Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management
NewsRoom Contact Us

Inheriting Your Great-Great Grandparents’ Investment In Your Future

by:

Joe Patti

Early in April you may have seen that Yellowstone National Park is celebrating its 150th Anniversary by offering an Inheritance Pass for $1500 with the catch that it can’t be used for another 150 years.

Well, actually while the pass isn’t usable until 2172, purchasers get a complimentary annual pass good for a year after the first use.  I am calling attention to this not to suggest this as a possible program, (I mean right now how many of us can guarantee access to our programming in 10 years much less 150), but rather to point out that there is often at least a small niche interest in bespoke arrangements. In this case, the target is families committed to conservation.  It can be worthwhile to be flexible about exploring those opportunities.

Their hope is that the Inheritance Pass—a campaign created by advertising agency Havas Chicago— could create an important legacy among families that are committed to conservation.

Those who choose to invest in the Inheritance Pass will receive it as soon as August of this year. It will feature the name of the donor on the back. Yellowstone Forever says that the money it raises through the campaign will go toward supporting scientific studies, trail maintenance, and wildlife conservation, among other projects.

I tried to find out how many people might have taken advantage of this program in the few weeks it has been available but couldn’t find any information. 

Quite honestly, even though they promise to keep track of the ownership of the passes, I think purchasers have to acknowledge buying the pass is tantamount to making a straight donation to the park. Will there even be websites and email addresses by which to contact Yellowstone Forever to retrieve a lost pass in 150 years?

In terms of my earlier reference to donor programs with niche appeal, the pass one receives is a physical token to accompany the concept of investing in the park to benefit future generations. It would be great if families actually retained the pass across five generations (based on a generation being about 30 years), and presented it for redemption. But the pass is just an appealing prop in a conservation donation campaign.

I would be interested in knowing how they calculate the tax deductible portion of the pass. Do they use $1500 less the current cost of an annual pass to figure out the received benefit value vs. the donated portion? Or will it be the cost of the pass in 150 years which may exceed $1500?

(Actually, given that the person making the donation will receive no benefit, I would assume the whole amount is deductible if they refuse the complimentary annual pass available in 2022.)

Fundraising, Working In The Arts

No Comments

People Fund People Not Organizations, So Maybe Do That Even More?

by:

Joe Patti

Last month Marginal Revolution blog posted an excerpt of a piece by Adam Mastroianni about how grant funding is broken.  I immediately hopped over to see what he had to say. While his post was mostly focused on grants funding science and the Rhodes scholarship process, there were a lot of common elements that are likely to be familiar to all who apply.

One of the first observations Mastroianni makes is that it is very easy to hack the grant process thanks to relationships you have. This both confirms that people give to people and organizations and that groups that may really need the funding but lack access to guidance, resources and insiders often get locked out.

For instance, most Rhodes selection committees include a cocktail party as part of their interview process. This is a pretty bad way of judging whether someone is a good person, but it’s a pretty good way of judging whether they are pleasant to talk to at a cocktail party, and so Rhodes Scholars are often charming conversationalists and sometimes bad people (see: Bill Clinton, Bobby Jindal, noted anti-vaxxer Naomi Wolf).

[…]

For example, the Rhodes Trust probably hopes that by picking the most accomplished college seniors and giving them a super prestigious prize, they will encourage the youngsters to do lots of brave and risky things. Instead, the most popular destinations for my Rhodes cohort were top-tier medical schools, law schools, and PhD programs (guilty), as well as a handful of consulting companies––exactly where we would have gone if we hadn’t gotten the scholarship.

Generally, Mastroianni’s criticism is that most grant programs reward people who are already successful to the detriment of those they say they wish to help.

Mastroianni’s suggested solution is to take advantage of the flaws in the system to force it to reach into the underserved cracks and crevices. His system, which he refers to as “Trust Windfalls,” essentially allows one to provide a benefit to friends–but only once.

But isn’t it unfair that a bunch of money should go to my friends? Also yes. That’s why, if I was an Agent, I should only get one turn at awarding Windfalls. Then I’d have to pass on the responsibility to someone very different from me who I trusted to give out the second round. If I did it right, Trust Windfalls would eventually find their ways into corners of the world that conventional grants could never reach. Just a few trusted links away from me might be a Botswanan ichthyologist or a trucker smuggling medical supplies into Kiev––people who may not speak English or know the right things to say on an application or even realize there are grants they could apply for in the first place. Making Agents temporary also prevents the Trust Windfalls from being hacked: once people know you’re an Agent, every interaction with you becomes a grant application.

If people hate conventional grant funding so much, why haven’t they tried something like this? Honestly, I think it’s because trusting people seems a lot scarier than it really is. Funders have to trust Agents. Agents have to trust their grant recipients, and they have to trust the person they nominate as the next Agent. (We should maybe call the organization that oversees all this the Trust Trust.) Anybody could betray the trust put in them, which would be a huge shame and very embarrassing.

While this is an interesting idea in theory, I think it is overly idealistic in terms of thinking that people will pass the baton on to people outside their own peer group in any great numbers. Funds may be sent to a biologist studying the ecology of a Latin American country or an aid worker in Ukraine, but is the money going to a life long resident of that country or the sister of a person the Trust Agent went to college with who is working for a university program or an NGO with roots in the US? Certainly Mastroianni alludes to the fact something like this could happen.

I think the structure he suggests has a better chance at providing an equitable distribution of funds than the current system. I like the idea of leveraging the problems of current practice into a solution. But the funding source would probably need to be plugging detailed data into relationship mapping software to ensure that the 4th or 5th recipient in the chain not have multiple common ties with the 1st and 2nd people in the chain.

I guess the fact I can identify a flaw and potential solution so easily indicates it is possible to refine his proposal into something workable.  Take a read of his proposal and see what you think.

Fundraising, Terms and Ideas

1 Comment

You Don’t Have To Wait To Grow Up To Be An Artist

by:

Joe Patti

Last month, Coco Allred, a teaching artist in Philadelphia had a post on Americans for the Arts about President Biden’s visit to one of the classes she teaches.  She started out with the best part right at the beginning:

On March 11, 2022, President Joseph R. Biden asked Maria, a second-grade student at Luis Muñoz Marín Elementary School in North Philadelphia, “What kind of art do you like?” Maria said, “Painting.” President Biden replied, “Do you think you’ll be a painter when you grow up?” Maria said with confidence, “I already am one.”

As Maria’s teacher, I felt proud of how she identified herself as an artist and added, “That’s the great thing about being an artist—you don’t have to wait to grow up to become one.”

Back in 2014 I made a post about a talk Jamie Bennett, then Executive Director of Art Place America, gave where he observed that people have an easier time seeing themselves on the continuum with athletes than with artists, even if they are fairly invested in a creative practice. So the fact that child views herself as an artist is greatly encouraging to me. Hopefully more kids are growing up with this perspective.

If you watch the video included in Allred’s post where the kids are interacting with President Biden, (around 20:30 mark) a student makes an comment drawing parallels between learning/teaching basketball and artistic skills. Her observation was clearly more sophisticated than the president, (or I for that matter), expected from the student.

Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

She Made Sure We Ain’t Gonna Lose Touch With Soul

by:

Joe Patti

I want to take the opportunity to call attention to an article in the NY Times this past Sunday focused on Zelma Redding, wife of the singer Otis Redding, Jr.  The Otis Redding Foundation is a close neighbor to my theater. We can see the back door of their offices from the lobby doors of the theater.   Zelma is only in the offices on occasion. The last time I saw her was a week before Covid shut everything down two years ago. However, her daughter Karla and grandson Justin are very visible, accessible and involved in the community. (I just congratulated Justin on the NY Times article in a crosswalk while returning from lunch today.)

Just as the article notes, Karla, Justin and other members of the family are active on numerous boards around the community.  But the Otis Redding Foundation has a number of programs of their own focused on music education. They have afterschool lessons and run two summer camps, one of which is focused on training kids for the music business and has seen them travel and perform in Nashville as part of the camp experience.

If you walked into their offices, you would hardly believe they run such extensive operations out of such a small space.  They actually announced construction of the Otis Redding Center for the Arts on March a half block from their current offices. It will be focused on serving students 5-18 who have interests in all aspects of music, from performance to recording technology.  Right now Justin is flying around the country raising money for the center. If anyone has any interest in being involved with the project, reach out to them.

The article does a great job of discussing the environment into which Otis Redding was launching his career and in which the Foundation operates in today. There is a Confederate statue right outside the foundation offices on a street with a history of Black owned businesses. The county’s efforts to move it have been stymied by lawsuits. The Foundation has had to be neutral on calls to have Otis Redding’s statue replace the current statue, just as they had to be with the push to have the city auditorium named for Redding.

Before I had read the NY Times article, I ended up having lunch with an elder statesman musician who grew up here and had gigged with The Pinetoppers when Otis Redding was a member prior to joining the horn section for Sam and Dave. He discussed the virulently racist mayor of Macon who nonetheless loved Otis Redding that is also mentioned in the NY Times article. (He also talked about touring in the Jim Crow era. While he made light of the situations, they must have been tense to terrifying when they happened.)

Similarly,  it is indeed “complicated” that when he died Redding had been a partner in a record label that later ended up carrying a lot of Southern Rock acts that employed Confederate symbols in their marketing.

But the Foundation probably wouldn’t even be around today if not for the dogged efforts of Zelma Redding. After Otis Redding’s death, while raising four kids, she went back to school and learned the music business, eventually opening her own music related businesses. All the way, she had to fight to make sure she was getting the royalties and payments from Otis’ work that were due his estate.

So give the article a read. It is such a great encapsulation of so many issues that remain relevant today.

Art(ist) Education, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Previous 1…102103104105106…769 Next
Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

/ Find It!

/ Recent Comments

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