Foundation management
A rather widely shared belief within the foundation community holds that philanthropic resources cannot, will not, and perhaps even should not, be expected to keep up with the growing and changing resource needs of the not-for-profit arts industry. This belief has generated lively discussion among arts grantmakers about the future role of foundations in supporting a healthy nonprofit arts sector in this country.
Read More...Foundation grantmakers are investors. The endowment that sustains a grantmaking program demands the same concentrated, strategic thinking that developing a focus for a giving program entails. The challenge addressed in this essay is to bring together these two basic functions — investing and grantmaking. The context for doing so is socially responsible investing. My purpose is to take an expanded definition of socially responsible investing and see if it has a meaningful role to play in arts philanthropy.
Read More...Typically when businesses decide to support the arts they do so through a grant-giving mechanism or through a program that places employees as volunteers and consultants in arts organizations. But, I've noticed a different kind of interaction between the profit-making and not-for-profit art worlds in recent years. Some business people have set up foundations dedicated to improving the ethical and cultural context in which their own professions practice.
Read More...In June 1998 the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers held a forum on "Conflicting Visions of Philanthropy" and I was invited to place the recent criticism of the field of philanthropy in historical perspective. [See page 44 for a short report on the session as a whole.] My objective at the forum, and in this revision of those remarks, is to put the problem in bold historical relief and to provide a context for understanding the long tradition of criticism of foundations and philanthropy. In doing so, I want to make five basic points.
1.
Read More...1999. 48 pages. National Center for Family Philanthropy, 1220 19th Street NW, Suite 804, Washington D.C., 20036, 202-293-3424.
Read More...1998, 178 pages, Independent Sector/Jossey-Bass Publishers, 350 Sansome Street, San Francisco, California 94104, 415-433-1740
Read More...Management Consultants for the Arts, Inc., 132 East Putnam Avenue, Cos-Cob, Connecticut 06807, 203-661-3003
Read More...October 1996, 30 pages, The Aspen Institute, Nonprofit Sector Research Fund, 1333 New Hampshire Avenue, NW, Suite 1070, Washington, D.C. 20036, 202-736-5800.
Read More...The Cleveland Foundation, founded in 1914, is the nation's oldest community foundation. In 1998, the Foundation's assets totaled $1.5 billion and it made grants totaling $47 million.
Read More...Kudos to Retiring Board Members
The fall 1998 conference in Chicago will signal the end of GIA board service for a remarkable group of leaders. Each one of the six individuals leaving the board, along with Ben Cameron who departed mid-year, has given magnificently of themselves in building GIA into a much richer and more participatory provider of services to its membership.
As they return to regular membership in GIA, these individuals leave a board far more responsive to its members, supported by a wonderfully facilitative staff, and serving many more arts grantmakers.
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