First, do no harm? Sarah Lutman on Capitalization Session from Houston

Susan Nelson of TDC gave us a healthy dose of her thought leadership in her GIA session with Olive Mosier of the William Penn Foundation. She presented — for the first time — the findings of a new report on Philadelphia cultural institutions that comes five years after the breakthrough study, Getting Beyond Breakeven: A Review of Capitalization Needs and Challenges of Philadelphia’s Arts and Culture Organizations.

The 2009 study rocked the national philanthropic boat with its analysis of ways local grantmakers offered a robust but chaotic grants marketplace and showed that more than 70% of Philadelphia organizations had high financial literacy but weren’t able to apply it successfully to their operations. The report spurred both conversation and action across the U.S. and helped inform GIA’s own National Capitalization Project. So, no surprise when Nelson dropped successive bombshells on the packed room of grantmakers on Monday.