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Stuff To Ponder: Alternatives To Forming A Non Profit Org

January 10, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

If your new year’s resolution is to do good this year, go for it! But if you are thinking of starting up a non-profit, you should be aware of the challenges you face. Both the normal processes to follow when starting a new organization as well as emerging scrutiny by the federal government. The Non-Profit Law blog has been packing a lot of informational goodness in their posts over the end of last year and the transition in to this one. Among their tweets of the week for last week was news of extra scrutiny of non-profits by the IRS.

The Gene Takagi and Emily Chan who write Non-Profit Law Blog also linked to a piece they wrote for the American Bar Association outlining the considerations a lawyer and their clients should use to evaluate whether they should actually form a non-profit organization. Many of the suggestions made are just good sense for forming any business including evaluating the need, whether it duplicates the efforts of another group, if there is sufficient clientele and a support base present in the community. They make suggestions of alternatives to consider.

But another person they link to in their tweets of the week really does a great job of providing these alternatives. Allison Jones makes suggestions for 6 alternatives with links to more information about pursuing these options.
I had never heard of an intrapenuership myself.

* Free agent: More and more people are affecting social change outside of an organization. Harnessing social media, you can mobilize your network to take action or support a cause without the hassle of incorporating….

* Informal group/club: If the issue you are addressing is small or very specific (cleaning up a local park or stacking shelves in a local food pantry) you may just be able to round up a group of friends and get to work….

* Giving circle: … In giving circles you pool money and resources together to support an organization you all select. The focus is usually on a local organization, often extends beyond giving financial support, and the circles can be formal or informal….

* Local chapter of a national organization: … You can build on existing resources, support, and guidance to make a difference. Organizations that focus on professions, such as Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, Grant Managers Network, or Emerging Leaders in the Arts, tend to have chapters across the country. However other organizations in different causes, like the Reeve Foundation are open to supporters launching local chapters as well….

* Intrapreneurship: Do you work or volunteer for an awesome organization? Maybe you noticed a need because of the work you do? This can be tricky as many organizations are pressed for resources and time. However, you can harness your organization’s infrastructure to make small steps in addressing the need you have identified. Organizations are more willing to support innovation if there is someone (i.e. YOU!) willing to take the lead. Start by collecting information on the need and presenting it to your organization….

* Fiscal sponsorship: In fiscal sponsorship a nonprofit will allow you to operate under their 501c3 status….You should find an organization whose mission and work align with what you want to do and reach out to them directly….

Fundraising, Info You Can Use, Terms and Ideas

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Hey Joe, Where You Goin’ With That Ticket In Your Hand?

January 5, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

My mother lives very close to Bethel, NY where the original Woodstock Festival was held. I had written about the plans to develop the grounds of the festival with a performing arts center and museum about six years ago. Both structures have now been constructed as part of the Bethel Wood Center for the Arts so I stopped by to see them during my visit.

Because of the cold and snow, we weren’t allowed out on the festival grounds when I was there last week. I could see a little bit of the pavilion from the top of the hill near the memorial, but because of the way the hill folded down, it was difficult to see it clearly. In that respect, the building isn’t a massive intrusion on the beauty of the surrounding countryside. While the current lay out is quite a change since my last visit, my festival coordinator eye was wondering if it was developed enough. The road looked too narrow to accommodate the capacity of the performance space and I wondered if there were enough lights in the parking fields.

The museum was very interesting. It occurred to me that it may be the only museum devoted to a performing arts event. The only other place that might come close is the restoration of the Globe Theatre in London and that isn’t really about a specific event. There was a simplicity to the museum design that I appreciated. Most of the exhibits were multi-media as you might imagine. Even though the festival has been documentaried to death at every significant anniversary, I still found myself learning quite a number of new things about the festival (like the fact there was actually a security plan). In fact, when we went in to see the once-every-30-minutes film in the movie theatre, I wondered aloud if there was anything new to mention given all the other video exhibitions. It turned out there was.

There is a fair size events room in the museum that allows them to host performances even when the outdoor stage is gripped with ice and buffeted by winds. Apparently there was a history conference there a week or two before and one of my mother’s friends who attended commented on how wonderful the grand fireplace was.

As I am wont to do, I paid close attention to all the customer service interactions we encountered. The volunteer docent was very welcoming and informative and pointed out that they had brought coat racks out into the lobby so that we didn’t have to go downstairs to the coat check. One guard tended to hover outside the psychedelic bus while I was inside watching a short movie. I was half expecting him to poke his head inside and scowl disapprovingly and grumble something about damn hippies. Maybe that was calculated to give you a feel for the whole experience.

One of the things I appreciated the most about the museum was the sense that the experience was still in process even though the event it recalls is over 40 years in the past. There was a booth for people to record their memories of the event for inclusion in the museum. There was also a special exhibition of recently acquired pieces. What was interesting about this was that while some of the pieces were really great, there were some flawed pieces as well. One film they had running had poor video and some times audio quality. At certain points it is entirely black and all you can hear is some music. I was impressed that they choose to include some less than perfect footage of less than notable parts of the festival when they clearly had no lack of good material to utilize.

I guess in an age where people are posting poorly made videos on YouTube, this practice becomes less remarkable than it might have been. When I saw it though it reminded me of blog posts and articles I have read urging arts organizations to discuss their failures along with their successes in a public way.

Arts in an Age of Technology, State of the Arts

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You Talk Funny

January 4, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

Okay, admittedly this doesn’t have a lot to do with management, arts or otherwise, but as a person who started out in theatre, I am always interested in dialects of different places. Linguist Rick Aschmann has created an interactive map of all the North American English dialects. It is really a fascinating project in terms of being able to look at the dialect boundaries for different dialects.

One of my original intentions was to point out just how small a geographic area the Greater New York City accent actually covers. I grew up just an hour north of NYC but constantly have people express amazement that I don’t have an accent. New York State isn’t New York City, kids, no matter what you see on television. But my intent was circumvented by the revelation that Downtown New Orleans is a sub-dialect of Greater New York City. Will wonders never cease!

Aschmann also has audio samples of different dialects and is grateful for suggestions and samples to add. I noticed that a lot of the samples were politicians. I figured this was because politicians posted a lot of their campaign ads on YouTube which made them good sources. Aschmann addresses this noting the different sources for dialect samples and why they tended to be reliable.

“DISCLAIMER: I do not necessarily agree with all of the people speaking here: I have simply selected them as good examples of their dialect! Nor does the fact that many of them are politicians indicate that I particularly like politicians: The fact is that politicians tend to retain their local dialect more than other public professions (actors, artists), to maintain their identity with the locals. Also, they talk in public a lot, so the data is readily available. Country singers and southern gospel singers also tend to be reliable, and I like them better than politicians. Somewhat surprisingly to me, NASCAR racers seem to be very reliable, also: even though they travel a lot for the races, they tend to raise their families in their old home town, from generation to generation, and don’t care in the least how they talk!”

We speak about the arts as a medium of expression that we don’t want to see disappear. The same can be said of many regional dialects. So take a look at the map and take pride in your dialect! (Even though you talk funny).

General Musings

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New Year’s Not To Do List

January 3, 2011

by:

Joe Patti

So I am back and raring to go. This is the first Christmas holiday season I have been away from my bed in about 10 years. I went back to visit places I used to work and gained some insights and ideas. I bookmarked things to write about when I returned, but it will take a little bit for me to sort and process some of these things in my brain. One bit of wisdom to start off the new year I came across was linked to by Daniel Pink. It was an entry on the Drucker Exchange, a blog maintained by the late management guru Peter Drucker’s Drucker Institute.

The entry titled, Your Not-To-Do-List, essentially advises organizations and individuals to examine themselves and decide what efforts they are no longer going to pursue. It sort of follows the idea that if you bring something new into your house, you get rid of something old. In this case, you are encouraged to get rid of something old to leave room for the arrival of future innovations. The Drucker Exchange cites a 2004 interview in Forbes where Drucker says:

“A critical question for leaders is, “When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?” The most dangerous traps for a leader are those near-successes where everybody says that if you just give it another big push it will go over the top. One tries it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third time. But, by then it should be obvious this will be very hard to do. So, I always advise my friend Rick Warren, “Don’t tell me what you’re doing, Rick. Tell me what you stopped doing.”

The only hitch I think arts organizations might have with this is that waning audiences can make many programs look like they should be put on the not-to-do-list when some just need the attention being spent elsewhere to succeed. I think it is telling that Drucker focuses on the almost successes and achieved goals for elimination rather than targeting poor performers. While the latter should certainly be examined for elimination, Drucker reminds us not to become too invested in the moderate successes just because they provide a degree of satisfaction.

I just read the article this morning and spent most of the day catching up with a backlog of emails so I haven’t really had time to ponder what I might want to eliminate both personally and organizationally. However, over the holidays I had been thinking of discussing with the staff a new approach to one of our events with an eye to more closely connect with the local arts community. The old approach to the event might be the perfect thing to put on the top of our not-to-do-list.

General Musings, Info You Can Use, Leadership, Management Philosophy, Terms and Ideas

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