Claire Peeps

Cheese and crackers in the boardroom? Standard fare.

Puppetry and handwriting analysis? Not so much. Nonetheless, there was a line out the door of the boardroom at the Marriott Hotel in Los Angeles, where the Council on Foundations’ annual conference was taking place. Conferees awaited their personalized encounter with the LA-based arts group the Machine Project, which was also offering mind-reading workshops, cheese music, and concerts of Renaissance lute and vocal music.

The Durfee Foundation’s ARC program — Artists’ Resource for Completion — is, you might say, a program designed to let a thousand flowers bloom. It was founded in 2000 to serve Los Angeles artists, in any discipline and at any career level. The grants are made quarterly, for small sums of up to $3,500 per artist. About sixty to seventy artists are funded each year (fifteen to eighteen each quarter).

When I was in college, I had a great work-study job at an organization that placed students in internships with local nonprofits. It was a small outfit and a jack-of-all-trades sort of job. I answered phones, mocked up application forms, stuffed envelopes, filed, ran errands, organized open houses, and learned how to write a business letter. It wasn’t the sort of job you’d want to stay in for too long, but it was a fabulous introduction to the nonprofit sector. It gave me practical office skills to boot.

Why are you engaged in your current field of work? What significant lessons have you learned along the way? These are questions we ask of applicants to the Durfee Foundation's Sabbatical program, an initiative that provides "time off" to leaders in the nonprofit sector in Los Angeles. Sadly, arts applicants to the program have had difficulty providing compelling answers. By and large, their attempts to explain their commitment to their chosen field have been weak, particularly in comparison to their peers in the social services.