ARTSblog

Valerie Beaman

Suzan Jenkins, CEO of the Arts & Humanities Council of Montgomery County, moderated a convention panel on creative methods for growing new funding born out of the experiences of the recession. The rise of online funding campaigns, emphasis on creating partnerships with businesses and, more radically, treat all philanthropic support as start-up funding and don’t rely on it for core operating income were some of the ideas explored. The consensus was to, remain flexible but, above all, stay true to your mission.

Maud Lyon, executive director of the Cultural Alliance of Southeastern Michigan, used the Community Foundation Challenge in Detroit as an example of the challenges and best practices for online giving/day of arts giving campaigns. A major goal of the Challenge was to raise awareness for the arts and culture sector.

Referencing it as “Glitches to Riches,”  Maud said the Challenge program raised $4,992,000 million for 75 organizations in one day. While the larger organizations raised higher dollar amounts, smaller organizations raised a higher proportion of their budget size. Existing donors were the mainstay of the Challenge (59 percent), but the Challenge brought in a significant number of new donors as well (28 percent).

Lessons learned by the arts community include: the importance of being prepared with technology and social networking in order to be able to respond quickly to challenge opportunities; the future of online giving is with younger donors; and, convenience, ease, flexibility and lack of pressure are the appeals of online commerce.

Maud emphasized the necessity of a good donor database and an excellent donor stewardship program. She personally donated to twelve different organizations during the Challenge, received very few thank you letters, and only three of the twelve followed up the following year for new donations. Lost opportunities! Read the rest of this entry »

Bruce Whitacre

“Our projects have to have a beginning, a middle and an end.”

“Don’t bring me your menu of options, A-level for $10,000, B-level for $15,000. Let’s just talk about what you’re doing and let me figure out how we can be part of it.”

“We’ve been tasked to put the A for Arts into STEM for the next Clinton Global Initiative meeting.”

These are not foundation executives or nonprofit executive directors talking. These are community relations executives at three Fortune 500 companies.

I also saw this phenomenon at the IEG sponsorship conference last spring, when GE and Xerox explained how they are using sponsorship to enter a new country or demonstrate logistics prowess through a sports franchise. Or a company that uses its pro bono work on behalf of a nonprofit to develop in-house expertise that will be resold to the commercial market.

What does all this mean to me? Read the rest of this entry »

Brian Reich

There is little denying that Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, is a genius. He created a site that not only attracts more traffic than any other on the web, but also influences behavior, business, and social norms at an unprecedented level.

He can sit down and build something that most of us could never even imagine existing with lines of code that almost none of us can understand. But for all that brilliance, I wouldn’t give him the task of running a nonprofit organization. And especially not an arts organization. He is not the right fit for the task.

But if Facebook were to commit its resources and energy towards supporting the arts, Zuckerberg would almost certainly assume a leadership role in that effort because of his existing role as CEO of Facebook.

Thankfully that is a hypothetical situation. But it happens all the time – an existing organizational leader is thrust into a position where they are not a good fit. They are asked to guide an effort, inspire a team, and help an organization transform itself to meet a new set of challenges, only to find out too late that they weren’t up for the task. That practice needs to stop. Read the rest of this entry »

We all know that joint-venture partnerships can yield many benefits. In hopes to spark more creative partnerships, here are some interesting partnership examples formed with arts organizations around the country. Some are likely partnerships between arts organizations; others are “unlikely” partnerships, which sometime can often bring in new audiences.

Success, of course, depends on each partner’s willingness and ability to live up to its part of the bargain.

Public Art In Detroit Benefits Community and High School Students
A dozen or so west side high school students created a mural on a three-story-high exterior wall of a vacant building in Detroit’s Brightmoor neighborhood. The project, Detroit Neighborhood Arts Corps, provides high school-aged artists with the opportunity to give back to their communities through the creation of public art. The College of Creative Studies (CCS) project was funded by the Skillman Foundation. This project probably solves two problems, it brings arts education to public schools which may have cut art programs and it brings public art to an under-served community. Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve all heard the bad news. According to The Conference Board, corporate giving is expected to be down 41 percent in 2009, with arts giving taking the brunt of the cuts. Many companies are cutting back their arts support or cutting their programs completely. Americans for the Arts estimates that 10,000 nonprofits will close their doors this year as a result of the economic situation.

However, it is not all bad news. Led by President Obama’s call to service and a desire at companies to give back to their communities and engage employees, volunteerism has gained momentum. 45 percent of companies surveyed by The Conference Board are increasing volunteer resources in 2009—the biggest increase of any program area.  Volunteering is beneficial to companies because it aids in recruitment, retention, and engagement—all key areas for businesses trying to navigate through a treacherous economic landscape.  Arts organizations also benefit from the addition of skills and resources that they would not otherwise be able to afford.

A volunteer management consulting service like Business Volunteers for the Arts (BVA), a program of Americans for the Arts, can greatly increase the mutual success of both the volunteer and nonprofit experience. BVA assesses capacity and needs of a nonprofit and then carefully matches a business volunteer’s skills with these needs. This program can be hosted by a local arts agency, united arts funds, Business Committees for the Arts, or Arts & Business Councils.

BVA has proven results. Between 2003 and 2007, more than 7,200 BVAs have been involved in the program nationwide. During those years, 64,443 hours have been donated to the arts. At the hourly consulting rate of $160 per hour, donated services add up to $10,310,920. At a time when each dollar is carefully accounted for, 10 million dollars of donated time adds up to a lot of value.

Even when corporations can’t provide sponsorship or grants, they can still retain their relationship with the arts in a way that is good for everyone.

Have you ever worked with business volunteers? How were they able to help you or your organization?

Blogging has begun!

Pre-conference pricing institute.

For those of you who deal with a box office day in, day out, keep your eye out for Steven Roth, Alan Brown and  Tim Baker and The Pricing Intitute . Their session laid out the fundamentals to analyzing ticket buying patterns and maximizing that data to increase revenue. Talk about priming the pump!

As they said in the presentation, don’t leave money on the table.

Check their site and look out for them in your city.

The hotel has a great pool and terrace on the 24th floor. If you’re here be sure to check them out.

What the hotel doesn’t have is great internet connectivity. Maybe I’m being a little West Coast centric, but I’ve come to expect wireless in conference hotels. Ethernet in the rooms is surprising to me and not being able to log on during sessions is a let down. So I’m left to post at the end of the day rather than in realtime, chrono order be damned! Read the rest of this entry »