Many people who haven’t done big-ticket philanthropy can be intimidated by the numbers. “How can I seriously sit across from someone and ask them for $1 million?” they will say. “I can’t even imagine$1 million.” And therein lies the problem. If your family wasn’t wealthy, and you’ve never been wealthy, your frame of reference is […]

The rise of social media, and more specifically social media advertising revenue, has nudged a rather interesting question: How should we measure success? In the olden days, “hits” were the thing (but turned out to be a rather generic thing), then it was “unique page views” (slightly better, but still a bit bulk), then it […]

These days, you can discover music you like, or might like, in a batch of different ways. You can discover in the ‘old school’ way by finding a radio station that hovers around your style. You can build a Pandora radio station or two that finds artists ‘like’ the ones you like. You can click on […]

After spending several days at a gathering discussing cultural mega-projects, it was a welcome relief to discover the Little Free Library project, which has just found a foothold near my home in Wisconsin. Little Free Libraries are tiny shelters for books for community members to find interesting things to read, and to share the books […]

I spent the end of last week at a roundtable meeting, learning about and responding to the evolving work of the Cultural Infrastructure Project team from the University of Chicago’s Cultural Policy Center. The research explores many facets of large-scale cultural facility projects in the United States over the past decade — scope and scale, […]

There’s been lots of talk about ‘creative placemaking’ and ‘creative vitality’ in cities and towns and communities. It seems many people want such things, but whose job is it to build them? Is it the job of innovative artists and arts organizations? Or community-focused private funders and philanthropists? Or banks and community development interests? Or […]

Several articles and events this month explore the narrow margin between public/nonprofit and private enterprise.  The first is the acquisition of Jumo, the nonprofit social networking service, by GOOD, the for-profit media company. The move had Wired magazine gushing about innovation and success, but had others in the philanthropic world wondering how the many grantors and […]

Thanks to all who attended my morning workshop at the Midwest Arts Conference today on “Building a Better Business Model.” The questions, ideas, insights, and examples were inspiring and compelling. And I was grateful to hear from so many of you after the session that it had some value to your current work. As promised, […]

Just catching up on Nina Simon’s Museum 2.0 blog, and discovering this great post about a primary tension in exhibit space design. After consulting and writing for a long while, Nina is now ‘on the ground’ as Executive Director of The Museum of Art & History in Santa Cruz, where she is bringing her innovative spirit […]