Createquity.Createquity.

Around the horn: grantmakers edition

Ian David Moss — Tue, 18 Oct 2011 04:28:07 +0000

Back recently from the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in San Francisco. More on that soon! In the meantime:

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – FEDERAL

Republican House members are back on the warpath to eliminating public broadcasting money (along with other government programs).
The first 1:36 of this interview with Grammy-winning jazz musician Esperanza Spalding has the makings of a great arts advocacy video.

ART AND THE GOVERNMENT – STATE AND LOCAL

Minneapolis Mayor R. T. Ryback doesn’t understand why artists don’t have his back when people make fun of public art that his administration has commissioned. The link also contains the complete video of the recent creative placemaking panel featuring Rocco Landesman, which was the context of the comments.

ARTS POLICY AROUND THE WORLD

NEA Chief of Staff Jamie Bennett, aka the most influential person in the arts you’ve (probably) never heard of, submits four highly entertaining and thought-provoking reports from the 5th Annual World Summit on Arts and Culture in Melbourne, where he and Rocco Landesman were representing the United States. Check them out: part 1 | part 2 | part 3 | part 4.
During the World Summit, the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies released the WorldCP International Database of Cultural Policies, based on the fantastic European version here. Good ol’ US of A isn’t represented yet, but I trust it’s in the works.
Sad: BBC to cut 2000 jobs by 2017.
Ugh: it sounds like Arts Council England’s new austerity-induced performance measurement system for its grantees is kind of a mess.
The former Irish Minister for Arts, Culture, and the Gaeltect is now running for President of Ireland. He is making “a creative society” a centerpiece of his campaign. Is he the first serious candidate for national office in modern times to do so?
A new report from the British think tank DEMOS finds that creative industries in the UK present no special investment risk to banks as compared with the rest of the economy.
Chinese censors have abruptly canceled the premiere of a new opera by American composer Huang Ruo over complaints that the music was not sufficiently glorifying of its subject, China’s first president.
Hat tip to Tyler Cowen for this discovery: the Singapore Complaints Choir. (Apparently a Fringe Festival production!)

PHILANTHROPY

California has brought two new corporate forms into being: the benefit corporation and the flexible purpose corporation. Here is more on both from the Nonprofit Law Blog, and more on the flexible purpose corporation from CharityLawyer.
The Acumen Fund has been working on a list of “lessons learned” from its work in global poverty in celebration of its tenth anniversary. See them all in this slick but hard-to-navigate web feature, or read them one by one at the blog.
PhilanTopic interviews Orlando Bagwell, director of the Ford Foundation’s new JustFilms initiative, which will distribute $50 million over five years to fund social issue documentaries.
Here’s a data point I bet we wouldn’t have seen five years ago:

RESEARCH CORNER

The Urban Institute and LINC have released a new white paper on artist spaces and community development.
The Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance’s Tom Kaiden writes up GPCA’s new Portfolio research report for the Foundation Center’s PhilanTopic blog. Portfolio is one of the best examples of Cultural-Data-Project-derived research out there, not just because it looks beautiful (though it does), but because it actually starts to tap into some of the targeted analysis made possible by that rich data resource.
Researcher Elizabeth Currid-Halkett challenges the wisdom behind recent national initiatives such as Our Town and ArtPlace, arguing that policy interventions can’t always be relied upon to spur economic development. The op-ed has its flaws (she doesn’t seem to realize that ArtPlace is separate from the NEA), but the underlying point–about the complexity of the ways in which the arts and economies interact–is worth consideration.
Yes, journals sometimes retract research, and the trend is on the rise.
Fun to see my peeps from the Yale School of Management getting into economic impact studies for the arts.

IN THE FIELD (AH, ORCHESTRAS EDITION)

The Philadelphia Orchestra musicians are taking a 15% pay cut under their new contract.
More on the Brooklyn Philharmonic‘s new artistic direction, from New York Times critic Steve Smith.
Lee Streby has a new entry in his Project MAD (Musical Arts Development) series outlining a forward-looking business and programming model for orchestras. And Paul R. Judy laments on the NEC blog how little real-life orchestras have changed in recent decades.

BIG IDEAS

I love how Barry Hessenius just tucks these stealth ideas into his posts sometimes. Here’s one of recent vintage:

It occurred to me that an interesting pilot project would be for the arts in a given area to open an Apple like store for the two months before the Christmas shopping season – with simple, clean lines in the design, with high tech monitors on tables, and a cadre of Arts Sales People available to answer questions and move the shopper through the experience of looking at all the available performing and visual arts options in the local area — videos of the best of the operas, symphonies, museums, dance companies, theater offerings, and the other arts – and the shopper could instantly buy tickets to a single performance or season tickets or memberships in museums etc. for themselves or as holiday gifts for others. There would also be offerings of local classes in various arts disciplines for all ages and , opportunities to join boards of directors or otherwise volunteer at local arts organizations. If you packaged it right you might be able to recreate some of the same kind of excitement an Apple store generates. Bottom line: we have wonderful products, and perfect gifts alternatives to the same old boring stuff people give to each other every year.
Franz Nicolay reports firsthand on the life of the middle-class musician:

Most music fans, and most musicians, only have two models with which to think about a life in music: the Starving Artist or the Rock Star. The starving artist has moral authority and credibility, and the rock star is rich as hell and has total independence. Most Starving Artists imagine, in their heart of hearts, that they’ll eventually be Rock Stars.But most musicians who spend their life in music fall somewhere in between – the Middle-Class Musician. Somewhere in between blue-collar and white-collar; making enough to live on – let’s say $20k-$60k – and caught somewhere along the margins as far as things like health insurance, mortgages, and car payments.And it’s on the head of the Middle-Class Musician that most judgments about morals and ethics in the music world fall, about licensing songs for commercials, about which other bands to tour with, about signing with particular labels (major v. indie v. major indie) – and independent fundraising. A lot of arguments against things like commercial licensing are the ethics of the Starving Artist, which the Rock Star has the comfort and flexibility to ignore or indulge them.
Composer Kevin Clark riffs on my post about usability testing and arts organizations, asking what it would take to apply the idea to the art itself.

Wrap-up: SOM Philanthropy Conference (Part II)

Ian David Moss — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 20:05:00 +0000

The first half of this wrap-up is available here.

Following the Funder/Grantee Relationships panel, I attended another discussion focusing on the democratization of philanthropy (i.e., bringing more and more types of donors to the funding table). The panelists were Diane Airker and Angel Fernandez-Chavero from the Community Foundation of Greater New Haven, Eugene Miller from the Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society at the CUNY Graduate Center, Richard Porth from the Hartford Foundation for Public Giving, and Tim Walter from the Association of Small Foundations. Cheryl Casciani from the Baltimore Community Foundation moderated. I didn’t take as detailed notes for this one, so I will just pass along a few memorable tidbits that caught my attention.

Cheryl Casciani: “It’s impossible to know what it means to give until you’ve worked to get.” I couldn’t agree more. Sure, impossible might be an overstatement, but it definitely helps to have had that perspective. And all the more so when the project you’ve raised funds for is your own, rather than someone else’s.

Tim Walter’s Association of Small Foundations is an interesting group. Representing 3100 small-staffed or unstaffed foundations with average giving of $1 million, these groups often act more like individual donors than the behemoths like Gates, Ford, etc. Interestingly, Walter characterized small foundations as somehow more “philanthropic” than larger ones, I guess because they rely more on volunteer time than paid professional staff. Not sure I buy that, mostly because non-professional givers seem more likely to distribute funds in ways that risk getting grantee organizations “off mission”–i.e., by making large, highly restricted grants for very specific projects of personal interest to the donor. This came up a bit in discussion, but Walter warned against alienating donors with educational efforts that come off as condescending or arrogant. Better to inspire them and present it as an opportunity to lead through their actions.

Someone said that organizations are not engaged so much in fundraising as “friendraising.” Classic.

Apparently, all foundation giving represents only 0.2% of the annual GDP. This seems surprising considering the fact that nonprofits employ a tenth of the nation’s workforce. I would like to know what proportion of the GDP is accounted for by individual donations, government grants, endowment income, and revenue earned by nonprofits for profit-making ventures. (It’s also important to note that the foundations themselves would be included in that workforce figure above.)

Following this second panel, we broke for lunch and listened to the keynote speech by Charles Best, CEO of DonorsChoose and a 1998 graduate of Yale College. Looking like the California surf had dropped him on our doorstep, Best gave an engaging presentation about his organization and the creative ways it has interacted with donors and corporations alike. DonorsChoose acts as something of a clearinghouse for small-dollar classroom projects in public schools across America, kind of like a more focused version of what Fractured Atlas does as fiscal sponsor for fledgling arts organizations. The projects are submitted by teachers and vetted by the organization. Apparently the best part is the personalized thank-yous you receive at the end. What’s more, you can buy gift certificates for your favorite budding philanthropist. All in all, an interesting model that bears further study.

The final event I attended was the Trends in Corporate Giving panel with Joseph Gianni from Bank of America, Greg Johnson from the Sports Philanthropy Project, Celina Miranda from the Bank of New York Mellon, and William Shutkin from the Innovation Network for Communities. Jack Meyers from Yale SOM moderated. This panel was perhaps the most wide-ranging of the three I attended, as much of it featured highly philosophical debate about the very nature of corporate responsibility to society. Shutkin, in particular, advocated a very specific vision of his in which private philanthropy in some sense would no longer become necessary because corporations became committed to social responsibility in their day-to-day operations. After all, corporate giving accounts for 31% of all foundation giving, which if the statistic from the previous panel is true means that it makes up less than one-tenth of one percent of the annual GDP. By working social responsibility into the fabric of major for-profit operations, a scale perhaps can be achieved that would be unattainable otherwise. This point of view was echoed by a questioner who opined that it would be better if corporations sought to avoid causing problems in the first place rather than trying to “fix” them after the fact through their philanthropic arms. Some aspects of this vision are already entering the marketplace on a small scale: for-benefit corporations with hybrid/integrated solutions that use markets for social ends–the so-called “double bottom line” approach. Shutkin also mentioned “mission investing,” the process of nonprofits using their own endowments as a means to funnel resources to socially responsible ventures. The discussion was fascinating, but difficult to grapple with fully in the time available.

Since this blog is ostensibly about the arts, I’ll quickly mention that Bank of New York Mellon delivers substantial support to the arts in NYC, although not so much (as yet) in Boston, where Celina Miranda is based. Miranda had an interesting perspective as someone who came to corporate philanthropy from social work. It seems like an appropriate track, frankly.

Overall, the Philanthropy Conference was excellent and I’m glad to be able to report on it here. Here’s hoping it’s an SOM tradition that persists for many more years.

Thanks to Jeff Levi for the use of his photos from the conference.

Commongood Careers

Ian David Moss — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:57:00 +0000

On Monday, I attended an excellent presentation by James Weinberg, the founder and CEO of Commongood Careers, an talent search firm for the nonprofit sector. The presentation was primarily geared toward career advice for us students, but it also provided some interesting insights about the industry as a whole. For example, did you know that there are 1.4 million nonprofit organizations in the US alone, employing a tenth of the domestic workforce and controlling $2.9 trillion in assets? That is some serious market power. Another big theme of the talk focused on the sector-to-sector convergence taking place: nonprofits are becoming more like for-profits, while the for-profit sector is adopting many of the mission imperatives of nonprofits. The combination of the two factors above is creating a tremendous leadership vacuum in the nonprofit sector, because the rise of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and for-profit social enterprises is draining much of the talent that might otherwise have gone to nonprofits. That’s good news for us, but perhaps not so good for the organizations we’ll end up working with.

It seems that, as MBAs, our primary challenge will be to convince potential employers that we really do care about the mission (something that Alex Chu, the excellent MBA admissions guru, warns about as well). While respecting their acumen in operations and management and knowledge of best practices, nonprofits tend to view MBAs with some suspicion, fearing unrealistic salary demands and elitism. I suppose I don’t blame them, although it appears that this factor is greatly reduced if the applicant has previous experience working for nonprofits.

I asked James about the arts getting short shrift in umbrella nonprofit services because of their unique position in between the nonprofit and for-profit sectors. He agreed that the arts often take a back seat in donors’ hearts to priorities like education (strong #1) and the environment. Another factor he mentioned that I hadn’t really thought about is that arts organizations often have difficulty achieving a certain scale. His company, and indeed many institutions across the nonprofit sector, primarily deals with mid-size to large organizations (i.e., budgets of $1 million and above). Obviously, major symphony orchestras and art museums clear this hurdle easily, but the great majority of the arts organizations out there slip under the radar.

Apparently, though, there are some risks being taken by venture philanthropy firms. Venture philanthropy has redefined expectations around management and social return on investment, making it “okay” to invest in infrastructure, for example. I know very little about this field, but what I’ve read so far has me very intrigued. I’ll be exploring some of these ideas as they relate to the arts in future posts.