Bridging the Arts and Tech Sectors

Bridging the Arts and Tech SectorsBy Becky Neil

After a rousing and candid keynote panel on defining open systems, participants in the Emergence 2013 Networked Approaches track moved downstairs at SPUR for our first breakout session. Moderated by Maura Lafferty, independent PR consultant, this session’s topics focused on practical suggestions to improve collaboration between the arts and technology sectors. Maura gathered a balanced panel featuring Brianna Haag, marketing manager at Eventbrite; Emma Leggat, head of corporate social responsibility at StubHub; and Allison Murdock, organizer of Silicon Valley Rocks and VP of Marketing at GigaOM.

Maura began the conversation by asking the panelists to share how their organizations are currently involved in the arts, and it was both heartening and revealing to see how each company used the passions and interests of their employees to direct their efforts in the arts.

Emma shared how StubHub began their Rising Stars philanthropic program by identifying ways their employees and company assets were particularly well-suited to make a difference. Because StubHub is an event ticket resale platform, they discovered that music, youth development, and local organizations resonated particularly well with their employees.

As Emma put it, “Our employees are fans themselves!”Roots of Music, a New Orleans teen music program, was the perfect match to align with these interests, and received one of the initial Rising Stars grants in addition to leveraging the StubHub platform for their event ticketing.

The theme of shared values emerged as a key point of discussion as the conversation continued.

Emma Leggat and Brianna Haag by Kegan Marling

Emma Leggat and Brianna Haag by Kegan Marling

What values are shared between technology organizations and arts organizations? How can these shared values be leveraged to the mutual benefit of partner organizations?

Brianna urged arts administrators to think beyond funding when approaching a technology company, and consider the full spectrum of ways to partner and support mutual goals. She suggested in-kind sponsorship — such as free use of the company’s software — volunteer days, and workshops.

Allison agreed, saying, “You need to create opportunities to engage. Writing a check is nice, but create an opportunity to do something; an afternoon of engagement can lead to money later.”

Emma built on this, describing a holistic approach to working with tech companies: “Think of it as a funnel: a well-constructed program leads to volunteers leads to money.”

So put your brainstorm caps on, fellow arts managers, because these tech companies really want to hear innovative ways that they can build a lasting partnership with you!

If you are an arts organization looking to secure funding, sponsorship, or other support from a technology company, you may want to think about the following as you build your program:

  • Business strategy, marketing, and other expertise: Do you have an organizational challenge that the technology company’s employees may have the expertise to help with? Allison recommended that you think about ways they can advise you on improving processes, strategies, and plans.

  • Software, real estate, and other physical or digital assets: Does the technology company have a great location? Maybe you can use their grounds or conference room for a donor event. Do they have access to a wide channel of advertising? Maybe they can donate space for a week to your cause, like Emma did at StubHub for Roots of Music.

  • Opportunities to teach and learn: This goes both ways! In addition to sharing knowledge on specific computer tools, technology employees might want to learn to paint, dance, sing, or whatever skills and talents your organization offers. Brianna shared how excited her employees got when they were able to interact during a workshop with artists: they talked about it for months afterwards!

Of course, these relationships need to start somewhere.

Maura asked panelists, “What suggestions do you have for starting the conversation and initial outreach?”  Here, it became clear through their anecdotes that startups look their employees for leadership.

Brianna explained how Eventbrite created an employee-led impact team that makes philanthropic decisions for the company on a quarterly basis. “So,” she said, “identify the people who are passionate [about your mission]. They will be your advocates from within the organization.”

To get past the email filter and initial blockade, “do your homework!” Allison urges. “You really have to research. Find those people and reach out to them directly.” Once you have an advocate on the inside, the word will get back around to the decision makers that this cause is important to their employees.

In all there is tremendous potential for cross-industry collaboration between technology and the arts. With this insider’s scoop in mind, arts professionals should be able to identify natural ways to align both organization’s missions and approach the right people to make those programs happen. I, for one, was pondering for days after of ways that I can get a tech expert to help me with my art project!

About Becky Neil

Becky Neil is a project lead at Bottlecap Gazebo, where she builds community through big art.

Defining Open Systems: Diversity, Representation, and Equity

Defining Open SystemsBy Sunshine Lampitoc

As part of Emergence, Emerging Arts Professional’s daylong annual convening on June 3, 2013, a panel discussed what it means for a system to be open and healthy.

Defining Diversity and Open Systems

Defining and creating open systems involves many components but, for some reason, “diversity” has become the catch-all term for discussions about changing population demographics, inclusion, equity, and representation.

However, Lynn Johnson, co-founder and CEO of Glitter & Razz Productions points out that “diversity can’t be the only component, and it can’t be the lead component.” Each of these aspects requires unpacking on their own, both on individual and systemic levels, before any type of movement or change can be planned or enacted.

Defining these potentially loaded terms and concepts is the first process dancer and organizational equity consultant Tammy Johnson goes through with organizations.

“Let’s get clarity,” she states. What is the definition of diversity? Inclusion? Equity? What does all this stuff mean when the rubber hits the road?” To enact systemic change, it is immensely important for everyone to be starting on the same page and speaking the same language.

Parsing the diversity of thought that exists within diversity conversations is the first step in addressing how a truly open system can be created.

Outcome-Oriented Philanthropy

Outcome-Oriented PhilanthropyBy Carrie Blanding

Former Hewlett Foundation president Paul Brest defines outcome-oriented philanthropy as “philanthropy where donors seek to achieve clearly defined goals; where they and their grantees pursue evidence-based strategies for achieving those goals; and where both parties monitor progress toward outcomes and assess their success in achieving them in order to make appropriate course corrections.”

Mario Marino, co-founder of Venture Philanthropy Partners, puts it more succinctly: “It’s no longer good enough to make the case that we’re addressing real needs. We need to prove that we’re making a real difference.”

That’s from Marino’s (free!) 2011 ebook, Leap of Reason. In it, Marino advocates nothing less than a sector-wide revolution in which all nonprofits measure and manage their outcomes. He believes that soon funders “will migrate away from organizations with stirring stories alone, toward well-managed organizations that can also demonstrate meaningful, lasting impact.”

I see two main benefits to this trend:

  1. It encourages nonprofits to hold themselves accountable for the work they do. In a time of diminishing resources, it is morally right that we should meet a high standard of impact in order to be funded.
  2. It helps nonprofits develop language that translates better for the new generation of donors. Venture philanthropists and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs are important new players on the philanthropic scene. These are data-driven, results-oriented people, and we need to speak to them in terms they will understand.

Applying this to the arts can be challenging, though. Most of what I’ve read on the subject is geared toward education and social service nonprofits, where one can measure things like high school graduation rates, inmate recidivism, distribution of malaria nets.

But what are our outcomes in the arts and how do we measure them?

I had hoped to find some inspiration for this on the new website, Charting Impact. Launched in 2011, this site provides a free, standardized self-assessment tool for nonprofits to measure and communicate their effectiveness. However, it seems that almost none of the participants so far are in the arts and culture sector, and the few that

I was able to find fell a bit short of what I’d hoped to see.

Still, I think the idea behind Charting Impact is a good one. If anyone reading this finds an example of an arts group using it well (or is inspired to be the first!), I would love to hear about it.

Another point of entry into measuring artistic outcomes is the ongoing discussion about “intrinsic” versus “instrumental” impacts. A few years ago everyone seemed to be measuring the “instrumental impact” of the arts — the way in which the arts stimulate the local economy or improve student test scores, for example. However, in the last decade thought leaders like Adrien Ellis and the RAND Corporation have exposed the pitfalls of instrumental arguments for the arts, shifting the conversation instead toward their “intrinsic impacts” — the way that art makes audiences feel and enriches our lives.

Intrinsic impacts are tough to measure, though. It’s not obvious how to quantify a feeling and report on it to a funder! But the intrepid folks at Theatre Bay Area and WolfBrown have taken on the challenge. TBA’s 2012 publication Counting New Beans got the conversation started. Then WolfBrown carried the work even further, launching a whole website and line of services aimed at helping arts nonprofits learn to measure and evaluate their intrinsic impact. If you want to understand what it means to measure art’s intrinsic impact, those two resources are the place to start.

Regardless of how you choose to approach the issue, the ultimate goal is to find some meaningful way to evaluate your organization’s outcomes, and then use that information to make necessary course corrections and to communicate with donors.

At the organizational level that means asking ourselves: Is my organization having the impact that it ought to have? Are the things we’re doing actually achieving the outcomes we set out to achieve?

Furthermore, it means developing consistent methods for answering these questions, being brutally honest about the answers and, most important, making changes if at any point we fall short of achieving our goals.

Whether this trend serves the arts well when it comes to getting grant money will depend largely on how funders implement it. Hopefully they will follow the lead of Marino

Marino, who writes in Leap of Reason: “We’ve learned that we cannot impose our support for this type of change process, that we have to give our partners the time and space to do it their way, not our way.”

Amen!

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Don’t miss parts one (improved assessment tools) and two (building vs. buying) in Carrie’s series on trends in philanthropy!

About Carrie Blanding

Carrie Blanding is currently on a research sabbatical in which she gets to blissfully romp through the most interesting nonprofit literature every day. She is particularly fascinated by organizational sustainability, personal resilience, effective philanthropy, and management theory.

Previously, she has been executive director of the the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and co-founder/principal of Next Big Thing Children’s Theatre. She earned her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and received the department award for academic achievement.

An avid singer, Carrie has at times been a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, a jazz vocalist, and a singer-songwriter pouring her heart out at your neighborhood bar.

Showing Up for Your Community

Showing Up for Your CommunityBy Masha Rotfeld

At Emergence, Emerging Arts Professional’s annual daylong convening on June 3, 2013, a daring and complicated group discussion facilitated by Arielle Julia Brown and Ernesto Sopprani centered on the participants’ viewpoints regarding failures and successes in community engagement.

Brown, teaching theater artist at Destiny Arts Center and artistic director of The Love Balm Project, hailed the community engagement “shero” of our time, Kemba Shakur. City greening activist Shakur founded and directs the Oakland tree-planting project Urban Releaf. In late 2011, the Oakland Museum of California (OMCA) took a stance by spotlighting Shakur, along with five others, as a Modern Day Muir. This served Brown’s point that more arts organizations ought to reach out across the community to honor women, especially those that have started community organizations.

I found myself brainstorming with a striking group of individuals: Quinn Associates’s Jessica Johnson, recent John Hopkins graduate Glennis Markinson, OMCA’s Lisa Silberstein, and EAP’s Ernesto Sopprani. Peers were eager to sound off successes: ProArts and Youth Speaks, organizer of the National Youth Poetry Slam, as well as SOMArts, which got an instant in to a community.

While approximately ten small group discussions focused on the binary question of community engagement failure and success, the ensuing shared conversation evolved into a wider set of topics:

1. Working definitions of community vs. network

2. What it takes to get an “in” to a community

3. How to keep a network meaningful and vibrant, not unlike a personal relationship

As the small groups opened up to the room, Brown urged caution as she also invited participants to divulge what struck a chord with them. “Community engagement is one of the grant buzzwords. Glorified interactive audience surveys, and other questionable work.”

Community vs. Network

Silberstein, a visitor engagement specialist at OMCA and brain behind In-The-Mix programming, shared: “Everyone else’s community is your network” and urged others to “understand how they are related to you in the bigger network.”

Some slogans that could be heard floating around the room as participants were grappling with the assignment were:  “One is giving, one is taking,” “A network literally is multi-directional,” “Engagement is outward facing,” and “A network could help you expand your community.”

The following gave me pause, “Before we used to just have our communities, but now we have all the others.” Indeed, the law of attraction is still at work.

The ever-pertinent question of funding resurfaced when the quandary came up about having numbers over meaningful experiences in reporting back to granters. Through a topical example Silberstein incorporated “network” to discuss the difficulty of community engagement within a framework when a major funding partner restricts the use of a formerly flexible account.

How does one balance the desire for meaningful interactions while reaching a large numbers of people?

“A very minor qualitative questionnaire,” suggested another participant, who thought that having a high response rate to a yes/no and one open-ended question would do the trick. Qualifying and quantifying audience participation really does become an opportunity to educate the funders. Facing the truth is not for everyone, but knowing what works, rather than what should, will get arts professionals out of dated reporting processes.

Photo by Kegan Marlking

Photo by Kegan Marling

A Ticket Into a Community

The energy in the room reflected a consensus that the following rhetorical questions could serve as a fertile ground for not only opening up discussion but also catalyzing future considerations.

“What community are you in? What community are you engaging? Is engaging a synonym for organizing, getting grants, or just taking a photo with someone?”

In essence, the speaker exhorted the room think about what tactics one would be willing to use to get in.

A well-heard qualifying response was: “You need to show that you are passionate about being involved in our communities. Do not lose focus about why you started in the beginning.” Be mindful of institutional power around the community you live in or the one you are going into.

A board member of the Zaccho Dance Theater sketched out some interesting subtleties: what are the peculiarities regarding getting “into” East Los Angeles versus San Francisco’s Mission District, or an African-American entering Detroit, while never herself having been there prior.

Sopprani made an example of a community’s engagement around queer performance, which he says involves curating work in their spaces, activating them. Make a community around whatever the problem may be and finding a solution.

Emphatically, regret was voiced and seconded about a kind of involvement that is here and gone, leaving the place at the heart of the project without lasting transformation.

For instance, everyone wants to fund a project in the Bayview, which while “local,” deserves the same weight as international or global endeavors. Questions of sustainability and establishing expectations ought to be front and center.

Network Upkeep

Our third point, regarding hands-on networking, was divulged by the Zaccho board member. Calling it the “elephant in the room,” she was speaking directly to the individuals gathered, prompting them to really connect to others at the Emergence 2013 event.

“The people in attendance, are they going to show up? If we don’t take advantage of our new acquaintances, we will move further and further away from each other,” she urged.

Sopprani echoed that to maintain such ecosystems, arts professionals must have one-on-one conversations.

It is really about the personal relationships. We care what we do to each other, but we must make an effort to stay in touch and connected.

He reminded the group to document knowledge on EAP’s Hackpad, a source of resources and grants that has just opened to the network. Via Hackpad, EAPers can share contact info and what they do.

Community Engagement at Large

To quote Gore Vidal, “We are permanently the United States of Amnesia. We learn nothing because we remember nothing.” We are in an era of perpetual forgetfulness, whether about new acquaintances or social and cultural phenomena at large. An art historical “moment” — a tremendous story — will pop into public consciousness and disappear immediately.

It is difficult to hold onto any one string, but we must find different strategies for paying attention and approaching situations with a desire for continuity. Such strategies include: getting permission for fair use of artwork or use of space, asking (theater) participants to bring their friends, and having daily conversation with people who share our interests.

Sustaining community engagement comes in after initiating contact in events such as Emergence 2013 by continuing to build those relationships intentionally. Such success can be attributed to the network of European Burning Man followers, who find ways to communicate year-round, such as with mixers in a “burning pub” in London. People have branched off into new communities to pursue emerging international projects, while opportunities to get to know each other tangibly increase interpersonal and inter-organizational support.

And, keep experimenting! You are more likely to bring successes to mutually beneficial processes if you are. Arts community members ought to try new things, for they are already doing something they are good at. The question is now, how does one push at that. A failure could be skewed into a success, but not before action is taken.

“Seeing how things are interconnected as well as what else is going up around makes you run better,” observed Sopprani.

And one participant voiced the takeaway at the heart of the session: “If you show up for your community, they will know that you are authentic and will be there for you too.”

 

Masha Rotfeld is a personal fitness trainer and holds a master’s degree in art history from the University of California, Riverside.

Learning the Difference between Building and Buying

Learning the Difference Between Building and BuyingThis is part two in a three-part series by Carrie Blanding on emerging trends in philanthropy.

If you haven’t yet read George Overholser’s seminal piece “Building Is Not Buying,” you should stop everything and do it now. The essay is only ten pages long, but it packs a punch!

In the piece, Overholser encourages nonprofits and their funders to distinguish between growth capital and revenue-like funding, and to track this income separately in their budgets.

Once you get the basic definitions down, tracking capital growth and revenue-like funding differently is a very simple idea, but the implications for philanthropy are huge.

Growth capital (“building” money) generally involves one-time grants in which the donor invests to help you get started but doesn’t intend to keep giving at the same level in future years. Think of this like start-up capital invested in a for-profit business.

Revenue-like funding (“buying” money) is income that could reliably be sustained or replaced as part of the organization’s regular operating budget. It buys a service or project, in the same way that customer purchases sustain a for-profit business.

This simple-yet-powerful distinction puts a whole new lens on donations and internal accounting. It teaches funders to be more realistic about their goals, time frame, and gift amounts. It teaches funded organizations to budget more effectively and to better plan new growth initiatives.

For example, an organization I used to work for once received a one-time, nonrenewable grant to overhaul its marketing department. It was meant to be an investment that would pay for itself when the grant period was over because our improved systems would bring in new income. But the grant amount was small and the time-frame short, relative to the task at hand.

Basically, it was a typical “building” style grant, but with “buying” level resources. Looking back, it’s not surprising that the results fell short of what we had envisioned. I dream of going back in time and giving everyone involved a copy of Overholser’s article (although I don’t think it had been written yet).

The article would have helped the funder to design the grant more realistically, and maybe we would have had more success in achieving our goals.

Fortunately, this knowledge is now available and it’s starting to spread. The Nonprofit Finance Fund has developed a whole set of services around Overholser’s notion of building versus buying, including a series of publications that specifically apply to the arts.

Thanks to the Doris Duke Foundation, arts organizations are leading the way when it comes to implementing these new ideas. Ten arts organizations were among the earliest beneficiaries of cutting-edge “change capital” grants aimed at building their organizations (and our knowledge) in a meaningful way. The lessons learned from these first grants were published just a few months ago.

Whether or not your funders are thinking in these terms yet, just learning the basic concepts in Overholser’s article will give you a powerful new perspective on fundraising, income, and budgeting.

Up next: An optimistic look at the challenges and benefits of outcome-oriented philanthropy. And don’t miss part one about improved assessment tools for donors.

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About Carrie Blanding

Carrie Blanding is currently on a research sabbatical in which she gets to blissfully romp through the most interesting nonprofit literature every day. She is particularly fascinated by organizational sustainability, personal resilience, effective philanthropy, and management theory.

Previously, she has been executive director of the the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and co-founder/principal of Next Big Thing Children’s Theatre. She earned her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and received the department award for academic achievement.

An avid singer, Carrie has at times been a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, a jazz vocalist, and a singer-songwriter pouring her heart out at your neighborhood bar.

An Intergenerational Fishbowl

By Margot H. Knight

An Intergenerational FishbowlA fishbowl marked the finish of Emergence 2013, Emerging Arts Professional’s daylong annual convening on June 4.

Keeping the Talkative Fish Swimming

Even though they can discriminate against the shy, I like fishbowls.  I like fishbowls because they provide a focal point for condensing experiences and thoughts. Fishbowls are round and provide a welcome break from the we-talk-you-listen square or oblong formats that stubbornly cling to the most innovative of conferences.

Fishbowls focus on the learner. As teacher and then as learner again, I particularly liked the Emergence 2013 fishbowl because as moderator (the key to any successful fishbowl), Adam Fong did a great job of keeping the talkative fish swimming.

So what did we learn?  Here are my takeaways.

Struggling for Cultural Equity

The struggle for cultural equity ’twas ever thus whether the issue is art creation, arts audiences, arts organizations, or arts advocacy. All of which rolls back around to the roles privilege, power, and money play in the cultural sector. By the same token we are, each in our own way, blind to our own advantages in the world.

We would all do well to take our own inventories and be as self-aware as our selfish, self-involved selves can muster.

More important, each generation’s progress towards a more just and inclusive society stands on the risk-taking shoulders of its predecessor generation. Each generation has to find its own language, its own attitude and its own solutions.

Each generation creates new barometers to assess progress, along with its own versions of what Hewlett Foundation program officer Ron Ragin called “the uncomfortable conversation.”

The cultural sector must also contribute to the definition of diversity, cultural equity, and cultural pluralism because sometimes, as Frances Phillips of Arts & Creative Work Fund/Walter and Elise Haas Fund noted in the opening panel, funders can screw things up by defining them.

photo by Kegan Marling

Uncommon learning with Margot Knight (center) by Kegan Marling

What if We All Worked Together?

I felt a lot of “versus” undertones (we vs. they, big vs. small, new vs. old, old vs. young) and not enough if-we-all-work-together strategies. It sometimes felt like a convention of overwhelmed, put-upon people.

Without whitewashing the economic climate for those new to the job market and emerging arts professionals specifically, the challenge is to find ways to stay in the field and not abandon it for greener for-profit pastures. I heard loud and clear that it’s not just about money when choosing a job—it’s about passion and principles.

But the lack of a clear path to jobs with a desirable salary was a dilemma expressed over and over again in public and private conversations.

Who’s at the Table?

Obstacles to more Bay Area collaboration within the sector are inherent in a field that encompasses varying disciplines, organizational structures, and umbrella organizations. It’s unclear who has the power and who uses it to convene the cultural community at large. It’s unclear who has the trust to represent the cultural community at economic development, policy and planning tables.

Where should that kind of leadership come from? Only the designated heads of big budget organizations? Or can it come from the ranks of groups like Emerging Arts Professionals?

If we don’t take the arts seriously and ask others to do so, whose fault is it that the arts are considered a frill? If we are not serious about our work, we might be unconsciously training other people how to treat us.

An Invitation to Keep Listening

For me, the conference’s promise of a day of uncommon learning was realized. I walked away buoyantly awash in the dedication of conference attendees to take on some pretty big personal, industry, and societal issues.

The tension between the “longing for love and struggle for the legal tender,” as Jackson Browne sings, did nothing to diminish the passion and belief that the arts and artists matter.

All we need to do is keep on listening, talking and taking action.  The leadership of Emerging Arts Professionals is providing an open invitation to do that.

 

Margot H. Knight is executive director of Djerassi Resident Artists Program.

Personal Regenerative Practices in the Age of Information Overload

personal regenerative practicesBy Lucy Claire Curran

I am so grateful to have been able to take part in the morning breakout session on personal regenerative practices at Emergence, the Emerging Arts Professionals daylong annual convening on June 3, 2013. Facilitated by Emma Bailey, associate producer at Citizen Film; Carrie Blanding, former executive director of the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players; and Yesenia Sanchez, coach and consultant, this session explored how we can rest and regroup as arts professionals in the age of around-the-clock email and social media.

How can we make time for the creative work that most inspires us when we barely even have time to do laundry?

That’s Just How We Roll: The Balance Wheel and Beyond

Emma Bailey started us off with an exercise called The Balance Wheel.

The guiding question for the Balance Wheel exercise was: “How do you

Emma Bailey by Kegan Marling

Emma Bailey by Kegan Marling

spend your time and energy?” We were to choose eight areas of our life that we felt took up a significant amount of our time and energy. Next, we divided a circle into eight pie-wedge sections of equal size, each representing a different area of our life. We then drew a line across each section to indicate how fulfilled and satisfied we felt in that area of our life.

The closer the line to the middle of the circle, the less satisfied we were; the further out towards the outside of the circle, the more satisfied.

When we were done, Emma asked for us to share what we had discovered. We then spent a few minutes teasing out why our wheels looked the way they did and how we could make them more balanced. Many of us in the room felt that we spent most of our time trying to catch up with the necessary tasks of daily living. As a result, studio time or creative time or regenerative time – or any sort of time that allowed us to feel rested, rejuvenated, or inspired – was liable to be lost in the crush of “getting more pressing things done.”

The end result? All of us often ended up feeling depleted, frustrated, and discouraged.

Artists without Borders: The Importance of Boundaries in a Creative Life

Carrie Blanding by Kegan Marling

Carrie Blanding by Kegan Marling

After this lopsided time-allocation has been identified, what in the world is an artist supposed to do? It’s one thing to become aware of the problem, but it’s a whole different matter to begin to use our time more effectively.

Carrie Blanding followed up the Balance Wheel Exercise by leading a discussion about the importance of carving out time for recreation, and even time for doing nothing. We talked in particular about setting healthy boundaries at work and with family members and friends.

Setting boundaries, Carrie explained, might be as simple as telling family members, friends, and coworkers: “This is when I’m available, and this is when I will be busy with my creative work.”

Carrie also shared her technique of “managing expectations.” In other words, it helps to be straightforward and upfront with coworkers and others about when to expect that a particular project will be completed. All in all, the conversation was constructive and helpful, yielding several pragmatic and common sense approaches to achieving more balance in the face of the daily “to dos.”

Practice, Practice, Practice

yesenia sanchez by kegan marling

Don’t give up! Yesenia Sanchez by Kegan Marling

To wrap up the hour, Yesenia Sanchez spoke to us about positive practices and empowering beliefs that can support us  in achieving more balance and fulfillment in their lives. She started out by focusing on common ways we deplete our energy and creativity. The list included cramming our days and nights with obligations (gulp!) and indulging in people-pleasing to the extent that we give away our personal power (oh, dear, this one’s familiar, too!).

But don’t worry, says Yesenia. There’s hope!

She introduced a series of practices to help regenerate and rejuvenate on a daily basis:

  • Getting clear on what you want to be creating in your life, and then checking in daily with yourself on whether or not you are living your vision is empowering.
  • “Unplugging” in a very literal way is not only important, it’s essential. Try turning off your cell phone, perhaps just for a couple of hours at first. If you get really ambitious, you could even try it for a whole weekend. (Gasp!)
  • Doing things differently is very good for the brain, and it can also help us to regenerate and keep things fresh. This could mean taking a different route to work or even brushing your teeth with your non-dominant hand.
  • Practice having necessary conversations, even if they are difficult or uncomfortable. Voicing concerns right away, instead of waiting until resentments have reached a boiling point, can go a long way toward smoothing out difficulties in relationships.

To wrap up her time, Yesenia reminded us that we all usually have more power than we think to turn any situation in our lives in a more positive direction. And

She left us with an empowering belief that she encouraged us to take on as our own to drive us forward in our development as artists: “Your life,” said Yesenia, “is precious. It’s worth it to pursue the life you want to lead.”

All in all, it was an inspiring and informative hour. Having talked through common stumbling blocks and shared frustrations with the others in the room, I felt much less alone. In addition, I was equipped with a new set of inspiring tools and practices that I could use to achieve more balance in my life as an arts professional.

About Lucy Claire Curran

Lucy Claire Curran is a freelance writer living and working in San Francisco, CA. A recent graduate of Harvard College with a degree in English, Lucy Claire is currently at work on the manuscript of her first novel, titled The Third Hit. In addition to writing poetry and prose, Lucy Claire loves reading, painting, laughing, and going on adventures.

My Favorite New Trends in Philanthropy Part I

philanthropyBy Carrie Blanding

We’ve all been there: you’re at a conference, or a fund development meeting, or coffee with a colleague, and the conversation turns to What Is Wrong With The Current Funding System. We commiserate about the perils of chasing program funding. We lament the scarcity of general operating support. We share stories of insane reporting requirements. . . .

But lately when these conversations come up I find myself irresistibly bringing up the bright side. Why? Because for the past six months I’ve been reading a lot about philanthropy, and the beautiful truth is that I’m seeing some good ideas out there. Some of them are still just a twinkle in the eye of an academic, but others are starting to take hold and influence the way funding gets distributed.

So let’s take a little break from thinking about what’s not working, and focus on a few encouraging trends in the philanthropic sector. In this three-part series, I’ll write about a few of my favorites: improved assessment tools for donors, smarter thinking about capital, and outcome-oriented philanthropy.

Part 1: Improved Assessment Tools for Donors

Remember when organizational effectiveness was determined by how much a nonprofit spent on overhead? Well ring the bells, because that clumsy old metric is on its way out! The current trend is to look beyond simplistic ratios and empower donors with more well-rounded assessment tools.

The movement away from overhead ratios has been making headlines lately. By now we’ve all seen Dan Pallotta’s TED talk on the subject. Much more exciting, in my opinion, is this open letter denouncing the “overhead myth,” signed by the CEOs of Guidestar, Charity Navigator, and BBB Wisegiving Alliance.

In their words, the letter “marks the beginning of a campaign to correct the common misconception that [overhead] … is, on its own, an appropriate metric to evaluate when assessing a charity’s worthiness and efficiency.”

While the campaign is new, the idea is not. Various foundations, consultants, and information providers have been thinking hard about this issue for some time. That’s good news because it means that several new and improved online assessment tools have already been (or are being) developed.

Perhaps the most accessible of these is Philanthropedia. This site allows anyone to view free ratings of nonprofits based on peer assessments. Developed at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, launched in 2009 with funding from the Hewlett Foundation, and acquired by Guidestar in 2011, this young site is a testament to how the goal of improving donors’ access to information is supported across the philanthropic sector.

The arts are well represented on Philanthropedia, with twenty-one rankings of Bay Area arts nonprofits, and seventeen national rankings. The site only ranks its “top nonprofits,” refraining from singling out any groups as not worthy of support. It does, however, allow users to view the peer comments (both positive and negative) that it receives for non-ranked nonprofits.

Another new offering from Guidestar, with the Nonprofit Finance Fund, is Financial SCAN. Launched in 2012, this tool attempts to evaluate an organization’s financial health over the long term, in a more comprehensive way than ever before. Priced at $2,500 a year, Financial SCAN appears to be primarily intended for large foundations and financial advisers.

Charity Navigator, a ratings site available to the general public, is a bit behind the times but poised to catch up. Currently this site only rates nonprofits on financial health, accountability, and transparency, but they are working towards adding “results reporting” (basically impact measurement) to their evaluation criteria by 2016.

If you’re interested in getting a bigger-picture view of how this trend can improve the nonprofit world, check out this 2008 white paper from the Hewlett Foundation. In the report, the foundation describes its vision for a bustling nonprofit marketplace in which individual donors, empowered with better information, efficiently direct their resources to the best nonprofits. We’re not there yet, but we seem to be moving in the right direction.

Stay tuned for my next installment: an ode to growth capital!

C.Blanding_PhotoAbout Carrie Blanding

Carrie Blanding is currently on a research sabbatical in which she gets to blissfully romp through the most interesting nonprofit literature every day. She is particularly fascinated by organizational sustainability, personal resilience, effective philanthropy, and management theory.

Previously, she has been executive director of the the San Francisco Contemporary Music Players, and co-founder/principal of Next Big Thing Children’s Theatre. She earned her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley, and received the department award for academic achievement.

An avid singer, Carrie has at times been a member of the San Francisco Symphony Chorus, a jazz vocalist, and a singer-songwriter pouring her heart out at your neighborhood bar.