Grantmakers in the Arts

For the next four weeks, Julie Fry, Program Officer in the Performing Arts Program for The William & Flora Hewlett Foundation, will join Barry Hessenius on his blog for an ongoing discussion on arts education and the myriad issues and challenges facing the field in moving arts education forward. The discussion begins today with an introductory post.

In a post for the NEA blog, Rainey Knudson, founder of the fantastic and now ten-years-old Texas visual art blog, Glasstire, addresses the following (difficult) questions:

The redesigned Form 990, Return of Organization Exempt from Income Tax, has been the subject of much discussion since the IRS released it in 2007. As the exempt sector and practitioners have been adjusting to the new filing requirements, areas of confusion have been identified. Earlier this year, an IRS official reported filing errors in approximately 1% of redesigned Forms 990 filed electronically during 2010. Common errors include failure to file Schedule O, Supplemental Information to Form 990, and failure to complete required lobbying details when a Sec.

Cultural industries are economic powerhouses and states have the data to prove it, according to a new analysis from the National Endowment for the Arts. Drawing on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Arts and the GDP: Value Added by Selected Cultural Industries is a new NEA research note that examines the value added by three selected cultural industries: (1) performing arts, sports, and museums; (2) motion pictures and sound recording; and (3) publishing (including software). Combined, these three cultural industries contributed a total of $278.4 billion to the U.S.

Critical Contributions: Philanthropic Investment in Teachers and Teaching is a new report that examines recent foundation activity to improve instruction and offers an in-depth review of grantmaking in the 2000s. A key finding of the report was the magnitude of philanthropic investment in strengthening teacher quality—between 2000 and 2008, $684 million was directed toward teachers and teaching. Half of this funding came from a group of ten foundations. Similarly much of it—60 percent—was directed to just twenty organizations.

Helen Walters from Fast Company on the persistent problems with design thinking, and the attempts to graft its processes onto businesses:

William I. Miller took the reins of The Wallace Foundation on July 1. Today he introduces himself via email: