GIA Blog

From the News page at New England Foundation for the Arts:

Lawrence J. Simpson, board chair of the New England Foundation for the Arts, announced that Cathy Edwards will join the organization as executive director, beginning late January, 2015. Ms. Edwards comes to NEFA from the International Festival of Arts & Ideas in New Haven, CT, where she has served as director of programming since 2006. She has also served as the artistic director of the Time-Based Art Festival at PICA in Portland, OR. Previously, she was artistic director of Dance Theater Workshop in New York City, and co-director of Movement Research in New York City.

The Unitarian Universalist Veatch Program at Shelter Rock on Long Island awards approximately $12 million annually to nearly 200 organizations nationwide. After working with a consultant to overhaul the financial component of its application process, the program eliminated requests for budgets last year. The Foundation Review published the case study titled, "In Other Words, the Budgets Are Fake: Why One Funder Eliminated Grantee Budgets to Improve Financial Due Diligence." Through this report, the Veatch Program proposes one model for reducing administrative burden on applicants while simultaneously getting a clearer picture of an applicants' financial well-being and capacity to fulfill project goals.

Funders can do more than just support artists with discrete project needs; they can help artists survive unexpected challenges.

From Mike Scutari, Inside Philanthropy:

Who's there for musicians when times get tough? The answer is the MusiCares Foundation. Established in 1989 by the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences, its primary purpose is to focus the resources and attention of the music industry on human service issues which directly impact the health and welfare of the music community.

From Eileen Cunniffe, writing for Nonprofit Quarterly:

After many months of rancor, which NPQ has followed with attention to the governance, management, and community relations implications of a messy nonprofit meltdown, the dust appears to be settling around the reconfigured Museum of Contemporary Art (MOCA) North Miami and the newly established Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA) Miami. The public mud-slinging began last spring, but trouble had been simmering for some time between the City of North Miami — which owns the building MOCA North Miami has long occupied — and the trustees of the institution, who wanted to expand the facility or move its collection to another location.

From the News page at National Endowment for the Arts:

From partnerships to develop a districtwide arts education plan in North Carolina to poetry from a combat engineer to a folk arts festival in rural Wyoming, the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) continues to support the arts and creativity to improve lives and communities in the United States. In its first fiscal year 2015 announcement, the NEA will award $29.1 million in 1,116 grants in three categories: Art Works, Challenge America, and NEA Literature Fellowships in Creative Writing.

From Kerry Lengel, writing for the Arizona Republic:

A study released by Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Is Grantmaking Getting Smarter?, showed that grantmakers are making shifts on how they support their grantees. Among these shifts is the increasing support for general operating, multiyear, and capacity-building purposes. A median 25% of grant dollars now go to general operating support - up from 20% in 2008 and 2011.

From the editorial page of The Boston Globe:

Aroha Philanthropies prepared this video to advocate for the arts as a means for a more fulfilling and vital aging process.

Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation, writing for Detroit Free Press: