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Calling All Men

March 10, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

I came across a pretty interesting piece on the Chronicle of Higher Education about motivating men to volunteer. If you are having difficulty getting men to volunteer or want to do a better job of inspiring men in their work, you may want to take a look at this.

As you might imagine from the source, the article is about motivating college men to volunteer more frequently and is a result of a $600,000 grant to study the issue on 14 campuses. However, one of scholars quoted near the end of the piece suggests, as with so many things, that the root behaviors and attitudes about involving oneself in service learning activities were developed as young boys. I am sure there are similarities for the way men react to a call for aid in post-collegiate life too.

Among the tactics the different participants identified as useful were enlisting peer leaders to promote opportunities and have people extend personal invitations. On the whole, they found that male students were externally motivated and would become involved when it was a requirement or a project of a group with which they were associated.

Language use also appeared important. The article notes that when an instructor shifted to more action oriented language- “‘Social Justice: A Service-Based Exploration” to “Working Toward Social Justice.”

‘She saw a pretty spontaneous increase in the number of men enrolled,’ Mr. Chesbrough said. ‘That plays to gender stereotypes, but those words were more likely to catch men’s attention.'”

This piece is too short to be making decisions that will reshape your volunteer recruitment and training. The book talking about the study is due out this summer if you really feel you need to make an effort to involve more men in your organization. There are also a few other books on the subject.

My only caveat is to be skeptical about some of the generalizations about gender you may come across. I have seen enough debunkings of methodology on similar studies to have a cautious approach. I don’t deny people are motivated to volunteer for different reasons. In my experience there just isn’t any straightforward consistency in them.

Just the same, I have never really thought that we might be attracting or losing male volunteers based on the way we structured the appeal and volunteering experience so the concept is something to consider.

Volunteers

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Arts Administrator Residencies-Is There A Need?

March 9, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

I am not quite sure what drew my eye to it but Fractured Atlas did an interview with the founders of the Philadelphia Art Hotel this January. I don’t know why, but the project just looks and sounds a like a cool idea.

Personally, if I were a visual artist, I would probably tend toward the residencies in rural settings which is where a lot of them are located. Ready access to the Philadelphia art scene is not to be undervalued though.

I would probably sell my children into slavery to participate in the Arts/Industry program at the John Michael Kohler Arts Center.

It is probably fortunate then that I am not a visual artist. And I don’t have kids either. That is probably better since they have a performing arts program and I would still love to work there for the washrooms alone!

I don’t really talk about artist residencies too much. Perhaps because there aren’t too many for arts administrators. If you check the residency search tool at the Alliance of Artistic Communities website, administration is not even a search option. The only place I am aware of that offers one is The Studios of Key West which I wrote about 18 months ago.

I start to think that people like Michael Kaiser are correct when he talks about how few training opportunities there are to make people good arts administrators. There aren’t many opportunities for them to take a retreat and do research. Though to be fair, residencies for arts managers isn’t really part of the ethos. Arts administrators don’t get granted long periods of time to hone their skills. I don’t know if there is a market for offering residencies to them. How many administrators would ask for the opportunity? Most would say they don’t have the time. Kaiser talks about starting his day at 4 am which pretty much reflects the trend for many arts administrators.

One might say the Kennedy Center’s Art Management Fellowships are a sort of residency for arts managers. It combines practical work experience around the Kennedy Center with classes on relevant topics. And I believe they provide a $20,000 stipend to support yourself which is really pretty decent compared to what I was paid to intern. Though since the fellowships are for mid-career administrators,they would be bringing much more to the table than an intern would.

In any case, I would imagine the days there are just as long and involved as the position the arts manager left to become a fellow. That doesn’t give a lot of time for reflection and thinking about what the future of the arts might be and how one can restructure their organization to move forward to acknowledge these changes.

This summer I waswoolgathering a little about taking advantage of low real estate prices in Detroit to help grow an arts community there. I wonder if I was being too narrow in my vision and should have been thinking of including opportunities for arts managers to cultivate their skills too since there are so few opportunities.

Art(ist) Education, Leadership, Management Philosophy, State of the Arts

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Green Papers-Not What I Thought They Were About

March 8, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

Due to the imminent failure of my refrigerator’s compressor, I don’t have as much time to devote to the old blog as I had hoped.

With that in mind, I wanted to direct people’s attention to Americans for the Arts’ efforts at creating a conversation around green papers on topics of importance in the arts. Given the whole push for environmentally friendly activities, I initially thought a green paper was essentially an attempt to issue a white paper on good conservation practices.

It turns out, a green paper is actually a policy document similar to a white paper, only less binding. Who knew? I mean, there are ribbons of every color for every cause, I thought this was a similar attempt.

In any case, Americans for the Arts’ are making a big effort to have substantive conversations on many topics across the next year. In their definition:

“Green Papers are short, easy to read, visions of the future meant to inspire a nationwide dialogue on the future of the arts. As a way to celebrate the successes of the past 50 years in the arts field, Americans for the Arts has collected Green Papers from a variety of national arts service organizations and peer groups representing different perspectives and disciplines.”

Currently their topics include:

The Future of…

* Art Therapy
* Artists’ and Arts Organizations’ Preparedness and Emergency Response
* Artists’ Residency Programs
* Arts and Disability
* Arts Education
* Arts in Healthcare
* Arts Learning for Children/Youth
* Community Arts Education
* Cultural Democracy
* Dance Education
* Leadership for the Arts
* Jazz
* Preservation
* Private Sector Support for the Arts
* Public Art
* Public Voice in Arts Advocacy
* State Arts Agencies
* Strings
* Symphony Music
* Digital Infrastructure for the Creative Economy
* Theatre
* Urban Municipal Arts Agencies

They want people to get involved and contribute to the conversation. I wonder if they also need people to lead the conversations. You can’t tell from the list here, but there are no links to pages for Art Therapy, Arts and Disability, Jazz, State Arts Agencies, Symphony Music and Theatre. I don’t see a call for leaders, though I certainly may have missed it. Most of the Green Papers were rolled out on February 16, perhaps the leaders for the unactivated sections weren’t immediately available to discuss those areas.

I also am curious to know why there is someone leading Strings but not Symphony Music and why there is a Dance Education category, but no Dance. Guess I have to stick around, read and ask these questions.

Oh yeah, and where is the paper on environmental sustainability in the arts! 😉

New Initiatives, Terms and Ideas

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Info You Can Use: Employee or Independent Contractor

March 3, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

As usual, the folks at the Non-Profit Law Blog provide some useful links. I will quickly point out a short piece about the Senate has recently passing a jobs bill that will provide incentives to hire and keep employees.

The measure would exempt private employers, including nonprofit groups, from paying their share of Social Security taxes for employees they hire through the end of 2010. The new hires must have been out of work for at least 60 days.

They would get an additional $1,000 bonus if they kept the employee on the payroll for a full year

I had heard about this a few weeks ago, but it never occurred to me that this would be a real boon for the non-profit world where a little savings can go a long way. I wish I could remember where I heard it, but I was listening to a radio show where one of the panelists said he wished the money going to public works was directed to non-profits because you could create hundreds of non-profit jobs for every construction job created.

The main of what I wanted to discuss is examining the employment status of people who work for your organization. According to Jessica R. Lubar, a lawyer at Venable LLP, the IRS is undertaking a study of employment tax compliance. They will be focusing on three areas: worker classification, fringe benefits and officer compensation.

What I wanted to point out specifically was the issue of worker classification. I know of a number of organizations that call those who work for them independent contractors so that they don’t have to attend to any of the tax withholding details. However, if the IRS doesn’t call them the same thing you do, there could be a lot of trouble.

“A worker is considered an employee if the employer exercises the requisite amount of control over the employee under common-law principles. Over the years, the courts and the IRS have articulated certain factors that are considered in making that determination. The IRS organized the factors that are considered into three categories: (1) Behavioral Control – whether the business has a right to direct and control how the worker does the task for which the worker is hired; (2) Financial Control – whether the business has a right to control the business aspects of the worker’s job; and (3) Type of Relationship.”

If you have made a mistake in classifying an employee as an independent contractor, there is an opportunity to rectify that situation and obtain relief from the penalties of that mistake. Lubar outlines these in the entry. You would obviously want to consult a lawyer because I am already confused by the first of the three requisite criteria–not treating a person like an employee. That seems to me to imply you have been treating the person like an independent contractor which means you are in the clear.

Perhaps the distinction is in whether you contractually had the right to behavioral and financial control but never enforced it thereby treating someone as if they were an independent contractor when technically they were not.

Guess that is what the lawyers get paid to tell us.

Info You Can Use, Leadership, Management Philosophy

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