More Built to Fail

It occurs to me that my suggestions in my entry yesterday didn’t really solve the problem of arts organizations feeling forced in to professionalizing their organization. My suggestions really were only applicable for organizations who had just started out and didn’t have their own theatre space.

What happens if you are a member of a theatre group that was started back in the early part of the 20th century as part of the Little Theatre movement? Even if your only ambition is to be a resource for the community and the kids in the neighborhood and provide them with a place they can express themselves artisitical on weekends and after school, you face some problems.

Back when your theatre was formed, the community was more focussed on itself. Businesses were run by people you knew and they could be easily approached about supporting you. Now it is all corporate owned. Chances are you don’t know the community giving officer when you approach a company and probably won’t have much contact with them outside of your project. Chances are also about even that they may not be the community giving officer next year when you go back for an annual appeal.

Banks used to be owned locally and focussed locally as well. Now your bank can easily change names 3 times in five years as they merge and get bought out. Instead of dealing with a local person, you end up sending grant donations in to a corporate office in Delaware or perhaps a regional headquarters.

Instead of talking to someone about giving you a donation and having them stop back to see the results, now you have to fill out all sorts of paper work and are judged heavily on your persuasive writing skills. If you are given a grant, you then have to follow up with more forms typically backed up with survey data to show how you served X number of people or improved the lives of folks in the community.

All these things require you to be organized to such a degree that the move to having a professional staff take care of it rather than shuffling paperwork between committee members homes seems like a logical step.

Only now you find that the people funding you are interested in doing a lot of bragging about how many school children they serve and they want to get as much bang for thier buck so the place that says they can serve 4000 kids for a 10,000 donation is a better investment than a place that does a really great job serving 400.

Then you discover you need to have matching funds. So for the $10,000 you want, you need to raise $10-20,000 from another source, be it donations or earned income. So then there is more effort to expend organizing, tracking and reporting for other grants/donations or ticket income.

It is all a pain in the ass, but you are really dedicated to providing support to the community, so much so that you will start doing things you never initially envisioned in order to make yourself attractive to granting organizations. Some of it is really great and rewarding, but you are getting tired so you bring on more people to help you out.

Now you see how easy it is get into a situation where your organization is overbuilt as the Artful Manager referred to. You get into a position where you are focussing on preserving funding to things you aren’t interested in doing simply so you can divert some resources to the things you are. But you aren’t fulfilling your original purpose well because you are distracted by the effort of keeping all the other balls in the air. (And by the way, by this point you are talking about every arts organization.)

I can really see how expectations in today’s environment can really put a lot of pressure on organizations to professionalize. I can’t see any viable solutions. In an age where governments are dissolving arts councils, I can’t see foundations and businesses tasking more employees to going out and getting to know their communities to the point where donations can be made on a handshake.

I absolutely think there is a need for accountability and recordkeeping so that businesses know where their money is going and how it is being spent. Unless a company or foundation is going to have their employees travel around collecting support materials, pictures, etc from small arts organizations and then fill out the paperwork themselves to take the burden off the arts, I have a tough time imagining an alternative at this time.

About Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice.

I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/)

My most recent role was as Executive Director of the Grand Opera House in Macon, GA.

Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

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