June’s Member Spotlight

This month we feature The Helis Foundation on GIA’s Member Spotlight. Click here to read about their work and mission of advancing access to the arts and continuing a family legacy of philanthropic support to the New Orleans community.

From the GIA Reader

On Sunday, October 12, 2008, the Arts and Justice Funders Working Group presented a pre-conference workshop for grantmakers who wanted to strengthen their skills in addressing questions of racial equity in order to increase the overall effectiveness of their work. In this member report, published in the Spring 2009 edition of the GIA Reader, the Center for Social Inclusion and the Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity address how “structural racism feeds on the unconscious” and that regardless of whether the focus is education reform, the environment, the workplace, urban planning and development, affordable housing, or health care, we must make the role of race visible.

“Taking Things a Step Further: Strategic planning for ALAANA funding” Webinar

Last year, Tracie D. Hall, program director of culture at The Joyce Foundation; Bushra Junaid, outreach and development manager at Ontario Arts Council; and Dana Payne, program director at Pennsylvania Council on the Arts, joined us to discuss their efforts to close the racial gap in arts philanthropy through their respective programs. This year, they are back to take things a step further and discuss the various stages of the strategic planning process for ALAANA (African, Latinx, Asian, Arab, and Native American) arts organizations. It is GIA’s belief that ALAANA individuals whose identities intersect with those of other “minority” social statuses often experience compounded mistreatment that is amplified by the interaction of race. We look forward to an in-depth presentation on how funders can address this issue.

“Taking Things a Step Further: Strategic planning for ALAANA funding” will be held Tuesday, June 26, at 2:00pm EDT / 11:00am PDT. Details and registration available here.

“The decimation of federal support is the coup de grâce of a long campaign carefully crafted to mislead the public into believing that the arts are irrelevant to most Americans,” says a recent study by the National Center for Arts Research…

A new report by the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance looks at what motivates donors to give to the arts and what organizations can do to better engage high-net-worth donors…

Jeff Chang, executive director of the Institute for Diversity in the Arts at Stanford University, announced he will be leaving this summer that position to join Race Forward: The Center For Racial Justice Innovation, where he will be their first Vice President for Narrative, Arts, and Culture…

The finding is not surprising: wealthier children are about twice as likely to visit a cultural institution or historical place or see a play or concert during the summer, as compared with children from lower-income families, points out an article by Chalkbeat…