GIA Blog

From Joel Brown at The Boston Globe:

“Culturally enriching field trips matter. They produce significant benefits for students on a variety of educational outcomes that schools and communities care about. This experiment on the effects of field trips to see live theater demonstrates that seeing plays is an effective way to teach academic content; increases student tolerance by providing exposure to a broader, more diverse world; and improves the ability of students to recognize what other people are thinking or feeling.

This day-long preconference was intended for newer program officers, trustees and foundation executives – but the reality was that the attendees were split between newbies and those who are recognizable names in the philanthropic community with long resumes. The combination of the two made the questions throughout the session very interesting and relevant.

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.

A study released by the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project shows that America’s most recent arts graduates are using skills learned in school combined with internship experiences to find work, forge careers and engage their communities, despite higher student debt levels than older alumni. The report, “Making It Work: The Education and Employment of Recent Arts Graduates,” analyzes data from more than 88,000 arts alumni of all ages, with a particular focus on the 17,000 recent alumni — those who finished their undergraduate or graduate level degrees up to five years prior. Arts alumni participating in the study attended 140 degree-granting institutions in 41 states and the District of Columbia.

Bloomberg Philanthropies is launching a new program to support temporary public art projects that engage communities, enhance creativity and enrich the vibrancy of cities. Bloomberg Philanthropies is inviting mayors in cities with 30,000 residents or more to submit proposals for innovative temporary public art projects that demonstrate close collaboration between artists, or arts organizations and city government. At least three cities will be selected to receive up to $1 million each over two years.

The third session in a four-part Native American Educational Series from Philanthropy Southwest will explore the interplay of policy, philanthropy and the Native American and Alaska Native communities. Maximizing the Return on Your Investment will take place Tuesday, October 21, 2014 at 2:30 pm (EST)/11:30 (PST), and is presented by Native Americans in Philanthropy in partnership with Casey Family Programs, Center for Native American Youth, Philanthropy Northwest and Philanthropy Southwest.

Barry Hessenius posts his observations from the GIA Conference:

Movement. Motion. Swag. The Tuesday Lunheon Plenary had a dance battle break (complete with Google Glass intro) when Dance Houston took the stage.

I. Session: Funding Commercial Creative Businesses: Sell Out or Smart Strategy? The City of San Jose (CA), in partnership with the Center for Cultural Innovation, has started providing small “investment grants” to creative entrepreneurs with goals at the nexus of cultural and economic development. Basically this project is still in its infancy, as only two rounds of funding have been completed, and only a total of $40,000 has been awarded in total to 12 grantees, with the $40,000 third round coming up.