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Month: June 2016

Resources From Unexpected Places-Federal Reserve Banks

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Okay, I know this week I posted a piece that continued my long standing assertion that talking about the economic impact of the arts is not an effective way to garner long term support and investment around arts and cultural activities.

However, while it shouldn’t be the central argument for support, I don’t discount the value of using economic impact as corroborating data.

In that vein, I have recently been wondering if it might not be useful for the arts community to forge closer ties with the various regional Federal Reserve Banks. I have seen some publications coming from them that are valuable to non-profits and make a case for the place cultural organizations have in community development.

Last December, I used a well-written guide on managing Non-Profit Executive succession and transitions produced by the Kansas City Federal Reserve in a post I wrote for ArtsHacker.

Since then I have seen two pieces in a four part series written by the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland on the importance of cultural organizations in Eastern Kentucky’s transition away coal mining. The first focuses on creative placemaking and the second specifically spotlights the work of Appalshop in Whitesburg, KY.

I am not sure how many may read the articles, but the people and businesses who closely watch the activity of the Federal Reserves are not without influence. Section headers like “The economic impact of creative placemaking;” “A Case for investment: two examples;” “Making Dollars and Sense” can resonate with the interests and concerns of these groups.

It might be worth having state and regional arts councils reach out to make contacts with the respective Reserve Banks in the different regions to explore whether the councils can provide data and stories that might be of interest to the readers of the Federal Reserve publications.

Having the Federal Reserve’s research as an additional source to corroborate statements and statistics about economic impact can help bolster non-profit organization goals.

In return, the Federal Reserve banks may be able to produce publications like the non-profit leadership succession guide that are useful to non-profits. Having issues of finance, taxation, labor law, business relations, etc tailored to the national needs of non-profits could be helpful.

If the Federal Reserve produced case studies about beneficial collaborations between businesses and non-profit organizations, the gravitas they bring could cause groups to consider exploring similar efforts.

Maybe they already produce documents like this and we are just not widely aware of it. It actually took me some time to find the third installment in the series on Eastern KY on the Cleveland Fed website. Had I not had the URL of Part 2 as a guide, I may not have found it.

You Too Can Help Build Public Will For Arts And Culture

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Long time readers will know that for the last year or so I have been a bit of an evangelist for the burgeoning effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture.

What impresses me about the effort is that it learns from the successes and mistakes of past efforts. For example, they study how the a long standing concern about smoking didn’t gain much traction until the argument was reframed around the idea that one had a right to protect one’s health from second hand smoke.

Nor is the effort afraid to cede short term satisfaction in order to meet the long term goals. First rule of building public will for art and culture is you don’t talk about art and culture. (Because the term currently has negative connotations for people.)

The effort has moved to the next step with the creation of the Creating Connections website. The site has a summary of the research to date. There are tools for getting involved, including messaging, how engage with groups so they feel like they have a stake in the outcome and questions to ask oneself about the experiences you are providing to the community.

What I was surprised to see was the inclusion of talking points about the Building Public Will effort that accompanied a Powerpoint presentation on the subject.

Basically, anyone can go out and start talking to groups about this effort tomorrow if they wanted to. I feel like that is putting a lot of trust in people not to screw it up. But that also fits into the underlying philosophy about this being a grassroots effort about active participation in the arts and culture.

So if anyone wants me to come talk to their group, let me know. I am ready! More importantly, now you have the tools to deliver the talk yourself. (Though obviously a famous blogger such as myself would have WAY more gravitas!)

Data Is Nice, Stories Are Better

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It is pretty much an accepted truth that if you want to secure funding for the arts from a government entity or foundation, you need to marshal a lot of data to prove you are having an impact, especially an economic impact.

However, in a recent interview Kresge Foundation President & CEO Rip Rapson seems to indicate that story rather than data may be more important in influencing decisions and policy.

Rapson speaks about a conversation he had with former NEA Chair Rocco Landesman about the ArtPlace initiative. (my emphasis)

And I said, well, I agree with that, but how about the data, and how about the quantitative elements of all of this? Isn’t that what will tip the scales?

And he just laughed. He wore these big cowboy boots, and he stood up, and he pounded the floor, and he said, you know what? I walk into every congressional office in the United States House of Representatives, and not one asks me about the data. They all want to know a story about what happened in one of their neighborhoods, one of their communities, one of their cities.

He doesn’t say that data isn’t important. My suspicion is that politicians especially like to have data to corroborate their decisions if anyone questions them. Rapson says one of the goals of ArtPlace is to help discover:

“Is there something between the highly rigorous, systematized generation of data about how many dollars per square inch an arts activity generates and all of these millions of points of light? When are the data important? When are the stories important? How do you aggregate the stories?”

A little later he gives an anecdote that illustrates how people overlook the arts in their lives and just how invested they are in their practice. He speaks of a very conservative wardperson in Minneapolis who thought the arts were a waste of time. (my emphasis)

“He actually hauled me in front of the city council committee to explain why in heaven’s name we would accept a grant like this.

So, I said, well, Walter, could we have the very first conversation in your ward, and he kind of grumbled and said all right, all right. So, we had it. It was at his Ukrainian church where he went every Sunday. We were able to identify the woman who sewed the vestments, the man who had done the mural painting on the altar, the three women, who every year created the Ukrainian Easter eggs. We got the choir director. You get the drift.

And Dziedzic walked in and saw these13 people in his congregation, and I said something to the effect of “I want to introduce you to your arts and cultural community, Walter.” And they all talked about how art became central to the way this Ukrainian church practiced, and of course he was toast; he became the biggest single advocate of how arts and culture sort of shaped community life. Now, I could have brought him all sorts of data, I suppose, but, having him sit with 13 or 14 of his congregation members talking about Ukrainian eggs and choral concerts, was really quite wonderful.

So in trying to convince people of the value of the arts in their lives, it may take focusing on impacts on a very granular level. Not just things that happen in the district or town that they identify with, but how it manifests directly in places they are deeply invested and care about.

A program that served 1000 school kids may not be as important as the joy it brought a single kid.

While the implications of that single sentence could lead to a whole debate about influence, wealth disparities, urban vs rural funding, etc., remember that not all the hearts and minds you need to influence are politicians, funding organizations and individual donors. Just shifting the general perception for a greater number of people in a community can be a victory.

Are You A Cultural Omnivore If You Take Very Careful Bites?

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Here is an interesting insight from Stanford University Graduate School of Business (h/t Marginal Revolution blog). According to some latest research, cultural omnivores may be as rigid in their thinking as those they disdain as monoculturalists. (Though I guess they don’t use that term.)

That is, those dubbed “cultural omnivores” — because they eat Thai for lunch, play bocce ball after work, and stream a French film that night — are the very ones opposed to mixing it up. No hummus on their hot dogs, forget about spaghetti Westerns, and do not mention Switched-On Bach. Those offerings are not considered culturally authentic. They are a hodgepodge to which these folks would likely wrinkle their collective noses — as they did in 1968 when Wendy (nee’ Walter) Carlos electrified J.S. Bach. Today’s cultural elites approve only if the experience is authentic, which means eating pigs’ feet at a Texas barbecue passes the test and slathering a taco with tahini does not.

[…]

Today, a higher status accrues to those who are perceived as open to new experiences, and those who oppose experimentation are dismissed as narrow-minded monoculturists, or worse, rednecks, Goldberg notes. Therefore, the elites resist anything that undermines their identities as social and cultural leaders, and that means they are more likely to maintain boundaries.

So I guess the way to read that is that today’s snobs are just snobby about a wider range of things?

While there are probably boundaries that cultural omnivores maintain, I suspect it isn’t as simple an example of hummus on hot dogs. My guess is that Korean Taco food trucks are acceptable to a wide range of cultural omnivores even though on paper the concept is as strange as hummus on hot dogs.

The article does suggest that there is a small segment of people who are open to change so perhaps they normalize things like food trucks for the wide range of omnivores.

If this research is accurate, the larger question this raises for me is what constitutes an “authentic experience” for cultural omnivores? Recent research cites finding that people want to have an authentic creative/artistic experience.

In the context of the Stanford piece, I become a little more concerned that perception of what an authentic experience is may not match the reality of an authentic experience. (And not only in respect to silly manifestations of preconceived notions of authenticity.)

When a performing arts group presents a chamber music concert in an edgy, new, boundary breaking format, do the musicians need to be conservatory trained or will the music ensemble from the local community college be acceptable?

If you say the former, why does an unorthodox approach require such a high level of training in order to be deemed acceptable? If the effort fails (succeeds), will you be more satisfied with the experience knowing the performers were highly trained?

I do think it is important that people who invest time and study to render an authentic experience of a certain genre or culture be in a position to delineate themselves from people providing a superficial representation of those things and labeling it authentic. Though the discussion of who gets to call themselves authentic practitioners is an entirely different can of worms, especially in regard to cultural and ethnic practice.

But as I am reading the Stanford article, it almost sounds as if it could be just as problematic trying to provide an acceptable authentic experience to people who describe themselves as cultural omnivores as it is to those who consider themselves to be purists of a certain genre of artistic expression.

New audiences may feel the experience is just as elitist when they overhear others expressing disdain for a show they liked as they would when people glared at them for clapping between movements of a musical work.

The Stanford article says Big Data will provide needed guidance, but I am not sure how many arts organizations will have the resources to access and interpret the data effectively. (I would happily be wrong if in 5 years there was an app for that.)

What Does Waning Trust In Non-Profits Mean For The Future?

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A decision by the OneOrlando fund to distribute money they collected directly to the families and victims impacted by the recent nightclub shooting rather than through charities bears watching. Even while groups are calling for the reducing the use of overhead ratio as a measure of a non-profit’s effectiveness, there is increasing pressure to have money only spent for the purpose for which it was given.

According to the NY Times:

With the move, Orlando is the latest to shift away from established charities and opt for direct donations, a move that has become increasingly common, in part because of questions about how some charities use donations.

[….]

“There have been so many scandals we’ve seen after these sorts of situations, so it is a big deal that they’ve bypassed nonprofits because it shows a distrust in how nonprofits are doing things,” said Stacy Palmer, editor of The Chronicle of Philanthropy. “This sends a big message, too, because other cities might decide to use this as a model in the future.”

Mai Fernandez, executive director of the National Center for Victims of Crime, said Friday that the group, as well as some family members, had told city officials that they feared donations from OneOrlando would not get to victims if a traditional nonprofit was placed in charge.

While the motivation for donating money following a tragedy like Orlando is different from supporting arts performance or education programs, it isn’t beyond reason to think people will expect the same type of accountability from arts organizations. In a sense, smaller non-profits suffer for the poor decisions and scandals of larger non-profits like the Red Cross and United Way.

An individual has a right to be concerned about how their money is being spent, but those individual concerns aggregated across hundreds of individuals can serve to paralyze a non-profit as illustrated in a post by Vu Le from two years ago.

Non-profit organizations need to provide greater transparency and communication to meet the donor expectations of greater accountability. I am not sure how to communicate that there is a lot more involved in providing 6-8 year old kids with the opportunity to paint than just handing them the paint.

Do you include pictures of staff members joyfully buying paints and materials a the local arts and crafts store in your newsletter and donor report? Pictures of staff meeting with teachers to develop a unified curriculum of enriching activities? Readers may automatically gravitate to the pictures of the cute kids painting and ignore those of staff members, but maybe the fact that every hour of painting is backed by five hours of prep will slowly sink in.

In the meantime, I wonder if the committee Orlando is putting together to decide how to distribute the $7 million they have collected won’t also eventually come to realize that there is a lot of work involved in effectively and transparently giving away that amount of money. If they don’t end up paying a dedicated staff to help administer the money, they may end up either subsiding the effort through long volunteer hours or enlisting office staff paid by their own businesses and organizations.

Not So Simple As “Just Ask What They Want”

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Seth Godin has a post today that seems like it is written just for arts organizations.  Obviously, that is just my ego that views the arts as the center of my universe talking because the assertion in the title, “You can’t ask customers want they want,” applies to every company.

My first thought upon reading the post was Malcolm Gladwell’s story about how Prego achieved dominance with spaghetti sauce by doing a lot of experimentation with sauces that did not conform to the stated preferences of consumers at the time.

Godin says you can’t make a breakthrough in the product you are offering because customers have a difficult time imagining a breakthrough product. Instead, you have to do a lot of risky experimentation.

You ought to know what their problems are, what they believe, what stories they tell themselves. But it rarely pays to ask your customers to do your design work for you.

So, if you can’t ask, you can assert. You can look for clues, you can treat different people differently, and you can make a leap. You can say, “assuming you’re the kind of person I made this for, here’s what I made.”

There are a lot of little details in there that we have heard before in terms of arts organizations needing to know about audiences, what their impediments to participation are and what stories they tell themselves about the type of person they are.

There is an element of Godin’s post that replicates the “fail early and learn” philosophy being bandied about quite a bit lately.

I don’t have to tell you there isn’t a lot of room in arts organization budgets for experimentation and constructive failure. Alas, to a great degree, that is the only option available any more. As he suggests, experimentation doesn’t have to be scattershot, you can make educated guesses from clues and change the way you interact and execute with different people who use your product/services.

I think that last sentence I quoted emphasizes that not everyone in your community is going to be your market. What you made is only going to connect with a certain type of person. There may be 10,000 of that type of person within your reasonable reach or there may be 10.

Goodness knows we think we are making an educated decision about what will appeal to a large number of people only to have our efforts fall flat. Other times, we are delighted to gain an overwhelming response with little effort, but are confounded to figure out how to replicate (or avoid) those mysterious conditions in the future.

You can probably find no greater verification that not everyone in a community is part of the same market by dedicating a month to walking down a supermarket aisle or past a display that you don’t buy from. Every time you go past, notice how much the product is turning over.

Maybe it is the sushi you don’t buy because are not the type to buy sushi that isn’t freshly made moments before in front of you. Maybe it is some strange food from the ethnic food aisle. Perhaps it is the Uncrustables PB&J sandwiches in the freezer case (I mean, how the hell is a PB&J sandwich you have to defrost more convenient than making the sandwich?).

You have a lot in common with thousands of other people in that you both shop at that supermarket rather than another one, perhaps based on your shared self image, perhaps simply due to geography. Yet there are thousands of items in the store that the manufacturers would be happy if you bought, but also understand that you are not in their target market demographic.

Emotionally Intelligent Interview Questions

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Back in March, Entrepreneur magazine website had an article listing 7 Interview Questions to measure Emotional Intelligence. (I have no idea why it says it was published on July 20, 2016 at the bottom.)

Emotional Intelligence is one of those qualities you would think an arts organization would be seeking in an employee. Perhaps I have been working too long with the relatively regimented government human resource system for too long, but I haven’t really seen questions like most of those the article lists used during an interview process.

The first one about who inspires you is almost a no-brainer for the arts. I would say that is probably the one conversation that would naturally unfold in an interview for an arts job without any planning.

I like the second question – “2. If you were starting a company tomorrow, what would be its top three values?” because it is so revelatory about the type of person an interviewee is.

More importantly, the interviewers should ask the same question of themselves…and then evaluate if those values are being exhibited in the organization they are running.

The third question about how one handles communicating and execution changing priorities and the fourth question about building lasting friendships are important for people who are going to be part of a team. Given that non-profit arts organizations are often faced with changing their priorities due to funding, the answer can be helpful in learning how people handle change.

I feel like the fifth question, “5. What skill or expertise do you feel like you’re still missing?” might show more emotional intelligence on the part of the interviewer if it were revised to ask “what skills do you feel like you are missing that this job/we can help you develop.”

The question they ask is essentially a rewording of the standard, “what are your weaknesses.” I think the tweak I gave it can help both reveal the candidate’s self-knowledge as well as their perception of (and research about) the type of work the organization does and what the position will require of them.

I liked the sixth and seventh question for the useful qualities the article outlined.

[highlight]Are there any interview questions you have used/encountered or can think of that are particularly useful for illuminating the emotional intelligence of a job candidate?[/highlight]

Congress Won’t Vote To Fund U.S. Department of Arts and Culture

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I was visiting the website of the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture (USDAC) today and…

Wait a minute you say, there is no Department of Arts and Culture in the U.S. government, that sort of business is handled by the National Endowment for the Arts.

You would right about that, but even though I know that the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture is not a government agency, it takes me a second to remember that. (The first few times I saw it mentioned, it took longer.)

So yes, technically Congress won’t vote to fund the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture.

There is something delightfully subversive about the name because it seems to tap into “lie repeated often enough becomes the truth” aspect of human nature.

Back in 2008/2009 when Barack Obama was first about to take office, there was a lot of conversation about how he should add a Secretary of Arts and Culture to his Cabinet.

While that hasn’t formally manifested within the government, I can’t help but think that USDAC is a fulfillment of that wish and the organizers weren’t going to allow something as pesky as the lack of government imprimatur to be an impediment.

They may not have the name recognition that the National Endowment for the Arts and Americans for the Arts have, (which granted, may not be that widespread either relative to entire population beyond the public television/radio crowd), but there may be more cachet in declaring you are a Agent for the U.S. Department of Arts and Culture.

You may be getting tired of me repeatedly talking about the effort the Build Public Will for Arts and Culture, but it occurs to me that part of the path to success may be found in fooling people into thinking a government agency is actively going out and working to promote arts and culture.

If you have been watching NEA Chair Jane Chu’s Twitter feed, you know she has been doing just that. I am not sure she remembers what her office looks like. But she can use a little help.

A lot of people know about the controversy of government funded smut. They haven’t had personal contact with government agents/employees working to bring them art. Perhaps the perception that they have met such people will help cultivate good-will.

In addition to the writings on their blog and press sections, one of the things that caught my eye a few months back was a piece USDAC Chief Policy Wonk Arlene Goldbard wrote for Grantmakers in the Arts.

For decades I have had conversations with people I meet in dentists’ waiting rooms and on airplanes…I get around to asking if they care about things like how their communities are depicted on television and in the movies, how their heritage cultures are reflected in their kids’ education, and whether their children’s schools still offer theater and music classes along with math, science, and standardized test prep. So far, everybody has said they care.

Then I get around to asking if they care about cultural policy. That usually brings a puzzled look or an indifferent shrug.

[…]

Yet except for aficionados, the phrase “cultural policy” conjures something so dry, obscure, and removed from daily life that the two questions may seem to have no connection.

In reality, everyone makes cultural policy.

When a local planning commission approves the destruction of a long-standing Latino neighborhood for the construction of a new freeway or sports stadium, cultural policy is being made,…

When parents and teachers introduce students to heritage cultures through classes and holiday celebrations sharing music, stories, and food, schools are making cultural policy, prioritizing the school’s commitment to cultural competency.

When music venues ban hoodies, they are making cultural policy, establishing who is welcome to take part in local cultural life — and who is not.

This reminds me of Jamie Bennett’s TEDx Talk where he mentions people have an easier time identifying themselves on a continuum with Tiger Woods and Serena Williams based on their sports hobbies, but have a harder time seeing themselves as artists even though they have creative hobbies, too.

In Goldbard’s examples, it is easier to see the impacts of these decisions in a variety of contexts, but miss the fact that there is a cultural component present as well.

When The Cool Kids Hung Out At The Museum

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As you may be aware, last Friday, June 11 was the 30th Anniversary of the release of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. To commemorate the anniversary, Vox had an article about how it was a great movie about being a terrible person.

However, a few weeks back Smithsonian pointed out that the movie was, to a great degree, a love letter to Chicago from director John Hughes. Particularly, John Hughes included a scene set in The Art Institute as a tribute to all the time he had spent there.

Because, really even in 1986, how many kids cut school to visit a museum?

Actually, maybe it isn’t so far fetched. Given that Ferris and his friends bluff also their way into a French restaurant for lunch, a visit to the Art Institute could be viewed as experimenting with what they perceived to be post-graduation adult existence.

The museum scene is really quite poignant on its own. There is no dialogue, a little goofing around, some tender moments and some existential angst.

In short, pretty close to what you want a museum experience to be for people. Reading the Smithsonian article, I wondered if that scene in a movie about the quintessential 80s con-artist might have had a lingering, albeit subliminal, positive effect on those of us who grew during that time.

I am just trying to think, other than this scene in the movie and maybe A Night At the Museum, are there any other movies that present a museum in a way that makes you want to visit? I am hoping there are.

Usually museums are places to be robbed, places kids visit on boring field trips or places where a character’s cultural bona fides are established (often in a negative, Bond villain sense.)

Overhead Funding May Not Be Expanding, But The Conversation Is

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Something I had meant to mention in my post yesterday was that Priceonomics’ admiration of Yerba Buena’s Dream House Raffle sounded very similar to fund raising philosophy espoused by Dan Pallotta.

Said Priceonomics,

There is something admirable about Yerba Buena’s Dream House Raffle.

Every nonprofit spends a lot of time conducting and worrying about fundraising, and that is time that could be spent on the nonprofit’s mission. The Yerba Buena Center for the Arts identified a new revenue stream and has done well at it. It now raises more money from its raffle than it receives from individual donations or from the city of San Francisco.

Dan Pallotta says something similar in his 2013 TED Talk:

Now, if you were a philanthropist really interested in breast cancer, what would make more sense: go out and find the most innovative researcher in the world and give her 350,000 dollars for research, or give her fundraising department the 350,000 dollars to multiply it into 194 million dollars for breast cancer research?

If you have been following my blog for any period of time, you know that there has been a lot of discussion and examination about overhead ratio as a valid measure of institutional effectiveness.

Of late, the topic has been spilling out of publications focused on non-profit audiences and into the mainstream. This week, FastCompany’s FastCoExist took up the topic in a piece titled, “Demanding That Nonprofits Not Pay For Overhead Is Preventing Them From Doing Good.”

Upon reading the transcript of Dan Pallotta’s talk, I see the FastCoExist article basically says everything he did three years earlier. Except there continues to be more research conducted that is supporting the validity of the claim. FastCo cites a new Bridgespan Group study that shows how uniformly applying a flat rate limit on overhead is undermining non-profit effectiveness.

According to a recent report by Oliver Wyman and Seachange Capital Partners only 30% of New York nonprofits can be considered “financially strong”—and “many trustees do not understand the financial condition of their organization or how it compares to its peers.”

[…]

Part of the problem is that many funders have become obsessed with measuring their impact on a per-dollar basis, which means they’re more eager to give to specific projects than the institutional upkeep that supports them. But the 15% overhead limit doesn’t even parallel what commercial companies shell out. According to Bridgespan’s research, the average S&P 500 firm spends about 34% of their budget on essential behind-the-scenes support. For IT companies it’s more like 78%, the report notes. Some 21st-century nonprofits probably require the same kind of tech firepower.

Similarly Pallotta noted,

So we tell the for-profit sector, “Spend, spend, spend on advertising, until the last dollar no longer produces a penny of value.” But we don’t like to see our donations spent on advertising in charity. Our attitude is, “Well, look, if you can get the advertising donated, you know, to air at four o’clock in the morning, I’m okay with that. But I don’t want my donation spent on advertising, I want it go to the needy.” As if the money invested in advertising could not bring in dramatically greater sums of money to serve the needy.

What Bridgespan did in their research was segment non-profits into four general areas (U.S.-based direct service, policy and advocacy organizations, international networks, and research organizations) and then broke down expenses into five different categories. It probably isn’t any surprise that different segments of the non-profit sector vary widely in their needs.

There is a graphic in the FastCo article that illustrates this, but for example research organizations spent huge percentages on physical assets compared to policy and advocacy organizations. Policy and advocacy organizations didn’t spend any money on field and network operations, whereas the international and research segments did, but in greatly differing amounts.

They use this research to support their assertion that requiring flat-rate reimbursements for overhead costs across the entire non-profit sector is inappropriate. Not to mention that the percentages they set are restrictively low.

Regardless of whether this research brings about change in the immediate future, at least the scope of those involved in the conversation continues to expand.

Is It Worth Gambling On A High Stakes Raffle Fundraiser?

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Via the Marginal Revolution blog, I recently read a piece on Priceonomics about how the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts was using a loophole in California state law to “raise $4 million by selling $10 million in raffle tickets.”

Since the authors note that other states have a similar loophole (or lack thereof), I thought this could be something of interest to arts organizations in general. While it can be something to explore, before rushing out to organize one, you should also be aware that there are some elements to their raffle that have raised more than a few eyebrows.

Essentially what they do is sell $150 raffle tickets for the opportunity to win a $5 million Dreamhome or a $4 million payout.

Yerba Buena does not buy a house every year, and it is unlikely that it has ever given away the dream home that it advertises on fliers and billboards. Instead, as SFGate has reported, the organization finds someone who is trying and failing to sell their expensive home. The homeowner signs a contract with Yerba Buena agreeing to potentially sell their house, which would allow the nonprofit to give it to the winner of the contest.

[…]

Since taking the dream house comes with a big tax bill, winners always choose the money. SFGate failed to find any winners who moved into the San Francisco dream homes, and this seems to be the case nationwide. “I believe that with most, if not all, [dream house raffles] around the U.S., the winner takes the cash,” says Brian Yacker, a lawyer who works in nonprofit law. “I don’t recall a winner taking the house.”

A San Francisco Chronicle piece on the raffle notes,

Often owners of these homes connect with the Dream House Raffle because the nonprofit will pay them to take their property off the market as it becomes a marketing tool.

“Usually, the nonprofit is not given the home,” Pender wrote. “It might lease it from the owner with an option to buy if the winner chooses the home. The owner gets paid for keeping the house off the market during the raffle, and even if it doesn’t end in a sale, the home gets plenty of free publicity.”

This actually sounds like a smart approach and win-win all around, especially if you know that people will generally choose the money.

What raises eyebrows is the fine print. You only get the dream house or the $4 million payout if a minimum number of tickets are sold, in this case, 65,000. According to that same San Francisco Chronicle article, the art center won’t reveal if they ever reached that minimum in the seven years they have held the raffle and have deflected inquiries by the Better Business Bureau saying it was proprietary information.

The SF Chronicle notes though that even if only 70% of the 65,000 tickets are sold by June 24, the winner still gets to claim 50% of the profit from ticket sales which would come to $3,412,500, not an insignificant amount. They also peg the chances to win some sort prize at 1 in 30.

In terms of the operational nuts and bolts of these types of raffles, Priceonomics reports that California law requires 90% of the raffle proceeds go to the non-profits’ programming. (Though they say thanks to legal maneuvers, Yerba Buena actually spends 60%-80% of the proceeds on the prizes and cost of running the raffle.) Other states have looser requirements,

In other states, no loophole is required. Tennessee law, for example, only requires that 25% of the raffle proceeds go toward charitable causes; in Minnesota, it’s 40%. Massachusetts law just states that a “reasonable” amount of the proceeds should fund the nonprofit’s work.

Now before you start pondering the potential to use a raffle of this scale to make money, you should note Priceonomics’ comments the perceptual issues involved.

For one, there is the ongoing discussion of overhead costs. If people feel like the money they have donated isn’t going toward programming that benefits a needy organization or people that they serve, it can undermine donor confidence. Priceonomics cites a number of instances where people felt burned upon learning that only a small portion of what they gave actually benefited the group they were being solicited to help.

They list a number of examples where organizations have abused people’s ability to gain tax credit for donating homes and vehicles. The SF Chronicle article cites a few sketchy situations with dream home raffles.

Though Priceonomics does note in Yerba Buena’s case,

Most participants in Yerba Buena’s raffle probably would not be shocked to learn that a good chunk of their $150 raffle ticket goes toward the cost of the $4 million cash prize. And since the cost of raffle tickets is not tax-deductible, taxpayers are not subsidizing these fundraisers.

Actually, one of the criticisms of the billboard and bus advertisements for the dreamhome raffle is the fact it is a fundraiser for the arts center is downplayed.

The other perceptual issue Priceonomics cites in relation to raffles of this scale it can be equated with gambling. While a $150 ticket is not going to be viewed as exploiting low income people the way state lotteries are, if people feel like too little is going toward programs, it may create a negative view of the organization.

“The original reason for the 90-10 raffle rule—and having those raffles just for nonprofits—is because it’s not gambling but a fun way to support nonprofits you want to support,” says Berlin. “Once you move away from most of the money going to charity, it looks more like gambling.”

If you think you might want to do a raffle of this sort, it is worth reading both the Priceonomics and SF Chronicle pieces.

The former does a good job analyzing the logistics of such a raffle and ends stating their general admiration of the arts center for freeing up their time to focus on programming rather than fundraising. The SF Chronicle article takes a more skeptical view of the whole arrangement, questioning and then physically verifying the house even exists. Between the two, you can get a good sense of all the questions you might need to answer if you choose to replicate this sort of raffle.

Pursuing Better Artist Treatment Through Cultural Shift Rather Than Rules

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Given all the attention recently being paid to the release of Americans for the Arts’ Statement on Cultural Equity, I thought it would be a good time to call attention to the draft of a Code of Conduct for Non-Equity Theatre being developed by a pilot project group in Chicago.

The Code of Conduct seeks to set guidelines for the sexual content/nudity, physical safety, violence and use of cultural representation in non-union performances. Essentially, the creators want artists to be fully informed about any of these issues from the time the audition notices go up through to rehearsals and performances.

There are also some general “be decent to the artists” guidelines like:

[at auditions] Actors will be made aware of people present that are not the casting authority.

[…]

You will not be asked to audition more than 3 times for this production;
You will not be kept at any audition more than 3 hours; or past 11pm;
You will not be asked to disrobe, or perform any intimate contact or violence as a part of your audition;

Even without sexual content and violence, the interminable, anxiety-inducing audition environment has long been a source of complaints by performers. One element of the code that appears frequently is that the performer has the right to refuse to audition or refuse a casting offer without fear of future reprisals.

The code doesn’t just stipulate that you need to tell people that the roles they are auditioning for will include sexual content, staged violence or place them in physically precarious situations, it also insists that a clear plan about how these things will be handled be communicated and provides guidelines about how to address them. (i.e. at what point in the rehearsal process is full nudity implemented and how the environment should be managed.)

Cultural appropriation and stereotypes in performance has been a frequent topic of discussion and the code includes that as well.

“…actors have the right to make inquiries about how the producer plans to use their cultural personhood…

…participants have the right to speak up if…

Costume pieces that can be reasonably understood as culturally demeaning are not disclosed at audition/casting.

Staging (culturally based violence or abuse not disclosed at the time of auditions/casting)

Accents to underscore a cultural presentation not disclosed…

Make up that can be reasonably described as “blackface” or “brown face” not disclosed…

Some elements of the code are attempts to create some parity with union situations. For example, appointing a Non-Equity Deputy as an extra set of eyes too make sure the physical, social and emotional elements of the production are being handled appropriately. Included in this is addressing an environment of harassment or intimidation, be it based on sexual, gender, racial or ethnic identity; age, ability, citizenship, etc.

Again, one of the frequently mentioned aspects of the code is a clearly defined complaint path for any issue that may arise.

Reading the Code of Conduct a number of thoughts struck me. First, there is fair bit in the document that has long been part of the rules Actors’ Equity union contracts. The code is essentially asking that all performers enjoy the same basic level of consideration that union actors have received.

At the same time, there are decades old unaddressed issues here that have long bedeviled the arts community regardless of union affiliation. These are problems that everyone has talked and complained about, but nothing has been done to rectify.

Of late, many of these complaints have been addressed by action thanks to the conversation being picked up by larger constituencies. In this I see some hope that even if this specific code of conduct is not adopted, practices may change to achieve the ends the authors seek.

As they note on the project homepage, they seek to engender a cultural shift, not construct a legal document.

Community Theatre, Beijing Style

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Before traveling to Beijing, I took the opportunity to arrange to meet with Beijing Playhouse Executive Director, Chris Verrill.  Beijing Playhouse describes itself as “China’s English Broadway Theatre.” It is essentially a community theater that casts ex-pats from various English speaking nations. Though anyone with sufficient skill in English can audition. Looking through some of the playbills, I saw people from the U.S., British Commonwealth countries, Africa, Japan, India and China.

While the Beijing Playhouse does conduct kids’ theatre camps and classes, they only just mounted their first children’s theatre performance this Spring. I got to meet up with Chris Verrill after a performance of Rapunzel at a new theater space they were trying out. Unfortunately, the house staff quickly locked the theater up after the performance so I didn’t get an opportunity to see inside.

Verrill has been running the Beijing Playhouse for 10 years now. The Playhouse was founded when he was traveling in Beijing and decided to mount an English language production seeing that no one else was. People were so pleased, they urged him to stay develop a permanent theater company.

As you might imagine, running an English language theater in China has its own set of challenges, not the least of which is the fact that the Beijing Playhouse is categorized as a performing arts consulting entity rather than a theatre and needs business partners to help them produce shows.

Technically, they aren’t supposed to sell tickets so they can’t use China’s online ticketing equivalent of Ticketmaster. (The seat numbers on the ticket samples Verrill gave me need to be filled in by hand.) Nor can they do much marketing via print and broadcast media.

They also have to be careful about the content of the shows they present. Not all of the problematic subjects are political. The ghosts in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol tread a fine line.

This isn’t to say Beijing Playhouse is furtively darting into theaters. Verrill invites Communist Party members to all the productions and events.

Verrill also strives to remain in favor with the merciless powers of Western theater–dramatic and musical rights licensing agents. While it might be easy for a company in China to fly under the radar, the Beijing Playhouse pays all due royalties. As a result, they have run into the same frustrating problems faced by theaters in the US–having rights blocked due to an incipient tour.

Verrill said his request for the rights to Sound of Music were deflected for six years before the tour actually came through Beijing.

Beijing Playhouse supports itself by soliciting corporate support from a variety of sources. They can’t really engage in  fundraising.

One of the interesting things I learned was that the average age of theater audiences in China is about 25 years old. Beijing Playhouse audience tends to be a little older. Theater is viewed as cutting edge given that the Cultural Revolution had sought to eradicate it.

Most of Beijing Playhouse’s performances are presented with projected Chinese supertitles. Verrill says it can get entertaining when the subtitles get a little out of synch because there will be two sets of laughter–the first from those who understand English and the second moments later from those who are just getting the joke in the supertitles.

Verrill noted that Chinese audiences tend to be  poorly behaved by Western standards. They get up and move around, chat with others, potentially climb up on stage from time to time. He said after 10 years they had gotten their audience to modulate their behavior quite a bit. A higher than average ticket price helps to deter some people as well.

However, he said, the Children’s Theater performances of Rapunzel were pretty chaotic between normal kid behavior and a new audience segment that wasn’t familiar with the expectations of live performance attendance.

Now lest you think they are adherents of the philosophy that audiences should watch quietly until it is time to laugh or clap, Beijing Playhouse performs many shows using the British Pantomime style which takes children’s stories, mixes in people in drag, innuendo and double entendre, and audience participation.

Verrill swears by it and encourages theaters in the U.S. to include it in their season. He said the first time around, people might not understand that they are expected to participate, but thereafter they will jump in and participate whole-heartedly.

Verrill is also an advocate for Readers Theater. Beijing Playhouse will frequently engage in an intensive week long rehearsal process to put a show together for a single performance to benefit charity. They use this format to introduce audiences to slightly edgier content than might be found in their main season. For example, this June they are planning to perform One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.

Since Beijing Playhouse ends up performing in spaces all over the city, we got to talking about the quality of different places both around the city and the country. One thing I had been aware of was that many cities were building big grand performing arts centers without sufficient programming available to fill a calendar even before considering whether the shows are of interest to audiences.

Verrill noted that one of the things that China lacks is the regional development system the US has where shows get developed and refined before going to Broadway. As a result, some times things are mounted in the big houses before they are quite ready for prime time.

I wonder what sort of structure might evolve over time in response to this need. Without a doubt it will be particular to China and may not ever really occupy the spaces currently constructed for performances.

My thanks to Chris Verrill for taking the time to meet with me. Also, for quickly responding with verification and clarifications on the content of this post.

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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