Home Page

It’s Easier To Destroy The Building Than Fix The Roof

April 18, 2016

by:

Joe Patti

For over a decade now there has been a conversation about how detrimental it can be if an arts organization decides to add new programs in order to qualify for foundation grants and funding. Usually the negative issues revolve around conflicts with core mission and placing additional strain on staff and resources.

Until recently, I hadn’t heard about arts organizations feeling they have gotten caught in a vicious cycle of needing to build multi-million dollar expansions in order to attract more money.

According to a Non-Profit Quarterly piece referencing an article in The Art Newspaper, that is the very situation facing museums. Even in the deepest throes of the recent recession, museums were spending billion on expansions. (my emphasis)

The museums say they need to expand to attract new donors, and that requires enough space to display enough work to pique the special interests of individual prospects.

“If there isn’t room to show these works, you are hamstrung when you want to make the case to a private collector that a particular object would have a suitable home in the museum,” says Neal Benezra, the director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. The Art Newspaper agrees, saying, “Patrons are also more likely to stump up for a splashy expansion than for a lower-profile renovation or acquisition.”

In fact, in the article, new galleries, buildings, and wings are described as grounds for friendly competition among the ultra-wealthy. But after the expansion comes expanded operating costs, of course, and…well, the monthly nut becomes bigger and more formidable.

[…]

But large institutions have ended up being in constant capital campaign mode, creating bigger sustainability issues in the long run unless the donor money continues to expand and those donors fall in love with funding operations—a doubtful prospect. Too few capital campaigns and major gifts are structured to include endowments or other funding to sustain the buildings over time.

Not only is there a sense in both articles that there is quite a bit of vanity involved, there was also a suggestion that museums would “become a dumping ground for speculative investments in the art market.”

With the existing concerns that museums are becoming too closely tied to commercial efforts, it may not be unreasonable to fear that people may seek to burnish the value of their collections by having it shown in prestigious museums. Having taken on greater operating costs, wouldn’t museums feel pressured by influential donors (and concerned board members) to accept?

You may be thinking, none of this applies to you because you don’t work for a large, prestigious museum. However, this situation illustrates the dangerous cycle and potential for conflicts of interest, writ large.

Not only that, the sentence I emphasized is related to the more encompassing issue of funders in general not providing support for overhead and operational expenses. There is an implicit suggestion that capital campaigns and major gift solicitations be structured to include support for operations and long term infrastructure maintenance.

It may not be as sexy, but it is necessary and needs to be seriously considered by arts non-profits of all sizes. It is probably easier to carve out a portion of a major capital gift for these purposes than to solicit for it directly.

Arts Facilities, Fundraising, State of the Arts

No Comments

Maybe Art CAN Support Your Retirement

April 13, 2016

by:

Joe Patti

One of the more intriguing ideas I have written about here is the Artist Pension Trust. It was started 10 years ago with the goal of providing retirement benefits to the 2000 participating artists, each of which commit to “depositing” 20 works in the trust over 20 years. The trust then sells the works to provide benefits to the members.

When I first wrote about it 10 years ago, the plan was to evaluate the state of the trust at this year. According to a recent piece in the NY Times, the Trust decided to start disbursing funds, in part to reassure participants that it works.

Since its founding, the trust has evolved significantly. This month it will make its first distributions, rather than wait to make a large payout at the end of a 25-year period as originally planned, along the lines of a pension fund.

“This was built as a pension, but we decided to pay as we go along so people can see the model works,” said Al Brenner, a board member. “Also, it’s been 10 years, and in some cases it was right to sell. But we’re extremely cautious and don’t want to sell too soon.”

As I wrote two years ago, some of the participants have withdrawn over the years due to needing money, but the trust still has more applicants than it planned to accept and is looking into creating a new global grouping.

To put this in context, there are 8 regional groupings of 250 in which artists’ works are pooled, plus one global group of 628. So they are looking to accommodate more artists in a 10th group.

I was encouraged to learn that the Trust, recognizing that it has the capacity to provide additional services to artists, doesn’t solely see itself as a money making enterprise.

Along with changing its distribution plan, the trust no longer defines itself as a financial product but as a kind of artist cooperative, providing services as varied as free storage and transport, or a loans-and-exhibitions program that promotes the work of artists internationally.

Indeed, some artists have joined more for the community support than the financial advantages.

“I’m aware the ultimate goal is financial security for the future, but it’s not the reason why I joined,” said Alicia Paz, a Mexican artist who lives in London. “I’m more interested in the networking and the support structure for the now.”

Of course, the real validation of the concept won’t come for another 15-20 years when a large number of participants start to depend on the Trust’s distributions to support themselves in retirement.

State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

This Radio Story Sounds Familiar

April 12, 2016

by:

Joe Patti

There is a really interesting piece on Slate telling an all too familiar story.

Seeing that the median age of its listeners has been creeping slowly up from 45 to 54, NPR is in the throes of trying to make itself relevant to…yes, you know this one…a younger audience.

In some respects NPR’s problem is worse than that of the non-profit arts. In one case, the person telling NPR’s Foundation they need to appeal to a younger demographic had, unbeknownst to them, been hired away by Amazon subsidiary Audible. He is only one of many that were hired away or choose to strike off on their own.

Just as there is a recurring conversation in the arts that they are too beholden to a narrow segment of stakeholders, NPR also finds itself conflicted between innovation and catering to the demands of its funding sources.

The tumult was touched off in late March, when an NPR executive announced that the network’s own digital offerings—most importantly, its marquee iPhone app, NPR One—were not to be promoted during shows airing on terrestrial radio.

The ban was widely viewed as proof that NPR is less interested in reaching young listeners than in placating the managers of local member stations, who pay handsome fees to broadcast NPR shows and tend to react with suspicion when NPR promotes its efforts to distribute those shows digitally. After the gag order was made public, dozens of public radio and podcasting people set about picking at an old scab—discussing, spiritedly, in multiple forums, whether the antiquated economic arrangements that govern NPR’s relationships with its member stations are holding it back from innovation.

I was totally unaware of the NPR One app but according to Slate author Leon Neyfakh, it is pretty awesome and replicates the car based NPR listening experience- “it makes me wish my commute to work was longer.”

If you have read or participated in any conversations about the problems faced by the arts, you will find that NPR is wrestling with many of the same issues: Trying to appeal to too wide an audience versus focusing on specific segments; losing audience to other media channels (podcasts in this case); addressing serious topics vs. providing entertaining content (which is not to say you can’t do both, but there are some serious topics that require a serious approach.)

In other respects, NPR is way ahead of the non-profit arts in general. They may be playing a little catch up with podcasts and losing talent to other companies, but they are gathering valuable data about their audience behavior via the NPR One app. One of the things they have learned is that people skip the serious news content fewer times than anything else. People see value in one of their core activities and they have the data to prove it.

Certainly thanks to the efforts of many research projects, the arts also have data about what audiences value. The data collection method just isn’t as nimble yet.

Since there are a number of NPR and aligned radio shows/podcasts that take to the road for live shows, I wonder if there is any opportunity for adoption/sharing/development of data collection techniques.

Arts in an Age of Technology, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Stuff To Ponder: Cultivating Creativity For Corporations

April 11, 2016

by:

Joe Patti

I frequently advocate for arts organizations to find ways to help for-profit companies instill creativity and energy in their employees. Last month, the Partnership Movement of Americans for the Arts posted an essay with some case studies illustrating how this might be accomplished.

The Partnership Movement post talks about the benefits of partnering with arts organizations in the context of employee retention and engagement, providing statistics about how companies with engaged employees tend to have better revenue growth and lower employee turn over.

In general, the case studies provide some conceptual starting points for identifying a need and designing partnership programs to meet them.

The Arts & Science Council of Charlotte, NC created a Cultural Leadership Training (CLT) program to help cultivate new board leaders for the non-profit organizations in the region. At one point in the year long program, they hold a “speed dating” session to match participants with arts organizations seeking new board members.

Over the last 10 years participation in the program has become highly competitive and is a tool that the businesses themselves have used to identify potential leaders.

This self-selection process sometimes helps companies to identify ambitious and talented employees whom they might otherwise have overlooked. “Firms absolutely use CLT to identify potential leadership candidates,” says Mooring. “We had one law firm tell us that they would not have picked a certain employee as leadership material, but they transformed their opinion of that employee’s potential within the firm after watching that person go through our program and serve successfully on an arts board.”

Alternatively, companies can use CLT as a low-risk way to test whether an employee who is already identified as “leadership material” lives up to his or her potential by watching how that person performs during CLT and post-graduation on an arts board.

This case study helped assuage some of my concerns about how receptive employees of a business might be to participating in a hands-on practical arts experience. It sounds good in theory, but how do you put it into practice with people who may not see themselves as artistically inclined?

“The first time we tried asking the CLT participants to participate in art, we were kind of terrified,” she admits. “The people in our classes are bankers and lawyers and accountants. What if we put violins in their hands and they freaked out and just refused to participate?”

In fact, just the opposite happened. It turned out that everybody not only wanted to play music—they wanted to try every instrument!

Not only did the executives enjoy the participatory and creative elements of the CLT program, it turned out that the experiential aspects of the program actually made the education part “stickier” or more memorable.

Of course, one caveat to remember. The CLT participants were all self-selected. Mandatory or highly encouraged employee participation may result in a different experience.

The other case study, COCAbiz, a program created by Center of Creative Arts (COCA) in St. Louis is more along the lines of what I initially envisioned when I started thinking about how arts organizations can help businesses cultivate creative practices and thinking in their employees. COCAbiz works with teaching artists to help them create and deliver programs businesses find effective for their employees.

Depending on its partners’ needs, COCAbiz uses teaching artists from a variety of artistic disciplines including choreography, set design, theater, and poetry. Working with the business facilitators, these teaching artists help business people discover new skills and approaches in areas such as leadership, collaboration, communication, risk-taking, creativity, and presentation skills.

A number of the participants have found these classes invaluable to shifting their mindset and practices to be more constructive.

One part of the workshop consisted of improvisational theater. “These improv exercises helped me realize that to be an effective influencer, you really have to listen to other people and incorporate their ideas,” says Boland….Rather than just pushing my own agenda, I had to figure out what the other person wanted to get out of the skit and incorporate their ideas, too.”

[…]

“Much of my job involves synthesizing observations and then analyzing data to create strategies,” says Wurth. “Experiencing how actors and directors use the See-Think-Wonder method showed me a really powerful way to communicate and offer suggestions in a way that promotes dialogue rather than shutting it down.”

When people from COCAbiz talk about how they developed and delivered this program, collecting feedback and revising comes up frequently as an important part of their process. There was a sense that the business community with which they worked had high level of expectations of the program so they couldn’t leave any part unexamined.

creativity, Info You Can Use, Leadership, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments