Jumper

Diane Ragsdale on what the arts do and why

Tackling an inequitable arts funding system: A response to the report, Not Just Money

Helicon Collaborative, with a grant from the Surdna Foundation, has recently published a second report, Not Just Money, examining where US arts philanthropic dollars go. Some may recall that when the first report was published it set off a small quake across the arts and culture landscape—with many shaking their heads at the inequitable funding picture that emerged in the report and some (like me) finding it curious that this was news to anyone since these inequities are not only longstanding but, to a great extent, by design. (You can read my Jumper post on the 2011 report here.)

Here’s how the most recent report describes the issue, which is worsening:

Just 2 percent of all cultural institutions receive nearly 60 percent of all contributed revenue, up approximately 5 percentage points over a decade.

The 2 percent cohort is made up of 925 cultural groups that have annual budgets of more than $5 million (NCCS). These organizations are symphonies, opera companies, regional theaters, art museums, ballet companies and other large institutions – the majority of which focus primarily on Western European fine arts traditions. While most of these institutions have made sincere efforts to broaden participation in the past decade, their audiences remain predominantly white and upper income (NEA Research Report #57).

If the goal of the first report was not only to raise awareness but also to spur a shift in funding away from large, (historically) white, major metropolitan fine arts organizations to smaller, community-based, or culturally specific, or rural arts organizations … it appears to have failed, thus far. The winners have gotten richer and the losers poorer since the first report; and this is despite considerable attention having been paid the past handful of years to issues of diversity, equality, and inclusion by Grantmakers in the Arts (the national service organization for arts funders) and several individual philanthropies.

Helicon has published three posts on its key findings, which I highly recommend as an introduction to this discussion. The third post is focused on how to move the needle and recommends that private foundations: (1) set explicit goals for change; (2) engage wealthy donors to address equity with their funding; and (3) commit to collaborative actions.

These are great recommendations but I’m going to suggest that it may also be beneficial to focus attention on a few other players on this field if we want to see a more equitable distribution of funding for arts and culture in the US: government agencies (whose funding already tends to be more equitable than that of private foundations in large part because of the obligation to serve the public interest), small family foundations (many of whom do not currently fund the arts), and the winners in this winner-take-all system (the large, historically white, fine arts institutions).

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To the National Endowment for the Arts: Graduate the Largest Institutions Out of Your Portfolio

As many know, the NEA does not have all that much money to distribute once the largest portion of the pie is sent to the states and the remainder is divided across the different programmatic areas. One consequence of this is that very large institutions often get NEA grants that represent a laughable portion of the budget (e.g. an orchestra with a $50 million budget might get a grant of $40,000). When I was a philanthropoid at the Mellon Foundation I would sometimes muse to colleagues:

How would it change the sector if there were a wholesale shift in funding from the largest organizations to the next tier down? What if organizations over a certain size (say $5-$10 million) were simply no longer eligible for certain pots of government money—on the argument that once government funding represents 0.1 percent of your budget (a) you no longer need the “imprimatur” of government to secure other funding; and (b) you can easily replace government funds with dollars from other sources?

In other words, rather than seeing all pots as pots over which all should compete for funding, what if government adjusted its priorities in light of the fact that individual contributions, private foundation support, and corporate support have proven over time to flow toward larger institutions? What if government recognized that–given its capacity to make grants that are more diverse on a number of dimensions–its primary value is to invest primarily in promising small and midsized enterprises, providing them with both an imprimatur and the early capital needed to grow their operations to the point where they might attract other sources of funding?

Having read the most recent Helicon report, I think it’s time to consider something along these lines. As a thought experiment: what if policies were instituted whereby organizations would “graduate” from NEA funding? That is, what if they would become ineligible for NEA funding once, for instance, any of the following conditions applied?

  • Total annual operating budget is greater than e.g. $10 million three years in a row;
  • One or more staff members has an annual salary greater than the president of the United States (~$400,000);
  • The wage ratio between the highest and lowest paid employee exceeds 1:5.
  • More than 50% of its end users (e.g. visitors, audiences, students, or artists) earn more than $50,000 a year (or perhaps more than the median income in the MSA where they are located).

One benefit of this approach is that it would not only begin to redistribute some arts dollars in the system; but it would blunt the tip of the sword of conservatives whose leading arguments for eliminating the NEA are that (a) multimillion dollar arts organizations can easily survive without it; and (b) it is essentially welfare for cultural elitists.

In a sense, the shift I’m proposing would put the federal government in the role of providing much-needed fertilizer to the most promising of the hundreds of Davids in the bottom and middle of the sector hourglass rather than sprinkling the equivalent of magic pixie dust on the handful of Goliaths that tend to dominate the top of the hourglass.

And, as we all know, none of this would preclude larger institutions from receiving other forms of recognition from the NEA (e.g. awards), or from tapping into other public pots (in addition to continuing to be the greatest beneficiaries of the indirect subsidies to the arts). Since driving place-based tourism and anchoring cultural/creative districts are often their highest value to cities-at-large, perhaps larger institutions should be beneficiaries of larger tourism grants, or economic development grants, rather than traditional arts funding?

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To City/State Arts Agencies: Broker Relationships between Family Foundations and Small Arts Orgs

Helicon’s most recent report indicates that while private foundations seem to be acknowledging the importance of diversity, inclusion, and equity they are still defaulting to funding the same (large, white) organizations as always.  How to square these two findings? An all-too-familiar anecdote relayed in a recent brief article in American Theatre magazine covering the Helicon report, points to one possible reason why. AT reports:

The course of true fundraising never did run smooth. Just ask Randy Reyes, artistic director of Mu Performing Arts in St. Paul, Minn. In 2015, Mu applied for an arts access grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board to teach audiences about the history of Asian-American theatre. Though Mu’s mission and audience is Asian-American, they didn’t get the grant. “We were disappointed in that,” Reyes admitted.

But one organization that did get an arts access grant was St. Paul’s much bigger Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, which received $86,039 to present Notes From Asia, “a series of performances, films, conversations, and an exhibit that will highlight arts and culture of Eastern Asian communities for East Asian, Asian American, and broader audiences.”

This is, of course, a long lament of smaller, culturally specific organizations who quite often feel either co-opted or eaten alive by larger organizations—who will sometimes lightly affiliate with smaller, community-based or culturally specific organizations in order to get access to diversity funding, or simply emulate the longstanding practices of such organizations in order to snag limited “diversity dollars” available. More dedicated pots of money, or dedicated philanthropies, probably need to be established to pay attention to small and midsized organizations.

As I’ve written about here, more than a decade ago (after changing the tax laws to make it easier and more beneficial for individuals to set up small trusts and foundations), the Australia Arts Council started an arm’s length organization whose role was to broker relationships between small and midsized arts organizations and small private family foundations and trusts. This intermediary met with donors, talked to them about the importance of supporting the arts, and identified organizations that might fit with their values; it mentored arts organizations to help them develop realistic funding strategies and prepare effective proposals; and it made matches between the two.

I have long wondered whether that same model could be transferred and modified at the city or state level in the US. Again, as a thought experiment, could state or city arts agencies make use of a similar, arm’s length lightly staffed brokerage service designed to spur increased arts contributions from small family foundations (many of which do not presently fund the arts)–to SME’s, in particular. At the same time, like the Australia program, could these matchmakers provide mentoring to small organizations to help them prepare more effective proposals?

Attention might be more productively turned to speaking to a new generation of individual family foundations and getting them each to adopt, say, 10-15 small-to-midsized arts enterprises, while we wait for the older institutional philanthropies to catch up with changes in the world; modify their values, aesthetics, boards, presidents, staffs, and systems; and presumably launch new strategies, programs, or organizations, designed to help them reach beyond the 2% to organizations that will necessarily require different metrics, application processes, etc.

However broadminded and whatever their good intentions, it is clearly operationally or philosophically or emotionally difficult for large philanthropies to shift money away from large institutions, particularly when they keep knocking on the door and seeking funding.

Which brings me to my last provocation.

To Large arts organizations: It’s time to recognize your historic privilege and the physics of pie slicing

I’ve observed several times that when discussions in the field turn to expanding resources for under-privileged groups incumbent beneficiaries (and their trade/advocacy organizations) are often quick to say, “Yes, of course, philanthropies and government agencies must fund the smaller organizations. But they shouldn’t do so by taking away funding from the large institutions. That’s not fair.”

One is reminded of the phrase: To the privileged, equity feels like oppression.

Given that new money is not gushing into the NEA’s coffers or the arts budgets of most foundations, it would stand to reason that making more, or larger, grants to arts organizations with budgets less than $5 million will likely require taking some money away from larger organizations—who have many more sources to which they can turn to make up the difference.

It is time for large organizations to exercise some moral imagination: to recognize that they are the take-all winners of an unjust system and that aggressively (and generally successfully) competing for every single $5,000 or $10,000 or $25,000 grant available is greedy behavior that contributes to the starvation of other parts of the arts ecosystem.

Period.

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A report came out 5 years ago intended, I think, to goad or shame arts philanthropies into adopting more progressive funding strategies. It appears most didn’t. San Francisco emerges as the North star in an otherwise bleak report. While it’s troubling that since Helicon’s first report, money has not shifted away from the 925 organizations with budgets greater than $5 million, it’s not surprising. One can imagine various reasons why the needle may not be changing.

It may be because this is a progressive political agenda that Helicon is proposing and some foundations are simply not interested to see their arts funds used to support what appears to be social activism. It may be because these things just take time given the nature of grant cycles and how long it takes to change policies, priorities, and guidelines. It may be because private philanthropies, a lot like individual donors, have a lot of ego in the game and quite often want to fund and be affiliated with arts institutions that they and their peers perceive to be “winners,” or “excellent,” or “prestigious” (qualitative valuations that are deeply tied to the culturally based aesthetic judgments and values of foundation decision makers). It may be because it’s hard to say no to organizations you have been funding for a long time, whose ADs and MDs have become close friends with program staff and board members. Or it may be because large organizations are quite savvy about how to exploit the system to secure funding no matter what the priorities are (yesterday it was innovation, today it’s diversity and inclusivity, tomorrow it will be something else).

Nevertheless, I applaud Helicon Collaborative for keeping the heat on this issue and pressing for discussion and change in the sector. I have no doubt the 2011 report spurred the leadership of Grantmakers in the Arts, much of the race-bias and implicit-bias training programs in the philanthropic community over the past five years, and many new grant initiatives aimed at diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Evidently, more is needed.

Perhaps it’s also time for the philanthropies who are presently allocating the majority of their resources to the 2% to more transparently address the questions and concerns raised in Helicon’s report? Perhaps Surdna (the funder of the most recent report) could host a roundtable of private foundation presidents to respond to the report? I, for one, would love to hear whether change is happening (but is just not showing up in the data yet because of the nature of grant cycles), or whether (and, if so, why) this is an area in which they are unlikely to implement changes anytime soon.

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Valuable data, questionable field recommendations. (A response to Irvine’s latest report on arts participation.)

risk question markA few years ago I had a meeting with a PhD advisor in the US to talk through the proposed chapter breakdown for my dissertation. When discussing the key components of my final chapter I conveyed that it would include a major section covering policy implications and recommendations for arts organizations, artists, and funders. My advisor smiled a bit and said, “Well, let’s see if you earn that section, first.” It was a good lesson. Whenever I come across a passage in a research study that begins, “The evidence suggests that arts organizations should, could, might …” my antenna goes up and I ask whether the recommendations are merited, or whether liberties have been taken.

I share this anecdote because I recently reviewed the findings from a very good study commissioned by the Irvine Foundation—The Cultural Lives of Californians, undertaken by the National Opinion Research Center at the University of Chicago. While the report itself is chock-full of both data and provocative questions that I imagine could be of great value to arts organizations who are sincere about such things as broadening, deepening and diversifying audiences (the motto brought to us by Wallace and Rand back in the day), the Irvine Foundation seems to be overreaching with its follow-on recommendations for arts organizations.

A brief exposition:

A few years ago the Irvine Foundation (located in California) made a dramatic shift in its arts grantmaking strategy. As executive director of the LA County Arts Commission, Laura Zucker, once put it, “Irvine’s constituency seems to have shifted from arts organizations to people in the community not being served by arts organizations.” *

Irvine’s current aim is to promote engagement in the arts for all Californians. Here’s the text that appeared in 2011 when it announced its plans:

Under the new strategy, the foundation will work to boost participation among low-income and ethnically diverse populations that have traditionally been underserved by arts nonprofits; support programs that expand how Californians actively participate in the arts, including the use of digital technology to produce or curate art; and use diverse, non-traditional spaces, especially in regions with few arts-specific venues.

In support of this democratic ideal the Foundation launched in 2013 a new Exploring Engagement Fund to support projects that “aim to engage new and diverse populations by adding active participation opportunities and/or incorporating the use of nontraditional arts spaces” (emphases added). While some nonprofit professional arts organizations in its portfolio met this news with enthusiasm, evidently uptake on the new program was slow. Many of the Foundation’s historic arts grantees seemed unwilling to follow the carrot.

I addressed this resistance a couple years ago in two blog posts (here and also here).  My view, in a nutshell, was (and still is) this: While the Irvine Foundation may have been justified in pursuing a brave new strategy, its grantees were also justified in rebuffing it. I wrote:

Irvine appears to be interested in bringing about a kind of diversity (i.e., change) in the arts sector we don’t often talk about: aesthetic diversity. … However well-researched and justified, Irvine must recognize (and I think it does) that its strategy is out of line with the missions of a majority of professional arts organizations, which were formed to present work by professionals for audiences that come to appreciate that work, not make it. … Irvine needs to recognize that it is endeavoring to coax organizations into uncharted territory. It wants to coerce a change that many cannot make, or do not want to make.

On The Cultural Lives of Californians

So here we are two years later and Irvine has released the findings from its latest study, which investigated differences in  arts and culture participation behaviors across California’s diverse population. It probably goes without saying that many of those surveyed are not patrons of traditional fine arts organizations. Researchers sought to understand (1) what counts as culture, (2) where culture happens, (3) its value to people, and (4) the role of technology in the cultural lives of Californians.

One outcome of the study is an expanded concept of arts participation–one that reflects seven types of behavior researchers encountered: art-making, arts-going, arts-learning, media-based consumption, supporting arts and culture (i.e., volunteering time, money or resources), using social media, and the nebulous category additional activities.  Irvine is not alone in expanding the aperture on arts participation. The NEA has made a similar shift in its periodic survey of public participation in the arts (discussed in this NEA blog post written by director of research Sunil Iyengar).

So, what’s the headline of Irvine’s latest report? Well, it seems to be a good news/bad news message.

First, the report “reframes” the broken-record lament that arts participation is in decline by advancing the much more optimistic perspective that if the definitions of ‘art’ and ‘participation’ are expanded to encompass such things as salsa dancing at the community center, singing at church, knitting at home, watching a YouTube video demonstrating how to knit, writing fan fiction, posting a comment to Facebook about an artist, or taking a photograph and posting it on Instagram–then, actually, significantly more people participate in the arts and culture than previously acknowledged.

(That this might not be encouraging news for orchestras whose audiences for concerts are in decline seems to be a perspective the report doesn’t want to indulge.)

However, the report is not simply a pep rally to drum up enthusiam for the breadth and diversity of cultural participation in California. The bad news? While the levels and varieties of arts and cultural participation overall are “encouraging, there is significant disparity between different groups of Californians.”

It strikes me that, to a great extent, Irvine is trying to grapple with this disparity and, in particular, trying to harness the energies of nonprofit professional arts organizations to solve this problem. To that end, the report includes several sets of provocative questions—all versions of, “So how might a professional arts organization help improve this situation?”

  • What tools or points of access can organizations offer to support individuals in their own art making and learning?
  • What are the opportunities for nonprofit arts organizations to entice and engage those who typically make art in private?
  • How can nonprofit arts organizations make their expertise and resources accessible to people who choose to engage culturally in non-arts-specific spaces, including private settings, such as the home?
  • What are the opportunities for the nonprofit sector to work in and with community spaces without being disruptive to the activity already underway?
  • How can nonprofit arts organizations make their expertise accessible to people who choose to engage culturally online or through mobile devices

I wonder if I am alone in bristling a tiny bit at these questions, which lead a bit too obviously in the direction of Irvine’s grantmaking strategy. Nonetheless, the market is changing, disparities exist, and it’s not unreasonable to at least turn to professional arts groups and ask, “So, what about this market? Do you think you might have something to offer here?”

While the report merely hints at possible strategies for arts organizations, a blog post by Irvine president Josephine Ramirez introducing the report is more direct.  In What Arts Organizations Should Know About the Cultural Lives of Californians, Ramirez states, “this study, and a growing body of research, point to several important opportunities and implications for arts organizations and the sector.” She mentions five, three of which are:

  • Respond to the high demand for more active arts participation;
  • Expand offerings to meet people where they are; and
  • Explore how the arts can stimulate greater participation and connection among California’s largest and growing demographic groups.

Sound familiar?

Basically, the conclusions drawn from the research are that arts organizations need to develop the sorts of programs and initiatives that Irvine has been trying to spur through its Exploring Engagement Fund.

Overreaching?

And this brings me to my basic concerns about the report. While it is extraordinarily worthwhile for a foundation to shine a light on arts and cultural participation among those disinclined to participate in traditional fine arts institutions, and while smart arts organizations will look at this data and seek to understand what it conveys about arts participation behaviors across diverse populations, I’m not sure that the implications proposed by Ramirez are realistic.

Essentially, Ramirez is suggesting that nonprofit professional arts organizations need to develop new products (e.g., those that meet the demand for active participation and those that happen where people are rather than in the traditional arts space) for new markets (e.g. first generation immigrants and other growing groups who are not currently participating in the arts). This is a move that carries enormous risks.

This Ansoff Matrix demonstrates the point.

ansoffmatrix

If a business is doing well, then (from its perspective) the best strategy is to continue to create the product it knows for the market it knows (market penetration). However, when that market is in decline (and one could argue that this is the case for many professional arts groups at the moment), its least risky move is either (a) to develop new products for existing markets (product development), or (b) to develop new markets for existing products (market development).

Asking arts organizations to develop new products for new markets sends them diagonally into the box marked diversification and is a high-risk move; there can be a significant chance of failure. And while Irvine might be willing to underwrite some of the financial risks associated with experiments in this realm, it can’t underwrite the strategic, operational, compliance, social, and psychological risks associated with such changes—organizations need to be ready, willing, and able to bear these on their own.

bridge jumping

Areas for further research?

There seem to be a few assumptions embedded in Ramirez’s recommendations to arts organizations to venture into this realm.

The first is alluded to above. It’s the assumption that profesional museums, theaters, opera companies, dance companies, and orchestras have the capabilities and resources to do this work. This assumption may derive from the difficult reality of an overbuilt nonprofit sector and a desire to see existing assets (whose value may be declining anyway) redeployed in service of a new set of needs. It may derive from the loyalty Irvine feels to its historic grantees and a desire to continue to support them in some way (rather than abandon them for others). Whatever the motivations underpinning the assumption, however, I am not sure it’s sound.

A related concern is that the emphasis on spurring traditional arts organizations into this realm seems to overlook the excellent work being done (for decades now) by grassroots or community-based organizations. They have the necessary skills, values, and ties to diverse populations. Many are already reaching representative audiences (which seems to be Irvine’s primary goal). They are also, quite often, underresourced. Would a better recommendation be that grassroots and community-based organizations merit greater investment to meet this growing need?

The second assumption is the flipside of the first: it’s that first-generation immigrants, the elderly, and the other populations about whose cultural lives Irvine is most concerned desire deeper engagement with opera companies, orchestras, dance companies, museums, and theaters. Is there evidence that this is true?

The third assumption seems to be that art-making is swallowing arts-going whole and that there will be no demand in the future for receptive arts experiences and organizations that are uniquely qualified to offer them. And yet reading the report I was struck by how much interest there still seems to be in good, old-fashioned, “passive” arts-going. Will professional arts organizations that avoid developing active participation strategies be at a disadvantage in the future? Or is there still a healthy market of people who want to buy a ticket, sit in a seat, and watch a show?

Has research already been done that could help address these questions? If so, please comment and send links. If not, would it be worthwhile to probe these assumptions?

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From my perspective, the report is definitely worth a read. I was particularly interested in a section that reports on the relationship between use of social media (to experience, educate oneself, gather information, or tell others about art or artists) and ethnicity (p. 38). I also spent quite a bit of time examining two infographics that show the relative size of audiences for various forms of music and dance (pp.19-20), one that examines venues for arts-going by type of arts activity (p. 41), one showing rates of arts-going across income levels (p. 24), and one that maps the seven modes of arts participation (p. 12).  Again, it is chock-full of data and I would encourage arts organizations to dig into it.

Here are some links (that Irvine asked me to pass along) to get you started:

I would be keen to hear what others have made of Irvine’s new report or its field recommendations.

* Laura Zucker made this comment at a Grantmakers in the Arts panel that I was invited to attend and blog about in 2013. You can read the full post here.

 

My Grantmakers In the Arts 2013 Conference. I’m Sensing an Evolution.

Grantmakers-2013-2-300x255A few weeks back I was invited to attend the 2013 Grantmakers in the Arts Conference in Philadelphia as a Conference Blogger. I joined Barry Hessenius (Barry’s Blog) and a whole team of bloggers, led by Ian David Moss (Createquity), from Fractured Atlas. I wrote three posts summarizing the activities I attended and reflecting on key themes, which you can find here. I vowed (to myself) that I would let the conference sink in a bit and then write a post for Jumper–a brief summary of the sticky points, if you will. This is that post.

ARTISTS FRONT AND CENTER

In a relatively short period of time (since I was last at GIA in 2009) it seems that the conversation has shifted from being largely organization-centric to being oriented to the needs of both organizations and individual artists (with increased attention being given to the latter at the moment). This was certainly noticeable from the way artists were incorporated into the plenary sessions, but was also evident in the sheer number of sessions dedicated to artists, or artist collectives, or the relationship of artists to institutions (not including the Support for Individual Artists Pre-Conference).

Of course support for individual artists (in practice, or as a topic for conversation at GIA) is not new. What does seem new, however, is the idea that such investments are needed not simply because most artists exist outside of institutional structures but because artists are potentially important agents of change in the arts sector. If we want to see innovation in the arts sector, goes the argument, then perhaps we need to support artist-driven enterprises and encourage the presence and influence of artists within institutions.

To be clear, I didn’t hear the latter argument articulated, per se. The closest sentiment (I heard) came from Ben Cameron when he explained the motivations behind a new program at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, which puts artists in residence at arts organizations with the aim of  Building Demand for the Arts. In his opening remarks, Cameron mentioned that the program was “a reaction to the book Outrageous Fortune,” which he characterized as having “reinforced a divide between artists and institutions.” (For what it’s worth, I would characterize the book as having drawn attention to the divergent perspectives of arts organization leaders and artists that many in the theater field were previously unaware existed or were unwilling to acknowledge.) In any event, I sense that this particular program of the Duke Foundation is representative of a more general idea in the air. As I wrote in this GIA post,

For the first time, in a long time, I was at an arts conference in which artists (rather than organizations) seemed to have primacy. Where are the new ideas going to come from? Artists. Where does the energy to create community organically originate? Artists. Who are the entrepreneurs in the arts and culture sector? Artists.

If this is a growing sentiment, perhaps it would be worthwhile to structure a discussion next year around this idea and its implications for arts organizations?

OPENING UP THE GRANTMAKING PROCESS

A second (rather minor) theme was one that I experienced in large part due to the sessions I chose to attend. It’s the idea that funders now have the motive, opportunity, and means to give communities-at-large, or expert citizens, greater influence in the grantmaking process. Whether they want to take advantage of these tools is another matter; however, it appears that some long established grantmaking processes and structures may be shifting.

When the Knight Foundation first launched the Knight Arts Challenge in 2008 my sense was that it was perceived as a quite radical leap for a private foundation. I didn’t see (m)any other established foundations following Knight into the land of crowdsourced grantmaking. Even a couple years ago when Ian David Moss gave a TEDx talk and wrote an essay advancing his idea for  Citizen Curators to be engaged in the panel process, the funding community seemed rather perplexed by the idea, and it didn’t really seem to take off. At this year’s conference,however, it felt as though the tide may be shifting. Many arts funders acknowledged that they are rethinking their panel processes and some expressed receptivity to the idea of opening up their decision-making processes for direct engagement, or at least influence, by the end users that they are trying to reach through the arts. You can read more about this theme in my third blog post, which includes a discussion on the shift in Irvine’s program goals and strategy.

If I’m right about this then, again, it could be worthwhile to engage a discussion or debate around the implications of such shifts.

CONCLUSION: THE MEANS AND ENDS OF INNOVATION AND CAPITALIZATION

After writing this blog I decided to read the wrap ups of my fellow bloggers and I was struck by two things: (1) None of us attended the same conference–in the sense that we each walked away with a different perspective depending on the sessions we decided to attend. (2) If you attend GIA every year (as I did for years) it is hard to sense the change that may be happening.

In advance of going to GIA I was told by those organizing the conference that GIA had changed quite a bit since I was last in attendance. I was skeptical. And wrong to be so. Being away from the conference the past four years has, I believe, enabled me to detect the degree to which some things have, indeed, shifted with the times. When I was last at GIA the conversation seemed to be largely focused on the mis- or under-capitalization of arts organizations and ways to enable and encourage flailing organizations to either innovate or die gracefully. No doubt this was in large part due to the influence of the recession.

Don’t get me wrong—Systegic Survibrustainadaptinnovaccountabeffectipreneurism (my mash up of current funder jargon) continues to waft through every discussion and capitalization, in particular, is still cooking on the front burner. However, the conversation seems more evolved now. I sense (and hope I am right on this) that funders have begun to see innovation as a process rather than a destination (and one that should not be institutionalized by funders) and to ask themselves a question that the chair of my department at Erasmus, Arjo Klamer, might ask. Namely, “What’s capitalization good for?” In other words, what are the “goods” (the values, ideas, benefits to the world) that foundations are striving to realize in supporting the capitalization of organizations?

As I understand it, GIA has been actively recruiting new members to the fold the past few years (e.g., family foundations, local and regional arts councils, and community foundations). Additionally, it feels as though the median age of participants at GIA has dropped. It makes me wonder if the evolution in the conversation (if I’m right about that) is a result of having a wider lens on the world … and the role of the arts, artists, and arts organizations within it.

I sincerely hope others in attendance will consider weighing in. Did I attend the same conference you did? If not, what themes emerged for you?

On tipping the dominoes then walking away …

shutterstock_77378713A couple months back I was one of a number of people interviewed for a research project of Grantmakers in the Arts. The interview was aimed at understanding my influences as a funder (when I worked at the Mellon Foundation) and drawng out some lessons learned. At one point in the discussion I found myself saying that I had probably left grantmaking just in time because I was not sure I understood how to be an effective arts grantmaker over the long haul.

While at Mellon I found myself continually questioning whether it was better to provide stable support to a few over a very long period of time (forsaking all others) or to “cycle out” grantees after a reasonable period of time in order to make room for new entrants.

No matter the choice, the questions that ensued were maddening: If “fewer but larger” which few given that so many worthy organizations needed support? If “spreading the wealth” then what was a “reasonable” timeline for ending support given that organizations and their projects were chronically underfunded?

Without a doubt, a common funder’s dilemma.

And there were other aspects that troubled me.

For one, since no single funder is generally a “majority stakeholder” in most arts organization, the fate of any organization is a factor of actions by quite a number of private and public donors, who can have competing values, rationales, measures of success, and goals.

And perhaps most disconcerting, as time went on it felt increasingly difficult to see the sector with clear eyes. As in any organization, attention in a foundation is focused on some problems but not others. The lens is narrowed and the field is seen through the logic of the current “regime” and through the eyes of current grantees. Problems are problems only insofar as they can be addressed by and classified within existing program areas and can be grasped and articulated using the house rhetoric. Whole swaths of the sector and their issues, by necessity, become invisible in order for the funder to maintain any sense of purpose and potency; to think about everything one can’t fund is to invite a nervous breakdown on an organizational level.

***

About a month ago, I was reading an oft-cited essay from 1970 by Zelda Fichandler, co-founder of Arena Stage in Washington DC and pioneer of the resident theater movement. The essay is called Theatres or Institutions?* Perhaps because this GIA interview had been on my mind I found myself circling back to a couple of paragraphs in which Fichandler questions and reflects upon the impact of first receiving funding (when the Ford Foundation, NEA, and others first began to support theaters) and then losing it a little over a decade later. (Emphases added by me.)

She writes:

What happens when the money comes in a little? When you get enough from the Ford Foundation or the National Endowment to move ten squares and buy the Atlantic City Boardwalk? Is it migraine headache time? What time is it when you are suddenly endowed with all the blessings of institutionalization? (Mind you, the blessings aren’t something that are forced on you. They’re something you asked for without quite knowing what you’re getting.) Time for the Table of Organization? Time for the specialization of labor? Time to begin to consider the internal distribution of wealth now that you’ve got some? The promoting, marketing and distribution of the product? Ways to increase efficiency, ways to rationalize use of time and manpower, ways to diversify so as to appeal to a broader base, ways to close the gap between income and spending? It’s headache time and Surprise! Surprise! Time. One has become a private enterprise in a capitalistic society. The “not for profit” in your papers really says No Parking. Shades of Adam Smith and the Ford Motor Company of American and Pan, where hast thou fled? (p. 109)

[…]

We’ll need more money than we are getting and we must get it in a different way. Arena Stage has just received a terminal grant from the Ford Foundation which, partially matched by a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts will just about cover our deficit for the last season and for this one and the next. We have also received other grants from these and from other foundations, among them a three-year grant for a workshop program for our acting company, a three-year grant for the training at minimal salaries of young craftsmen under a production intern scheme, a three-year grant to increase the salaries of a ten-person nucleus of an acting company. This was very early on, around 1958 or 59—to entice actors from the magnetic field of New York. …

I mention these in particular to make the point that while it may be better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all, these grants had such a seminal meaning for our organization that when they were withdrawn, or, more accurately not renewed, the trauma was so intense that one wondered whether it would have been better not to have had them than to have had them and lost them.

Not knowing from one year to the next whether there will be a spring, or only summer, winter and fall, one simply does not know how to organize one’s closet. I suggest an end to this tithing tease. I suggest a recognition that subsidy is here to stay or we cannot possibly. (p. 110)

Reading this last line, in particular, brings to mind some of Scott Walters’ recent posts on the need for artists to create new business models that are not dependent on contributions in order to maintain their independence (summarized here by Laura Axelrod).

I am compelled by the dead-in-your-tracks ending of the last sentence of Fichandler … or we cannot possibly. Cannot what? Cannot conceive of any way, perhaps, to continue the revolution that the resident theater movement was intended to be if our comrades in the large private foundations and federal arts agency abandon the cause.

Less than a decade after she spoke these words major funding from Ford would be evaporating and funds from the NEA would begin to flatten before beginning their descent. And by 1978 there would be a palpable sense that the resident theater movement had taken a wrong turn at some point along the way.

I keep returning to these paragraphs from Fichandler’s essay because they illustrate poetically and potently what happens in the psyche of a grantee when a little bit of money comes in and when it, inevitably, goes away. In response to the question, Would it have been better not to have received these grants than to have received them and lost them? I finding myself wanting to shout back at the page, “Yes! You would have been better off never having received the money!”

No matter how good the intentions of most foundations over the past several decades it seems the “tithing tease” has debilitated rather than strengthened the sector. And by debilitated I mean weakened the ability of organizations to enact their missions.

So what is the problem? I find myself wanting to push past questions like whether or not the field would benefit from more GOS and less project-based support, or from longer-term rather than shorter-term grants and ask a more  philosophical question … Something like …

Is it ethical for funders to start what they cannot finish?

Cannot because they do not have the resources … Or cannot because they are unwilling to commit to full funding or long-term support because it is believed that these create an unhealthy resource dependency …  Or because there is a desire to keep options open in order to be able to pursue new initiatives or respond to new grantees at will.

The assumption embedded in the term “start” is that I’m not talking here about the kind of helping hand that simply wants to support ongoing programs or operations. I’m talking about the kind of hand that seems to want to push, pull,  prod, coax, launch, build, expand, change, or otherwise disrupt the status quo.

Some follow-on questions …

  • Is it ethical to de-fund organizations that are achieving agreed upon goals, if you know that removing support will destabilize the organization or the funded program?
  • Is it ethical to provide “seed funding” if the organization is unlikely to be able to raise the remaining funds needed to finance the initiative (in the start up phase and over time).
  • Is it ethical to start relationships with new organizations (i.e., cut the pie into smaller pieces) when those that are currently funded are already receiving inadequate support?

Fichandler says it all in those paragraphs: (1) Even small amounts of money can have undue influence. She isn’t just talking about new programs being started, she’s talking about a shift in the logic, the goals, and the processes of her theater. (2) When money goes away it can be traumatic–not simply because it’s hard to replace the cash but because it feels like, and signals to others, a withdrawal of support for the cause.

As far as I can tell not much has changed with funders since 1970. We continue (at times) to give organizations just enough money to encourage them toward one path rather than another (a choice that we know will consequently enable certain future paths and disable others) and then we walk away when they are just far enough down the path that they can’t really turn back.

We still call it philanthropy but perhaps we need another name for an action that essentially amounts to tipping the dominoes and then walking away.

***

PS – I am delighted (!) to have been asked to attend and blog about the 2013 Grantmakers in the Arts conference in Philadelphia in early October. I will be posting on the GIA website and also on Jumper.

*Essay published by the International Theatre Institute (US) in a journal called Theatre 3 (one of five such journals).

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