{"id":925,"date":"2006-08-02T07:37:03","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T14:37:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp\/2006\/08\/thinning_the_nonprofit_arts_he\/"},"modified":"2006-08-02T07:37:03","modified_gmt":"2006-08-02T14:37:03","slug":"thinning_the_nonprofit_arts_he","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/main\/thinning_the_nonprofit_arts_he.php","title":{"rendered":"Thinning the nonprofit arts herd"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Western States Arts Federation (<A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.westaf.org\/\">WESTAF<\/a>) Executive Director Anthony Radich makes some rather bold statements in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.westaf.org\/blog\/archives\/2006\/07\/hessenius_group_8.php\">a weblog conversation by the Hessenius group<\/a> (scroll about halfway down the page). In his opinion, the volume of arts production has grown beyond sustainability in many communities, and the oversupply is killing vitality and connection between arts and audience. His suggested solution? Encourage some arts organizations to die:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><\/p>\n<p>So let&#8217;s euthanize some arts organizations. Let&#8217;s pull some of the nonprofit arts programming off the arts-production line and free up funding and talent for reallocation to stronger efforts&#8211;especially to new efforts tilted toward engaging the public. Let&#8217;s return to the concept of offering seed money for organizations that, over a period of years, need to attract enough of an audience and develop enough of a stable financial base to survive and not structure them to live eternally on the dole. Let&#8217;s find a way to extinguish those very large groups that are out of audience-building momentum and running on inertia. Instead of locking arts funders into a cycle of limited choices, let&#8217;s free up some venture capital for new arts efforts that share the arts in new ways with the public.<\/p>\n<p>Euthanizing arts organizations will not be easy, but the alternative is the underwriting of a museum of arts organizations&#8211;a dust bin of well-intentioned nonprofit arts programming that either never quite connected with the public or whose day has passed. The public expects more from our field. They will return in numbers to nonprofit arts programming when we clear out the ghost organizations that live on without community support. These entities are a heavy weight on our efforts to share meaningful and insightful arts experiences with others.<\/p>\n<p><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>It&#8217;s a wrenching and incendiary conversation for our field&#8230;but absolutely necessary. Of course, the essential questions of such a strategy are &#8221;who gets to decide which live and which die?&#8221; and &#8221;by what criteria do we make that decision?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Western States Arts Federation (WESTAF) Executive Director Anthony Radich makes some rather bold statements in a weblog conversation by the Hessenius group (scroll about halfway down the page). In his opinion, the volume of arts production has grown beyond sustainability in many communities, and the oversupply is killing vitality and connection between arts and audience. [&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-925","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\/925","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=925"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/925\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=925"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=925"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/artfulmanager\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=925"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}