Grantmakers in the Arts

(4-19-10) The Kresge Foundation announces today a new national strategy for its Arts and Culture Program that fosters the long-term financial stability of arts and cultural organizations, supports artists’ services, and helps to integrate arts and culture institutions and activities into effective community building. Grantmaking is focused in three areas: Institutional Capitalization, Artists’ Support Services and Arts and Community Building.

(4-16-10) On April 14, Russell Sullivan, staff director for the Senate Finance Committee, spoke at a symposium hosted by Catholic University of America's Columbus School of Law, "Philanthropy in the 21st Century: Should All Charities Be Created Equal?" Sullivan forecast the emergence of proposals to form "for-benefit corporations," agencies created for the public benefit with business structures falling somewhere between for-profit and nonprofit organizations.

(4-15-10) The Washington Post's Jacqueline Trescott provides a summary of this week's hearings before the House Appropriations subcommittee responsible for the budgets of the NEA, the Smithsonian, and other government-funded cultural agencies. Her description of the back and forth creates a very nuanced impression of the discussion, as well as the personalities in the room. Read it here.

(4-14-10) GIA Board member John Killacky, one of the Bay Area's most vigorous champions of the arts will announce today that he is leaving the Bay Area to oversee a respected arts center in Vermont.

(4-14-10) In an interview with Alliance Magazine, Geraldine Kunstadter of the Albert Kunstadter Family Foundation discusses her grantmaking practices, while urging larger foundations to take risks and pare down assessment practices. Kunstadter, who regularly visits her foundation's grant recipients (16 in the U.S. and abroad per annum), has a very personal relationship to the granting process and offers a unique perspective on the funder-grantee dynamic: "If you trust people enough to give them money, you have to trust that they know best how to spend it."

(4-13-10) Secretary of Education Arne Duncan gave a speech at the Arts Education Partnership National Forum on Friday, April 9. A full transcript is now online. Some highlights:

(4-13-10) Statement from Lance E. Lindblom, Nathan Cummings Foundation

After serving for more than sixteen years as the director of the arts and culture program at the Nathan Cummings Foundation, Claudine Brown will be leaving the Foundation to become the Director of Education for the Smithsonian Institution.

(4-13-2010) Grantmakers in the Arts begins a new series of Web Conferences in May designed for emerging leaders and veteran grantmakers alike. You can see the six sessions we’ve put together on the GIA website. They are free to members and pretty inexpensive for nonmembers. This is an opportunity for colleagues from the same department, office and organization to share a learning experience on various topics offered up by some pretty smart people in the field of philanthropy and nonprofit arts.