Grantmakers in the Arts

Governance Lessons from the SD Opera: Culture, Transparency and Bravery

January 26, 2015 by Steve

From Eileen Cunniffe, writing for Nonprofit Quarterly:

This weekend, the San Diego Opera will open its 50th anniversary season — a season that came perilously close to being cancelled when the company’s board voted last March to cease operations at the end of the 2014 season. Nearly ten months after the company and its board began a highly public meltdown, followed by a hard-won battle to re-engage the community and restructure the organization, San Diego Opera was featured at the 11th annual Nonprofit Governance Symposium at the University of San Diego on January 10. In a panel discussion titled “Saving the Opera: Lessons Learned from a Board Perspective,” current board president Carol Lazier, board members Linda Spuck and Joe Watkins, and new CEO Keith Fisher shared insights from the wild roller coaster ride they’ve experienced since last spring.

January 21, 2015 by SuJ'n

Last week the US Department of Housing and Urban Development PD&R Edge magazine published “Catalizing Culture and Community through CDFIs.” In this article, Judilee Reed, director of The Surdna Foundation's Thriving Cultures Program, discusses the importance of community development finance institutions in the creative placemaking movement.

Reed writes:

The cross-sector nature of this work suggests the existing infrastructure in the community development field, like community development finance institutions (CDFIs), could play an important role in helping artists, arts and culture organizations, and non-arts organizations build their capacity to sustain creative production long after dedicated funding for specific projects has passed. For many CDFIs, the role they play in providing both financing and technical assistance to support neighborhood-based projects and the growth of small business in low income communities implies they may also have the potential to pivot their services to engage artists and projects that support the development of arts and culture.

January 16, 2015 by Steve

From Tim Delaney at The Chronicle of Philanthropy:

Rather than focusing on what Congress will (or won’t) do in the new year, foundations and other nonprofits would do well to take a close look at a little-noticed overhaul of federal grant-making rules — in the works for three years and that took effect the day after Christmas — that could provide meaningful traction for ending the so-called nonprofit starvation cycle.

Grantmaking Practices that Advance DEI

January 16, 2015 by SuJ'n in Racial Equity

Released in the fall and in collaboration with D5 Coalition, OMG Center for Collaborative Learning (newly renamed Equal Measure) released Foundations Facilitate Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: Partnering with Community and Nonprofits. This report outlines eight specific practices that foundations can do to facilitate diversity, equity, and inclusion with non-profit grantees and their communities.

January 15, 2015 by SuJ'n

The Community Development Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco recently published the Community Development Investment Review on Creative Placemaking. This anthology of articles and ArtPlace America profiles shares research and best practices in providing capital to low- and moderate-income communities through creative placemaking approaches.

January 15, 2015 by SuJ'n in Support for Individual Artists

In a study commissioned by the Emily Hall Tremaine Foundation, Arizona State University's Pave Program in Arts Entrepreneurship inventories business training programs and opportunities for artists outside of academic settings. How It's Being Done: Arts Business Training Across the U.S. looks at where arts business training programs exist by region, what kinds of organizations provide training, training modalities, topics, and costs among other distinctions.

January 14, 2015 by SuJ'n

The National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) releases three reports using data from 2012 to show the life of the arts and cultural sector from three perspectives. The first report, When Going Gets Tough: Barriers and Motivations Affecting Arts Attendance, uses data collected from a NEA-sponsored topical module in the General Social Survey to learn more about why people attend different types of arts events. The second report, A Decade of Arts Engagement: Findings from the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts, 2002-2012, investigates arts participation rates from 2012 and compares them with findings from previous surveys using 2002 and 2008 data. The third report in this series, The Arts and Cultural Production Satellite Account (ACPSA), analyzes the arts and cultural sector's contributions to the US gross domestic product (GDP), finding they exceed previous estimates of its impact on employment and the national economy.

January 14, 2015 by Steve

Nonprofit Finance Fund has just announced the State of the Nonprofit Sector Survey for 2015 is now open. NFF conducts the annual nationwide survey to examine challenges and trends in the nonprofit sector, and it has become an important source of information for arts and culture organizations. Last year, more than 900 arts and culture organizations responded to the survey, contributing a wealth of information to the field. With your help, we can do even better in 2015! GIA presented a Web Conference to examine last years survey findings. You can watch that Web Conference session online.

Explore Solidarity Economy resources here

Future of the Field: Cross-Sector Creative Placemaking Series

Video from the GIA 2021 Conference are now available for streaming.

The Racial Equity Coding Project: Unpacking The “Why”

In this first of a three-part discussion, we are joined by Susan Feder, Adam Fong, and Maurine Knighton, as they discuss the Racial Equity Coding Project, why it was started, their experience with the earliest iterations of the coding measures, and how their reflections will inform steps forward.

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