When You Invite An Artist To Dinner

by

Last week I was invited to dinner to meet with a muralist who is in town painting the floodwall murals. I don’t mean to constantly harp on the small town charm I am experiencing here at my new job, but you write what you know, eh?

I have been thinking recently back to my childhood when my parents would regularly invite our teachers home for dinner. It wasn’t just my family. Every kid’s family seemed to take turns. We were all horrified because not only were our teachers invading our personal sanctums, but given we were Catholic school kids, our homes were being visited by nuns who kept us at the edge of terror!

I am not sure anyone does this any more, but this was the type of grassroots effort that let both the kids and the teachers know the community valued education.

I wonder if it might be effective to do the same thing with the arts where you invited your neighbors over to meet an artist.

I know a few groups that have house concerts by guest musicians as fund raising events. While that sort of intimacy offers a great experience, the type of people invited and the expectations placed upon them by the fund raising format aren’t really conducive to what I have in mind.

Having the party at the biggest mansion in the most exclusive neighborhood probably won’t make the arts appear accessible to new segments of the community either.

But a back yard cook out or dinner you would invite your friends to anyway, but in this instance you say, I would like you to come to dinner to meet this local/visiting artist, provides a low pressure environment that communicates that you value the arts.

The artist doesn’t need to perform or have their work on display. Just the fact they are the guest of honor to whom everyone is introduced at a gathering with good food and good company can be sufficient to influence attitudes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eLfb9hgmufI

What’s Your Culture?

by

When I assumed my current position, I had hoped that I had escaped the need to complete long annual reports. I was leaving a region whose higher ed accrediting body has the reputation for being the toughest. So I thought, if I did end up having to do an annual report, it wouldn’t be too onerous.

Well, I was wrong. Under the guise of a lunch invitation to meet the rest of the university leadership, I discovered that I would indeed need to do an annual report. And it seems to be more extensive than the one I used to have to do.

In addition, the reporting protocol this year seems to be entirely new, giving rise to thoughts that this is a conspiracy against me by a universe that just won’t let me escape doing annual reports!!!!

While I am not looking forward to the task, one section of the report that I must admit met my approval inquired by department culture:

3. Please answer the questions below addressing departmental culture. As you answer the questions, please include examples from the past year illustrating your points.

a. Describe your department culture?
b. What influences your culture?
c. What theories or practices inform your culture?
d. How do you assess if your departmental culture is impacting the continuous improvement of your department and the institution as a whole?

 

I think reflection on organizational and departmental culture in this way can be important. Even within a performing arts organization, the culture of the tech, marketing, front of house and artistic areas are distinct from each other.

Discerning what influences your culture and how your departmental culture contributes to the organization as a whole can be contribute toward bolstering the positive and making a constructive effort to repair the negative.

It can help recognize the truth of dysfunctional dynamics if a department realizes a prime influence on their culture is acting as a buffer between two other departments to prevent them from throttling each other.

Yeah, acting as a peacemaker is a positive thing, but if the result is to delay or deflect conflict rather than effect a continuous improvement, it isn’t ultimately a constructive contribution.

Info You Can Use: We Are More Than Just Our Overhead Ratio

by

Well, the timing could be a little better.

Part of the big news today is that GuideStar, Charity Navigator, and BBB Wise Giving Alliance joined together to sign an open letter to all donors asking them not to use overhead as a primary criteria for giving.

The letter does a pretty good job in a short space of discussing how inaccurate the ratio is and the consequences for non-profits when they feel they have to hobble themselves to maintain a low number.

The letter specific cites Stanford Social Innovation Review‘s article, The Non-Profit Starvation Cycle which does a good job explaining the problem in detail.

The reason why I said the timing could be better is because it comes on the heels of a weekend where CNN has been majorly featuring a story about charities that have been fleecing donors with the causes only getting 4% in some cases.

Now make no mistake, I am not defending a 96% overhead by any means. There are a lot of scams out there and it appears pretty clear that the organizations featured in the story set out to deceive right from the moment they generated names that sound very close to nationally recognized charities.

My concern is that to people unfamiliar with charities, the timing of the letter’s release makes it almost appear to be an apologist for the high overhead ratios these dishonest groups had. Especially since a picture of the website of the one of the groups CNN damns contains a claim that Charity Navigator gave them a 3 star rating.

The proximity of these two announcements aside, the public recognition that charities should not be judged on overhead alone is a real advance in the effort to get non-profits evaluated on less superficial criteria. It will likely still happen for some time to come, but it is an encouraging sign.

Stuff To Ponder: New Standard Discount Category

by

I had some additional thoughts regarding the article by Alex Tabbarok I cited yesterday that I didn’t include for fear it would get lost in the entry.

Noting out how oriented toward higher education our society is, Tabbarok observes,

“College students even get discounts at the movie theater; when was the last time you saw a discount for an electrical apprentice?”

It occurred to me that extending a discount to trade apprentices might provide a continuous but subtle message that the arts are for everyone, not just the educated elite.

Obviously, this needs to be supported by programming and an attendance experience that isn’t intimidating. But I wondered if the passive act of providing a discount to laborers might succeed where active claims of the arts being for everyone have come up short.

You may not get many actual apprentices attending, but the act of publicizing the discount may contribute to a shifting perception of your organization.