Diane Ragsdale takes on happiness, joy, and meaning in the current post of her Jumper blog. In a think piece about using ‘happiness’ as a metric for success in the nonprofit arts, she wonders: What’s the happiness exchange that we’re striving for?

It may be because I’m reading the new book on Resilience by Andrew Zolli and Ann Marie Healy. It may be because I taught two courses this past fall, one on each end of the scope and scale spectrum in the arts (one on cultural organizations, one on scrappy, start-up arts enterprises). Or it may […]

A reasonably long while ago, one of my master’s students (thanks Syrah Gunning!) was writing her thesis on professional development, and she discovered and shared a theory on human cognitive development that keeps coming back to haunt me. While the name of the theory sounds clinical and detached, the concepts of Constructive-Developmental Theory are rather […]

You may have noticed (or may not have, which is cool) that I’ve been away from blogging for a rather long while. And when I WAS blogging, the posts were few and far between. Part of that gap, I’ve come to recognize, was because my brain is still moving. My body and my business location […]

I know I haven’t been “on” as much this fall, during my first semester on the faculty at American University. But I’m off again for a holiday break. I’ll be back to blogging as best I can in January. Until then, may you and yours have a joyous holiday season filled with observable community impact […]

There’s an arts management metaphor buried somewhere within the recent story about Australian authorities and Apple’s mobile map system. In brief, the computer company’s new (and much maligned) iOS mapping program was leading hapless Australian motorists into a dangerous wilderness, instead of to the town they were looking for. The frequent error led Australian authorities […]

On November 16, I moderated a panel discussion in New York on the Low-Profit Limited Liability Company (L3C), and its potential for the arts. The panelists included two of the leading national experts on the business entity (Marc J. Lane and Rick Zwetch), alongside two masters from the theater world (Gregory Moser, Victoria Bailey), and […]

This week, I’m part of an Americans for the Arts blog salon on the question of ‘scaling up,’ essentially about making programs in the arts available to more people in more places through project models that can accommodate such growth. Getting ‘to scale’ is an essential element in the venture capital world, where you invest […]

I’m in New York, prepping for Friday’s symposium at Columbia University on the L3C and the Arts (2:00 – 6:00 pm Eastern Time). The in-person event is filled to capacity, but you can watch it live online, or follow along (and submit questions to the panel) on Twitter (@l3c_arts, thanks to Alli Houseworth). [The event will […]

I’m attending the Future of Music Summit today, hearing panel after panel of experts, artists, and advocates interested in a healthy ecosystem for independent musicians. And it’s striking me how the worlds of ‘indie music’ efforts and nonprofit arts organizations are finding their way into the same world (or at least longing toward it).