Funding Research

April 2001, 96 pages. The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street N.W., Washington, D.C. 20037 (202) 833-0687

2003, 336 pages, Jossey-Bass/Pfeiffer, 989 Market Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

2002, 8-page executive summary. The Chicago Community Trust, 111 East Wacker Drive, Suite 1400, Chicago, Illinois 60601, (312) 372-3356

The Chicago Community Trust, interested in making its arts education grantmaking more focused and effective, decided to get a clearer picture of what was happening in the Chicago Public Schools and in the process created a methodology and reporting format that could easily be adapted for use in other communities.

2000, 47 pages. Council of Europe Publishing, Cultural Policies Research and Development Unit, (33) 03 88 41 25 81

2003, 107pages, Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20037, (202) 833-7200, www.urban.org.

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2001, 116 pages. San Antonio Arts in Education Task Force, www.saysi.org

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   The Arts Dynamic (5Mb)

At the GIA conference in fall, 2002, we hosted a round table discussion with the euphemistic title "Adapting in a Time of Constraints." Essentially its burden was to ask: what should we, as funders, be doing for the cultural institutions with whom we work in the context of these extraordinarily difficult times?

Editors of the Reader invited GIA's research advisors to reflect on challenges facing arts grantmakers in light of current research findings on arts funding trends.

What do recent research findings suggest about the prospect for the support of arts and culture in the years ahead?

Ed Pauly: After a decade of dramatic growth in foundations' support for the arts, the funding news is now somber. Yet the meaning we make from the most recent study of foundation funding for the arts depends, as always, on the perspective we choose.

Recently, several studies of arts funding have been conducted in specific cities and regions. We report on a few of these here. In the winter 2002 issue of the GIA Reader Vol. 13, No. 1, Lisa Cremin and Kathie de Nobriga reported on a comparative study of arts funding in Atlanta and nineteen other cities. The report was both an inspiring and a cautionary tale for Ann McQueen and others in Boston as they planned the study that Cindy Gehrig reviews below.

Booms and Busts

From the depths of our economic trough it is hard to look ahead, clear-eyed, and to see where U.S. foundations are headed. But consider, for a moment, where we have been. We have experienced an era in which: :

• New scientific and technological advances captured the popular imagination.
• These innovations promised a huge jump in economic productivity.
• There was talk about a new economy replacing an old economy.
• Many business corporations were consolidated and reorganized.