Arts Intranet

The following two blogs by Helen Goulden and Caroline Mason were originally published on the Arts Impact Fund blog, and are great posts for this week's Blog Salon on Corporate Social Responsibility.

Advancing the Art of Finance Helen Goulden, Executive Director, Innovation Lab, Nesta

The Arts Impact Fund is a new £7million fund that brings together public, private, and charitable investment to support arts organizations in England and the first of its kind to focus on their social, artistic, and financial return. The fund was created and funded by Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Esmée Fairbairn Foundation and Nesta, supported by Arts Council England and with additional funding from Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation. It was convened with the help of the Cabinet Office, to demonstrate the significant social value created by arts organizations and support their work through loan finance.

What’s a Weeksville?

Established in 1838, Weeksville became the second largest known independent African American community in pre-Civil War America, the only such community whose residents were distinctive for their urban rather than rural occupations, and the only one that merged into a neighborhood of a major American city after the Civil War. Therefore, Weeksville Heritage Center (WHC) is a nationally significant American historic site and a documented example of an intentional, independent African American community.

Some people are numbers focused, others are creatives. In business, it is often the metrics and the people behind them that pull the strings and the corporate philanthropy field is following the same path. Social impact is increasingly measured by data and used by corporate funders as the basis for grant-making decisions. This trend has not necessarily been kind to the arts sector, as corporate giving budgets have reshuffled to target organizations and initiatives that can quantify their impact.

Giving in Numbers: 2014 Edition found that total giving to Culture and Arts fell by 20 percent between 2010 and 2013, a result that suggests organizations operating in the field have struggled to successfully capture the metrics and information necessary to demonstrate impact in a way companies can understand. Americans for the Arts is responding to the decline, however, with a shrewd assessment of the place arts has in the corporate philanthropy world—it’s not just about impact that can be supported by data, but about using creativity to broaden conversations and generate support.

Our story culminates with beautiful music, healing, and hope. However, the origins of the Angel Band Project sprung from the depths of horror the night my best friend, Teresa Butz, was raped and murdered.

Just after midnight, on July 18, 2009, Teresa and her partner, Jennifer Hopper, were attacked at knifepoint in their Seattle home. The intensity of grief and pain was magnified by the fact that it happened suddenly and with such violence. Her death left an indescribable void for all who loved her–a virtual canyon of despair that summoned more than just making a casserole and telling her family we were sorry. But what act of kindness or charity was worthy of honoring her memory?

“Our Board often asks why we aren’t giving more money to education, but they never ask why we aren’t giving more to the arts.”

This was the response from one corporate funder interviewed by the Animating Democracy program of Americans for the Arts for the report Corporate Social Responsibility & the Arts.

Arts organizations face a unique challenge, as they are often viewed as an extra or nice initiative to fund, though not essential in comparison to other charitable causes. Corporate Social Responsibility & the Arts demonstrates that this is not actually the case. Arts organizations can—and do— help businesses address key goals.

With the arts advocacy season fully upon us, the following is my updated “10 Reasons to Support the Arts.” Changes this year include updating #3 with the BEA’s new Arts in the GDP research, #8 to include a statement about the benefits of the arts in the military, and #10 includes the new Creative Industries data (now current as of January 2015).

This is just one of many arrows to include in your arts advocacy quiver. While it’s a helpful one, we know there are many more reasons to support the arts. What are yours? Please share your #11 (and more!) in the comments section below. What a great collection we can build together.

Please feel to share and post this as you like. You can download a handy 1-pager here.

Those of you who read my periodic blogs know that I have a real passion for Tulsa. As I've described the Brady Arts District where the Hardesty Arts Center, Guthrie Green, Philbrook Downtown, and Woody Guthrie Center reside along with a growing number of arts-related venues, restaurants, and boutiques, I've received comments from a number of readers that they had no idea Tulsa had so much going on in the arts.

There is a gigantic, come-and-have-some, boatload of private sector money available to all arts organizations. New research from Richmond, Virginia confirms that most don’t ask for it.

What’s the pot of money? It is the money in personal pocketbooks of the arts organizations’ most loyal constituents: pocketbooks that already make ongoing donations in response to grassroots solicitations such as direct mail, special events, and crowd-source platforms. But new research shows that most arts organizations rarely have personal, look-you-in-the-eye meetings with their best donors to ask for major amounts of money. The donor who loyally and happily writes an annual $1,000 check never experiences a personal meeting to ask for $25,000.

Recent studies by Americans for the Arts, Giving USA, and others have drawn welcome public attention to the role of corporate giving in the creative ecology–some sounding alarms and others offering rays of hope.

Now, the organization I run, Dance/NYC, is weighing in with State of NYC Dance and Corporate Giving, which segments available Cultural Data Project data on dance group budget size, type and geography to address equity in the distribution of resources. No matter how we segment the data, the findings are bleak for most dance groups and invite collective action to enlarge and stabilize business support.

As a long-time re-granting organization, Silicon Valley Creates knows how critically important money is to our arts and culture ecosystem. Organizations will also prioritize funding before any other form of support.

But when Arts Council Silicon Valley, a 30-year old United Arts Fund, merged with 1stACT Silicon Valley, a community catalyst, to form Silicon Valley Creates just over a year ago, we opted to take a new approach to how we strengthen our creative ecosystem–which was one of four main goals in our strategic plan.

So we developed a framework (pdf) of what we believe to be the key elements to a sustainable artist or arts organization in Silicon Valley.

Adapting to a shift in the volunteer landscape is one of the exciting challenges that the Arts & Business Council of New York (ABC/NY) and many arts organizations now face. As a new team running ABC/NY, my colleague Caleb Way and I are putting our heads together to come up with innovative ideas to expand and modernize our local volunteer matching program. To give some context, the Business Volunteers for the Arts® (BVA) program was founded by ABC/NY in 1975 with the mission of serving to connect nonprofit arts organizations with pro bono volunteers. However, as web-based volunteer matching services such as VolunteerMatch and Taproot have taken off, and businesses expand their volunteer or corporate responsibility (CSR) programs to include more expansive and flexible options for employee engagement, the old model of staff-managed volunteer matchmaking is simply not enough. ABC/NY’s new strategic direction combines the idea of volunteer matching with a much broader menu of employee engagement options.

Kate McClanahan

 

If you saw my first post this week, Tax Policy Time: Who wants that?!, you’ll know that an entire bullet was saved for later discussion on tax treatment of donated artwork—perhaps another yawn-inducing subject to some, but wait until I tell you that it’s been said in Congress that there is nothing more permanent than a temporary pilot program, and nothing more temporary than permanent law. Despite the humor, a quick search of “permanent than a pilot program” turns up these truth-verifying headlines:

• “Redeploy Illinois, a pilot program to divert youths from incarceration in state facilities, will become a permanent state program”
• “Forage Seed Insurance Pilot Program to Become Permanent”
• “Arizona municipality to launch a permanent supportive housing pilot program”

Why is this relevant? Because in 1969 Congress permanently changed tax law to prohibit artists from being eligible to take a fair-market value deduction for their works donated to a museum, library, or archive. Many are now working to revert the law, including the Art Dealers Association of America and the American Alliance of Museums. Legislation is pending in Congress, and many have hope that “permanent” only means until Congress changes its mind—and are counting on that fickleness.

Tim Bresnahan

Serving on a “working board” is challenging. Rewarding, but challenging. I recently had the honor of taking over the reigns as the Board President for Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, a small but mighty theatre in Chicago with a mission focused on promoting women theatre artists.  As we like to say at Rivendell, “It’s women’s work!”

Without a doubt, one of the greatest challenges we’ve faced as a board during my tenure has been attracting and retaining qualified board members.

Let me repeat: attracting AND retaining.

I understand that we need to build and sustain a deep and dedicated board of directors in order to build a sustainable organization that is positioned for long-term growth.  But I also understand that achieving this goal could be more easily attained if we had help. So I have a small but simple request.

Lydia Zacharias

Many of the companies we work with at ArtsKC are engaged in a variety of programs, including our Now Showing program for emerging artists and businesses, Advocacy efforts, and workplace giving for the ArtsKC Fund. These corporate partners are not only passionate about supporting the arts in the Kansas City region, but are also achieving true employee engagement. Through their partnerships with ArtsKC, companies are able to provide unique engagement opportunities that encourage people to stay with the company longer, report higher levels of job satisfaction, and increase productivity through teamwork and a sense of personal investment from management. Many people are now more interested in working for companies in which they feel valued, and in which a certain level of work/life balance is encouraged, than ones that simply provide a paycheck. So, support of the arts is not only good for your corporate philanthropic efforts, it’s also good for your talent recruitment and retention efforts!

Ali Fernandez

One of the challenges facing employers today is attracting and retaining a talented workforce while concurrently asking employees to do more with less. Employee satisfaction is increasingly linked to the employers’ commitment to providing opportunities for employees to engage with one another and the broader community.

We all know that the arts encourage creativity and innovation, but they are also an amazing vehicle for team building and collaboration. As a United Arts Fund that conducts employee giving campaigns, the Greater Hartford Arts Council is uniquely positioned to facilitate employee engagement, while raising funds and awareness for our arts community.

Katie Kurcz

Three years ago, Chicago Arts Orchestra (CAO) came to the Arts & Business Council of Chicago (A&BC) for help in taking their organization to the next level–shifting from knowing the next move toward knowing the next ten moves. At the time, CAO had a board of five members, an annual budget of $50,000, and the Founder/Artistic Director as the sole staff member. Although a small organization, they had six years of impressive programming under their belts, a strong artistic vision, and a committed core of musicians and supporters.

Robin Hanson

According to Taproot Foundation, 92% of nonprofits across the nation say they do not have enough pro bono support. Of the 500+ companies who pledge to support pro bono volunteering through A Billion + Change, 14% are Fortune 500 companies.

If you take the need for pro bono volunteers and the pool of corporations who support pro bono volunteering, there are not enough volunteers. Furthermore, if you reduce the pool of potential volunteers to businesses who support the arts, the pool becomes a pond.

So how do you attract a different kind of pro bono talent to fill the pond? By forming cross-collaborations with other partners focused on skills-based volunteers and introducing those volunteers to the arts world.

Kyle Dlabay

When you think about the performing arts, the first image that comes to mind probably isn’t thousands of cyclists. But in Milwaukee, bike riding and the performing arts have been connected since 1981 when the United Performing Arts Fund (UPAF) started the UPAF Ride for the Arts, sponsored by Miller Lite. Back then it was known as “Arts Pedalers,” then it grew immensely as “Uecker’s Ride for the Arts” and “Miller Lite for the Ride for the Arts.” The current name, which our title sponsor graciously agreed to in 2010, ensures the focus of the event is on its reason for being–to support the performing arts in Southeastern Wisconsin.

Founded in 1967, UPAF is an umbrella fundraising United Arts Fund with a threefold mission: 1) to raise much-needed funds to ensure entertainment excellence, 2) steward the dollars our donors so generously give, 3) promote the performing arts as a regional asset. As the single largest funder to 15 of the largest performing arts organizations in our region, including the Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra, Milwaukee Ballet, and Milwaukee Repertory Theater, UPAF is essential to sustaining the valuable asset that we have in the performing arts.

Elissa Francis

With one of the oldest United Art Funds in the country, Fund for the Arts, the Louisville region is a national model for how the arts can make a community–providing an outstanding quality of life, progressive educational programs and a great place to succeed in business.

In 2014 Fund for the Arts raised more than $8 million in support of the Arts, with workplace giving making up 45% of the revenue generated. Workplace giving has risen from five participating companies in 1980, with a few hundred donors, to more than 200 companies with more than 20,000 donors providing more than $3 million annually.

Emma Leggat

I have the pleasure of serving as StubHub’s Head of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and in September 2012, had a life-changing opportunity to visit New Orleans with a special mission.

New Orleans was to host Super Bowl XLVIII, meaning it would also be the site of StubHub’s annual Super Bowl Pregame Bash, which attracts some 7,000 attendees each year. The city of New Orleans has given so much to sports and music fans alike, and as the world’s largest ticket marketplace, these very fans are the core of our business. Naturally, we wanted to give back.

While considering ways to narrow StubHub’s CSR focus to increase our positive impact, we uncovered findings any Americans for the Arts member knows all too well: while more research than ever before demonstrates how vital the arts are to youth development and future achievement, budget cuts continue to threaten arts education in schools across the country, particularly those in underserved communities. These findings further spurred our drive to give back.

Welcome to Americans for the Arts’ latest blog salon, hosted by a hybrid of development and private sector partners. “Giving Time and Treasure to the Arts” can be interpreted in many ways depending on who’s doing the talking. It can mean raising support from corporate partners, building relationships with passionate individual philanthropists, engaging employee volunteers, or harnessing the power of creativity to increase productivity and happiness in the workplace. We welcome you to join us throughout the week to learn what “giving time and treasure to the arts” means to our members around the country, as well as some of our sector’s greatest supporters.

The role played by volunteers and philanthropists from the largest city to the smallest town is key to fostering a thriving arts sector in America. Both elements that this blog salon focuses on are important: the time and talent of volunteers provide capabilities and experiences that many arts organizations do not have the resources to procure; and the donation of funds, services, and other “treasures” allows the field not only to produce great art, but also to be the economic drivers and job creators that we know the arts to be. The decision to give to the arts is essential, and we make that choice and encourage others to make the same one because the arts themselves are essential.

Terry Liu

As an Arts Education Specialist at the National Endowment for the Arts, I am fortunate to see new blooms in the field of education.  Earlier this year, I was honored to join more than 200 national, state, local, and community-based youth arts leaders for the National Summit on Creative Youth Development in Boston, sponsored by the President's Committee on the Arts and the Humanities, the Massachusetts Cultural Council, and the National Guild for Community Arts Education.

It’s exciting to have a quorum of leaders who are committed to taking creative youth development to the next level.  We came with decades of experience in this field, and we left with a clear policy and advocacy agenda that our respective organizations could implement at the local, state, and national levels.

Sarah Bainter Cunningham

New sustainability models break through belief barriers about the business of arts education.  If teens must be employed during their high school career, why not employ them to make art? One organization pays students to participate as employees and upends assumptions about student participation. If fund-raising is challenging for smaller organizations, why not gather together tackle this beast? Another organization runs common development events for multiple arts education organizations, and upends the assumptions that local organizations must be pitted competitively against one another.  Both of these examples threw out prior assumptions to create new models.

Laura Perille

 

Is it possible to rapidly increase the level of arts education offered in an urban district? Based on the example of the Boston Public Schools (BPS) Arts Expansion Initiative launched in 2009 by EdVestors, the BPS Superintendent, and local foundations, the resounding answer to that question is yes. This effort was rooted in the belief that arts opportunities play a powerful role in the life and learning of students in urban schools, and that a fundamental part of creating these opportunities was increasing access to quality arts education in order to create equity for all students. One of the main challenges initially faced by BPS Arts Expansion was increasing the amount of in-school arts education offered in Boston Public Schools.

Mari Barrera

Collaborative fundraising provides nonprofits with more donors and more donations for all - $8 million in new dollars in total over a five-year period. That was the experience of the 30 youth arts organizations that participated in the ARTWorks for Kids coalition, an effort initiated and supported by Hunt Alternatives in Cambridge, MA.

How did 30 different youth arts organizations – all collaborators in serving youth in the Greater Boston area, but also competitors for donations – join forces to raise money together? First, we supported the leaders of these organizations as they worked together to build trust with their colleagues. Then, we provided a venue for each coalition member to showcase the great art their youth were producing for a large and diverse group of funders.

Jon Hinojosa

I am an Artist masquerading as an Arts Administrator - there I said it.  Actually, I am a proud artist working collectively with a committed team to change lives through creative youth development. Our program, SAY Sí, recently got some positive props for being an exemplary national arts-education model that should be replicated in Something to Say, a report by the Wallace Foundation of out-of-school arts programs for tweens and teens. (By the way, please don’t use the word “tweens” in front of young people.)

Part of the reason for our success and the attention is not just the arts part, we certainly do that well – I think it is because of our assessment process and track record of accomplishments. Our youth-focused multidisciplinary arts programs: visual arts, film, performance, and (soon) game design were created not because of our interest in jumping on a funding trend (more on funding below), they were created because our youth and community told us they were needed and missing from their lives, from their city, and from their schools.

The Film Production class at Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies

 

The Film Production class at Los Angeles Center for Enriched Studies was busy shooting a narrative film projects this past semester with the generous help of Vans and Americans for the Arts. With our grant, we were able to hire USC Film School graduate student, Julius Robins, to facilitate workshops and demonstrations of every aspect of film production from script writing to post-production effects. Julius runs our sessions the way film classes are run at USC.

Patrick O’Herron interviewing Dr. Ralph W. Shrader, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer of Booz Allen Hamilton.

1. Booz Allen Hamilton was a 2011 BCA 10: Best Businesses Partnering with the Arts in America honoree. Why does the company choose to support the arts?

The arts inspire, provoke thought, spur creativity, and connect us in a shared experience. These are also the essential qualities of an enduring, successful business–therefore, both as an institution and as individual employees, we find a natural affinity for the arts at Booz Allen. Corporate support helps make exhibitions and performances possible, and we find this to be a good way to give back to the communities in which we work and live.

2. How has the company’s support of the arts advanced business objectives?

Externally, there is a positive brand affinity and visibility that comes from association with respected museums and arts organizations, as well as favorable recognition in the community for helping to make possible quality exhibitions and performances.