{"id":1157,"date":"2008-04-11T09:17:46","date_gmt":"2008-04-11T16:17:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2008\/04\/on_recession_and_expression\/"},"modified":"2008-04-11T09:17:46","modified_gmt":"2008-04-11T16:17:46","slug":"on_recession_and_expression","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/on_recession_and_expression.php","title":{"rendered":"On recession and expression"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wnyc.org\/shows\/soundcheck\/episodes\/2008\/04\/10\">was a guest<\/a> on WNYC&#8217;s Soundcheck (about 15 minutes into the audio file), to discuss the challenges nonprofit arts organizations face during economic hard times. The lead-in to the conversation was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/04\/05\/arts\/music\/05fest.html\">this article<\/a> by Daniel Wakin in the <i>New York Times<\/i>. The Swiss bank behemoth, UBS, had decided to pull its $10-million annual promotional spending and financial support from the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.verbierorchestra.com\/\">UBS Verbier Orchestra<\/a>, and refocus its giving on the International Music Festival of Lucerne.<\/p>\n<p>The question was whether the decision was tied to UBS&#8217; <a href=\"http:\/\/rosemanblog.sovereignsociety.com\/2008\/04\/ubs-jolts-swiss.html\">disastrous financial status<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>From the little information available, it seems that the shift is more an issue of fit than financing for UBS, but such re-evaluations of <i>all<\/i> resource allocations are certainly expected in tougher economic times. The conversation on WNYC focused on whether this shift should be a warning for <i>other<\/i> arts organizations relying on corporate sponsorship, and what they should do to prepare.<\/p>\n<p>Big-ticket corporate sponsors are wonderful means of support and promotion, but of course they carry a risk. As American Ballet Theater discovered in their <a href=\"http:\/\/query.nytimes.com\/gst\/fullpage.html?res=9D0DE5DA1F39F931A25752C1A9659C8B63\">kerfuffle with Movado<\/a> back in 2003, or as the [insert merger-and-acquisition corporate name here] Celebrity Series of Boston discovered in their <a href=\"http:\/\/www.celebrityseries.org\/0708_aboutus\/aboutus_mission.htm\">multi-name history<\/a> (Bank of Boston, BankBoston, FleetBoston Financial, Bank of America, then nothing), high-profile corporations can be fickle friends.<\/p>\n<p>As with most other forms of revenue, major corporate sponsorship is a matter of continual risk assessment, and thoughtful contingency planning (how boring does <i>that<\/i> sound?). There are a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.philanthropy.com\/free\/articles\/v20\/i08\/08000601.htm\">few things you can do<\/a> to prepare for tough economic times. But nothing beats a voracious awareness of your environment, a continual eye on the health and happiness of your biggest supporters, and an iron stomach for the roller coaster of economic fate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yesterday I was a guest on WNYC&#8217;s Soundcheck (about 15 minutes into the audio file), to discuss the challenges nonprofit arts organizations face during economic hard times. The lead-in to the conversation was this article by Daniel Wakin in the New York Times. The Swiss bank behemoth, UBS, had decided to pull its $10-million annual [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1157","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-main","7":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1157"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1157\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1157"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1157"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1157"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}