Philanthropic practice

What do you believe the arts sector ought to look like twenty years from now? This is a question that every arts funder should be able to answer with a healthy amount of specificity. Whether arts funders choose to acknowledge it or not, much of what we do shapes the future of the field. This point is not intended to give arts funders more power than we actually have but to acknowledge reality. Funders’ actions — including when we choose not to act — prioritize, privilege, and capitalize particular models over others.

The Impetuses to Begin the Racial Equity Funders Collaborative

Glyn Northington, Special Initiatives director, Nonprofits Assistance Fund

Robert E. Gard, with additional contributions by Maryo Gard Ewell, Robert L. Lynch, and Michael Winslaw. Edited by Maryo Gard Ewell with Clayton Lord and Elizabeth Sweeney. 2016, 128 pages, Americans for the Arts, Washington, D.C.

Many foundations are considering adding impact investing as a tool to complement their grantmaking activities. This article explains the practice generally and as it applies to funders working in the arts and culture sector. We will begin by introducing the terminology and motivation for impact investing, then provide an overview of the options, and conclude with examples from four foundations that have made impact investments in arts and culture.

Understanding the Language

In America, the arts are highly dependent on donations from individuals for funding. Once a new president is in office in 2017, Congress is expected to take up “tax reform” in a serious way.

The arts sector struggles within an environment of scarcity of resources, and yet we know that untapped, unexplored resources exist. We live in an age of a sharing economy, where existing extra rooms, vacation homes, and apartments become the destination for travelers, and car owners provide a vehicle to those in need of transport. This makes so much sense.

The Initiative

Over the past five years, Theatre Communications Group (TCG) has taken an active and vocal position on the need for a more equitable, diverse, and inclusive theatre field. We have been approaching this challenge on multiple fronts, and our thinking has evolved dramatically over time as we learn more about equity, ourselves, our history, and the deeply embedded structures of racism and other forms of oppression in our theatre field and larger society.

Understanding and embracing transformational change are ubiquitous in cultural policy circles. Research on dramatic demographic shifts, seismic alterations in technology and audience consumption, and postrecession political realities compel arts leaders to master not only their genre but the sticky notion of change itself. Grantmakers in the Arts' own equity work, EmcArts Community Innovation Labs, and ArtPlace’s placemaking practices are all attempts to recalibrate the arts funding ecosystem to respond and adapt to change.

The 1960s was a time of ferment and creation on so many fronts. In the arts, we note explosive growth in the number of significant professional arts institutions as well as countless locally based arts organizations, from chamber orchestras to theater companies; the birth and growth of culturally specific arts groups and arts centers; the creation of arts groups in support of, and arising from, the civil rights movement; the rapid increase in the number of community arts councils, especially in small cities; the birth of Community Arts Councils, Inc.