First Music, then Newspapers, then the Arts?

here's a fascinating little provocation from Douglas McLennan at ArtsJournal associating trends in the music and newspaper industries with large arts organizations

Dashboards

Just in case you're wondering what the heck everyone was talking about back in 2007, when we all were talking about dashboards... a post from nTen about Dashboards!

PS: Here's my favorite dashboard of the moment, from the Indianapolis Museum of Art

We're 96th!

Yesterday the Philadephia Workforce Investment Board published a report called "A Tale of Two Cities," (pdf) which describes in compelling and straightforward language the state of this city's economy. And no surprise, there is one city-within-a-city that is on the rise, and another that is still in a steep decline. This is probably true of every major urban center in this country.

I was struck by the numbers, though. According to the report, 45% of working-age adults are not working or looking for work, and the city's labor participation rate is ranked 96th out of the nation's 100 largest cities. We're ranked 92 in the percentage of college graduates living in the city (20%).

So... what does this mean for the arts? And what does this mean for arts management? On one level, one could say that the arts are an essential asset that helps the city to attract and retain educated workers and new businesses. And we're working on ways to more efficiently leverage the city's powerful and prominent arts assets for the benefit of the education system, most notably through the new Arts for Youth Initiative. But do the arts have a role in improving the city's educational opportunities for adults? Perhaps more promising, can the arts help to drive innovation by coming up with new markets, new businesses, new business structures that can help generate new jobs?

Our current economic downturn is a signal that an old economic order has passed, and a new one is in the process of being born. The arts can play a role in shaping that new order...

More on Business Models

This, from the Stanford Social Innovation Review a list of business models for nonprofits: Most arts nonprofits seem to fall into the "Member Motivator" model, but it's a great exercise to see what other possibilities are out there...

Secrets of Survival

...we recently came back from a really great meeting in Hartford, CT with a small group of other capacity-building funders, where the subject was how to assess and communicate the impact of this mode of grantmaking. [It was a GEO "action learning" group, if you must know.] It has me thinking that I should spend some time here talking about just what exactly capacity-building is and isn't, what it can and can't do for organizations, particularly arts organizations.

At the end of the two-day session, the facilitator asked "What do you think are the key characteristics of organizations that will survive (and thrive) in the current downturn?"

Here's the list we came up with, in no particular order:

1. Thoughtful, visionary leadership with a strong sense of mission and the core program.

2. Strong decision-making systems and planning frameworks.

3. The ability to express the value of the organization internally and externally.

4. Strong advocacy and creative support from board members.

5. A diversified funding base

6. Capacity for bold, even audacious decisions. Also, the ability to make tough decisions informed by the core principles of the organization.

7. The ability to evangelize and build public support.

8. The ability to identify and take advantage of collaborative opportunities.

No surprise, a lot of these things are interconnected--be thoughtful and externally-informed enough to know your core value proposition, be bold about using the opportunities of the current crisis to reorganize your operation around that core value, etc. And yes, all easier said than done, but I think we were all surprised by the level of consensus on these points from funders working in very different sectors.

Fund For Action awards, 2009

Here's the list of our 2008-2009 Fund For Action grant awards! And here's the accompanying press release.

Culture Wonk in Love

This NYT article on MoMA's new web site led me to the site of the Indianapolis Museum of Modern Art and its iPhone-styled dashboard.  Sigh.  I wonder if their constituents use this?