Philanthropic practice

How does philanthropy stay accountable to the values we claim to espouse? Over the past seven years, ArtPlace America invested $87 million in supporting artists as allies in equitable community development. The National Creative Placemaking Fund (NCPF) funded 279 creative placemaking projects in 208 communities of all sizes across the United States. As that fund came to a close at the end of 2017, we decided to interrogate how effective we had been at aligning our values with our assumptions and philanthropic practice.

Successful cultural organizations masterfully manage contributed and earned income. This income mix can include corporate grants, endowment income, foundation grants, government grants, individual donations, membership fees, ticket sales, and unrelated business income (National Endowment for the Arts 2012). Although Alicia Schatteman and Ben Bingle (2017) have suggested that government funding is the most stable of these sources of income, foundations have played a significant role in the development of the US cultural sector (Renz 1994; Negley 2017).

Having worked with panels since my first job in philanthropy at the National Endowment for the Arts, thirty years ago, I am always interested in learning more about how to make the panel system better. Discussions about process, scoring systems, panel adjudication methods, conflict of interest, panel recruitment, multistep review processes, criteria, and more are infinitely fascinating to me and at the heart of improving our own work at the Jerome Foundation.

Twenty-five rising high school seniors will have paid internships during the summer at local Boston arts and cultural organizations through the Bloomberg Arts Internship. The program seeks to help them develop career skills and gain professional experience in the arts, besides providing students college-readiness preparation.

A piece on the Stanford Social Innovation Review addresses how organizations are examining their work to commit to racial equity within their institutions and impact investing practices.

Participatory grantmaking, according to an article by Inside Philanthropy, is drawing more attention these days if you consider "a growing body research, the Foundation Center’s embrace of the topic embrace of the topic, and heightened interest and field-building support from large institutions like the Ford Foundation and Open Society Foundations."

Launched by the chef and restauranteur Rick Bayless, the Bayless Family Foundation selected three nonprofit Chicago theater companies with issues as the inaugural recipients of its Stepping Stone Grants. The $150,000 grant, as Nonprofit Quarterly reported, is intended to help the theaters overcome financial barriers to their growth and stability and help them achieve their artistic and administrative growth.

Grantmakers in the Arts is delighted to share this year’s “Foundation Grants to Arts and Culture, 2016.” In their analysis, Candid (formerly Foundation Center) has included both grants made by foundations directly supporting culture through arts portfolios and grants in support of culture through Grantmakers in the Arts is grateful to amplify the work of other grantmakers – in such fields as education, community and economic development, climate justice, and information and communications – who also see the value of arts and culture as part of their work. This arts funding at the intersection approach is one which GIA recognizes culture as essential to all social change within the larger social sector.

Women of color face systemic obstacles to their advancement over and above the barriers faced by white women and men of color, according to a new report by the Building Movement Project.

A recent piece in the Harvard Business Review states that as investors are eager to generate both business and social returns, one avenue has been impact investing or "directing capital to ventures that are expected to yield social and environmental benefits as well as profits."