ARTSblog

Kate Marquez

There is no question the arts are essential to build community in dynamic, lasting ways. However, arts organizations are constantly defending this concept. Unfortunately, in today’s economic climate it seems the best way to keep the arts alive is to attach monetary terms to their worth.

Southern Arizona Arts and Cultural Alliance (SAACA) has found there is more to gain than lose by venturing down this avenue and building lasting partnerships with businesses, for the sake of preserving art and supporting artists and musicians.

When local government funding was no longer available, due to budget cuts, SAACA turned to the business community to collaborate on events and programs. SAACA began to build arts-related partnerships, creating benefits for all parties that continue to unfold and grow.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 8%

Diane Ragsdale

There’s an old Dunkin’ Donuts commercial that ran back in the 1980s. It first showed a baker’s alarm clock going off in the wee hours of the morning and then the baker shuffling into the shower, and then into the bakery, all the time muttering “Time to make the donuts…The donuts!” When the alarms go off at the homes of artistic and managing directors of nonprofit arts institutions across the United States, I imagine them waking up and sighing “Time to meet more donors…The donors…The donors!”

There’s a lot of talk these days about transformation of the arts sector. But before we consider what we might look like in the future it might be worth reflecting on the fact that the arts sector has undergone enormous transformation already. Many institutions have evolved from rough-and-tumble clans filled with artists running around in blue jeans to…well, to professionalized bureaucracies filled with fundraisers striding around in suits. We were prodded into this transformation by corporate types who perceived our way of doing business as chaotic and, therefore, ineffective.

But what if the corporate types were wrong decades back when they told us that becoming more like them would make us more stable and, therefore, better able to fulfill our missions?  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 8%

Rob Schultz

As an arts administrator with responsibility for community arts education programs, it’s too easy to get caught up in the routine side of management: revenue, expenses, supervising staff, policies, procedures, publicity, and the rest. While necessary, these are merely tools to reach the more crucial and satisfying aspect of community arts education: improving people’s lives and helping them be happy.

In Mesa, AZ, our community arts education programs are fairly comprehensive, and growing.

In 2005, through a “Quality of Life” half-cent sales tax increase approved in 1998 by our citizens, Mesa completed a $99.8 million arts complex just a few blocks north of the original Arts Center site. Because our arts education classes had grown over the years and demand was high, the new Mesa Arts Center’s design included 14 fully-equipped visual and performing arts studios on two floors in two buildings, including an 8,000 square-foot ceramics studio and kiln courtyard.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9%

Rebecca Novick

Asked to write about new business models I find myself instead thinking of un-business models. How can we move the business from the center where in fact the art belongs? Not move the money, which is always necessary to some degree, but the business, the unholy preoccupation with systems and structures and buildings and the perpetual employment of administrators.

I have the honor to be involved in a project that is striving to do this, a big, messy, ambitious collaboration with spiritual aims and practical struggles, led by a playwright and shepherded by his family of collaborators. Soulographie: Our Genocides is an international project organized by playwright Erik Ehn to bring together the 17 plays he wrote in the last decade about various genocides. Teams in ten cities are producing one or more of the plays locally, in preparation for performances of the full cycle at La Mama in New York City in November 2012.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9%

Helena Fruscio

We can all see the business models changing – for-profits with a social mission, nonprofits with a business models that include historically “for-profit” ventures, and sole proprietors, small business owners, and entrepreneurs devising new plans, products, and businesses at a breakneck speed.

In Berkshire County, a rural community with a population of about 120,000 in western Massachusetts, we have started a movement that encompasses and supports the needs of this swiftly changing business dynamic.

It starts with the acknowledgment of the new businesses dynamic and then working to shift the focus on the core and driving values of the emerging field: Creativity.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10%

Prompted by a fluctuating economy and technological advances indirectly threatening to usurp the traditional live arts experience, we are at the height of buzz surrounding the possible identification of new business models for arts organizations; specifically, alternatives to nonprofit incorporation.

I agree – nonprofit incorporation isn’t for everyone. But what I feel is absent from these conversations is a real discussion on what we are striving for on the other end of these supposed magic bullet business models.

There seems to be a sense that we somehow trapped ourselves into the 501(c)(3) model. And so instead, we’re looking for alternative structures; other structures within which we can operate. That also seems limiting and honestly a little backwards to me.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10%

Janet Brown

The issue of new business models is a topic with which I am losing patience. To me it’s a “red herring” actually, when we should be discussing new product delivery models that engage more audiences, both young and old, utilize technologies, and update the organizational structures and attitudes that may have worked forty years ago but are not working today. These are huge issues of leadership, boards of directors, management, community relevance, and understanding audience trends.

“Money follows good ideas” is a mantra I’ve used most of my career. What we need are leaders who are seriously challenging programming, marketing, and governance protocols put in place years ago. Whether the legal pot the money goes into is a 501(c)(3), L3c, fiscal sponsorship, or sole proprietorship is best determined by what gives the artist or organization the greatest flexibility to raise funds, reach audiences, and fulfill their missions.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 9%

Paul Miller

Founder’s Beware! Do you have a great idea to found a program to help others in need or benefit a worthy cause or a unique artistic goal? If so please ask yourself the following questions:

•    Should you establish a nonprofit, a for-profit, or a low-profit organization?

•    Are your ideas protected?

•    Do you have a clear exit strategy?

•    If you’re successful and your project takes off, will you be ready to deal with people who have  power and resources and are used to getting their way but who do not understand the creative process?  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 10%

Tim Mikulski

Late last week Melody Barnes, director of the White House Domestic Policy Council, took to the White House website to inform the voting public of the recent President’s Council on the Arts and Humanities (PCAH) report, Reinvesting in Arts Education: Winning America’s Future Through Creative Schools.

Although the report recently made a splash in the arts education world and it was picked up for publication in some publications across the country, it was comforting to see that Ms. Barnes felt it important to utilize the stature of whitehouse.gov to spread the word, too.

In addition to highlighting the work of PCAH, Barnes also spotlighted the first family’s series of concerts (and poetry reading) held at their home since moving to Pennsylvania Avenue.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 8%

Colin Tweedy

I sense a sea change in the way the arts are funded. There is no doubt that many countries in Europe are cutting their culture budgets. A recent leader in the Financial Times concluded:

“Cultural organisations also need to do more to help themselves. A new act is unfolding in the drama of arts funding – and artists must play their role to the full.”

Arts organisations are entrepreneurial by nature. Many of the largest arts organisations are becoming more commercially savvy.

In London, where the lion’s share of all private cultural investment is raised, major bodies have seen the light. The Royal Opera House joined forces with RealD, a film and production company to provide 3D movies of their productions worldwide; the National Theatre is producing films of its block buster productions to 380 cinemas across the globe. The public grant percentage of their income has been reducing annually.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 13%

Claudia Bach

The nonprofit arts organization. An ungainly set of modifiers. But in the pre-professionalized mid-1970s, when I had to create my own bachelors degree in arts administration, I felt like I was part of an exciting evolutionary force, helping to grow the structural integrity and value of the arts within the conceptual and legal arts nonprofit corporate framework.

At that time it appeared to be a boundless horizon: a corporate structure where artists could gather force to develop and publicly share their work, communities could access entertainment and elucidation, and where we could rest assured that cultural legacies would inspire us and be preserved for future generations. I don’t think I, or my fellow travelers, questioned this as a common good. It was the chosen path and our work was to use it to good advantage in service of the arts.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 16%

James Undercofler

Why, why are arts organizations being advised to research models other than the 501(c)(3)? It’s vitally important to analyze the reasons behind this “movement” in the arts and culture sector.

The changing nature of philanthropy surely plays a central role. Reduced contributed revenue from government, foundations, and corporate entities has placed increased pressure on individual giving AND earned revenue. These latter two elements tend to work in opposition to each other, in that increased pressure on individual giving generally leads to more, less-informed board members who require attention, while the need to increased earned revenue requires a fleet-footed executive team.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 12%

Diane Ragsdale

In his book The Revolutionary Stage, Joseph Zeigler states that Arena Stage in Washington, DC, began as a for-profit corporation by selling shares totaling $15,000 (at seven percent interest) to 300 Washingtonians. As part of doing research related to my dissertation topic—the impact of economic forces on the American resident theater movement—I recently read a speech called “The Long Revolution” written in 1978 by Zelda Fichandler, founder of Arena Stage.

She writes that she founded the theater in 1950 as a regular profit corporation, in order to better maintain control of its artistic policy, and that the theater became a nonprofit seven years later “in order to become eligible for gifts and grants, especially from the Ford Foundation which entered the field that year.”

Ms. Fichandler elaborated on the transition to becoming a nonprofit, saying:

“[…] we made all of our expenses at the box office for roughly the first fifteen years of our existence. It was as late as the mid-sixties when we conceded that we couldn’t continue to do this, but had to become a deficit-producing organization.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 16%

Scott Provancher

With the increasing media coverage about successful social enterprises like TOMS shoes and the sobering news of the near demise of major arts institutions like the Philadelphia Orchestra, there has been a lot of hand wringing in the nonprofit arts world about the need to change our traditional business models.

The blogs and conference forums love this topic and many have touted the B Corporation, Low Profit Limited Liability Companies, and numerous other hybrid business models as the path to the promise land. But before we all abandon our organization’s current model or tax-exempt status, let’s make sure we really understand what we are trying to accomplish through this change.

I must preface my comments with the fact that I am a huge proponent of continual innovation and organizational reinvention. In fact, at the Arts & Science Council (ASC) we are undergoing a significant shift in how we generate resources to achieve our mission. However, this business model reinvention is being guided by a cautious process that focuses on our mission and a clear understanding of our desired outcomes.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 11%

Valerie Beaman

Here we all are, still in the trenches despite the recession, still searching for sustainable solutions.

Some say the 501(c)(3) model is broken while others claim it’s the economy, not the nonprofit business model, that’s broken. One thing is certain: change is the only constant. The lines between nonprofit and for-profit are definitely blurring. What do you think?

Is the 501(c)(3) model still working well for your organization? And for emerging artists, is the 501(c)(3) model  still viable for what you hope to achieve or might another model better serve your vision?

Let’s take a look at some of the newer options that our experts will be debating in this week’s private sector blog salon.  Read the rest of this entry »

Popularity: 16%