GIA Blog

Evidence-based philanthropy. To some, that phrase offers the promise of long-overdue rigor. If the first principle of philanthropy and social impact is to do good, then evidence-based philanthropy ensures that we honor its corollary: Do no harm.

To others, that phrase represents all that is going wrong with philanthropy and social innovation—the rise of the ivory-tower theorists and technocrats whose logic models and fixation with metrics blind them to real-world knowledge and common sense.

Robert Booker, executive director, Arizona Commission on the Arts connects the dots for nonprofit arts board members: "Often, when I meet with the Board of Directors of an Arizona arts organization or institution, I am asked to provide more money to the organization.

Robert Booker, Executive Director, Arizona Commission on the Arts connects the dots for nonprofit arts board members.

Posted to Supporting Today's Artists by Paul Tyler, Grants Director, ArtsKC

We’ve had limited financial resources to invest in direct support for artists over the past few years, but I have come to realize that our work supporting artists through professional development training may have substantially more impact than our grantmaking over the long run.

Since 1998, the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation has supported contemporary art exhibitions through its biennial Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award. This opportunity provides funding for thematic exhibitions that are fresh and experimental in nature, and for which other funding is not yet forthcoming. The award provides assistance at the beginning stage of the exhibition’s development and offers the curator the support needed to realize the concept.

A new study by Music Machine aggregated data  on streaming music from Spotify users and broke down musical preferences by state and region. Previous research has analyzed the same data by gender and age.

The 15th Annual WESTAF Cultural Policy Symposium, co-hosted by the California Arts Council and Frank Gehry Partners, will be available online via a live stream. Creativity and Innovation in Public Education: Areas of Need, Mechanisms for Change will take place on March 4, beginning at 8:45am PST, when arts and policy experts will gather at architect Frank Gehry’s studio in Santa Monica, California for a thought provoking symposium addressing critical issues facing the arts and education. A series of six sessions will follow throughout the day.

Arlene Goldbard reports from the Staging Sustainability 2014 conference, recently held in Toronto:

From Jon Wojciechowski, writing for HowlRound:

Professor Ann Collins Johns at the University of Texas at Austin was just as peeved as many people were about President Barack Obama’s knock on art history majors. So she did what any self-assured art historian would do and wrote a letter to Obama on January 31, shortly after the President’s remarks, and sent it using the White House website. Then came the surprising part: Obama responded with a handwritten note on February 12.