Advocacy

Eclipsed By Your Cause

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Two weeks ago my neighbors were gathered around their pool talking excitedly about doing the ice bucket challenge. One of the kids asked five or six times what ALS was throughout the conversation before someone answered, “Lou Gehrig’s disease or something like that.”

This was a good illustration for me about the hazards of having a cause explode in popularity. Often the symbols associated with the cause become valued more than the cause itself.

The Non-Profit Quarterly has been covering some of the skepticism that has been expressed about the long term usefulness of the social media trend.

Writing for Time, Jacob Davidson, whose father died of ALS, found the ice bucket campaign initially attractive, but then had misgivings. “When I looked closer, I became uneasy,” Davidson wrote. “No wonder it took me weeks to learn the Ice Bucket Challenge was linked to ALS. Most of its participants, including Kennedy and Today’s Matt Lauer, didn’t mention the disease at all. The chance to jump on the latest trend was an end in itself.”

Davidson also mentioned the somewhat negative structure of the campaign, that if you choose not to donate, you dump a bucket of ice water on your head. “The challenge even seems to be suggesting that being cold, wet, and uncomfortable is preferable to fighting ALS,” he noted. If the strategy of dumping cold water was meant to increase awareness of the disease, the strategy has a built-in contradiction: “ALS needs all the awareness it can get, but somehow I doubt many learned a whole lot from contextless tweets of wet celebs smiling and laughing,” he added.

Despite Stephen Hawking and having seen Pride of the Yankees, ALS might not be strongly on my radar if my father hadn’t died from it about 20 years ago. Even if that hadn’t been the case, I still would be a little concerned about how centered the campaign is on the self rather than the disease.

Seth Godin noted that about 90% of those mentioning the challenge or posting video/images of themselves taking the challenge haven’t donated. That is certainly their right.

He goes on to point out the double edge to the situation. Specifically that a positive impact has been to spread the word about a little known disease. (I guess Stephen Hawking isn’t famous enough himself.) The other point Godin makes is that it is normalizing charitable giving.

This has been great for ALS related charities which have seen more giving in a few months than they see in many years. Even if 90% aren’t giving, the 10% who are are having a significant impact for these organizations.

On the other hand, Godin points out that there are some things to watch out for:

1. Good causes in need of support are going to focus on adding the sizzle and ego and zing that gets an idea to spread, instead of focusing on the work. One thing we know about online virality is that what worked yesterday rarely works tomorrow. A new arms race begins, and in this case, it’s not one that benefits many. We end up developing, “an unprecedented website with a video walkthrough and internationally recognized infographics…” (actual email pitch I got while writing this post).

2. We might, instead of normalizing the actual effective giving of grants and donations, normalize slacktivism. It could easily turn out that we start to emotionally associate a click or a like or a mention as an actual form of causing change, not merely a way of amplifying a message that might lead to that action happening.

Along the lines of Godin’s mention of a fundraising arms race, Non Profit Quarterly quoted Emmanuel College research fellow William MacAskill who expressed concerns that flash could easily obscure the need to do due diligence on the recipients of a donation.

His second point more directly addresses the issue of the seriousness of the charitable decision, that such “donor-focused philanthropy…regards all causes as equal…We should reward the charities that we believe do the most good, not those that have the best marketing strategy, otherwise the most successful charities will be those that are best at soliciting funds, not those that are best at making the world a better place.”

Of course, the truth is people give to people, not organizations. To be a successful charity, you have to be good at both soliciting funds and making the world a better place.

I don’t think anyone would really mind if there was a groundswell of support that rallied attention to their cause, even if the attention didn’t translate into material support. Attention is extremely valuable. I can say with a high level of confidence that there are people in my community right now that speak well of my organization that don’t attend our events. If they inspire others to become involved, that is great for us.

The thing to watch out for is when the cause escapes your control and is co-opted for other purposes. Probably the biggest example of this is pinkwashing where companies use the goodwill of breast cancer awareness to sell products and burnish their image with little or no benefit going to breast cancer research.

Stuff To Ponder: When Not To Tell Your Story

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Createquity may be in reruns right now while they reorganize, but they have great timing. Today they featured a post from 2011 which was something of a complement to the post about pricing and story I made yesterday.

Where my post yesterday addressed using a resonant story to get people invested in paying a little more to participate in an arts event, Createquity featured a guest post by Margy Waller suggesting that when it comes to public funding for the arts, the lack of a publicized story might be the best bet.

Members of the public typically have positive feelings toward the arts, some quite strong. But how they think about the arts is shaped by a number of common default patterns that ultimately obscure a sense of shared responsibility in this area.

For example, it is natural and common for people who are not insiders to think of the arts in terms of entertainment. In fact, it’s how we want people to think when we are selling tickets or memberships. But, in this view, entertainment is a “luxury,” and the “market” will determine which arts offerings survive, based on people’s tastes as consumers of entertainment. Consequently, public support for the arts makes little sense, particularly when public funds are scarce.

Perceptions like these lead to conclusions that government funding, for instance, is frivolous or inappropriate. Even charitable giving can be undermined by these default perceptions.

The second paragraph aligns squarely with Seth Godin’s thoughts on pricing that “Some goods are difficult to understand before purchase and use, and most consumers undervalue them and treat them like commodities.” And later “In situations like this, our instinct is to assume that the thing is generic, a commodity, not worth extra.”

Waller suggests that given the perception that public support of the arts is frivolous, by making the fight to restore/increase funding public, arts organizations are choosing a battlefield where they are at a disadvantage.

Politicians can leverage public opinion that the arts are a luxury. When the conflict is covered by the media, it is in the context of a political fight rather than say, a matter of societal value, education and cultural identity.

Because the big fight in the default way of viewing the arts is very losable. And in our efforts, we’re forced to expand a precious resource: the time and energy of staff and key supporters who have to work so hard to convince public officials that they won’t suffer consequences in the next election.

Moreover, every time the fight is public, we’re likely to be reinforcing the dominant ways of thinking about the arts that are getting in our way now. When attacked, we rebut with facts, and the media covers the issue as a political fight with two equal sides – both seen through a lens that sets up the arts as a low priority on the public agenda. And as we know, this can have the effect of making people defensive and hardening existing positions. Of course, it should be no surprise that even officials who are friendly to arts funding are reluctant to be in the middle of that kind of coverage.

Waller suggests a strong, but quiet lobbying campaign, citing the success of just such an effort in Ohio. When you think about it, she has a valid point because quiet lobbying is exactly how plenty of entities who would prefer to avoid public resistance to their plans get things accomplished.

I am sure we can all envision some program that slipped by under our radar and we would prefer not to be associated with those sort of tactics. But the reality is, not every act of governance is preceded by a rancorous public debate. I am sure many arts supporters would be happy not to gird for battle every budget cycle if their goals could be accomplished quietly and efficiently.

The Arts Are Enough of a Gamble Without Casinos

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When you do a S.W.O.T. analysis for your organization (Strengths, Weakness, Opportunities, Threats), Opportunities and Threats were where you listed external situations that could help or hinder you.

When I worked at an arts center in southern New Jersey, one of the biggest threats was Atlantic City. While it might take you hours to get there in summer time traffic, Atlantic City was 45 miles away and therefore fell into the customary 50 mile exclusion zone that prevented performers from appearing within a certain time period before or after their event date. It frustrated the artistic director to no end because we would frequently be outbid and excluded by casinos in Atlantic City.

This is one of those situations where it is too simplistic to claim that arts organizations that can’t support themselves or serve their community ought to close. No one in the local community was going to Atlantic City to see these performers. There was sufficient community interest in seeing them, it was just that the organization was prevented from offering the shows which makes it difficult to generate revenue.

That is why I have been watching an effort by performing arts presenters in upstate NY to prevent the same thing from happening to them. Last October, a coalition of a dozen venues received “assurances from Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration that potential private casinos in New York will be required to partner with local arts organizations rather than compete with them.”

Earlier this month, the coalition, Upstate Theaters for a Fair Game, came to an agreement with 10 of the 17 casino license applicants.

“While we were not able to reach agreement with a number (of casino applicants), the agreements we have reached are significant because they declare clearly the size and scope of casino entertainment plans, they have joint booking agreements that will guarantee access for the casinos and for Fair Game groups to touring performers, they support the Fair Game Fund for those same facilities and establish arts granting programs for smaller organizations in every region,” said Philip Morris, the CEO of Proctor’s in Schenectady and the chairman of Fair Game. “Finally, should the plans the casinos propose be significantly changed, each applicant has agreed to mitigate those impacts with additional support.”

According to another article, the state mandated that some sort of agreement be made. The agreements provide some funding for members of the performing arts coalition, keeping a fair bit of the money in the community.

Under the agreements, casinos will share gambling revenue with the coalition. Amounts will vary by casino and region. Of the distributed gambling revenue, 85 percent will remain in the region where the casino is located, with 15 percent going to the Fair Game coalition. Of the 85 percent that remains in our region, 70 percent will be split by the Bardavon and coalition member Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, on the Woodstock site in Sullivan County. Bethel Woods and the Bardavon will distribute the remaining 15 percent to local arts organizations.

But agreements haven’t been made with everyone, some like the Mohegan Sun have publicly stated they will refuse to do so.

As some members of the coalition say, the situation is still evolving. This situation will be a good case study for what to do if faced with casinos or some similar competitive threat in your area.

We Need CRM Software To Manage Our Relationship With Our Own Creativity

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Dallas Museum of Art Deputy Director, Robert Stein recently made an argument about the value of museums, and by extension, the arts, as a counter to philosopher Peter Singer’s suggestion that philanthropic giving to the arts means that many more people are fated to remain disabled.

I was actually surprised to learn that Singer is a philosopher because it seemed to me that he was making clearly erroneous assumptions that those giving to the arts aren’t also giving to health and social causes as well. Likewise, it is incorrect to assume that absent the opportunity to give to the arts, all those only giving to that cause would choose to support health and social causes instead.

Indeed, I admittedly always assumed that given the choice between healing the sick and feeding the poor and funding the arts, the sick and poor would tend to win out. The fact Singer was essentially implying arts and culture held a greater allure for philanthropists made me wonder if there were appealing elements of arts and culture I was overlooking and needed to exploit more.

Now just because I find Singer’s approach to be weak doesn’t mean that arts organizations don’t have work to do in communicating their value. Stein’s piece is involved and makes a number of compelling arguments about how arts institutions need to position themselves and their value to the community.

In fact, I have ultimately decided to break up my original post and address different portions of Stein’s piece over the course of two days.

I was most drawn to the following concept:

Consider what could happen for a moment if Museums were able to document — like universities do — our creative alumni? With the technology currently at our disposal, why are we only so focused on patron management systems (CRM by another name) that track the money people donate to us? What if we focused instead on keeping a catalog and evidence of the creative imprint our audiences are exposed to and the impact they make on the world. Such a catalogue could effectively illustrate the museum’s imprint on the formation of creative ideas and creative professionals and their resulting innovation across a multitude of fields. This alumni creativity database could be a proof-text for the role of museums in the formation of creativity and a boon for fundraising linked to this important outcome.

This idea that arts organizations really needed to be assembling a database of cultural experiences as sophisticated as that in a customer relationship management system shook me because really, those experiences are the true assets of our organizations and many arts organizations allow their connection with them to dwindle once they pass.

We cross reference giving and attendance history, know where people like to sit, how they like to be addressed and what their social and professional relationships are. Many arts organizations can pull that information up in moments and spit out a report or mail merged letter tailored to a person’s interest.

But our creative record is often contained in banker boxes and file cabinets that we have to sift through for hours in order to derive any value from it. How many people can pull up the program, images, video, interviews, notes by the creative team/curators and feedback from event attendees in a short period of time?

We make statements about putting the art and artist at the center of our work, but do we really cherish and reflect on what we have done the way a child cherishes a favorite teddy bear and the way an adult wistfully remembers that teddy bear? Or is the work filed away alongside expense reports and tax returns and only pulled out for grant reports and anniversary displays?

Near the end of his piece Stein says,

Only by measuring and counting the difference we make in people will we live up to our potential to change lives. Without it, we risk being relegated to the periphery of contemporary society as mere treasure houses for the wealthy in need of a tax-break.

If we give up on the idea that we can know for sure that our museum makes a difference, then Peter Singer is right, we’re not worth supporting.

He is referring to a commitment to investigating the impact work on outsiders that experience it. But it occurs to me that there might be an element of “if you want someone to love you, you must first love yourself,” in all this. Maybe only by making the totality of our creativity, past and present, central to our focus can we really convince the world of our organization’s value to them.