This week, the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation announced that, in light of the recession, it is open to renegotiating terms of previous grants in order to allow arts organizations to spend the funds on more immediate needs. At around the same time, the Gates Foundation was releasing a statement by CEO Jeff Raikes saying thatRead More
Thoughts on “Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy”: Lessons from my Summer Internship
As the twenty or so regular readers of this blog will note, I debuted Createquity last October with a rather brash six-episode litany of “Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy” in the realm of the arts. I say brash because, at the time, I had no experience running a philanthropic program; all I had were my outsiderRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part VI – The Philanthropist as Speculator, Not Gatekeeper
For this sixth and final post in this series, I’m going to wax philosophical for a bit here and talk about values. Everybody knows that philanthropy in the nonprofit sector, and the arts in particular, is a big deal. Leaders of most nonprofit organizations spend the bulk of their professional lives worrying about where (figurativelyRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part V – Meeting the Artists Where They Are
To view the rest of this series, click here. One of the memes that’s been coming out of the “best practices” camp for philanthropists the last few years is that organizations need more general operating support, rather than the project support that many funding entities are accustomed to providing. The advantage of general operating supportRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part IV – Funding Activity, Not Individuals
To view the rest of this series, click here. For years, artists have complained about the National Endowment for the Arts’s 1996 decision, under pressure from Congress, to eliminate individual artist fellowships (except for literature). Nevertheless, it seems that a number of local and private arts agencies and foundations have instituted programs in the pastRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part III – (Dis-)Economies of Scale in the Arts
Note: This is the third of a multipart series on the arts and philanthropy. I hope these ideas are of interest and welcome suggestions and feedback. To view the rest of this series, click here. When we left off last time, I was advocating for funding agencies to adopt a spirit of experimentation in theirRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part II – Philanthropy and Experimentation
Note: This is the second of a multipart series on the arts and philanthropy. I hope these ideas are of interest and welcome suggestions and feedback. To view the rest of this series, click here. When we left off last week, I noted that it’s hard to measure the effectiveness of the arts when weRead More
Thoughts on Effective Philanthropy: Part I – The Nature of the Arts and their Impact
Note: This is the first of a multipart series on the arts and philanthropy. I hope these ideas are of interest and welcome suggestions and feedback. To view the rest of this series, click here. Measuring impact is a hot topic in the nonprofit world right now, if the title of the 3rd Annual SOMRead More