GIA Blog

Reported today in the NYTimes: The Juilliard School’s music-training program for poor minority schoolchildren — a rigorous curriculum that the conservatory holds up as a national model — has been slashed, disappointing dozens of children preparing to audition…. Mr. Polisi … Continue reading →

New York City will expand loan opportunities and find ways to help the city’s 40,000 nonprofit organizations reduce costs and find new donors in the midst of the economic downturn, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. The program will focus on nonprofits … Continue reading →

I spent most of last week in Washington DC. The highlight was the Nancy Hanks Lecture given by Wynton Marsalis and his quintet. “The Ballad of the American Arts” was an incredibly moving piece that interspersed music and poetry to give form to the power of the arts in America to us as a people, collectively and individually. Believe me, it was magic.

April 6, 2009 – Arts program director Vickie Benson provides professional analysis on the need for a strategic statewide distribution plan for arts funding. In November 2008, Minnesota voters passed the Clean Water, Land and Legacy Amendment to our state … Continue reading →

In 1998, Southern California Grantmakers — a regional membership association of private and public sector philanthropies — conducted its first survey of public and private arts funders in Los Angeles County. Ten years and four additional surveys later, this year’s … Continue reading →

Those present reported that Marsalis gave a deep and moving speech, as did Newsweek: The impeccably cool artistic director of Jazz at Lincoln Center had come here to deliver the Nancy Hanks Lecture on Arts and Public Policy. His speech, … Continue reading →

The recesion brings new worries to organizations that hve invested in their own buildings, as reported in the NYTimes. “You get a building, and then you buy it, and then you get an endowment, and then the heavens open and … Continue reading →

Cultural historian Morris Dickstein examines the relationship between popular arts and culture in the years after the crash of ’29 in the LA Times. “If we look at the arts as a life-giving form of social therapy, many other fads … Continue reading →

From Alliance for Philanthropy and Social Investing One of the most perennially vexing questions in philanthropy is how to assess the impact of funding, especially where there’s no obvious way of putting a price on the end product. A recently … Continue reading →

Assets at the nation’s largest private foundations fell by a median of 28 percent from 2007 to 2008, and 40 percent of grant makers who participated in a new Chronicle survey say they expect giving to decline in 2009. The … Continue reading →