State of the Arts

Gender Generosity

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Via Arts and Letters Daily was an article by Christina Hoff Sommers that appears in In Character, “Men or Women: Which is the More Generous Sex?”

The short answer is, it matters on the situation. The long answer, which will give you some guidance in how you make your donor appeals, is contained in the article.

Depending on how laboratory experiments are designed either men or women end up emerging as more generous. When the design rewards risk taking, men come to the fore. When the design was purely about generosity, women were kinder.

This latter situation was also borne out by surveys where women’s answers about their generousity outstripped those of men.

However, outside of the lab and away from questionnaires, things are quite different. In a 2003 survey conducted by the National Opinion Research Center it was determined that when it came to actually doing something for others, “gender is not noticeably related to altruistic behaviors.”

As the article points out, women and men are different in the way they express their concern for others. Society places women in a nurturing role and men in risk taking roles. Men become firefighters and jump into burning buildings, women become nurses and tend to the burns. The article notes there is nothing wrong with men or women fulfilling either of these roles.

But what about when it comes to donating money and not saving or soothing lives? Well, it looks like in practical terms, men are more willing to part with money than women.

A 2005 analysis of federal tax data by NewTithing Group, a philanthropy research institute in San Francisco, shows that even when you control for income and assets, males still write larger checks than females. As the New York Times summarized the NewTithing findings: �The study found that single men, generally, are more generous than single women. Among the wealthiest singles, men gave 1.5 percent of assets compared with 1.1 percent for women. Wealth does not explain the disparity.�

If this isn’t what you want to hear or doesn’t mesh with your experience, then read the article. It goes into more detail and cites specific examples from fundraisers.

A couple things to pay attention to though–1) All people quoted as saying women don’t give enough are in higher education fundraising, not arts or social charities. The article alludes to this as a weakness in the argument in regard to a UCLA quote by acknowledging the female graduates might be sending their money elsewhere, but it could as easily apply to the whole article.

2) Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the right of center American Enterprise Institute which may or may not have an interest in portraying males in a positive light for giving $10,000 while saying the wife who only donates $500 can afford to give more.

Still the article provides enough generally unbiased information to perhaps illuminate and guide fundraising campaigns and direct asking strategies. For example, a study by economists James Andreoni and Lise Vesterlund: (remembering this is in a controlled lab situation)

“When altruism is expensive, women are kinder, when it is cheap, men are more altruistic.” They also showed how their findings (along with several other studies they cite) could have important implications for fund-raising as well as tax policy. For example, if the Internal Revenue Service were to increase the price of donating to charity by no longer allowing deductions, it is quite likely that men would react more negatively than women. (On the other hand, women could object that the present system favors male styles of giving.)

Finally A Captain At The Helm

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As a denizen of Honolulu, I have been monitoring the leadership situation at the Honolulu Symphony off and on over the past few years. Up until the last week or so they have been without an executive director and a music director and suffered some tension on the board of directors. This past Saturday an article in the local newspaper announced that Tom Gulick has been apppointed executive director.

Gulick, who counts the Detroit Symphony in his background, was recently executive director of Ballet Pacifica which has had some tough times of its own. In March Gulick left his position there for personal reasons. The ballet’s development director left around the same time. A few weeks later, artistic director Ethan Stiefel also departed barely a year after his loudly trumpeted assumption of that position citing the cancellation of the 06-07 season due to lack of funds as his reason for leaving.

There is some good news as Gulick takes up the symphony’s reins. Just last month the state allocated a $4 million grant to the organization contingent on matching funds being raised. The state also gave the symphony $150,000 for education programs. The symphony has a new board president and has recruited 13 new board members.

Gulick will need all the backing he can as he leads the largest professional performing arts company in the state. Not only does the organization need to hire a music director, it is also in contract negotiations with the musicians union who agreed to a fairly significant paycut a few years ago.

Gulick also faces some public relations problems for the symphony. In an interview on Hawaii Public Radio (mp3 format), Gulick acknowledged that he would be making a “save the symphony” appeal to the same people who gave to save the organization a few years ago and a few years before that. Among his plans to gain the trust of the community is to have fiscal transparency.

He may also want to focus on the use of the symphony web site to reassure the public about the symphony’s strength and successes. Despite the articles and radio interviews that have occurred, as of this writing there is no mention on the website that Tom Gulick is executive director or even that the symphony was preparing to announce someone soon.

There has been some grumbling among season ticket holders over the past month. Editorials in the newspaper have been complaining about a new pricing scheme in the balcony. Two couples wrote that their balcony seats have tripled in price since last year and are on par with the cost of the most expensive orchestra seating. Both decided to pass on subscribing this year, but one couple reconsidered and renewed their seats, although it was for fewer performances. Another single ticket buyer wrote to say she tried to buy balcony seats but was told they wouldn’t be sold until the orchestra seating filled up. Faced with only $60 remaining, she walked away. Two of the writers noted that given the symphony needed to match the state grant, they were surprised the symphony would risk alienating them.

While I might question the amount of the increase and the timing of some decisions, for me this just underscores just how important box office policies are in audience relations. There are some situations when communicated clearly with patrons that earn understanding and tolerance. It is just difficult to make a compelling case in a subscription brochure or train box office people to effectively do it.

I have been approached by symphony musicians with proposals to have both chamber performances and full symphony concerts in my theatre as part of an outreach to my side of the island. It will be interesting to see if any sort of momentum in that direction will develop in the next 5 years or so. Alot of new housing is popping up out here so there is a potential for new audiences as well.

New Cultural Divide

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Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper had an article in The Chronicle of Higher Education last week (subscription, alas, required) in which they offered two opposing views of what the cultural state of the US will be in the future. Regrettably in their opinion, both visions of the future are not mutually exclusive and will define the new cultural divide.

The first vision of the future is rather optimistic. As the cost of technology decreases and becomes widely accessible, the ability of people to express and educate themselves has been increasing. The authors cite British social critic Charles Leadbeater who feels the 21st century will be shaped by amateur professionals-“ProAms.”

Those pro-ams are people who have acquired high-level skills at particular crafts, hobbies, sports, or art forms; they are not professionals but are often good enough to present their work publicly or to contribute seriously to a community of like-minded artists or creators. Pro-ams typically make their livings in other work but are sufficiently committed to their creative pursuits to view them as a possible second career later in life.

A well-educated populace of amateurs who can converse intelligently with authorities of a field and perhaps even parlay their pursuits into a second career. Not only does technology make it possible for them to indulge their interests, but it enables them to cheaply disseminate their work to others providing for the development of ideas on a scale never before possible. What’s not to love about that scenario?

Well, actually, there isn’t a lot not to love about that scenario–if you are able to be a part of it. Like all incidents of cultural divide, the separation is mainly a function of the gatekeepers. The new optimistic trend they describe does away with the old gatekeepers for the most part because it allows people to make their own choice about what they want to experience, how long they want to invest processing the experience and in what environment they want to encounter it. The concepts of high and low art have less influence in this situation as do the arbiters of such things.

According to an article in the American Sociological Review by Richard A. Peterson, an emeritus professor of sociology at Vanderbilt University, hierarchical markers of taste have eroded. Today people define their status by consuming as omnivores rather than as snobs. A new kind of cosmopolitanism underlies the mixing and matching of different cultural forms.

As an illustration, imagine an encounter between two people on the street: a classical-music lover and a lover of rock music. If you are asked to predict which of them is likely to listen to Latin music, ethnic music, jazz, and blues, who would it be? It turns out that the classical-music fan is much more likely to enjoy those nonelite art forms, according to data from the National Endowment for the Arts’ national survey of public participation in the arts. If fact, when you analyze the NEA statistics, the classical-music fan is more likely to listen to just about every genre of music. Today’s cosmopolitan consumer culture is not bound by old hierarchies.

The more pessimistic view of the future is all about gatekeepers. Noting the ever increasing consolidation of the media in the hands of fewer and fewer people, many are forecasting a future where the variety of voices one can encounter becomes increasingly narrow. The authors point out that this is not only true in retail stores where only CDs of a limited number of artists might be available, but also in the arts where “small and medium-size organizations are facing competitive pressures from the growing number of big performing-arts centers – cathedrals of cultural consumption that might bolster a city’s image, but that bring with them some of the same constraints endemic in the consolidated media industries”

The authors also point out that things are moving from a world where we are no longer purchasing but renting culture.

“A few decades ago, cultural consumption required a small number of pieces of equipment – a television set and antenna, an AM/FM radio, and a record turntable. Now cable television, high-speed Internet connections, DVD-rental services, satellite radio, and streaming-audio services all require hefty monthly fees. Even consumption that feels like a purchase, like an iTune download, is often really a rental…”

According to the authors the new cultural divide will be comprised of those who have the time, resources and knowledge to “navigate the sea of cultural choice” to inform, cultivate and share their cultural lives on one side. Those who lack these things will obviously be on the other side of the divide receiving their culture via tightly controlled media channels.

The authors don’t quite know how the developing gap will impact political, cultural, social and communal life in the future. They do ask the question: “Can America prosper if its citizens experience such different and unequal cultural lives?”

I personally don’t see that this question has any more validity being applied to the chasm they anticipate than to the divide that already exists. It might involve different segments of the population than the current one does, but perhaps through lack of imagination, I don’t see the emerging one being markedly larger or destructive to society than if the old gap endured.

Paula Vogel–Cool As Hell

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As much as I enjoy James Lipton Inside the Actor’s Studio, his respectful posture and meticulous research just isn’t as fun as the host of Cool As Hell podcast’s energy and fearless interview style.

Last month Michael interviewed playwriting icon Paula Vogel and got her talking about the state of the arts in the U.S. Her ideas about getting kids doing art at the same age they are learning to kick a soccer ball and getting the arts back in schools might not be new.

She does say some interesting things about the messages artists are getting these days. Among them are her feelings that “Darwin and captialism are very bad models for art” (3:15) and art begets art.

I was also intrigued by her idea that even though she was a klutz, she had to learn to play sports and as a result, all athletes today, artists of the flesh she calls them, speak for her inner athlete. She hopes for the day that every creative artist speaks for the inner artist housed in everyone.

The thing I like about Michael is that he is respectful but he starts his interview right off saying he disagrees with some of her views. After he lets her explain, he then challenges her idealism and asks for practical ways for her vision to manifest in a country that isn’t likely to throw off the captialist model she says is unhealthy for the arts.

I don’t know that she really provides any new answers since she talks about going back to the 60s arts environment, calls for more money to fund the arts and art in schools. She does present some quotable moments like “art is a dog that you feed that bites you” (7:05) when arguing that art should challenge society but the agenda of arts funders is to make art palatable and devoid of challenge.

On the other hand, I give her credit for doing the interview. Podcasting being so new, I imagine it would be difficult to gauge how substantive a discussion she would be expected to have.