Philanthropic practice

This is part of the special section, Experience as Research.

This is part of the special section, Experience as Research.

In the fall 2012 GIA Reader, we revived five “old” research pieces and asked philanthropic leaders from different generations to reflect on the current value and relevance of these works. This got us thinking about other sources of “hidden” knowledge that might benefit those working in the field today.

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   Why Contests Improve Philanthropy (3 Mb)

Peter H. Pennekamp with Anne Focke. 2013, 34 pages, Kettering Foundation, Dayton, Ohio, Washington, D.C., and New York, kettering.org.

The Jerome Foundation, St. Paul, Minnesota, and the Camargo Foundation, Cassis, France, are now operating under a single governance and integrated management structure.

Grantmakers in the Arts began work on capitalization in 2010. Ever since then we’ve debated not using the word “capitalization,” but it has prevailed. In our work, the term is synonymous with financial health and the resources needed to meet an organization’s mission. In 2010, GIA published recommendations for grantmakers regarding actions they could take that would improve the undercapitalized nature of the nonprofit arts sector.

While the title of GIA’s 2012 Thought Leader Forum — Racial Equity in Arts and Culture Grantmaking — may have left something to be desired in the excitement department, the content of the discussions that took place was such that the two and a half days we spent together in June and two additional days we gathered in November revealed principles/approaches toward racial equity that I hope will have value to colleagues. The goals of the initial forum were as follows:

I am currently writing an essay for a university art gallery exhibition catalog about how the early nineteenth-century invention of photography marked a change in art and spiritual consciousness; and thus dwelling on the postindustrial trajectories of art and science. I have so many extra notions that I created this separate cloud of thought. Apologies if this musing seems too general. I present it here to excite dialogue and receive feedback through the GIA Reader.