Plan B, Part 3: Who Owns You?

Interesting discussion here about how an organization's board members need to decide who "owns" them. "Who are we really acting on behalf of?" This is not necessarily your audience, definitely not your staff... but who? Technically, perhaps, it's the people of the state where your organization is registered. But when you vote as a board member, whose face is before you?

Plan B materials

If you want to see the Powerpoint or the worksheets for this presentation, go to this page on our website: http://www.artshelp.org/knowledge/kb.html .

Look on the right side of the page...

Plan B Highlights

I'm sitting in our "What's Plan B" program, which has been designed to help organizations respond to crisis by thinking through scenarios. It's being led by Emil Angelica of the Community Consulting Group of Minneapolis. We've had a huge response to this program. Originally intended for 10 organizational teams of 3, we were oversubscribed for the session within 45 minutes of advertising it. Today, Friday, is the second session we added to accomodate the overflow.

The first part of the program has been largely about effecting change in organizations, & Emil presented an indelible model of group dynamics when attempting change. It's called the "100 Acre Wood" theory, and it basically says that in any group...

10 - 15% are Tiggers
30 -35% are Winnies
30 -35% are Piglets, and
10 -15% are Eeyores.

Tiggers are impulsive and enthusiastic, and are immediately on board with change. Problem is, they will go out ahead of the rest of the group before the group is ready to move. Winnies are receptive to change as long as the honey, which is to say the vision, is clearly in view. They need to see the steps and be assured that there is honey all along the way, and especially at the end. Piglets are anxious, and need to be assured that the cost of doing nothing is greater than the cost of change. They need to be shown all the steps and led slowly. If the tiggers get too far ahead, the piglets get scared. Finally, the Eeyores say no. They always say no. One of the biggest mistakes leaders make is to focus their energies on the Eeyores, to try to convert them-- and then on the Tiggers, to get their energies restored. The people to focus on, however, are the Winnies and the Poohs...

Another of my favorite concepts of the day is that when times get tough, people tend to focus on the organization, when what you need is to be focusing on the mission. You also need to be able to articulate what difference you make to the community. This can be incredibly difficult for arts organizations because they are focused on the quality of their work. They make great art, and of course great art changes the world. But this is hard to prove (worth trying, but hard), and it also doesn't necessarily set you apart.

...much more to say here, but for the moment, my placeholder is "problem of knowledge", but also the conflation of artists and art organization, two of my favorite hobbyhorses.

Arts Jobs

Here's a great post from the always-edifying Andrew Taylor: "Do Arts Jobs Count As Jobs?"

...one of the sub-stories percolating around about the Big Stimulus Packages is the role, or rather, the lack of a role, for the arts in it. There's the infamous Coburn Amendment to the Senate version of the package, for instance, which explicitly bars museum and other cultual institutions from seeing any stimulus money. [by the way, if you live in the Philadelphia area and this gets your dander up, {and why shouldn't it}, you should sign up for the Greater Philadelphia Cultural Alliance's Advocacy Action Center . It's like a moveon.org for Philadelphia Arts.]

And one more plug for GPCA--they've been able to fight against the trend that Taylor points out in his blog post by giving real numbers for exactly how many jobs culture provides to this area. And the answer is 40,000, as of the 2007 "Arts Culture & Economic Prosperity" report.

There's an interesting question here about who's to blame for the fact the general public and its government don't think of the arts sector as providing jobs (at a very efficient rate, might I add)... I wonder if it's an unintended consequence of our putting the counter-cultural, cathartic, iconoclastic, face of the arts at the front of the parade, or rather, being ashamed of talking about the arts as an Industry.

What Taxes Mean to Donors

For a long time now, I have wondered just how important the tax deduction is to donors. This article says that for many, it's not a big deal:

.http://www.philanthropyjournal.org/resources/fundraisinggiving/impact-changes-tax-rates-charitable-giving

Getting back up...

My friends....
It's been much too long, and I'm sorry for the silence. It's grant season over here, and i've been talking to many of you on the phone and in person about applications. It's the best part of the job, but it leads to neglect of the blog. the real enemy of the blog, of course, is high expectations of the things one should write. To defeat this, I'm just quickly putting up some article links that struck me as important and useful, viz:

...a Boston Globe article with inspiring fundraising stories re: the MFA,

...a David Carr piece from the NYT about social networking & the Obama campaign,

...a Chronicle of Philanthropy piece on what nonprofits can hope for from the Obama presidency,

...and that is all. More will come soon!

Why Rich People Give

Came across this in a daily news summary from the Chronicle of Philanthropy. It's a great little education in fundraising--no groundbreaking news, (people give to causes because their friends ask them too!) but a lot of affirmation of basic common sense. which is always useful and grounding.

Here's the study (pdf) on which the article is based. It comes out of Penn's center for High Impact Philanthropy.