Capitalization

"With 2021 designated the United Nations International Year of Creative Economy for Sustainable Development, there can be no better time for museum leaders to follow the example set by their university and foundation peers by aligning capital with values and mission. Inaction risks reputation, as well as financial return," wrote recently Laura Callanan, founding partner of Upstart Co-Lab.

March 2021, 121 pages. Grantmakers in the Arts, 522 Courtlandt Avenue, 1st Floor, Bronx, NY 10451. (929) 452-3740. https://art.coop/.

To better support Black artists and cultural communities, arts philanthropy should increase its focus on stability and resilience in creative practice. Covid has fully revealed its long-standing fragility, leaving 63% of all artists unemployed and 66% unable to access the infrastructure necessary for their work.¹

Over the course of decades of working with nonprofits, particularly arts- and community-based organizations, we’ve seen an unfortunate pattern emerge. With the regularity of waves, many nonprofits move in and out of cycles of fiscal instability. The factors are familiar and well-known: drops in earned revenue for various reasons, often out of leaders’ control; shifts in the priorities of donors; turmoil in staffing and leadership; and restrictions placed on funds.

In a recent piece, Adam Fong, Program Officer in Performing Arts at the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, reflects on a cluster of "adaptation grants" Hewlett put in place to help ensure Bay Area arts organizations "have sufficient resources to adapt to challenges both arising from and exacerbated by the pandemic."

In the fall of 2019, SMU DataArts — in partnership with Theatre Communications Group (TCG) — released a paper examining the financial health of nonprofit theaters in the years leading up to, during, and following the Great Recession. With data pointing to an economic slowdown, the researchers explored the financial preparedness of US theaters to weather the coming period of uncertainty and turbulence.

While some grantmakers "have moved toward the participatory model by bringing advisory panels on board," the North Star Fund, which identifies as a social justice fund that supports grassroots organizing and communities building power in New York City and the Hudson Valley, has "turned over most of its grantmaking decisions to committees composed of activists and others from the neighborhood," as a piece by The Chronicle of Philanthropy states.

Museums embracing sustainable investing: an article in Artsy by Anna Raginskaya, a financial advisor with the Blue Rider Group at Morgan Stanley, makes that case saying, "As endowed organizations, museums have a powerful voice that can parallel the stories told within their galleries."

The National Center for Arts Research at Southern Methodist University (NCAR) has found the majority of arts and cultural organizations have "precariously low levels of working capital," or resources available to cover day-to-day operating needs.

Suddenly, a cash grant changes everything. Through illustrative examples of artists who have received considerable cash grants and the experiences of foundations that give them, a recent New York Times article tackles how getting a substantial cash grant can alter most artists' lives and the questions that come after awards of this kind.