Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) Executive Director Anthony Radich makes some rather bold statements in a weblog conversation by the Hessenius group (scroll about halfway down the page). In his opinion, the volume of arts production has grown beyond sustainability in many communities, and the oversupply is killing vitality and connection between arts and audience. His suggested solution? Encourage some arts organizations to die:
So let’s euthanize some arts organizations. Let’s pull some of the nonprofit arts programming off the arts-production line and free up funding and talent for reallocation to stronger efforts–especially to new efforts tilted toward engaging the public. Let’s return to the concept of offering seed money for organizations that, over a period of years, need to attract enough of an audience and develop enough of a stable financial base to survive and not structure them to live eternally on the dole. Let’s find a way to extinguish those very large groups that are out of audience-building momentum and running on inertia. Instead of locking arts funders into a cycle of limited choices, let’s free up some venture capital for new arts efforts that share the arts in new ways with the public.
Euthanizing arts organizations will not be easy, but the alternative is the underwriting of a museum of arts organizations–a dust bin of well-intentioned nonprofit arts programming that either never quite connected with the public or whose day has passed. The public expects more from our field. They will return in numbers to nonprofit arts programming when we clear out the ghost organizations that live on without community support. These entities are a heavy weight on our efforts to share meaningful and insightful arts experiences with others.
It’s a wrenching and incendiary conversation for our field…but absolutely necessary. Of course, the essential questions of such a strategy are ”who gets to decide which live and which die?” and ”by what criteria do we make that decision?”
I suspect this is a ‘modest proposal’ of sorts but I can’t help agreeing with its basic premise. The funding community should not be in the business of keeping dinosaurs alive.
But if we accept being “out of audience-building momentum” as a primary qualification for euthanasia, we’d have to cut off all the ballet companies, opera companies, regional theatres, performing arts centers, symphony orchestras and musty old museums.
Talk about behaving like a business. By all means, lets eliminate the product lines that don’t show growth potential and put our venture capital behind promising start-ups.
Remind me again what those start-ups would be.
This conversation often comes down to what art forms or artistic offerings to euthanize, and therein lies the difficulty – our fundmental existence as a field is built on the idea that art is intrinsically valuable and should be preserved even if it is not profitable in the current audience market of a given location.
But I wonder if the conversation would become less circular and difficult if we explored ways to euthanize arts organizations without euthanizing art forms. Is this an area in which consolidation, joint ventures, and shared services could help to preserve the art without the need to preserve separate institutions that compete for audience and dollars? Can we eliminate some of our own redundancies without eliminating entire art forms from our cities?
Of course, following that path could put some of us out of a job…hmmmm…
This entry put me in mind, believe it or not, of an entry you did two years ago on an Independent Sector proposal to revamp the way non-profits are funded. (http://www.artsjournal.com/artfulmanager/76355.php)
Radich and the Independent Sector differ on some points. Radich is against keeping people on the dole, IS encourages foundations to ensure funding sources forever even if they move on. Radich seems to feel that funders have too few choices where IS seems to say foundations are funding too many people too shallowly.
What both propose though is a venture capitalist type relationship where organizations receive comprehensive funding in return for rock solid accountability. (Which just happens to tie into your July 31st entry.)
My question to you, since you brought both Radich and the Independent Sector to my attention, is if you feel the loss of inertia Radich is railing against might actually be the result of the current funding structure? Are their problems just a function of the fact that they started out with great focus, but as they chased funding they compromised themselves and dispersed their efforts so widely they became ineffectual.
I just wonder if even after cutting away the dross the remaining arts organizations might eventually be subject to the same fate unless the whole system of funding were to change. I sense that he might be proposing just that, but I am not quite sure.
Euthanizing superfluous and ineffective arts organizations may be a good idea. But, who will decide who lives and dies? Funders may withhold support, but rarely recommend arts organiations cease operations (so the organizations seek funding elsewhere). Organizations are not likely to call Jack Kevorkian for help. Peer review panels, which are perceived as objective when they are giving money away, would quickly lose credibility if they were asked to make Solomonic survival decisions.
The Darwinian concept of “survival of the fittest” is a core value in our society (and also a component of a free capitalist system). Euthanizing implies intervention in a system of natural selection. It is not generally accepted as a medical procedure, even when there is overwhelming evidence that keeping the patient alive serves no purpose. So, what makes us think it will work more effectively in the arts? And, even if we do come to see it as an acceptable outcome for an arts organization, who will play doctor and medical expert?
We American’s get our underwear twisted in knots over how our tax money is spent. This year it’s stem cell research, before it was NEA funding, something else is surely next. My proposal is simple:
1) The Federal government stops funding a whole lot of stuff, including our remarkably capable NEA.
2) You owe “X” in Federal taxes. Take some small amount, say 1% to 3%, from the bottom line of what you owe. You must pay this amount, but YOU decide which non-profit group it goes to. This is your choice — education, social causes, the arts, religion — as long as it is a registered 501(c)3 organization. You must document your payment with a receipt from the organization. The percentage amount is set by Congress every, say, five years.
3) This creates a pretty predictable, stable pool of billions of dollars each year. Non profits will compete for their share in the marketplace, from the micro/local to the macro/national. Those who make their cases — to the public, not to some foundation board or government committee (hands tied by this season’s version of political correctness) — will succeed. The rest won’t.
4) The government ensures that there ***is*** funding, and each indivdual decides who is most worthy. This gets the government out of the business of deciding if the local orchestra is still relevant, or worthy of more funding than building a local veteran’s monument or the animal shelter.
PROS & CONS:
While administration of this will be pretty easy — a single additional tax form, and a simple one at that — there will be fraud that will need to be policed. This will be vastly cheaper than the costs of the agencies now doling out money from the public’s chest for hundreds (thousands?) of ostensibly charitable projects.
There will be screaming from those now living, competition-free, off of the fat of the land. Most of these are entitlement dinosaurs. Let ’em work for their (our) money!
This could devolve into a rich-get-richer situation, with the best funded charities, like United Way groups, forcing out those with smaller voices. But since ***every*** household in ***every*** communty pays, and since the Big Boys still don’t have enough money to go door-to-door, this means that the local woman’s shelter or community music school has more muscle when it comes to reaching the people who already care the most about those programs.
Here’s my biggest problem: Americans are the most generous people in history. Would this system be perceived as telling people how much giving is “enough,” and that no more is necessary? The Law of Unintended Consequences may prevail here.
Discussion?
Going to Jennifer’s point about possibly euthanizing organizations rather than art forms – it’s a great question, and perhaps it’s naive of me, but I would assert that the board and leaders of our organizations have the most responsibility to frankly assess the vitality and impact of their respective organizations. Having the government or grant organizations “choose” more than they already do is a troubling thought – I think it’s less about changing the funding structure and more about having the courage as an organization to bow out gracefully, or implement major change to recapture the imagination of your community.
Is there a demonstrated case for the value of Arts Managers? There are now more people calling themselves arts consultants than ever before. My admittedly limited experience with their offerings (via volunteer work) is that their consultancies add little value and presume that the organization has the well-heeled backers that can be pushed over the edge into giving and getting a little more.
MBAs are increasingly prevalent in my professional work where creativity of a different sort is required. They don’t add much value to the creative work and when the funding gets tough, they tend to remain. Taking the parallel case in the arts, why is it that the creative forces need to be euthanized when dollars are scarce?
Ravi Narasimhan
Redondo Beach, CA
How about the inverse? Pull the funding from the strong programs now that thye are strong enought to be commercialized and support themselves, and then use the rest the other programs until the can do the same.
The arts should not become a popularity contest. Do you know what happens when artists in pop culture become so–everyone gravitates to the new and cutting edge artists. But they would be starved under Radich’s proposal.
Last year I was involved in making the difficult decision to shut down an artist-based, all-volunteer, non-profit organization for which I was serving as president at the time. The organization had been in existence for nearly 20 years, had changed mission after the first ten years, and clearly had outlived both the purpose for which it had been founded and its ability to generate the same level of enthusiasm for its evolved mission from its members, board, funders and the general public. It was a painful but necessary decision and process. There was a nice-sized treasury at the end that, according to the organization’s bylaws, was donated to a larger, more stable arts organization with a compatible mission. I see this as an evolution, not a failure, and I know that the individual members who wish to pursue the goals of the organization will do so in their own ways.
“In his opinion, the volume of arts production has grown beyond sustainability in many communities, and the oversupply is killing vitality and connection between arts and audience. His suggested solution? Encourage some arts organizations to die.”
We’ve all accepted his premise and have immediately jumped to a debate about his solution. But is the premise valid? In my mid-size city, there is no overabundance of professional arts or state-of-the-art venues for the arts. We have a desperate orchestra, art gallery, ballet school, and an opera guild that buses people to shows three hours away. We are a happy university and tourist city right on the American border, not far away up north. Money is poured into the university and it is known internationally-no one complains that the government does this – but nothing in our city is given to the arts. Our artists and Board members must monitor Bingo games to get core funding. Perhaps this is a geographical issue, or rather the issue is perhaps the way that the delivery of arts money is linked to the numbers of people and wealthy businesses in one place. Is this a lobbying issue? Like the lack of doctors which we also know here. The major cities house all the arts organizations.
But there’s another possibility. What if, by sustainability, you find that lack of universal and public arts education is eating away at the audience portion of the sustainability equation? We now have a general audience which knows less about arts expression and more about the search for personal oblivion in entertainment. I think arts managers need to pay more attention to politics. Or to their young artists who live and breathe current politics. The only way I can think of allowing the public to choose where arts moneys should be directed, a public which prefers American or Canadian Idol shows to opera, is to educate each and every one of them during every year of their public schooling, not about the arts, but to do the arts. All of them. The arts in a democracy doesn’t work if education isn’t universal.
An organisation’s by-laws/charter should outline the steps necessary to cease existence. That should also tell all involved where assets/debts should transfer to (usually another charitable concern) and what governance actions are required to do so (2/3 vote at AGM, quorum present, etc). This is an entirely internal issue in my book.
If the horse you’re riding on is dead, by all means dismount. However, if the organisation has a heartbead but still wishes to “wind down” its operations, why not consider a mutually-beneficial mergers and acquitions plan over certain death.
Take the core competencies, mission, and historic values (sorry to inject some MBA speak) and research existing, healthy external non-profit partners who might share part of that…or lack what your organisation has been able to do…or desire new members from your demographic…or promise to be a good steward of your assets and legacy.
Imagine like this…
“Palookaville Community Orchestra closes its doors, will re-open next season as a program of the extremely healthy Palookaville Arts Council. The trombones rejoice.”
“The Andorra Heritage Museum to be de-estabished, will merge with The Friends of Euorpean Culture Society. Museum debt to be assumed by Society. Major new Andorran donor secured by society to make for clean slate and bold new programming.”
“The Juggling Unicclist Collective to be re-named ‘Circus Arts Etcetera’ and will focus on training young people and schools outreach. Clowns welcome.”
And speaking to the evolution comment, in lieu of certain death, another option for the governance/AGM to consider would be a radical re-missioning of the ailing organisation. Before any vote to wind-down and cease, why not come up with a plan to entirely re-tool the mission, gut and amend the by-laws (within the limits they impose), tailor new components to interested future funders, install a throng of new board members who eagerly want to proceed in this new direction.
Heck, maybe even appoint a few students from Andrew’s class as trustees and see if they’ve learned anything to put to use. Just make sure your revised by-laws allow for tele-presence or email/proxy voting.
An ailing organisation’s board, much the same as a human being, might ask itself this: why die when there are still so many interesting things to expereince and schemes to try in this silly old world?
If you’re dealing with a swayback mule, and the horse really does need to be put down, by all means follow the by-laws and shoot it.
All best,
Eric
Wellington, New Zealand
P.S. – closing thoughts:
…diversify your organisation’s income sources as much as possible
…don’t depend on arts consultants to solve any of your problems
…enjoy the dinosaurs, maybe even partner with them
…find the 501c3 dole, whatever that is, and get on it
…if your organisation is running without community support…either dismount or work for change…see above.
…no animals were actually harmed in the making of this Artful Manager post
Like businesses, arts organizations come and go because they lost their market or are poorly managed. Funders need to be able to sort out who they fund and do not based on the validty of their mission and the quality of their management. Most funders, foundations and individuals are not fooled for long.
What is missing is the venture capital for new ideas and the an awareness that there are truly cultural entrepreneurs who create new cultural enterprises. These are the people who need to be funded. We need fresh ideas not to cut back on “production”. New ideas will either survive alongside all the other cultural offerings and they will push aside those out those who have lost their vision. Rather than finding ways to “kill” off a cultural enterprise we need to focus a portion of all funding on new ideas. We need a more positive look on the role of cultural offerings than worrying about who should survive and not. Without new ideas and new offerings the cultural community will become stale. The exisitng cultural organizations can be the innovators or an entirely new organization can bring forward new ideas. It will be the cultural entrepreneur who will bring these ideas forward and be the catalyst that brings continued new life to the cultural sector.
Let’s focus on the future, on the innovators, the cultural entrepreneurs and not on the executors.
Tom Aageson
yes, i agree. a lot of these institutions are full of overstuffed, blue fox, photo-op types that use the arts as a excuse for dressing up and partying. the needy artists get little from this bloated contingency. they are self promoting and wouldn’t know a monet from a phoney. no wonder the art scene is so vacant of content today. superficiality rules the roost. chuck ’em out. let them spend their own $$$$$$$