics of their participants and b) the quality of experience that participants have?
• What effect does the scale of an arts organization (or an organization with arts programming) have on its ability to create specific benefits for artists, audiences, and communities of color? How do networks of larger and smaller organizations perform relative to each other in facilitating these benefits? Does the influence of wealthy donors, funders, and customers tend to promote or harm an organization’s ability to deliver these benefits?
• Are arts activities designed to combat racism and other forms of oppression effective in that goal? How do they compare to other anti-oppression strategies, and do they make those strategies more effective when used in combination? What is the role of the arts in helping oppressed peoples cope, survive, and thrive?

What You Can Do With This Information

We hope this information can be helpful to organizations and agencies of all sizes seeking to define, measure, and achieve equity goals. Honest conversations about cultural equity are critical for all arts organizations, but particularly those that serve a leadership function in the sector – e.g., local arts councils, government agencies, foundations, etc. – who work with a cohort of organizations that may have varying ideas about what equity means in practice. We recommend discussing with your board/stakeholders and colleagues your collective vision of cultural equity going forward; which archetype best fits your goals, organizational structure, and institutional identity?

The four visions of cultural equity that Createquity outlined are not mutually exclusive, nor are their advocates. Yet in practice, the tensions between these ideas can be a source of great confusion if they are not called out explicitly. We recommend consideration of the following questions:

What is the Value (and Cost) of Integration?
The Diversity vision is strongly centered on the idea of people coming together to understand and celebrate their differences. Yet for some activists, this expectation to share and share alike ignores oppressed groups’ right to meaningful control of resources, traditions, and spaces that they can call their own.

How Central are Institutions?
Diversity and Prosperity see institutions as vital infrastructure with enormous potential for community benefit. Nevertheless, it’s worth questioning at what point most institutions tend to prioritize their own preservation over the health of the entire arts ecosystem.

How Influential are Cultural Norms?
One of the most important American cultural norms involves using an individual rather than group lens to talk about benefits and harm. What are some other norms that often go unexamined? How do they impact the work of your institution?

What about the Money?
For funders specifically, if you want to support communities of color out of a desire for economic and/or racial justice, how can you ensure that you are transferring not just resources but meaningful control/ownership of those resources?

What is the Role of Race?
Diversity often starts from a reference point of race, but advocates for Diversity frequently encounter pressure to include measures of social difference such as age, class, and disability status. How important is racial justice to your institutional mission?

What does/can equity look like within a healthy arts ecosystem?  
Pursuing future inquiry through a wellbeing or quality-of-life lens may be an effective tactic for building bridges between visions and the ideologies they represent, by enabling the relative value of components of each vision to be understood as part of an integrated whole. How do we measure and evaluate wellbeing in the context of self-determination? Who decides what’s good for you?

Resource List

On the Cultural Specificity of Symphony Orchestras (2017)
What is the role of white-led arts institutions in a race-conscious world?
As longstanding concerns about cultural equity find voice in policy initiatives, leaders at arts organizations that celebrate European cultural heritage may have to ask whether their loyalty is more to their art form or their local community.

Making Sense of Cultural Equity (2016)
When visions of a better future diverge, how do we choose a path forward?
Cultural equity is increasingly a topic of concern for the arts ecosystem, but not everyone agrees on what it means in practice. This article examines four overlapping but distinct visions of success advanced by cultural equity advocates over the past half century, the assumptions underlying each of these visions, and the fault lines running between them.

Notes to “Making Sense of Cultural Equity” (2016)
Full bibliography and endnotes, along with a set of definitions related to common terms in the discussion of cultural equity.

Who Will Be the Next Arts Revolutionary? (2016)
The story of how the nonprofit arts sector got started offers would-be changemakers some clues.
This article looks into how the non-profit organization became the dominant model for the sector, reaching a boom during the mid-20th century.

Notes to “Who Will Be the Next Arts Revolutionary?” (2016)
Full bibliography and endnotes, especially point 5.

Who Can Afford to Be A Starving Artist? (2016)
The key to success may be risk tolerance, not talent.
This feature article examines whether there is evidence that risk dissuades individuals from economically disadvantaged backgrounds from pursuing arts careers.

What We Talk About When We Talk About Race (2013)
What can we do to create an open environment for talking honestly about race relations in all of their kaleidoscopic, maddening, shame-inducing complexity?

Fusing Arts, Culture, and Social Change (2013)
A report published by NCRP argues that arts philanthropy, as currently structured, perpetuates inequality across the arts and culture sector by disproportionately funding large institutions that focus on Western European traditions.

Createquity Podcasts 

• “Createquity Podcast Series 4: Approaching Cultural Equity” (2016)
  Different visions of cultural equity, and how pursuing those visions has played out in practice.
• “Createquity Podcast Series 1: Watch Where You’re Giving” (2016)
  Effective altruism and the arts.

Empty stage in expectation of performance, by Flickr user renewleeds

If all the world’s a stage, who can compete with Broadway? While gathering research as a doctoral student at Rutgers University in Newark, NJ, Mirae Kim interviewed numerous arts organizations about funding issues. She spotted a pattern among local nonprofit venues: “Many theaters in New Jersey mentioned their need to compete against Broadway theaters in New York City – which perfectly made sense since they are only about ten to 20 miles away from Broadway,” Kim recalls. “They mentioned they cannot compete against Broadway theaters in the traditional way because of the different financial sizes, so several of them highlighted their community basis as a way of differentiating themselves from ‘commercial’ theaters.”

Kim’s curiosity about this distinction led to an intensive research study – Characteristics of Civically Engaged Nonprofit Arts Organizations: The Results of a National Survey – which she completed over a three-year period while working as an assistant professor at the University of Missouri’s Harry S Truman School of Public Affairs. She broadened her inquiry to survey myriad nonprofit arts organizations throughout the United States, focusing on what differentiates the groups with a 501(c)(3) status from commercially driven ventures.

“It intrigued me whether the need for survival prompted nonprofits to highlight their civic engagement role – or if there were other reasons,” Kim explains. “One of the findings I didn’t expect was the role of associations and collaboratives in encouraging nonprofit arts organizations to recognize ‘civic and community engagement’ as one of the critical factors they should embody.”

A Winning Formula

Another unexpected outcome for Kim: her study won the inaugural Createquity Arts Research Prize, entitling her to a $500 cash award and a platform for sharing her work with a wider audience. In our review of more than 500 arts research studies for the Research Prize, Kim’s publication rose to the top for several reasons: a high-level methodological design, the use of previously validated survey instruments, a widely representative sample, and a topic with resonance in the arts community. This work exemplifies Createquity’s interest in encouraging arts institutions to prioritize community needs ahead of their own prosperity.

First published in 2016 in the Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, Kim’s article includes and draws on a wide-ranging literature review. The study relies on a varied and robust combination of instruments and data sources including:

• structured interviews with 21 nonprofit arts organization directors
• a survey of 900+ arts organizations, with questions based on the qualitative interview results
• financial data from the National Center for Charitable Statistics to uncover income-source patterns

The survey was used to place arts organizations on a matrix measuring “civic roles” and “market roles,” based on a validated index of organizational behaviors developed by other researchers. Kim used the above methods to test hypotheses about the relationships nonprofit arts organizations have with other types of community organizations, their peer organizations’ emphasis on civic duties, the level of bureaucracy in their governance, and their reliance on program fees for revenue.

Key Findings

Kim uncovers several notable ways in which civically engaged arts organizations differ from more market-driven arts organizations, including:

• they maintain stronger networks with other community organizations such as schools, senior centers, etc.
• they consider civic engagement a key force driving the mission
• they’re consciously aware of their nonprofit status

The study finds that charging and receiving a higher share of program revenue negatively correlates with civic engagement. Indeed, revenue sourcing is one of the inquiry’s driving concerns. Noting that arts nonprofits often rely on a mix of contributions and selling tickets, Kim poses a central question that arts nonprofits confront: “How can they maintain marketable programs and share responsibility for the wellbeing of their community without compromising either?”

Many nonprofits surveyed reported high levels of involvement in both market roles and civic roles, so Kim conducted additional analysis taking market roles into account. She finds a greater correlation between network diversity (the number and variety of other organizations worked with in the past year) and civic engagement, when an organization performs both roles. Interviews with directors reveal that work with outside community groups and organizations helps arts nonprofits implement civically relevant programming and reach new audiences within their markets.

Perhaps surprisingly, “Characteristics” does not find a significant correlation between an arts organization’s reliance on government funding and its level of civic engagement. Kim points out in her literature review that several studies hypothesize a negative relationship between the two, while others argue for a positive correlation – and that empirical results are mixed. (At any rate, as Createquity has noted, the vast majority of arts organizations’ budgets comes from the private sector rather than government funding.)

Kim also hypothesized that a rigid and bureaucratic governance structure would be negatively associated with civic engagement. In fact, however, the survey responses indicate the opposite relationship. Because this finding conflicts with some of her interview data, Kim recommends more research in this area before a conclusion is reached, noting that this study does not establish a causal relationship between these factors.

Room for Growth

Kim notes that these findings cannot tell us definitively whether collaborating with other organizations causes nonprofits to be more civically engaged, or if civically engaged organizations are more likely to seek out collaboration. It also does not shed light on how effective the efforts of civically minded nonprofits are in achieving outcomes. However, the article does make a strong argument that partnering with other types of organizations will strengthen ties with communities and potential audiences.

The study’s survey instruments themselves contain a bit of wiggle room in terms of reliability. For example, respondents were asked to rate their involvement in various activities on a scale of 0 to 100, a huge range with no clear benchmarks that may have been vulnerable to bias in unpredictable ways. Future research on this topic would benefit from a lower reliance on self-reported, subjective measures like these.

Nevertheless, we find much to praise about the innovative approach that “Characteristics of Civically Engaged Nonprofit Organizations” uses to uncover and elucidate some of the key questions and priorities that nonprofit arts organizations face in the real world.

“I hope this encourages researchers to study the role of arts nonprofits, as they are critical elements to improve our civic life,” says Kim, now an assistant professor at Georgia State University’s Andrew Young School of Policy Studies. “And I hope it helps arts nonprofit managers recognize the role of associations and informal networks in influencing program decisions at individual organizations.”

“Money,” by Flickr user Clayton

Title: Do Donors Care About Results? An Analysis of Nonprofit Arts and Cultural Organizations

Author(s): Cleopatra Charles and Mirae Kim

Publisher: Public Performance and Management Review

Year: 2016

URL: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15309576.2015.1137775?journalCode=mpmr20

Topics: Cultural Data Project, nonprofit success metrics, philanthropy

Methods: Analysis of attendance, website engagement, and financial data from a subset of arts and culture organizations that complete Cultural Data Profiles between 2005 and 2015

What it says: This study examines whether nonprofit arts organizations with better “performance outcomes” – defined by higher attendance numbers, audience “awareness of arts and culture activities” (measured through website visits), and “increased access to diverse audiences” (measured through the number of free tickets provided) – receive more contributions than other arts nonprofits. It also examines whether nonprofit arts organizations with lower overall fundraising costs (measured through the ratio of development expense to dollars raised) receive more contributions than organizations that spend more to bring money in the door.  The authors find that foundation contributions decrease as organizations’ audiences and web viewerships grow. The impact of audience growth on individual donations is also negative but much smaller, while the impact on corporate donations is not statistically significant. The relationship between fundraising expense and donations is similarly split, but in the opposite direction: as organizations spend more per fundraised dollar, foundation giving goes up, while individual and corporate donations are not visibly impacted.

In discussing these findings, the authors conclude that certain performance outcomes for arts organizations have little to no relationship to their success with donors; in fact, “better performance outcomes in terms of increased awareness and attendance have a negative rather than a positive influence on charitable giving,” specifically related to foundations.

What I think about it: It’s tempting to get hung up on this study’s limitations – for example, its dubious use of attendance numbers and website visits as proxies for success, it’s reliance on self-reported Cultural Data Project (CDP) data, and it’s lack of a random sample. The latter point is particularly problematic because it’s difficult to glean the total sample size of the organizations analyzed. The authors note they only focus on organizations with audited financials (which excluded a whopping 52% of the overall pool) and further removed organizations with no expenses, revenue, government support, website visitors, or free tickets. Far from examining a cross-section of arts nonprofits in the United States, this study is focused on about half of organizations that submitted CDP profiles – meaning they are also located in one of the 12 states (including the District of Columbia) that have active CDP partnerships. Only one of those states (California) is located on the West Coast. None are in the South or Pacific Northwest.

Furthermore, just because such correlations exist in the CDP dataset doesn’t mean donors are making decisions based on the metrics the authors examine. There is no way to know whether foundations in the regions studied were closely following attendance rates at the organizations they funded, to say nothing of website traffic. To be fair, the authors acknowledge most of these problems, and they call for further research to better examine the relationship between organizational performance, fundraising, and donor behavior. That said, drawing firm conclusions from this study is difficult. What does seem clear is that a) foundations in the regions where CDP is used appear to behave differently from corporate and individual donors; and b) that behavior implies they are more likely to decrease their support as an organization builds a larger audience base. Similarly, foundations in those regions are more likely to respond positively to organizations that spend more money on fundraising.

What it all means: Given the unique role that foundations play in the nonprofit arts ecosystem as gatekeepers and, oftentimes, thought leaders, this study raises several intriguing questions about the extent to which they actually respond to the metrics of success to which they ask their grantees to adhere. It’s very possible that most funders eschew attendance and website data altogether, and focus on different outcomes that are tied to their own theories of change. It’s also possible (though not likely) that they are easily charmed by development officers and/or fundraising galas. Whatever the case may be, it’s worth noting that their decisions do not align with individual or corporate donors. Perhaps that’s how it should be; perhaps it indicates a flaw in how most foundations decide who to support. Without more research into the questions the authors raise – and more comprehensive datasets with which to analyze them – it’s difficult to know.

“Harmony,” by Flickr user Thad Zajdowicz

Title: Characteristics of Civically Engaged Nonprofit Arts Organizations: The Results of a National Survey

Author(s): Mirae Kim

Publisher: Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly

Year: 2016

URL: http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0899764016646473

Topics: Non-profit management, arts organizations, civic engagement, arts management

Methods: Survey, Structured interviews, correlation analysis

What it says: The study uses data from a U.S. survey, structured interviews and IRS forms to test four hypotheses about characteristics of civically engaged nonprofit arts organizations. After a series of interviews with 21 nonprofit directors, a survey was developed where respondents reported the extent to which their organization is involved with different nonprofit roles, some of which are market oriented (e.g. producing artistic products) and some of which are civically oriented (e.g. promoting community engagement or bringing together people of different backgrounds). The survey was completed by a stratified sample of 1,049 nonprofit arts directors. Additional organizational characteristics were measured by survey items in the same survey or federal data from the National Center for charitable Statistics (NCCS).

Author Mirae Kim finds that civic engagement among nonprofits strongly correlates with network diversity (i.e. working with a range of types of other organizations like schools or senior centers), and a perception of civic engagement as an industry norm. Both of these findings are validated by the structured interviews. Because many of the nonprofits surveyed reported high levels of involvement in market roles and civic roles, the author conducts additional analysis taking market roles into account. The positive correlation between network diversity and civic engagement is heightened when an organization also performs market roles. This also means that increased network diversity predicts a complementary relationship between the two roles. This is explained through interview statements about how work with outside community groups and organizations helps arts nonprofits identify and implement civically relevant programming, and simultaneously exposes their work to new audiences within the market.

Receiving a higher share of program revenue negatively correlates with civic engagement (though the connection is not as strong) and reliance on government funding is not correlated with civic engagement at all. The author also hypothesizes that a rigid and bureaucratic governance structure would be negatively associated with civic engagement. The study finds an opposite relationship in the data, but because this finding conflicts with some of the interview data, the author recommends more research in this area before a conclusion is reached. The authors note that this study does not establish causality between these factors, and more importantly it does not delve into the outcomes of the work of civically engaged nonprofits, only the extent that they pursue this role.

What I think about it: This study demonstrates how effective familiar (and relatively affordable) methods in arts research (surveys, structured interviews, NCCS data) can be when part of a sound and well-thought-out study design. This particular model includes a theoretical and literature review which directly informs the study design, the use of previously validated survey instruments whenever possible, care taken to achieve a representative sample, and triangulation between interview and survey data. In addition, the study poses questions relevant to real tensions in arts management, which do not already have obvious answers.

What it all means: Beyond the promising study methodology, this work offers some actionable insight about an ongoing discussion in the nonprofit arts sector: how does the role of supplying quality arts products and experiences interact with expectations to positively influence civic life? This study creates a theoretical map of the different components of this complicated question, demonstrates that the two functions interact, but don’t necessarily need to compete, and offers a clear action that correlates with civic engagement, which is even more pronounced for organizations who are also actively playing a market role. It also suggests that hearing about other organization’s effort to promote civic engagement, at a national conference, for example, does actually cause other nonprofits to increase their civic engagement in turn.

As the author notes, the findings cannot tell us definitively whether collaborating with other organizations causes nonprofits to be more civically engaged, or if civically engaged organizations are more likely to seek out collaboration. It also does not shed light on how effective the efforts of civically minded nonprofits are in their communities in terms of outcomes. However, the action that the study recommends (partnering with other types of organizations) is not such a departure from the missions or practices of most arts nonprofits to necessitate stronger evidence before nonprofits seeking to increase their civic engagement consider doubling down on it as a tactic. Even arts organizations doing this already can take away from this research increased confidence that their time and effort to collaborate across sector boundaries set their work apart.

This research also identifies a few bright areas for research going forward, including: examining the conflicting evidence related to organizational structure and governance, further research on outcomes, and deeper investigation about the effects of the quality or depth of collaboration or the type of collaborative organization on civic engagement and civic outcomes.

Photo credit: EKG Technician Salary

Title:  Nonprofit organizations and the Intersectoral division of labor in the arts

Author(s): Paul J. DiMaggio

Publisher: Yale University Press (in The Nonprofit Sector: A research handbook)

Year: 2006

URL: https://www.princeton.edu/~artspol/workpap/WP30-DiMaggio.pdf

Topics: Nonprofit arts sector, commercial arts sector

Methods: Analysis of economic census data, literature review

What it says: The article explores the division between nonprofit and commercial organizations within particular sub-fields within the arts. DiMaggio primarily uses data from the 1997 US Economic Census, which collects data on tax exempt (nonprofits and public) and taxable (for profit) entities in multiple categories. DiMaggio acknowledges several limitations of this data set, most notably that it tends to exclude or underestimate small or unincorporated arts organizations as well as those embedded within larger institutions like universities. DiMaggio relies on the data set despite these drawbacks, since he believes that it is the single best source to determine how arts activities are divided between the for profit and nonprofit arts sectors in the United States.

DiMaggio’s analysis finds that art and history museums are primarily non-profit. Within the performing arts, he finds that fields with the longest history of prestige and recognition as high art (symphonies, resident theatres, operas) tend to adopt non-commercial form while other less prestigious fields (popular music, dinner theatre) tend to adopt commercial status. Fields that have recently gained respect from critics and scholars, such as ethnic dance or Jazz, contain either a mix of organizations of both types, or skew toward the commercial. Overall, the majority of the categories DiMaggio examines are largely dominated by tax exempt organizations.

The author reviews three theories frequently cited in the literature to explain this division between nonprofit and commercial structures, or more specifically the dominance of the nonprofit form in the majority of many arts fields.  The first theory is market failure, or the idea that certain arts activities are not feasible as commercial enterprises and so can only thrive with private or public subsidies (Baumol and Bowen’s landmark work on cost disease in the performing arts is cited). DiMaggio points out that cost disease explains why subsidy is needed, while theories about collective or public goods, or goods which have benefits that accrue beyond those who utilize them, help explain why subsidy is made available.

The second group of theoretical approaches that DiMaggio examines are industrial-organizational in nature. These theories focus on the specific characteristics about the nonprofit organizational form that make it a well-suited for artistic endeavors. DiMaggio discusses literature focused on  variable demand for products, with some patrons willing to pay high amounts to subsidize the availability of the arts product (this “demand” is met by accepting donations from individuals) while  another segment of patrons with less interest or ability to pay have a drastically lower price point and contribute via ticket sales.)  He also discusses “club theory,” which discusses how the governance models of nonprofits are particularly suited to a small group seeking to ensure that their aesthetic sensibility is privileged over business needs. He also discusses theories positing that nonprofit status is useful for organizations in order to signal their commitment to artistic excellence and thereby attract and retain high caliber artists.

Finally, DiMaggio turns to historical and political analyses, which he identifies as an important addition to the theoretical explanations listed above. DiMaggio describes the establishment of nonprofit cultural organizations like museums and symphonies in the 19th century by elites, and then the slow diffusion of this model to other geographic areas as well as additional disciplines like opera or theater. DiMaggio states that, by the mid-20th century “the contours of the intersectoral division of labor in the arts were well defined. All that remained was to fill them in.” According to DiMaggio, this began to happen through the arts funding and field building programs led by the Ford Foundation, as well as the establishment of the NEA and other public funding sources. Public funding also served to broaden the range of arts activities likely to receive institutional subsidies, to include new types of activities like photography or ethnic dance. DiMaggio posits that the availability of private or public subsidies may have made organizations pursuing these activities more likely to be established as or become nonprofits. DiMaggio also references larger demographic shifts that made Americans more educated and prosperous, which in turn created a wider audience for more serious art forms. DiMaggio suggests that these three historical analyses, taken together, provide a solid overall explanation for the intersectoral divisions that appear in his data analysis.

DiMaggio concludes his paper by exploring patterns in the data not accounted for by these theories which also serve as potential areas for further research. He leads with a discussion of efficient boundaries, or tendencies  of organizations to form different types of employment relationships, i.e. long term employment relationships or shorter term contracts with workers (in this case artists). He notes that nonprofit organizations tend to dominate in fields which pursue long term employment arrangements, both in the arts and other sectors. DiMaggio suggests that for those types of organizations that gained an early foothold within the system of philanthropic support as it was being built, the nonprofit form provided an opportunity for managers and artists to limit risk. In fields without this longstanding access to grant support, DiMaggio notes that managers limit risk by decoupling presenting  and artistic activities, while many artists limit risk by subsidizing arts activities through alternate employment, or day jobs.

Next, DiMaggio raises the question of whether cost disease can be addressed in the future, citing recent methods to lower costs within some traditional disciplines, such as delivering symphony music through technological means. Finally, he returns to the importance of arts organizations and programs embedded within universities, churches, and other larger organizations as well as unincorporated organizations and hybrid organizations, which combine characteristics of multiple forms. DiMaggio recognizes that these groups are not fully accounted for in the theories in the article but make up a significant portion of arts activities. He also discusses the division of labor between the public and private sectors, noting that there are few arts fields where public and commercial institutions compete.

DiMaggio’s final question is this: Does organizational form matter? How does it affect the actions of decisions made by organizations? He notes that while there are numerous comparative studies on the differences between nonprofit and commercial organizations for fields like healthcare and education, these are few such studies related to cultural organizations. This means that case studies and theory provide the only available set of literature.

To conclude, DiMaggio highlights larger changes that may affect the sectoral division of labor in the arts going forward. He discusses demographic changes such as new waves of immigration that will lead to a boom in arts activities presenting and furthering the cultures of immigrant groups. These organizations may adopt the nonprofit or the commercial form. He also discusses the eroding boundary of high and popular culture and a gradual erosion of ideologies which privilege European culture over other forms. These trends could lead to future growth areas. He also notes the erosion of clear boundaries between nonprofits and commercial organizations, as many nonprofits are adopting language and practices from the commercial world, and embracing modes of distribution or business endeavors previously seen as too market-based. Lastly, DiMaggio discusses the disruption that new technologies are likely to produce. He predicts that these technological shifts may result in some services currently provided by arts nonprofits shifting to commercial arts firms and vice versa.

What I think about it: DiMaggio’s use of intersectoral division of labor as a framework to examine the contours of the arts sector proves to be a rich investigation, as evidenced by the number of critical arts issues that come up in his theoretical exploration of this one data set. While there are issues inherent in the data used for his analysis, DiMaggio fully acknowledges these limitations and takes time to explain how they may limit his sector analysis and where they may point to further research. DiMaggio’s literature review is particularly helpful since it combines theories and approaches from economics, organizational theory, and history.

What it all means: While Createquity understands that organizations as such are not a prerequisite for a healthy arts ecosystem, they can be important factors in the success of the ecosystem. DiMaggio acknowledges the influence that organization types have on the arts sector while refraining from assuming a  default or obvious form for organizations. Instead of letting the current boundaries within the arts sector frame his inquiry, DiMaggio probes them, and in the process identifies multiple avenues of inquiry that may be able to provide insight into critical major arts issues.

Basilica di Santa Maria del Fiore, Florence by Flickr user C.

Many teens around the world look forward to their governments “gifting” them the right to vote and/or permission to drink alcohol, when they reach their 18^th birthdays. Others receive absolutely nothing from the state. In Italy, however, teens born in 1998 will hit the jackpot this September. In addition to voting rights, they will receive a €500 “cultural bonus” from the Italian government. The program is intended to foster affinity between the country’s youth and its arts sector by providing Italy’s youngest adults with incentive to consume culture on their own terms. True to our times, the program will be administered largely through an app. Though other nations have experimented with “free money” vouchers, Italy is the only to target culture. Critics of the program question the wisdom of its launch in a struggling economy and its ultimate ability to empower workers in arts and culture. As this is the first program of its kind, we’ll have to wait and see.

Political Artists Feeling the Heat in the Middle East. Ever since the unsuccessful coup attempt to topple the regime of Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in July, experts have been raising the alarm about Erdoğan’s continued drift toward authoritarianism. Sure enough, soon after he regained power, Erdoğan shut down 29 publishing houses accused of affiliation with the political opposition, along with “a wide swath” of newspapers, magazines, and TV channels. Under Turkish law, the seizure means that all assets of these organizations are permanently transferred to the Turkish government with no possibility of appeal, leaving authors and other third parties in the lurch. It bears remembering that Erdoğan was once seen as a relatively moderate, democratically elected leader—especially in light of recent news coming out of Israel. A group of artists and arts organizations have filed a lawsuit against the country’s culture minister, Miri Regev, who has earned headlines for introducing a “loyalty test” for state-funded arts organizations and threatening cuts to those that refuse to perform in Jewish settlements in disputed territory. Want to help? Artists Rights Justice has a toolkit for you.

The Library is the Place to Be. Not so long ago, the future of public libraries appeared uncertain. What, wondered thousands of (usually digital) think pieces, would happen to those hallowed halls of books in the age of the e-reader, the audio book app, the personal hotspot? Well, it turns out that it wasn’t librarians lacking imagination.  It was all those writers. Public library systems are reinventing themselves as community spaces, where classes and meet-up groups, and special events and makers thrive. Seattle offers its public library cardholders access to free downloads of local music. In Erie, PA, the public library system is experimenting with mobile Wi-Fi hotpots, to help kids without access to broadband at home to keep up with their homework. Believe it or not, in Finland, a public library near Helsinki doubles as a karaoke bar.  The borrowers, it appears, are at the forefront of civic transformation.

Attack of the Short-Fingered Vulgarians. The more things change, the more the so-called alt-right tries to ensure they remain the same (as they were in the antebellum period). Once satisfied to post racist comments on 4chan, this online bastion of the Trump constituency is increasingly engaging in direct action up to and including the outright hijacking of actors’ social media accounts.   Another recent victim, science fiction’s Hugo Awards, opens up a new front in the culture war: vote-based artistic honors. For the second year in a row, nearly all of the shortlisted nominees were hand-picked by a collective known as the “Rabid Puppies,” thanks to a startlingly effective strategy of bloc voting that managed to put a short story called “Space Raptor Butt Invasion” up for an award. The Puppies’ ultimate aim? To ensure that the Hugo winners and nominees reflect themselves (white, male, conservative)—and no, they’re not subtle about this. Science fiction’s more, uh, culturally sensitive constituency has fought back using the same tactics, resulting in a victory for Puppy nemesis NK Jemisin in the Best Novel category and seven wins for “No Award” in the past two years.

Justice for Cultural Heritage. The Islamic State’s ongoing destruction of antiquities in the Middle East has received lots of coverage from Createquity over the past two years (see here, here, here, and here.) Unfortunately, such destruction didn’t start with ISIS; in 2012, fundamentalist group Ansar Dine’s destruction of world-famous heritage sites in Timbuktu made our round-up of the top stories of the year. This month, the International Criminal Court took Malian jihadi leader Ahmad al-Faqi al-Mahdi to trial for the Ansar Dine actions. Mr. Mahdi pleaded guilty, and will now be sentenced. Although the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia has handed down war crimes convictions for cultural destruction, this is the first time that war crimes against cultural heritage constituted the main charge of an ICC hearing. Though there is growing resentment among African states that the UN-backed ICC has concentrated its prosecutions on the continent, this case, which comes at a time of heightened international concern about the fate of similar antiquities, could prove useful. Currently, no international court has jurisdiction over crimes in Syria, Iraq and elsewhere; the Malian case could persuade other countries to pursue similar charges.

MUSICAL CHAIRS / COOL JOBS

• Two industry veterans recently announced their retirement. Alan W. Cooper, executive director of the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation, announced his retirement after 23 years with the organization. The search for his successor is underway. Meanwhile, Mary Kennedy resigned her position as CEO of the Mid-America Arts Alliance. Kennedy spent 27 years with the organization, including 14 as CEO, and will remain in a consulting role until her replacement is hired.
• Tracie D. Hall was named the director of the Chicago-based Joyce Foundation’s Culture Program. In addition to her success as a community arts leader, Hall is a playwright, poet, and fiction writer.
• Claire Rice is Arts Alliance Illinois’s new Executive Director. She begins her tenure in September, after several years as the National Program Director of Harvard University’s Sustain Arts project.
• The Nathan Cummings Foundation is hiring for a newly created role: Director, Voice, Creativity & Culture.  No closing date.
• UC Davis’s Imagine America initiative is hiring a Faculty Director. Posted August 23; closes October 21.
• American Ballet Theatre is hiring a NYC-based Coordinator, Diversity and Inclusion. No closing date.
• Helicon is hiring a part-time Junior Research Associate. No closing date.
• Kickstarter is hiring an Arts Engagement Strategist. No closing date.

NEW RESEARCH OF NOTE

• An Americans for the Arts survey on how the American public feels about the arts demonstrated that a majority supports arts education and government arts funding, and believes that the arts improve community quality of life.
• Chorus America released a first-ever systematic look at the motivations behind choral concert attendees–many of them social.
• An Australian study found that people who attend musical events and/or participate in dance are generally happier with their lives.
• According to an updated study by the Wellesley Center for Women on gender equity in leadership opportunities in non-profit American theater, lack of female representation in top positions is more of a “glass ceiling” than a “pipeline” issue.
• A new National Union of Students study of UK arts graduates found two out of three “don’t think a degree is worth £9k per year.”
• A UK study found an increasing decline in the number of children taking part in theater and dance.  However, research from the UK’s Department for Culture, Media and Sport also shows that the country’s culture sector’s economic contribution has grown by 33% since 2010.
• New research explores the link between gentrification and racial boundary movements in major US cities. US colleges are also highly stratified by wealth, according to a new study from the Education Trust.
• A report from nonprofit consultancy Third Space Studio demonstrated the continued reliance of nonprofit organizations on individual donors.
• SMU’s National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) recently launched its long-awaited KIPI Dashboard, a free online tool that allows arts organizations to compare their individual performance in nine finance and operations categories to that of similar organizations nationally.
• An analysis recently published in the journal Genome Biology found that a surprising number of scientific papers contain errors introduced by Microsoft Excel.
• As if expanded waistlines and slower cognitive response weren’t enough, a new study ties TV watching to blood clots.

Image: “Gogbot,” Installation at the Gogbot Media Art Festival in Enschede. By Flickr user Ineke

The Fractured Atlas and Createquity teams are back with a second installment of the Createquity podcast! Our first series, “Watch Where You’re Giving,” discussed the implications for the arts of the growing philanthropic movement called effective altruism.

In this series, we look at what it takes to “make it” as a professional artist, as explored in Createquity’s recent series of research-driven articles. Is a college education actually necessary, and how much depends on talent versus luck versus a high tolerance for uncertainty? And is the chance to succeed as a professional artist equally available to people of all backgrounds and income levels, or are people who, for example, grew up in lower-income families less likely to become professional artists?

In this latest Createquity podcast series, Createquity and Fractured Atlas team members illuminate the major factors that contribute to artists (or prevent artists from) establishing successful careers. We also focus on some of the tools Fractured Atlas has developed to support artists, with the larger goal of helping create a more navigable and equitable ecosystem for professional artists.

Episode 1:

Guest Michael Feldman (bio below) provides a quick rundown of the research Createquity has done on this topic. Hear about how the decision to become an artist is affected by socioeconomic background and tolerance for risk, and what artists have in common with tech entrepreneurs. This includes a comparison of different state-run programs for artists in countries outside the United States.

Episode 2:

In this case study of sorts, guest Theresa Hubbard, Program Specialist in fiscal sponsorship at Fractured Atlas (bio below), explains how fiscal sponsorship and the organization’s other programs can help mitigate some of the challenges and risks working artists face. She also discusses her own professional and personal experiences with access to creativity and her views on the future of the field.

The Host

E. Andrew Taylor, Host
Andrew Taylor thinks (a bit too much) about organizational structure, strategy, and management practice in the nonprofit arts. An Associate Professor of Arts Management at American University in Washington, DC, he shares what he learns at “The Artful Manager.”

In the past fifteen years, the number of nonprofit theater companies in the United States has doubled while audiences and funding have shrunk. Neither the field nor the next generation of artists is served by this unexamined multiplication…There has been tremendous collective buy-in to what has become a fossilized model.

—Rebecca Novick, theater director and arts consultant

Then hear out Voice 2:

We communities of color are still trying to understand the mainstream nonprofit culture, with all its unwritten rules and regulations. We are trying to be better nonprofit players. We have to, because the game is not going to change any time soon, and those communities who don’t know the rules or who don’t practice enough are left behind… We have no choice.

—Vu Le, executive director of Rainier Valley Corps

Stop and reflect on Voice 3:

I’ve always been a bit uncomfortable with our sector’s be-all-and-end-all focus on the needs of the nonprofit arts… The sector has grown bigger without getting richer.

—Bill Ivey, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts

See if you agree with Voice 4:

Funding organizations really do roll their eyes these days, when yet another nonprofit, pops up with its hands out. Reality: no one is gonna pay your tab.

—Misha Penton, opera singer, theater artist, and artistic director of Divergence Vocal Theater

Opinions about the nonprofit arts model—the fundamental legal and business structure in which arts nonprofits in the United States work—are as numerous and varied as 501(c)(3)s themselves. But one thing all of these quotes take for granted is the existence of the model itself. While that system may seem “fossilized” to some, the truth is that most arts nonprofits today are younger than most of our parents. The boom of arts nonprofits has been a relatively recent phenomenon, and it came about thanks in large part to a handful of individuals who intentionally put it into motion.

Graphic by Shawn Lent and Katherine Ingersoll for Createquity. See endnotes for additional detail on sourcing.

The story of the nonprofit model is part of the broader heritage of nonprofits, and follows a similar trajectory. A combination of intentional interventions and societal factors led to a massive expansion of the nonprofit sector in the United States in the middle of the 20th century, both in terms of size and portion of overall economic activity. Nonprofit expenses and assets actually outpaced the economy between 1994 and 2004 primarily thanks to the growth of hospitals, health organizations and private colleges. In 2012, there was 1 nonprofit for every 175 Americans.

Despite such a boom, life inside the current arts ecosystem is not all it could be. Createquity’s mission is to identify the most important issues in the arts and what we can do about them, but a crucial barrier to executing on that premise is the sector’s limited capacity to create change. While the 501(c)(3) arts model offers infrastructure that, in theory, combines artistic aspiration with public accountability, the decentralization and limited scope of government policy make large-scale, systemic change in the sector difficult to accomplish. Yet Createquity’s long-range goal is to do exactly that, or at the very least to catalyze it.

One of the things that I pray for is that people with power will get good sense, and that people with good sense will get power…

—Dixie Carter as Julia Sugarbaker

To accurately predict how change can happen in the arts ecosystem, it would help to understand how change has already taken place in our arts 501(c)(3) genealogy. Specifically, we want to know whether individuals or organizations can truly and intentionally marshal change, or if a cloudy mix of circumstances is responsible for where we are today. Has transformation in the arts sector historically been calculated and choreographed, or organic and inadvertent?

It turns out that a narrow time period starting in the mid-1950s and ending in the late 1970s presents clear examples of deliberate and broad action, precipitating one of the most extensive changes in the arts ecosystem: the spread and embrace of the nonprofit model as a mechanism for cultivating and promoting the arts and culture within the United States.

But first, some time travel is in order.

THE ARTS ECOSYSTEM’S EARLY DAYS

The modern tax code, including the arts 501(c)(3) status we know today, was established in 1954, but its roots stretch back much farther. Several of our nation’s first theaters and museums were built before the American Revolution, but voluntary associations in this colonial period (as well as in the freshly independent years following the war) were limited by the strong role of the church and emboldened by the lack of federal authority over them. The landmark 1819 Supreme Court decision of Trustees of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward further constrained the government’s power to intervene in private charitable organizations and set protection for incorporated endowments, including the few for arts institutions.

From the Met to the Hull House, arts participation in 19th century America was shaped by class division. Urban wealthy elites, their formal governing sway slipping away in a democratic society, established private organizations to advance the greater good—and to preserve their class status. In the wake of civil war and the arrival of nearly 12 million immigrants, Americans formed mutual aid societies and unions, but also private schools, libraries, social clubs, and a scattering of non-commercial museums and symphony orchestras.

Donations from wealthy individuals were the most important source of support, and policymakers in the late 1800s introduced the country’s first statutory references and implementation of tax exemption for charitable organizations. In 1889, a certain Mr. Andrew Carnegie published “Wealth,” an essay pressing other tycoons to join him in donating considerable percentages of their fortunes for the good of society, including the arts and humanities. Years later, historians would credit Carnegie with conceptualizing what is now the modern philanthropic foundation.

“The Immigrants,” by Luis Sanguino in Battery Park – photo by flickr user k31thw

Even so, through the rip-roaring early part of the 20th century, the dominant vehicle for performing arts enterprises, from jazz clubs to theater ensembles, was the commercial sole proprietorship. As the socioeconomic gap became a socioeconomic crater, philanthropic support for arts nonprofits remained limited and highly localized. Coming out of the Great Depression and WWII, national foundations like Carnegie’s were primarily setting their sights on educational goals.

All the while, countless early arts pioneers, renegades, and boat rockers had the ambition to innovate on the local level, and many eventually saw the fruits of their efforts spread to varying degrees. But it wasn’t until the middle of the 20th century that the stage was set for sweeping transformation for the arts at the national level.

A MAN ON A MISSION

There are people who more than others constantly see themselves between past and future, …both in their own lives and in the history of mankind. And I’m one of those persons.

—W. McNeil Lowry

In the early 1950s, an executive named William McPeak participated in a study group for the Ford Foundation, which was exploring potential new structures and priorities as it prepared to become the largest foundation in the world. McPeak was pushing Ford to include the humanities in its vision for the future. One of his confidants during that struggle was W. McNeil “Mac” Lowry, a civilian journalist with the Washington bureau of Cox Newspapers who had been McPeak’s colleague at the Office of Wartime Information. Ford ultimately decided against funding the humanities when it expanded its scope from serving Detroit to focusing on social justice nationally and internationally, moving its office to New York City, but McPeak was hired as Ford’s Associate Director in 1953 and he brought Lowry on board as his assistant.

Two years into his tenure, Lowry was promoted to Program Director for Education and started suggesting ad hoc humanities grants under this education arm. They were small and few, and they were accepted. He also began writing policy papers and advocating internally for the creation of a large, full-fledged arts and humanities funding arm. This proposal was bold and unprecedented for any foundation at the time. With persistence and McPeak’s partnership, a mere four years after joining the foundation, Lowry was named director of its newly minted Division of Humanities and the Arts.

Lowry aimed to leverage Ford’s dollars and influence toward a grand vision of a robust arts field across the United States, but he started with a more tangible and comprehensible project: an inventory of the field conducted through interviews with artists and arts stakeholders, which would subsequently inform the decision on the part of Ford’s trustees whether to make the program permanent.

ripple effect – photo by flickr user Judy van der Velden

Lowry knew that his audience didn’t initially take his project very seriously. But as his assistant Marcia Thompson put it, it quickly became clear that the trustees “were not only entertained but were enormously interested in the field.” Lowry later said of his thinking,

It was not any secret to me what the little start of that program in 1957 might mean on a national basis… It’s just, you couldn’t divulge it because it was still dream and plan… This work is… a little bit like casting a stone in a puddle, but precisely which stone and precisely which puddle and for precisely which effect [is] the real creative part of it.

He and Thompson began by giving themselves the task of creating a directory with the names and contact information of every art critic and artist they could find around the country. Long before digital spreadsheets or the Internet, this was a hefty self-assignment. A former journalist with a history of telling it like it is, Lowry was willing to question loyalties and cliques. For example, he worked to extend professional arts opportunities outside major metropolitan areas even though several Ford trustees with connections to prominent New York institutions pushed back. He, along with associate director Edward F. D’Arms, traveled the country to speak with artists and stakeholders at over 175 arts companies. Lowry’s was a personal approach which gave him strong buy-in and trust from people who were actually engaged in arts work; he preferred direct correspondence with prospective grantees, including the likes of James Baldwin and Tom Stoppard. Lowry synthesized this mountain of data with more formal knowledge from economics and policy to begin to design the functions of Ford’s arts program.

Columbus, Ohio’s State Capitol from the Air (1957) – photo by flickr user Sent from the Past

Choosing to start with theater as his first arts discipline, Lowry used his new directory to send out a wide call for proposals, looking for groups (many of which were either sole proprietorships or amateur projects at the time) that seemed ready for the next step in professionalization. The focus was on smaller organizations outside the big cities because he did not want to see “money that could go to artists and artistic directors or to their outlets put in bricks and mortar.” With an investment of $9 million in 1961, the Ford Foundation had gathered steam for what would become the regional theater movement. After seven years of commercial operation, Zelda Fichandler transformed DC’s Arena Stage into one of the country’s first nonprofit theaters, primarily to receive a grant from the Ford Foundation.

One of Lowry’s primary aims was to increase the amount of professional performing arts activity in the country, but he wanted to be inclusive whenever possible. He had intended to fund a black theater when he launched the program in 1957 but was unable to locate a promising black artistic director able to get a new theater up and running. A couple years after Martin Luther King Jr. inspired the country with his dream of integration, a playwright named Douglas Turner Ward wrote an editorial in the New York Times about the need for a black theater, supporting disenfranchised artists, managers, writers, and designers. Lowry read the article and contacted Ward immediately. Shortly after, with a Ford grant of $434,000 ($3.3 million in 2016 dollars), Ward, producer/actor Robert Hooks and theater manager Gerald Krone would establish the Negro Ensemble Theatre Company in 1965.

Lowry got artists out of their comfort zones and towards professionalization, and was well aware of the consequences of him doing so. As he describes it,

[artistic producers] had to think about ‘where does this move us to the next phase?’…They took on costly activities that they had ignored before…. So they were stretched. And some of them were even shrewd enough to say in advance of a grant, ‘You’re going to stretch me, aren’t you?’ I’d say, ‘Yes, I’m sorry, that’s an inevitable consequence of this.’”

Under his direction, arts grants now required matching dollars for the first time and arts grantees were pushed to improve their marketing practices. For example, he directly supported Danny Newman, the press agent at Chicago Lyric Opera, to evangelize the subscription model to performing arts organizations across the country.

Lowry’s legacy also stretched entire segments of the performing arts. During his tenure, Ford invested $19.5 million to help build 17 resident professional theaters between 1962 and 1976, and was the first American foundation to fund dance on a large scale ($22.5 million from 1957-1973). Ford’s largest arts investment over this time was the Symphony Orchestra Program ($80.2 million). Lowry retired from his position as Vice President at Ford in 1974, and passed away in 1993.

Mac Lowry could easily be labeled one of the nonprofit arts sector’s most significant figures of all time. No exaggeration. Lincoln Kirstein, co-founder of the New York City Ballet, described Lowry as “the single most influential patron of the performing arts that the American democratic system has produced.” By changing the financial incentives for artists, he directly helped to create an entire field of professional, nonprofit performing arts institutions. Thanks to Lowry, Ford became not only the first foundation to fund arts institutions on a large scale (making $249.8 million worth of arts grants 1957-1973, or nearly $2 billion in today’s dollars), but also the largest nongovernmental funder of the nonprofit performing arts.

In this position, the Ford Foundation was able to exert considerable influence on the sector. Bill Ivey notes that “the ‘Ford model’ remains the gold standard shaping intervention in America’s arts system.” Decades later, Ford is 5th on a list of the top 25 arts funders, which underscores how the number of foundations interested in the arts has grown over time, and the strength of Lowry’s legacy in philanthropy.

At the Ford Foundation, Lowry had been given wide latitude to try new things, with a significant amount of money. His success had always been boosted by internal support from McPeak, but in 1966 Ford welcomed one of its more liberal presidents, McGeorge Bundy, who came to Ford from the Johnson administration and his “Great Society” programs. Under Bundy’s leadership, Ford was an instigator of public-private philanthropy and Lowry was able to connect to the subsidy argument of federal support for the arts. Lowry later reflected that “a pervasive effect of the Ford program was the enlightenment that began to spread not only about the importance of nonprofit artistic enterprises, but more precisely their justification for subsidy.”

Lowry and his colleagues were able to ride a wave of public support and concern while acknowledging and working with, not against, broader political agendas. To Createquity, this insight seems critical to understanding why monumental change could take place when it did, and it raises the question of how such transformation could be possible in our current polarized political climate.

THREE ARTS PRESIDENTS AND A NANCY

With standoffs with Vladimir Putin and strikes at orchestras, theaters and beyond dominating modern newsfeeds, it is difficult to imagine a contemporary POTUS declaring the arts as a diplomatic weapon against Russia or sending the Secretary of Labor to personally mediate a dispute between a major arts institution and its workers. Yet in the late 1950s and early 1960s, that is exactly what happened.

As Lowry’s influence at Ford evolved, so did the operative role of the federal government in the arts. President Eisenhower, a Republican, advocated in his 1955 State of the Union address for the establishment of a Federal Advisory Commission on the Arts. This was cultural cold war: as one artistic director put it, “Eisenhower spoke of a lack of achievement in the cultural sphere: Who did we have to export in terms of ballet, opera and theatre companies? How could we compete with Russia, which had such a rich cultural spectrum of performing arts?”

Bolshoi Ballet Theatre in Moscow – photo by flickr user appaIoosa

Although Eisenhower was all talk and little action on the arts and no formal advisory body was created during his two terms, he did have one major accomplishment: the passing of the National Cultural Center Act of Congress in 1958, which would set the stage for the founding of a certain, prominent national performing arts center on the Potomac River thirteen years later.

Two years later, John F. Kennedy won the election with a party platform that included a brief mention of “a federal advisory agency to assist in the evaluation, development, and expansion of cultural resources.” Although he didn’t have a cultural agenda, the Kennedy Administration would be the one to finally elevate cultural policy to a national priority.

During his first year as President, Kennedy had the White House taking direct action in the arts. When the American Federation of Musicians Local 802 led a strike against The Metropolitan Opera during his first year in office, Kennedy sent Secretary of Labor Arthur Goldberg to arbitrate the salary dispute that had halted the current production season. While serving as the mediator in his office, Goldberg suggested that government funds be used to help settle the Met’s $840,000 debt (that would be more than $6.6 million federal dollars today used to bail out a private arts institution); it’s a safe bet today’s Congress would not get behind that.

Possibly influenced by Jacqueline Kennedy’s love for the arts, President Kennedy expanded his public support, saying, “The life of the arts, far from being an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is very close to the center of a nation’s purpose . . . and is a test of the quality of a nation’s civilization.” In contrast to Eisenhower’s cold war logic, Kennedy’s policy vision would position arts and culture as sources of national hope and solidarity, continuing to push toward both a national center and a federal agency for arts and culture.

President Kennedy was active in the arts right up until his shocking murder in Dallas. In 1963 alone, he emphasized the importance of national recognition of the arts in a speech at the dedication of the Robert Frost Library at Amherst College; established the Advisory Council on the Arts (not appointed until after his death); and commissioned a report by August Heckscher, director of the Twentieth Century Fund and his special consultant for the arts, on the relationship between the arts and the Federal government.

Together, these resources laid the foundation for the ultimate achievement in linking federal government to arts and culture, the signing of the National Endowment for the Arts and National Endowment for the Humanities into law in 1965 by President Lyndon Baines Johnson. Johnson chose Roger Lacey Stevens, a Broadway producer who had led the fundraising efforts for the National Cultural Center (later renamed The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts), as the NEA’s first Chairman and Special Assistant on the Arts.

NEH Chairman William Adams tours the Lyndon B. Johnson Presidential Library exhibits – photo by the LBJ Foundation on flickr

Following Stevens’s brief inaugural tenure as NEA Chairman, Nancy Hanks (not the mother of the 16th President of the United States, for whom she is descended and named), was selected to head the search for his successor. After several prominent figures had turned the position down, Hanks herself was appointed by President Nixon in 1969; according to Stevens, “they were looking for some women for jobs.” She was a Southern Republican and a Duke University graduate who began her career as a DC receptionist and later gained White House experience as assistant to Nelson A. Rockefeller and his arts programs. Afterward, while on staff at The Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Hanks published the influential report, The Performing Arts: Problems & Prospects (1965). By the end of the 1960s, she had both been named president of the Associated Council on the Arts (ACA) and diagnosed with cancer. She chose to remain unmarried and without children; she would later be deemed the mother of a million artists.

Amidst the burgeoning feminist movement, Hanks took the reins of a then-nascent NEA with grander aims for the agency. In her first six weeks at the helm of the NEA, she personally spoke to 200 Congressmen to advocate for her proposal to double the budget and to secure future appropriations for the nation’s bicentennial, which was more than six years ahead. Hanks was a sagacious power; her office became a lobbying machine.

She battled her cancer quietly while strongarming Congress, protecting NEA political territory, and preempting controversies for the agency. In 1970, when the NEA budget faced the ax, Hanks and her assistant individually cornered over 100 Congressmen and succeeded in swaying their votes. Julia Butler Hansen, a Democrat from Washington State and chairwoman of the House appropriations subcommittee during that term, said she needed to see letters from constituents to be convinced, so Hanks somehow got a form letter onto every theater seat in the country and, within a few weeks, had thousands of them into Hansen’s mailbox. When artists won prestigious prizes, Hanks would send out letters to the Representatives of their home states, reminding them that “good artists do not just happen.”

Hanks put a large emphasis on grants to institutions, which helped to make arts funding a bipartisan issue since many wealthy board members of symphonies and museums were Republicans like her. The concept of public subsidy for the arts was sold as a cure for the “cost disease” endemic to nonprofit arts organizations. Revenue and private donations alone could not support the sector, she believed; the income gap must be filled.

With an art-for-all-Americans ethos, Hanks supported a plentitude of smaller nonprofit arts organizations in newly funded areas such as crafts. Additionally, Hanks played an instrumental role in establishing the Arts Council of Americas to unite the more than 50 community arts councils already in existence and in expanding the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies in order to have a well-funded state council in every state and territory in the U.S. Much of the NEA’s funding was designated to run through these state councils.

Later in her tenure Hanks authorized the NEA Challenge Grants, which demanded matching contributions to leverage investment from the private sector. This was a strategy similar to those of the Ford Foundation in the 1960s and the Johnson Administration’s War on Poverty.

Before Hanks, the NEA was more of a figurehead organization with a modest budget; by 1976, it was the largest institutional funder of the arts in the country. In brief, she was the savviest operator in the NEA’s history. She served two terms as the NEA chair until her resignation in 1977, and she died of her cancer six years later at age 55. A mere three weeks after her passing, President Reagan (whose economic policies were threatening the existence of the NEA and NEH at the time) signed a law renaming NEA and NEH’s erstwhile home, the Old Post Office, in Washington, D.C. the Nancy Hanks Center.

Go to Theatre Week, 1922 – photo by Washington State Library

HOW LOWRY AND HANKS CHANGED THE ARTS NONPROFIT SECTOR FOREVER

Neither Lowry nor Hanks saw themselves as artists (Hanks said her only art form was “needlepoint typewriter covers”; others said that it clearly persuasion), yet both were passionate in building towards a new arts vision for America, supporting and connecting artists nationwide. They were willing to defy the expectations and design of their jobs in order to create financial and structural support for artists. Both traveled the country for the cause; Lowry to discover promising artistic directors, and Hanks to advocate on their behalf.

Their combined legacy was to establish the current shape of the nonprofit arts sector and its mechanisms of funding. Importantly, both the Ford Foundation and the federal government brought vast new resources to the arts funding table, and directed those resources almost exclusively to nonprofit arts organizations. In doing so, not only did Lowry and Hanks catalyze the arts 501(c)(3) boom, they created the common practice of matching grants, the growth and coordination of local arts agencies, the use of grant panels, the rise of grantwriter-as-paid-employee in arts institution, and more. The influence of each can be seen in the geographic spread of infrastructure to support the arts across the country — regional theaters, dance companies, and symphony orchestras in Lowry’s case, and arts councils in Hanks’s.

They engineered the initial professionalization of the field. Publications and conferences, like those of the Theatre Communications Group which Lowry first convened, declared and disseminated best practices. The effect of these deliberate acts was characteristic of the organizational ecology concept of “legitimation”: as a particular type of organization becomes more accepted, it is established more and more frequently. By the mid-1970s, the nonprofit was set as the expected and dominant legal structure for new arts organizations.

We approached this research wanting to learn how change happens; we didn’t intend to dwell on whether the change has been good or bad. That said, there are several aspects of the arts ecosystem in America today that seem to have been shaped by from the transformation fostered by Lowry, Hanks, Kennedy, and others in the middle of the 20th century.

There is more, more, more

The timing of the boom differed by discipline, but all disciplines saw sustained growth when they began to embrace the nonprofit structure. Overall, despite government funding cuts, Reaganomics and the culture wars, the leveling of private funding, and periodic recessions since the 1980-90s, the number of arts nonprofit organizations has shown continued, though slowing, growth.

What does that growth tell us about the number of people being served by these organizations, or about the amount of art available in general? We know that as the nonprofit arts sector grows it employs more individuals; however, it is unclear whether more artists are getting paid to make art, or if there are more opportunities for artists to work as administrators, or whether more money is going to hire arts managers and educators.

Did the increase in the number of arts organizations contribute to higher levels of arts attendance? Several reports show increased activity in certain disciplines during the 1960-1980s, but it is unclear whether the number of arts products/activities actually increased, or if it was just that more arts experiences were made professional or formal in ways that allowed them to be counted.

What we do know is that as the growth of the sector appears to have yielded more opportunities and inclination for people to experience the arts. For example, there have been rising rates of spending on arts experiences in relation to total leisure spending, which can be attributed to the fact that increased institutional grant support opened up new markets.

Opportunities for (nonprofit) arts participation are available across the country

Before Lowry and Hanks, almost all professional performing arts companies were in New York City and other metropolitan hubs on the East Coast, but the geographic spread of institutional funding starting in the 1960s has supplied arts, especially performing arts, outside of major metropolises into towns where the arts are not as commercially viable. During Hanks’s tenure, NEA grants found their way into all 50 states and six U.S. territories. Analysis by the NEA performed in both 1982 and 1992 on the division between nonprofit and commercial performing arts companies showed that nonprofit organizations represented higher percentages of the sector in areas that were not centers for commercial performance.

American art is now much more than Eurocentric symphonies, museums and theaters

The notion that we should remove barriers to access of the arts is now widely accepted and seems to be a legacy of Hanks’s ethos. During the 1970s-1990s, the boomers worked to democratize the arts: careers, patronage and participation. The sector’s expansion started in the professional performing arts but then grew to support a broader range of genres and disciplines, and it’s likely that this has made a stronger mix of cultural products available to society today. Although Lowry’s early efforts were focused on professional theater, music, and dance, once the funding infrastructure was in place and the category of nonprofit arts was established, the momentum provided by the new structures and incentives fostered demands to support other artistic disciplines, and, later, the inclusion of a broader range of artistic endeavors.

“Heard” by Nick Cave, Grand Central Terminal, March 2013 – photo by flickr user j-No

The U.S. arts ecosystem is still striving for equity

Although more resources are available to support cultural activity since before the nonprofit arts sector boom, the nonprofit system seems to have benefited European cultural traditions more than others, and white artists more than artists of color. It has legitimately been observed that arts genres that have been accepted as high culture for longer periods have adopted the nonprofit form in greater numbers, whereas cultural forms that have more recently come to be seen as important have been more likely to be commercial. In 1979, only 4% of NEA grant funds were going to black arts organizations, almost exclusively through its Expansion Arts initiative. In 1994, Elizabeth Broun, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American Art, was appalled to realize that “for 135 years after the founding of the federal art collections in 1829, no work by a black American was represented in the nation’s holdings.”

It seems that movement toward true equity in the nonprofit arts sector has been weak, slow, incomplete, or put in the hands of large institutions as part a community engagement trickle-down scenario. Issues of equity in funding, leadership and audiences by race, gender, disability, etc. have manifested differently in different disciplines, but important questions linger on whether the growth of the nonprofit sector has brought with it a growth of inequality.

WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

The story of Lowry and Hanks is the story of the establishment. They were two individuals who, welcomed into institutions of wealth, power, and (white privilege), adroitly navigated those spaces in a mission to do good across the arts sector. Yet as more and more arts nonprofits sprung up over generations, the metrics they established spread like a gospel of the arts, not recognizing the full array of cultural expression people were already employing. It seems safe to assume that white cultural traditions were more robustly promoted and supported by Lowry, Hanks and their allies, which is why it is important to note other schismatics who were integral to further developing and supporting the arts, to problematizing the relationship between nonprofit and commercial artmaking, to diversifying access and opportunity in the field, to utilizing technology, and to increasing popularity and new audiences for the arts. Influencers and moments of change like these will be explored in upcoming Createquity features.

Many of the sector’s successes, as well as its intractable issues, stem from the dominance of the nonprofit arts model which was driven by those formative actions in the 1950s-1960s. Lowry and his peers deliberately sought to create a healthier arts ecosystem by strengthening and professionalizing arts institutions. Yet the question is worth asking whether most institutions, thus professionalized, tend to prioritize their own preservation. Createquity’s definition of a healthy arts ecosystem asserts that “To the extent that any element within the infrastructure is unwilling or unable to put the goal of improving people’s lives in concrete and meaningful ways first, it’s acting as a drag on the system’s capacity to change for the better. We see this problem manifesting in a number of ways, including the reluctance of cultural institutions to prioritize the interests of the ecosystem as a whole ahead of their own prosperity…” Will future changemakers be the ones who, like Lowry, are able to prioritize the entire arts ecosystem over their own institutions?

This is just the first of many articles on the capacity to create change in the arts ecosystem. We invite you to get involved in this journey by joining us for a #CreatequityAsks Twitter chat on how change happens on March 17th from 7:30-8:30pm Eastern.

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Graphic: The Boom in U.S. Nonprofits / The U.S. Arts Nonprofit Growth Spurt

Reliable longitudinal data on the size of the nonprofit arts sector is difficult to come by for this period. In his 1984 essay, “The Nonprofit Instrument and the Influence of the Marketplace,” Paul DiMaggio turns to founding dates of nonprofits arts organizations to demonstrate this early boom in the sector. He points out that of the 165 theatres in TGC’s Theatre Profiles IV, 87 percent were founded after 1960. He cites data in an article by Leila Sussman which examines the dance companies listed in a 1979 issue of Dance Annual and finds that 89 percent had been founded in the preceding 10 years. DiMaggio also cites a survey of New York State arts organizations, undertaken by the National Research Center for the Arts in 1975, wherein 54 percent of theatres, 58 percent of musical groups, 91 percent of dance companies, 90 percent of visual arts organizations, and 84 percent of local arts agencies had been founded in the 1960s and 70s (this data is not included in our graphic above). He also cites statistics from “national sample of art museums” that says that more than a third of them did not exists before 1960. Our data on operas and folk arts organizations is taken from other sources. In a 1993 book, James Heilbrun provides statistics on organizations in a number of disciplines. He cites data about “All Opera” companies from Central Opera Service, with 648 operas listed in 1970, and 1285 listed in 1990. Information about folk arts organizations comes from an NEA report published in 1996 about nonprofit folk arts orgs. Of 23 organizations included in the report, 19 had been founded since the 1960s.

1. Throughout the early periods of the American arts ecosystem, numerous individuals and groups had great influence, including:

• James Smithson and his $500,000 bequest to the United States of America to found the Smithsonian Institution.
• John Jay, a lawyer who rallied elites to found the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which would grow to have the largest endowment of any American cultural institution.
• The sociedades mutualistas formed by Mexican Americans starting in the 1870s, in which traditional arts were prominent activities much like the mutual aid societies established by African, Asian, and European Americans.
• Jane Addams, the first American woman and second woman ever to win the Nobel Peace Prize, who launched a social settlement in Chicago where the arts were infused into the pursuit of social reform and wellbeing.
• Actors Equity Association (AEA), a social club turned labor union, founded “…not [as] a revolutionary body with anarchistic tendencies. / rather, a clearing house for a freer exchange of thought between artist and manager…” (Actors Equity Magazine 1915).
• Alain LeRoy Locke, the first African American Rhodes Scholar, who by bringing together artists with publicity and patronage such as that of businessman Julius Rosenwald, is part of a cohort to spearhead the Harlem Renaissance, a movement for black self-determination and cultural affirmation.
• The creators of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board and Act of 1935 protecting Native American cultural products and heritage.
• The nation’s first local arts councils such as the Quincy, Illinois Society of Fine Arts and the Winston-Salem Arts Council, a case of the arts utilized by the local Junior League as a distraction from racial issues in the South.

2. Looking at the rate of consumer spending on performing arts experiences (a somewhat problematic proxy for arts engagement, but one of the only ones available for some earlier period) sheds some light on how Americans’ participation rates have changed over time. In their landmark 1966 book Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma, economists Baumol and Bowen point out that even though it was popular in the press at the time to describe a cultural boom, the actual rate of spending on performing arts activities fell 25% between 1929 and 1963 when corrected for population growth, inflation, and economic growth, while spending on other cultural goods like sound recordings and sports grew during that time. A 2001 book by Heilbrun, The Economics of Arts and Culture, takes a similar tactic, looking at consumer spending on the performing arts as a percentage of total disposable income, effectively controlling for rises in the latter. There is evidence that the “cultural boom” that Baumol and Bowen had not found evidence for in the early 60s, was taking place from 1975 and 1990. In that period, the percentage of disposable income spent on the performing arts experienced a turn-around and began to rise. Heilbrun says, “After reaching a low of less than 7 cents per $100 of DPI [Disposable personal income] in the mid-1970s, consumer spending on the performing arts rose to 9.1 cents per $100 in 1980 and 13.4 cents in 1990… between 1975 and 1990 consumer expenditure on the performing arts increased almost exactly twice as fast as DPI.” (21) In fact, it rose even faster than the percentage of spending on motion pictures and sporting events. Heilbrun posits that this is a result of the subsidies made available in the 1950s and 1960s through the nonprofit ecosystem. These funds enabled to the creation (or expansion) of nonprofit arts institutions outside of major cities, where large numbers of arts organizations were not supportable by consumer spending (or even local wealthy patrons) alone. The new participation opportunities these groups offered met “latent demand” in these new geographic areas. Heilbrun does note that rising ticket prices are likely also a part of this overall increase in spending, especially after 1985.

3. Researchers sometimes examine the division between nonprofit and commercial activity in the arts as a way to isolate the effects of nonprofit status. In both 1982 and 1992 the NEA performed such an analysis on performing arts organizations. Within the list of states with higher rates of commercial performing arts activities, it’s easy to recognize the influence of industries which do not depend on reaching local audiences, like the music and film industries in Nashville Los Angeles. Even commercial hubs which do provide person experiences like Las Vegas and New York, are made possibly and marketed toward large numbers of tourists. These numbers demonstrate that the nonprofit infrastructure has been an important factor when it comes to providing live artistic experiences in areas without a large influx of travelers.

4. In his 2006 study “The Intersectoral Division of Labor in the Arts,” Paul DiMaggio looks at the division of nonprofit and commercial arts by discipline, using data from the US Economic Census from 1997. One striking divide is between disciplines that have been historically considered more prestigious like museums and orchestras (almost entirely nonprofit), and disciplines that are more recently recognized for their artistic merits like jazz and ethnic dance (more predominantly commercial). While one could make the argument that jazz and ethnic dance are inherently more commercially viable, it seems more likely that they are in fact, inherently more difficult to find subsidy for within the nonprofit infrastructure. Dimaggio does note that the creation of the NEA and other state and local government funding sources did help to expand the narrowness of the early funding efforts in the 1960s, though the predominance of high culture in the nonprofit sphere remains.

5. The vibrant yet flawed nonprofit arts ecology we have today exists thanks to individuals and groups who have challenged, spread, diversified, and redefined the sector in the last half century. Some of these agents of change include:

• Claudine Brown, Assistant Secretary for Education and Access for the Smithsonian Institution, former director of the National African American Museum Project and the arts and culture program at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, and former instructor to many of today’s “managers at art, history, natural history, science and children’s museums throughout the country.”
• Judith Jamison, who alongside others brought financial stability to the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater through increased funding, novel corporate agreements, and a 50th anniversary campaign that grew the endowment to $50 million, carrying forward Ailey’s visionary company which “changed forever the perception of American dance.”
• The politically motivated, important artists of the Black Arts Movement (1965-1975).
• John Goberman, creator and executive producer of Live from Lincoln Center. “We have discovered that television, far from undermining live performances, whets the viewer’s appetite for more” (NEA Annual Report 1980).
• The Apollo, which switched to nonprofit status in 1991.
• Karen Finley, Tim Miller, Holly Hughes, and John Fleck aka the “NEA Four” who filed suit when their NEA grants were vetoed in 1990, even after passing peer-review panels. The case caused the NEA to eliminate grants to individual artists in 1994.
• Asian Women’s Giving Circle, the first and largest giving circle in the nation led by Asian American women, promoting grassroots philanthropy.
• Claire Lomax Esq., CEO of the Lomax Family Foundation, one of the nation’s leaders in black philanthropy.
• Franny Armstrong who in 2004 was one of the first artists to use an online donation system for her work, a feature film entitled The Age of Stupid.
• Dr. Robert Gumbiner who left the Museum of Latin American Art with a $25 million endowment upon his death in 2009.

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GIF Animation Photo Credit

LC-USZC4-6410: American Revolution. Evacuation of Boston by the British, by National Museum of the U.S. Navy https://flic.kr/p/sxjuD6

Confederate Possession in Civil War America by Victoria Wynn https://flic.kr/p/vVPyXJ

“U.S. Is Voted Dry.” by Thomas Cizauskas https://flic.kr/p/Cfa2Cd

Dance to the Duke by StudioMONDO https://flic.kr/p/pv3Ddh

Harlem club map from 1930s detail by Rik Panganiban https://flic.kr/p/8toWkh

Fairfax Bomber Factory worker on B-25 by Sms_S https://flic.kr/p/DJDzc5

1950s wood panel on a Ford Country Squire by Mr. Gray https://flic.kr/p/DumSR5