Philanthropic practice

As a program officer at The San Francisco Foundation, I say “No” to artists and arts organizations daily. I try to soften the blow, detailing the reality of limited resources and an overabundance of projects, seldom discussing quality or appropriateness, thinking I am kinder in vagueness.

Danny Newman, who died last year (2007) at the age of eighty-eight, was a major post- World War II patron of the arts, but his contributions were not personal checks. Rather, they lay in helping arts companies—theaters, orchestras, dance groups, operas—build strong, committed audiences, providing the sound financial basis they needed to survive and flourish. His major tool was the promotion of subscriptions, a wide-ranging effort embodied in his book Subscribe Now! Building Arts Audiences through Dynamic Subscription Promotion.

2007. 162 pages. AltaMira Press, a division of Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., Lanham, MD 20706, www.altamirapress.com

Jaime Cortez was an arts and culture fellow at the San Francisco Foundation for two years. At the end of his fellowship, he and the other outgoing fellows were asked to read a prepared farewell statement to the board and staff of the foundation. Following is his closing presentation, given on July 9, 2008.

2006, 196 pages. Published by Princeton University Press, 41 William Street, Princeton, NJ, 08540, (609) 258-4900, press.princeton.edu

Last fall after the Taos Journey conference, Anne Focke and I got together to (as we say in California) process the event. She gave me a journal for my writing and a copy of a beautiful little chapbook, A Pragmatic Response to Real Circumstances, originally published by the back room, Portland, Oregon.

2008, 26 pages. Centre for Charity Effectiveness, Cass Business School, 106 Bunhill Row, London, EC1Y 8TZ, UK, www.cass.city.ac.uk/cce/

http://www.cass.city.ac.uk/cce/pdf_files/famfoundationphil.pdf

2008, 104 pages. The Urban Institute, 2100 M Street, NW, Washington, D.C., 20037, www.urban.org; The Foundation Center, 79 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, 10003, www.foundationcenter.org; GuideStar, 4801 Courthouse Street, Suite 220, Williamsburg, VA, 23188, www.guidestar.org

2005, 11 pages. TCC Group, 31 West 27th Street, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10001, (212) 949-0990

http://www.tccgrp.com/pdfs/per_brief_impact.pdf

2008, 130 pages. Published by Heyday Books, P.O. Box 9145, Berkeley, CA, 94709, O(510) 549-3564, www.heydaybooks.co