Just look at the US presidential election… and US nonprofit arts organizations.
We have established roles for ourselves. We can’t help it.
“In human life, social roles are ubiquitous. Historically, social and personality psychologists sought to understand the relation between social roles and psychological functioning. Contemporary social and personality psychologists, however, have focused much less attention on understanding the ways in which social roles influence psychological adjustment. Nevertheless, current research on aging and illness provides consonant evidence that social roles play a crucial function in psychological and physical health. Our research argues that social roles are important mechanisms through which basic psychological needs can be satisfied, and as such, fulfilling social roles has the capacity to enhance psychological health.”
— Talley, Amelia E et al. “Social roles, basic need satisfaction, and psychological health: the central role of competence.” Personality & social psychology bulletin vol. 38,2 (2012): 155-73. doi:10.1177/0146167211432762
Doting father, supportive mother, independent sister, ambitious teen. Abusive father, shrewish mother, tortuous sister, detached teen. That friend who listens. That friend who fixes. Mentor. Mentee. Partner. Antagonist. These are roles complete with costuming, makeup, and set design.
In the US presidential election, the voting for which has already begun and the tally for which may take days (perhaps weeks) after the official November 5 election day to ascertain, the roles the leading two candidates have chosen couldn’t be clearer. Irascible, irrational, privilege-losing, really-old White guy (and not just White…really White) against modern, non-White, not-too-old, parental figure with a high IQ, strong morals, and embodying F. Scott Fitzgerald’s description of a first-rate intelligence: “the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” Either candidate may win (which speaks to the racist 35-40% of the core electorate — the “KKK vote” — plaguing the US’s second-rate version of democracy for its entire 248 years), but that’s not the point of this column.
The roles are what is important here. They both consider themselves heroes, almost in the Greek sense. Each has engaged a role (as have their running mates) as a good actor does, creating and living to a backstory (sometimes woven out of whole cloth). Anything that might contradict the glory story attached to their heroic self-depictions must, by all logic, be a lie.
It’s a variation on an often-whined theme that goes, “We’ve always done it this way,” which has a second verse that goes “If you say otherwise, not only are you wrong and stupid, but it would mean my life and career have had no significance. I’m not stupid; you’re stupid.”
Roles have inherent limitations and boundaries. That should be self-evident. After all, a role is not something that is a positive force for all things and all people. That’s why companies create mission statements; successful ones chart a course and force the company to choose not to take on activities that might be rollicking fun but have nothing to do with the character and goals of the company.
Arts leaders have a role in the success or failure of a nonprofit venture (unless, of course, they choose not to turn their company into a charity — an entrepreneurial choice and not a bad one). The organization itself has a role within the community. In accepting that role, it sacrifices choice for efficacy.
Artists are not a part of that equation. They bear no responsibility toward an organization’s duty to its community. As jobbers, they are hired (or not considered) by an arts organization based on that organization’s needs in a single moment. Critics of community-first nonprofit arts organizations purposely conflate artists with arts organizations — to gain sway among artists, I suppose. As we’ve discussed in previous columns: art, artists, and arts organizations are three wildly different things, often at odds with each other. Art is essential; artists are magical in that they create artistic value from disparate materials; arts organizations are not essential to the process.
Arts organizations can be helpful, but they’re essentially nonessential (unless they choose to engage with their community to figure out how to solve or mitigate the negative issues plaguing that community). Art and artists existed before arts organizations, and should arts organizations all close down at once, they’ll be here long after.
What is the role of your arts organization? Now ask your community’s leaders what the role is of your arts organization should be. Have you convinced them that your production of art is a charitable activity, worthy of support from every corner and presented for the good of all people? Or is what you do a luxury item for the wealthy White folks in town? Do they donate as they do to blood banks, food banks, and shelters for those experiencing a housing crisis, with the expectation that their benefit will be wholly altruistic? Or do they donate to get better seats, their name on a plaque, and dinner with the conductor?
Breaking free from the role of guileless entertainment resource is of paramount importance, or so today’s funders have indicated by choosing artistic support as the first “luxury” to be jettisoned from the catalogue of support vehicles. To these foundations and donors, has “supporting the arts” evolved into something indulgent rather than critical? A hobby instead of a tool? Something to be funded after everything else is funded?
Take a hard look. Regardless of the size of your organization — behemoth or pocket-sized — you have a role within your community. It might not be the role you want to play, nor might it be the role your community needs you to play. But, as the psychologists said above, that role offers you some security and safety.
It just might not offer your community anything resembling security or safety. Which is why it will continue to lose funding as a charitable organization; worse, it’s why it will become dispensable (and dispensed with).
As we’ve said before, there is no moral high ground to forming a nonprofit arts corporation. In fact, it’s much harder than forming a commercial organization. In the latter, you don’t have to worry about your community; only your constituency. You don’t have to care about whether your community becomes a more viable place for the underserved; you only have to care about making money for yourself and your investors. Finally, you don’t have to concern yourself with metrics of impact or purpose; you just have to concern yourself with the entrepreneurial tasks of financial investment, profit, and managing scarcity. Just your basic Business Management 101 stuff.
How would your organization’s role change if it weren’t responsible for the betterment of your community and just put on a show (the chief task of a commercial arts organization)?
How would it change if, instead of just putting on a show, it worked with its community to identify and collaborate to solve or mitigate negative issues (the chief task for a nonprofit arts organization)?
Might a truly charitable set of goals cause your nonprofit board and donor base to get whiplash from what they perceive as radical role-shifting? Will “we’ve always done it this way” be their defense for stasis? Will they reject positive change for your community as somehow irrelevant to your company’s production of art?
After all, clamoring for positive change might contradict the glory story attached to their heroic self-depictions and must, by all logic, be a lie.
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