ARTSblog

I picked the topic title above from the list provided by Americans for the Arts because I don’t believe what it suggests is necessarily true.

We have seen some clear changes in program direction and focus from a handful of large and visible private foundations. The Ford Foundation is probably the poster-child for this topic. The bulk of these program changes have been the result of long-term planning efforts and/or changes in leadership, and not responses to the economy. The fact that some of these announcements coincided with the recession has muddied the waters a bit.

At the same time, we are also seeing both new foundations with a strong commitment to the arts come online, and program shifts in private foundations that strengthen the position of the arts and artists in their priorities.

It is also problematic to define “trends” from observations of activity among foundations. By and large, they communicate very little with each other (despite the efforts of GIA and others) and decisions are made independently and privately. While we look at the field of arts funders as a group, each is guided in their funding priorities by their individual missions, and those missions were often established a generation or more ago. In many important ways, foundations that fund the arts are more diverse and eclectic in their approaches than they are similar.

We are hampered from gaining a clear quantitative look at what is happening with private arts and culture funding since 2008 by a lack of real data. IRS deadlines for filing 990s, combined with the fact that foundations run on different fiscal years, means that reliable data is always at least 18 months old.

Research that GIA published in cooperation with the Foundation Center in July 2009 showed that while arts and culture funding decreased during the last two recessions, it was in proportion to reductions in other foundation program areas, and more importantly, rebounded once those recessions were over. More detail on this here.

The graph below shows foundation giving by major field. The shaded gray areas mark the previous recessions.

What’s on my mind recently is a comment by Marian Godfrey of the Pew Charitable Trusts that arts philanthropy is a very young field, and maybe we’re approaching it all wrong. I am not sure where to go with that idea, other than to think about the kind of research that is being done, and wonder, what’s missing?  What do we need to know to inform our work, and how can we secure and share that information?

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