Imagine what would happen if foundations and corporate donors funded not by grantee promises or relationships, but by their deeds and impact instead. Ah well, a man can dream, can’t he?
Imagine a world in which nonprofit arts organizations are given every tool they need to succeed. Or, in lieu of that, enough money to care for their communities, provide needed services, and use art as the tool for power rather than as a tool for fame, power, acclaim, vengeance, or just showing off how much smarter the artists are than the public they serve.
Just imagine.
Now imagine a world in which foundations, corporate donors, and powerful individuals who appreciate and love the impact that artistic organizations can provide see their responsibility not as a barrier to impact, but as an Autobahn.
Imagine that these funding goals were not naked advertising ploys, but rather, meant to show themselves as socially responsible, eager to make society work better, and branding opportunities to cause their own stakeholders to gleefully portray that kind of funding as an investment in making people better off. Instead, for example, of gleefully portraying themselves as cool saviors in an AI controlled universe that only holds sway among the billionaire investor class and tech entrepreneurs in Seattle, Silicon Valley, Austin, Boston, or Washington, DC.
Finally, imagine that the funding apparatus — the letters of inquiry, the grant applications, the limits on the grants themselves, etc. — was designed to provide charitable impact to as many people (breadth) in as many ways (depth) as possible. Rewarding impact offers more value to the community than sponsoring the Christmas show, for example. In addition, imagine that taking the chance to serve more people in a deeper way was rewarded even if the program failed for unforeseen reasons and the funder, rather than shying away from further grants to an operation that failed, saw the potential for success, reported on the lessons learned, and made it possible for other nonprofit organizations to read those reports and become more impactful in their own communities.
Now imagine that you’ve arrived in the land of milk and honey, with unicorns and cotton candy on the side.
Is it so preposterous for grantors to reward based on a history of a nonprofit’s advancement of the cause of human beings rather than on the popularity (which is not a nonprofit metric) of an artistic exhibition or event? Is it really?
On the other side, is it so preposterous for an ersatz bastion of freedom, the largest (and some would say, the most “prestigious” members of the) nonprofit arts industry, to choose to use skill to help people out rather than to sell, baby, sell?
Recently, in his diacritical blog, Douglas McLennan asked us to consider not how we measure art, but how we should measure art.
“Thus too the difficulty of trying to measure something so unwieldy and subjective as creativity and the arts. What are we measuring? Quality? Impact? Engagement? Each is a subjective measure.”
Measuring art depends on eliminating variables. Start by asking why you’re measuring and you’ll inevitably narrow down the data to what should be measured. Before that happens, ask your colleagues, your staff, your artists, and your board: are we measuring as a charity or as a commercial arts producer?
If your organization is a charity, a nonprofit 501(C)(3) organization taking tax exemptions (and providing tax breaks), the answer is simple: you’re doing everything you can to help the community’s issues. The lack of art is neither legally nor technically a community issue (at least according to the IRS and the state in which you do business). That means, of course, that the production of art is also not a charitable activity in and of itself.
If your organization is not a 501(C)(3) corporation, you can produce whatever you wish, whenever you wish, to whomever you wish, and for whatever reason you wish. There are no limits. There are taxes to be paid and investors instead of donors, but it’s a pretty straightforward, entrepreneurial decision.
As we’ve stated in earlier columns, there is no moral high ground to running a nonprofit corporation in lieu of a commercial enterprise. However, if you do choose to run a 501(C)(3) arts organization, know that the measurement leans more on the charitable results than anything resembling artistic excellence (whatever that means).
Funders, this is a two-way street. Your gifts cannot continue to result in commercial goals. Popularity and attendance, while grand, are commercial goals. Positive economic impact, while grand, is a commercial goal. Educational achievement requires data that proves results, just as you would require proof from a nonprofit elementary, secondary, or university educational institution. “Artistic excellence” is not only not a charitable activity, it’s not a commercial one either, except when more tickets are sold ostensibly because of that subjective phrase.
I understand that foundation giving is all a crap shoot and funders want to hedge their bets by throwing money at organizations rather than causes. Large, venerable organizations are safer (?) bets because they offer a sense of corporate stability. We now know, of course, that few are stable. If you missed that memo, just look at media coverage over the last several years.
The truth is that causes mean more and last longer than organizations.
Arts Capacity working with the incarcerated community means more than another black-tie gala. Voices of Our City Choir employing the unhoused community to perform means more than another all-white orchestra performing classical European music composed by people whose last names start with the letter B. Forklift Danceworks extolling the lives of the faceless people who comprise the workforce by providing an avenue for them to show the world how important they are is more important than the latest interpretation of the Nutcracker. Mixed Blood Theater disrupting injustice by highlighting the untold stories of the people of their community is more important than presenting another harmless screwball comedy.
Out of Hand Theater rallying people together to witness and discuss how inequities affect their lives is more important than other theaters producing an August Wilson play and using it to reflect their “commitment to DEI.”
The Louisville Orchestra changing the lives of people across the commonwealth of Kentucky by combining orchestral music with Kentucky’s longtime association with jazz, blues, country, and bluegrass music and bringing it to every county in the state in their In Harmony program (regardless of perceived acoustic deficiencies) and to work individually with every fourth- and fifth-grade student in the county to help them tamp down their anxieties and express themselves with music — well, that’s more important than what any other Grammy-winning nonprofit orchestra is doing, isn’t it?
If your foundation or other donations funds nonprofit arts organizations to serve themselves or some notion of artistic vision, you’re wasting your money. If you have a plaque in the lobby of such an organization, ask them to take it down – it’s only hurting your company’s, foundation’s, or personal reputation as a donor. Your duty as a donor is to help a community.
Measure your company’s art for what it does for everyone, not what it does for the donors.
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