Private Foundation

In a past report on challenges facing San Francisco Bay Area arts nonprofits (Reader, Vol. 11, No. 2), I wrote at length about space. Many nonprofits had been forced to seek new office, rehearsal, and storage space due to a steep rise in Bay Area real estate costs fueled by demand from a dot-com economy for start-up locations. The situation seems to have eased somewhat, in part due to funder- and municipally-driven programs as well as to a general downturn in the economy.

The Americans with Disabilities Act has been an important piece of legislation, opening doors to opportunities and enabling people with disabilities to gain access to employment, homes and quality of life. Since the passing of the ADA in 1990, the National Endowment for the Arts has been holding conferences with regional arts organizations to encourage access to the arts.

CLEA: Consortium for the Liberal Education of Artists

Here's a simple recipe for something magical: take a group of artists and educators with an unusual (and an unusually passionate) sense of mission, bring them to the exotic conference facilities of The Howard Gilman Foundation's White Oak Plantation in Florida, mix well. Then stand back to see what happens.

When we initiated an artist award program at The Durfee Foundation a few years ago, we decided to use financial need as one of several criteria for support. Durfee is a relatively small family foundation, and the trustees feel strongly that the foundation's modest resources should be applied where they will make the most difference. This is true across the board at the foundation, not only in the arts, but in our other programs as well.

See them in snow under a full moon
they told me.
The shadows will take you out of
yourself to when
the Stones were erected, the time it
took and the reason
we try to guess today.

Richard Hugo, from "The Standing Stones of Callanish"

Poets know that how we ask a question determines how we see the answer. The Murdock Charitable Trust, in its ambitious new study of arts funding, is learning the same thing. It's often your landscape of assumptions that determines what you can see.

The Potrero Nuevo Fund is a donor-advised fund housed at the Tides Foundation in San Francisco. Established about five years ago by Bill Laven and Christine Pielenz, the Fund supports projects in the arts, the environment, and sustainable architecture. While the Fund's giving to environmental and sustainable architecture projects is international in scope, the arts giving is focused on the Bay Area, and primarily on individuals and arts education.

The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation was established in 1985 to provide supplemental instruction to promising young artists and financial assistance to visual artists of demonstrated talent. Today, the Foundation awards approximately $500,000 annually.

2000, 218 pages, $19.95, Jossey-Bass

Don't let the medical bag with the big Red Cross on the cover of Alvin Reiss' CPR for Nonprofits fool you, the book is not about rescuing dying nonprofits. Instead it offers self-help for those willing to follow Reiss' prescription for breathing new life into organizations by identifying Challenges, developing a Plan and achieving Results.

Filmmaker, painter, and composer Jerome Hill established the Jerome Foundation in 1964, and was active in its operation until his death in 1972. The Foundation makes grants to support the creation and production of new artistic works by emerging artists, and contributes to these artists' professional advancement. The Foundation states its "belief in the vigorous and distinctive voices of artists whose works challenge our thinking and add meaning to our lives.

March 2000, 29 pages, executive summary; 126 pages, narrative report. ArtsMarket. Copies are available from Walter and Elise Haas Fund, One Lombard Street, Suite 305, San Francisco, California 94111, (415) 398-4474.