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Teach First, Ask Questions Later

August 22, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

Along the theme of my post yesterday about good ideas, I wanted to point out some interesting ideas about higher education for arts majors suggested by David Cutler on The Savvy Musician blog.

I won’t say all the ideas are completely viable, Cutler doesn’t make that claim either, but some implementation of the basic intent might be practical enough to break up the status quo a little.

One of the common themes of Cutler’s suggestions is predicated on the fact students looking for a career in the arts need to be more than just talented artists. They need to be good collaborators and have some basic entrepreneurial ambitions. He proposes evaluating those factors right from the time of auditions.

He also suggests multidisciplinary approaches including more allowances for electives, having at least two areas of specialty and working with different specialists.

“Encourage or require students to select at least two areas of specialty throughout their single degree program. This priority reflects the real world, where artists must possess multiple skill sets to survive and thrive.

[…]

“For at least one semester, each student studies with someone from another artistic specialty. Imagine the lessons a violinist might learn from a cellist, trombonist, dancer, or painter.”

This idea appealed to me because one of my former employers ran a residential arts and music camp where students had one major (an area they were already good at) and two minors (areas the want to explore.) The focus there was more about letting kids explore disciplines they had no experience in but were curious about. They might learn they were really awful at it or might gain a new interest.

A more rigorous approach in higher education could give students cross-training they may need in their careers but also provide the basis of increased avenues for creative expression.

What really interested me were some of Cutler’s ideas about what the educational experience might look like:

Paradigm 4: CLASSES & ASSIGNMENTS

Traditional model. Classes are typically built around a lecture. Students are assigned homework or projects to complete on their own time.
An alternative. On their own time, students watch lectures online. During class, the teacher works interactively with them on homework, projects, and other experiential endeavors.

If this alternative model sounds like wishful thinking, let me assure you what he suggests is very close to how some math classes are being taught on my campus right now. The approach has been very successful in terms of improved grades and student persistence.

Paradigm 5: PRIVATE LESSONS

Traditional model. Music students typically take a one hour lesson with a specialist in their area each week (i.e. violinist study with violin professors).
[…]

Alternative C. Teachers are in their office for certain hours each week. Students are free to show up as often as they want, and stay as long as they desire. If unprepared one week, perhaps they shouldn’t waste the teacher’s time with a meeting. On the other hand, maybe someone could benefit from 3 lessons a week leading to an audition. This open structure also allows students to observe their teacher interacting with others who face similar/different challenges, teaching valuable lessons in pedagogy and beyond. (This is the model I experienced when studying composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, Austria).

Cutler also proposes flipping the timing on education students’ teaching semesters and doctoral candidates’ orals from the last semester to the first.

The benefit for student teachers is, “This shows them what needs to be learned early on, and frames their entire college experience.”

For graduate students, “Begin the degree with some version of orals. Get people excited about researching and learning on their own before choosing classes.”

Now granted, I wonder how valuable having a completely inexperienced student teacher would be to the school in which they were placed. That whole experience would probably have to be redesigned.

I do think he is spot on saying that it would show arts ed. students what needed to be learned. I think I have mentioned before that when I was pursuing certification in secondary ed, everyone in my cohort agreed that it would have been helpful to have had a refresher course in grammar rules before we had done our student teaching. We would have paid more attention to that throughout our college careers had we known just how terrifying it would be being uncertain.

In terms of career preparation, he suggests students having a career mentor rather than (or in addition to) an artistic mentor for at least one semester. Instead of doing a summer or semester long internship, “Partner students with an external organization throughout their studies, so they are constantly challenged by real-world, practical concerns and trends.”

I have only covered some of his proposals and I quoted some of his ideas out of their original context (though I feel I accurately represent his overall argument) so you should check out his blog if any of this sounds intriguing.

If you are like me, when you read it you will wonder where in a student’s studies would there be time to implement many of these ideas. But I think his whole point is that the entire approach and prioritization of art student learning needs to be examined and revamped in order to make the experience and the degree granted more relevant.

Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts

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Info You Can Use: If You Missed Your Chance To Steal It Before

August 21, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

While Oscar Wilde may have said, “Good writers borrow, great writers steal,” and blogging by its nature does involve citing others quite a bit, I generally try to avoid having my blog entries involve someone else’s work entirely.

However, occasionally someone provides information that can prove so valuable, it pretty much bears repeating entirely. Last month Thomas Cott assembled a series of links in his daily email which he titled, Steal This Idea.

Many of those he linked to posted entries urging people to steal their ideas, including Trisha Mead on 2AMt , the Association of College Unions International’s Steal This Idea contest and the Please Steal This Idea blog.

After reading this series of articles, you could almost forget that companies are actually concerned about preserving their Intellectual Property rights.

There are a lot of great ideas for the arts in these links. I must confess however that one which resonated very closely with me was an article from the Library Journal (also titled Steal This Idea) which talked about how the Hartford Public Library solicited ideas from their patrons and created a series of library cards people could pick and choose from.

This is a great idea for cultivating a sense of ownership among arts patrons and subscribers. However, the reason it resonated so closely with me is because I actually have kept every library card I have owned since I was a kid. And since I have moved around a fair bit in my career, my collection is between 10-15. Had those libraries offered a choice of more personalized cards, I would have probably “lost” my card frequently so I could add to my collection.

One interesting idea that Cott hadn’t included was covered by Sarah Lutman of the Speaker blog. She discussed the Great River Shakespeare Festival’s (GRSF) decision to sell 10 year bonds to fund their organization. The board of directors authorized the sale of 100 bonds at $5000 each. As of a month ago, they had sold 39.

Though there is some hope that at the end of the 10 year period, people will roll over or donate the proceeds of the bond to the organization rather than calling it due, GRSF is prepared to pay 4% annually on the bond. And they may choose to repay the bond at the end of the term rather than having it roll over. Ownership of the bond can be transferred.

The legal and filing fees for Minnesota were under $2000. It may be more in your state. It is an interesting idea to get people literally invested in your organization. There is some precedent for this sort of thing. The Green Bay Packers football team is a non-profit corporation and has famously offered stock to support their operations.

Fans grab shares when they are made available mostly for the pride of claiming ownership because the team doesn’t pay dividends. How much better is it then to be able to proudly invest in your favorite arts organization and actually be promised a financial return on top of whatever benefit the organization has to the community.

Business Models, Fundraising, Info You Can Use

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Info You Can Use: Like This Post And You Could Win….

August 20, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

..Well Actually I Can’t Promise You Will Win Anything.

That was one subject tackled in a slideshow/PDF Venable LLP posted from a talk they did in early August, How Nonprofits Can Raise Money and Awareness through Promotional Campaigns without Raising Legal Risk. The slideshow proper is followed by resource documents that delve a little deeper into many of the topics.

The collected information is a great basic resource on many of the legal questions you may have about different sorts of promotional and fundraising techniques like raffles, games of skill and chance. The laws of many states make it necessary to have the “No Purchase Necessary” option and the ease (or lack thereof) of taking advantage of that option is frequently a subject of legal action.

While every state has different laws, the slideshow helps to clarify the general distinguishing characteristics of these activities. For example, I wasn’t aware of some of the following:

Some less obvious examples that may satisfy the “chance” criterion include those in which: a prize is awarded to the “100th” store (or Web site) visitor on a particular day; the amount of the prize depends on the number of people who decide to participate; the prizes are of unequal value; or, a drawing is used to break a tie, or a single prize is divided between tied winners.

The document addresses some of the issues use of the Internet to solicit contributes raises in relation to social media and rules dealing with being registered as a charity in other states if a significant amount of contributions is originating from there.

One of the biggest legal situations they discuss is the commercial co-venture (CCV) where a business might promote that a portion of a purchase will go to benefit a charity. NY State launched an investigation regarding companies that did that in relation to breast cancer and turned up a great deal of fraud. Apparently half the states have laws regulating CCVs in terms of disclosure and the manner in which the relationship is promoted.

Use of social media for solicitations is apparently a gray area legally so the suggestion is to proceed with the same care you would if you were making the same appeals face to face or in print. There are also concerns that you respect privacy when collecting user data, especially from children, and protect the data from theft. Geolocating and behavioral advertising and tracking are identified as hot button issues.

However each social media service has a number of their own rules of which you need to be aware.

For example with Facebook:

-Promotion may not be administered directly on the site, must be administered through a third-party Facebook Platform application
– Cannot use Facebook functionality or feature as an entry mechanism; e.g., “Liking” a profile page or posting a comment on a wall. Also cannot condition entry into the promotion upon taking any other action on Facebook; e.g., liking a status update or uploading a photo.

• However, can condition entry on a user “liking” a Facebook page, checking in to a “Place”, or connecting to the Facebook platform based promotion application as part of the entry process. E.g, can require that users “like” a Facebook page and then submit a completed entry form to enter.

This was something of a surprise because it seems like I get requests to like things all the time and have seen it tied to a chance to win something. I have been trying to remember about how they have been structured.

Facebook is also pretty strict about requiring groups to provide notice that Facebook is not associated with the promotion really in any way.

Another area of concern is intellectual property rights. If you are encouraging people to submit some sort of creative project you can run into a number of issues,

“Incorporating user-generated content in a marketing campaign could expose the sponsor to liability for libel, copyright infringement, violation of one’s right of privacy/publicity, deceptive advertising, trademark infringement, or other violations.”

While social media sites and marketers are protected from liability for what people submit or post on their sites, if you turn around and use the submitted content to promote your organization or product thinking it is entirely original, you could be in quite a bit of trouble.

If you look at the slide show but have more questions, it is really worth looking at the additional resource documents at the end. There are some good short articles that deal with the Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media promotion and

Fundraising, Info You Can Use, Legal Topics

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Oh What A Tangled Web…

August 15, 2012

by:

Joe Patti

Today at lunch a musician friend was picking our brains about a fund raiser he wants to do for a cause he really believes in. He outlined his vision and then asked for ideas of places he could hold it. There were a couple assumptions he made about his budget that were unrealistic which we helped him to re-evaluate.

The discussion made me think of an article someone I follow on Twitter recently linked to by Nell Edgington, “5 Lies to Stop Telling Donors.”

Edgington lists the lies as:

1. X percent of your donation goes to the program
The distinction between “program expenses” and “overhead” is, at best, meaningless and, at worst, destructive… It is magical thinking to say that you can separate money spent on programs from money spent on the support of programs…“overhead” is not a dirty word…

2. We can do the same program with less money
No you can’t. You know you can’t. You are already scraping by…Politely, but firmly, explain to the donor that an inferior investment will yield an inferior result…

3. We can start a new program that doesn’t fit with our mission or strategy
Yes, that big, fat check a donor is holding in front of you looks very appealing. But if it takes your organization in a different direction than your strategy or your core competencies require, accepting it is a huge mistake…Don’t let a donor take you down that road.

4. We can grow without additional staff or other resources
Nonprofit staffers truly excel at working endless hours with very few resources…But someday that road must end…

5. 100 percent of our board is committed to our organization
If that’s true, then you are a true minority in the nonprofit sector. Every nonprofit board I know has some dead wood…It’s a fact that funders want to see every board member contributing. But instead of perpetuating the myth that 100 percent is an achievable reality, be honest with funders…It is far better to demonstrate that you are tirelessly working toward 90 percent.

I have frequently linked back to a post Andrew Taylor made about 6 years ago where he suggests non-profit organizations aren’t doing themselves any favors by keeping funders expectations high when they report everything went as good, if not better, than planned every single time.

In recent years “overhead” has come to the fore as a problematic measure of effectiveness. I think the whole idea about low overhead being a measure of effectiveness is the root of the other evils Edgington mentions in her article, in the pursuit of portraying themselves as having low overhead non-profits will say they can do more with less money, do more with same/fewer staff and the organization has a super efficient board.

An April article in the LA Times talks about why overhead is such a poor measure of a charity. In that column, Jack Shakely, president emeritus of the California Community Foundation, cites the example of a group that was buying its medicine in Canada but was using the cost of the medicine in the U.S. as a basis to report the difference in price as an in-kind donation in order to make their administrative costs appear to be a smaller portion of their budget.

Writes Shakely (with my emphasis added),

Don’t get me wrong. Low administrative costs could indicate prudence and sound judgment at a charity, but they could just as easily indicate inadequate staffing, insufficient salaries or, shall we say, fudging. Moreover, administrative costs aren’t the primary measurement of for-profit excellence. Are McDonald’s admin costs lower than Wendy’s? Apple’s lower than Microsoft’s?

[…}

But our intuitive thinking system wants an answer now, and because we are intuitively inclined to believe that the nonprofit sector is filled with soft, amateurish executives, we latch on to the pseudo-science of administrative costs as a measure of excellence. It’s hogwash; there is absolutely no way of telling that an organization with 5% administrative costs is superior to one with 20% costs based on that criterion alone. In fact, the exact opposite may be true.

As Shakely notes, it will be hard to get donors and funders to shift to better criteria when the overhead ratio appears to be so clean and rational a measure. But as both he and Edgington comment, no funder is going to use any other measure of evaluation if they aren’t told the criteria is unfair and unrealistic.

Think about what you can do to change assumptions as you make your next pitch or write your next grant proposal.

Advocacy, Fundraising, Leadership

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