Funding Requests As Panhandling

I have been listening to On The Media’s series on the way poverty is covered in America and suddenly came to the realization that the language associated with the poor has many similarities to the way Non Profit With Balls blogger Vu Le describes funders perceive non-profits.

Proud of this realization, I went to Vu Le’s blog to grab some passages to cite…only to realize he made that exact point back in July.

As I was thinking about the parallels over the weekend, I really started to wonder if arts organizations need to find another tax structure to organize themselves under so that they didn’t have these negative associations to the work they did.

Granted, this is sort of abandoning the issue rather than trying to shift the perception. Arts organizations metaphorically moving out of the tax status neighborhood doesn’t help social service organizations who are painted with the same brush as the impoverished people they seek to serve.

Except that the perception can infect the social service charities as well which shows how unhealthy it is.

In one On the Media episode, Linda Tirado is interviewed and discusses how her family’s belongings were destroyed when their apartment was flooded. Eight months pregnant, she calls a social service organization looking for a chair so she would have a place to sit.

She was told she could have the chair, but she would need to take a resume writing workshop before she could pick it up. The charity wanted to make sure she was trying to better her situation. The only times the workshops were available were when she had to work so she would essentially end up putting herself in danger of being fired for want of a chair.

That is what personal responsibility means to somebody on welfare. It means here are these stupid hoops that we’re gonna make you jump through and then we’re going to give you a solution that absolutely won’t work for you. It’s that kind of just over and over beating your head against these ridiculous regulations and these double-blinds that don’t make any sense. And the whole thing is set up specifically to humiliate you as much as possible because what we need poor people to do in America more than anything else in the world is know their place.

Compare to a similar passage from Vu Le’s post:

The No-Free-Lunch: There have been idiotic proposals by clueless politicians designed to punish the poor for violating whatever ridiculous expectations are set out for them. Like taking away food stamps if their kids don’t get good enough grades or if they’re not volunteering or seeking out employment, despite the fact that there are only so many volunteer and paid positions to go around. In our sector, our funding gets threatened if we don’t comply with various requirements, such as working toward “sustainability.” A colleague mentioned a grant that won’t pay for staff wages and other indirect expenses, and applicants have to demonstrate that they will be completely self-sustaining within a year. That gave us all a good chuckle.

If people see non-profit arts organizations in the same light as welfare recipients, is it any wonder they don’t want their kids going into the arts? If they aren’t going to be constantly asking their parents for support, they will be asking society for support and what self-respecting parent wants that right?

I am not sure people equate the two in exactly that manner, but there is possibly a greater stigma associated with non-profits than we expect. Because people’s perceptions of poverty often has a very strong emotional element, merely surveying people about their attitudes may not be effective since they may not be entirely aware of how much their unconscious associations influence them.

About five years ago, it was relatively common to see people talking about the need for arts to adopt a different corporate structure. Many different options were debated but to my knowledge, no one ever restructured or organized a new arts organization under one of the alternative models. (Though we would really only start to see proof of concept now after five years of operation.)

While the idea that arts organizations need to distance themselves from those that society looks askance at may be immediately satisfying, not only does it not really appear to be viable, it doesn’t really solve the greater issues that arts organizations and non-profits in general face.

I have written before about the effort to build public will for arts and culture which seeks to change general societal perceptions about the arts. I have to imagine that a shift in the negative associations people make with the way arts are supported and funded would integral part to that.

If We Build It, Please Don’t Come

I am interested to see that artists are gaining an increasingly sophisticated view of their role in gentrifying neighborhoods. Non Profit Quarterly reported on a gathering in Miami to discuss the issue.

According an article in the Miami Herald, there was a sense among attendees that

“Artists find themselves in the uncomfortable and confusing position of feeling as if they have become inadvertently complicit in driving gentrification, even as they are also being victimized by the trend.”

One of the big topics of discussion was that gentrification is happening so quickly now that artists aren’t even able to set down roots before they are displaced. One Miami non-profit art space has had four homes in six years. Another artist claims to have been “priced out of 10 neighborhoods on two continents, from New York to Paris to Miami.”

Artists are beginning to recognize that not only are they getting displaced by gentrification, they are taking long time residents with them and are now essentially seen as harbingers of doom.

Some who contributed to the conversation in Miami were openly hostile to the idea of artists entering their neighborhoods, perceiving them to be an intentional element of a gentrification effort known as Artwashing.

Sensitive to this, some arts entities are working with the community. The Herald article mentions that Opa-locka Florida listened to residents’ feedback and built a park before building an arts center.

There are also accusations of artists being focused only on themselves rather than the impact they have on the communities in which they take up residence. Thinking back, I have to admit that the earliest writing I did on the subject of gentrification was about how artists were being displaced rather than how the neighbors were impacted.

Though to be fair, many of the first places artists were inhabiting were abandoned industrial and warehouse areas rather than residential districts and gentrification was only largely affecting them. The impact of gentrification on residential areas may be comparatively recent, say in the last 10-15 years. If areas are becoming gentrified more quickly than before, it may also be the case that developers are identifying and exploiting trends in neighborhoods that much more quickly than they had.

In the past I have written about how arts organizations can’t be egoistical and think that if they build it, the audiences will naturally come without any effort on their part. However, there are cases when artists may build it and fear what is to come. (Along with their neighbors.) They may not necessarily benefit too much from the increased economic activity prior to being displaced.

I am interested to see what comes of this growing awareness of cause and effect. What choices artists and communities make to manage, mitigate or resist.

Gasp! Orchestra Strike Post That Doesn’t Devolve To “Overpaid Bums”

On the Marginal Revolution blog, economist Tyler Cowen quotes bits of a Wall Street Journal article on orchestra strikes by Terry Teachout and ends with what seems to be an implication that many orchestra musicians and conductors are being paid too much.

I had expected many of the comments that followed to state orchestra musicians are overpaid bums, but to my surprise very few of the nearly 100 comments did. Instead, there were some of the most interesting discussions about the proficiency of orchestra musicians and ensembles I have seen outside of an arts related news source.  If anything, some orchestra might be tempted to cite these commenters in their negotiations.

There were multiple mentions of musicians today being more skilled than those in the 1950s and 1960s and easily able to tackle compositions with which their predecessors struggled.

Chicago Symphony Orchestra had a number of fans and comments about them emphasized their proficiency:

26 Tununak October 25, 2016 at 11:47 am

The only time I heard the Chicago Symphony live was when I was in Chicago for a conference years ago. They played Petrouchka, and to this day I remember the flute solo as being absolutely breathtaking. I had never really thought about that solo before that moment. There really are differences between the delivery of the very top performers and the rest, and they aren’t necessarily marginal differences.

27 Steve Sailer October 25, 2016 at 7:46 pm
Yup.

For example, I attend a minor league opera series in Los Angeles called Pacific Opera Project that is wildly entertaining and quite moderately priced. They’ll do anything for a laugh. It’s great entertainment value per dollar.

The only problem is when they spring for a really good singer and he suddenly reminds you that the rest of the singers in the production aren’t really good and you are missing out on a whole world of unbelievable singing because you can’t afford it.

Steve Sailer October 25, 2016 at 7:17 am

[…]
That raises an interesting question: if the next time the CSO goes out on strike, if management could secretly fire everybody and replace them with Lyric Opera musicians, how many season ticket holders would notice that diminution in quality?

I’d guess maybe less than 50% but more than 10%, but I’m just making those numbers up.

Since I am living in Ohio, I can’t let Cleveland’s praises remain unsung:

96 Faze October 25, 2016 at 10:25 pm

The insecurity of Clevelanders is reflected in the Cleveland Orchestra’s signature sound, which is perfection. The Chicago Symphony Orchestra has a looser, scrappier sound. But Cleveland can’t afford to let its hair down. Night after night, year after year, they pump out pure, transcendent perfection. The exquisite tone of the string section alone can leave you gaping. But as one Russian music student of my acquaintance said, “Eeez borink. I don’t learn from them. They have no mistakes.”

I was interested to see the following comment for the very Industrial Revolution assumptions it makes about the purpose of unions:

29 BC October 25, 2016 at 10:11 am

If musicians are that differentiated and not interchangeable, then why unionize and collectively bargain? Most unions represent interchangeable labor and indeed actively discourage differentiation (merit pay, employee evaluation, etc.). When labor is undifferentiated, unionization creates a monopoly. If musicians are individually differentiated, then each musician already has a monopoly on his or her own talents.

Professional athletes’ unions are an exception and their demands are correspondingly different than those of unions in other industries. In professional sports, the unions are pro-market, demanding things like free agency, and the owners are anti-competition, demanding things like salary caps, luxury taxes, etc. Are the musicians striking to end anti-competitve and collusive practices of orchestras or are they acting more like traditional labor unions, just asking for uniformly higher pay?

Discussions about the arts on an economics blog can yield some interesting points of view. There was a comment earlier in the thread where someone said something similar, asking why oboists, for example, didn’t hold out for more than clarinetist in communities where clarinetist were common.

It makes me wonder if part of the difficulty orchestra musicians face is this concept that unions exist to insure a supply of skilled, interchangeable cogs. I don’t think it is necessarily the term “union” that is the problem, any collective effort would likely be regarded as a union even if they called themselves more lighthearted like a Musician Clan.

From the comments and general observations, I think there is an underlying sense that talented individuals can negotiate the best deal for themselves and mediocre individuals join collective bargaining groups in order to get better pay than they would be able to get alone.

Really it is more a matter of what value is placed on the work being done than on the talent and skill of the person doing it. People initially formed unions to get better pay for work that has low value associated with it.

Whether you think orchestra musicians are overpaid or not, to read the comments in this post it appears a number of people feel that the musicians of many orchestras are to be commended for their pursuit of excellence in performance.

Not Everything Is For You

There is a video of Nina Simon speaking at the Minnesota History as part of her Art of Relevance book tour early this month. Many things she said jumped out at me and I am going to pass the video along to a couple other people in the hope of starting some conversations.

Around the 47 minute mark she talked about responding to organizational insiders who are dissatisfied by programming that seeks to attract new audiences.  She uses the metaphor about going to a restaurant and how you don’t suddenly decide to boycott the restaurant if they start adding vegetarian and heart healthy options to their regular menu.  In her particular experience long time insiders complained about interactive programming and community festivals, she pointed out that the new people coming to those events weren’t complaining that the museum was offering programming and opportunities that insiders valued.

When she talked about that, it occurred to me that often resistance to new programming is  rooted in the belief that everything should be for oneself. The truth is, everything isn’t for you.

Granted, some times new programs are part of a zero sum equation, especially in a performing arts situation where there are finite resources and dates. A new initiative may displace one of regular events. Instead of 10 things designed for you, you only get nine. For a lot of people even 1/10 of a change can result in them feeling the organization is no longer relevant to them. This may especially be true in the case of subscription holders.  That one bad grape in ten ruins the value of the whole package.

In this situation it can be a little tricky to say, that’s okay you don’t need to come to that show, we have other discount configurations that may suit your needs. Not only might your delivery of that message be flawed and sound offensive, but even with perfect delivery, the patron may only hear “that’s okay you don’t need to come.”

Even if the new initiatives are additions and don’t displace any of the current offerings, patrons, donors, board members can still feel the organization is no longer the one they value, despite having lost nothing.

Or at least lost nothing but the desire to keep the delight they feel to themselves. Nina addresses that a couple minutes earlier with the response, wouldn’t you want to share the joy you feel with everyone else? She says even though in their hearts they want to say, “No way!” it is difficult to admit it aloud.

Even though Nina makes it sound easy. Even though she cites examples of people who are excited to see new vibrancy come to the organization they value, it isn’t easy to go against the inertia of thinking that everything that is being done is being done for you.

Regularly reinforcing, gently and diplomatically, of course, the sense that “What We Do, We Do For YOU (collectively)” rather than “for you” (singularly) is important….even though we do want everyone to feel individually invested.

I think Nina’s restaurant metaphor is a useful one. Most of the time restaurants make menu changes and it barely registers notice from people. You can assure people that while it may feel like the organization is metaphorically changing from a steakhouse to a vegetarian restaurant, that isn’t what is happening. Besides, you may find you some of the vegetarian offerings appeal to you.

(As any vegetarian will tell you, if there is a delicious vegetarian option available on a buffet, it will be cleaned out immediately by all the meat-eaters.)