Grantmakers in the Arts

Penn Report: More Culture Than Donors Will Support

February 9, 2015 by Steve

From Peter Dobrin, writing for The Inquirer:

A new William Penn Foundation-commissioned study paints a portrait of the Philadelphia arts scene as rife with both promise and peril. The report, which examines more than 160 groups, says some are coming up with innovative ways to adjust to changing demographics and ticket-buying patterns, but it also finds that 70 percent are in poor financial health, undercapitalized, and unable to withstand financial stress or to fund new ideas. And while there is a promising new generation of philanthropists in the area, they have not been persuaded by arts groups to loosen their purse strings.

February 5, 2015 by Steve

Capitalization, Scale, and Investment: Does Growth Equal Gain? is a report from TDC, with support from the William Penn Foundation, that was presented at the GIA 2014 Conference by Susan Nelson, a primary author. The first part of the report analyzes date from the Cultural Data Project to take the temperature of the Philadelphia arts ecosystem in order to see how organizations fared over the five year period of 2007 to 2011. The second section of the report explores how to navigate the question of growth for an individual organization. To invest in growth that will contribute to sustainability, TDC contends that organizations and their supporters need to challenge their core assumptions and be relentlessly honest about their goals, what kind of investment it will take to actually achieve those goals, and whether the goals are achievable.

February 5, 2015 by Steve

By Paul Shoemaker, writing for Stanford Social Innovation Review:

The Empire State Building is one of the seven modern wonders of the world. Yet when it was built, the most revolutionary aspect wasn’t its architecture or the height. The less-acclaimed, quantum leap was in the construction practices that the contractor, Starrett Brothers and Eken, used. Never before had a building been constructed in that way or as quickly. In philanthropy today, we are doing some good “architectural” work in emergent philanthropy, networks, and collective impact, to name a few.

February 3, 2015 by SuJ'n

Southern Methodist University's National Center for Arts Research (NCAR) recently released its first annual Arts Vibrancy Index. This index ranked hundreds of communities, large and small, across the US on measures of arts vibrancy as defined by supply, demand, and government support for arts and culture on a per capita basis. Along with the report, NCAR released a web-based interactive heat map that show the relative strength of each community determined by scores for arts dollars, arts providers, government support, socio-economic factors, and other characteristics.

Read NCAR's release on the report here.

February 2, 2015 by Steve in Racial Equity

From Phil Chan, writing for Huffington Post:

January 29, 2015 by Steve

From Darren Walker, president of the Ford Foundation:

Dear Colleagues:

I am writing to share wonderful news regarding our extraordinary colleague Roberta Uno. In a continuation of the issues that she has worked on during her time at the Ford Foundation, Roberta will become the Director of Arts in a Changing America, a new national project engaging changing demographics through the lens of aesthetics, arts practice, cultural equity, and social justice which will be based at the California Institute of the Arts.

January 29, 2015 by Steve in Arts Education

From Elaine Weiss, from Moyers & Company:

January 28, 2015 by SuJ'n in Support for Individual Artists

In an article entited "The Death of the Artist—and the Birth of the Creative Entrepreneur", published in the current issue of The Atlantic, William Deresiewicz argues that the traditional notion of the professional artist as solitary genius is hopelessly outdated. He writes:

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