• Home
  • About
    • Engaging Matters
    • Doug Borwick
    • Backstory-Ground Rules
    • Contact
  • Resources
    • Building Communities, Not Audiences
    • Engage Now! A Guide to Making the Arts Indispensable
  • EM’s List
  • AJBlogs
  • ArtsJournal

Engaging Matters

Doug Borwick on vibrant arts and communities

Zero Sum Funding?

September 27, 2017 by Doug Borwick

The pursuit of grants, sponsorships, and donations is a central focus of all nonprofits–the arts no less than any other type of tax exempt entity. It keeps us up at night, permeates our dreams (and nightmares), and occupies many, if not most, of our working hours.

Over the years I’ve come to observe that this work is often rooted in an assumption so deep we don’t even realize we assume it. That is, the universe of funds from which we may legitimately pursue arts support is limited to a relatively small portion of the whole: wealthy individuals with an appreciation of the arts (or the status that the arts can provide), foundations with an arts mandate, corporations that for public image reasons give to the arts, and government entities with an arts support line item. Our funding efforts necessarily involve promoting one organization’s interests over another’s. This is the “cut the pie into smaller pieces” approach.

The notion of significantly expanding the funding horizon is seldom realistically entertained, although a precedent occurred years ago when it was discovered that corporate marketing departments had much more money at their disposal than their charitable contributions divisions. Today sponsorships have almost totally eclipsed “mere” contributions as a significant revenue source for arts organizations.

I would argue that the future of arts funding lies in the “baking more pies” approach. Crowdfunding, though not yet widely pursued by arts organizations holds promise. One of my early blog posts was titled 40,000 x $25 = $1Million. It is technically doable with advances in database management and maintenance. However, to be successful, it must be built on being valuable to many, many people. More on that in a moment.

But the real potential lies in the power of the arts to support interests beyond the traditional arts purview. In Engaged Fundraising I: More Pies, I highlighted Rocco Landesman’s work at the NEA. He found common ground with numerous federal agencies on how the arts could support their mission. The result was funding for the arts that had never been available before. The same principle holds true on the local level. Funding to support the arts can come from sources that are not directly interested in the arts but are willing to fund arts projects that further their own goals in social change, educational reform, health outcomes, etc. Pursuing such funding is the “bake more pies” approach.

The trick, with both crowdsourced and “not usual suspect” fundraising is the need for arts organizations to be deeply connected to their communities. It is community engagement that provides the mindset to imagine the possibilities and the tools to be successful in the attempt.

Engage!

Doug

Photo: Some rights reserved by nfnitloop

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: The Practice of Engagement Tagged With: arts, community engagement, fundraising

Comments

  1. Joanne Bernstein says

    September 28, 2017 at 11:08 am

    Your point reminds me of an issue I have described in my books as art for art’s sake or art for social purpose. Many arts organizations do feature excellent programs that support their communities in important and effective ways, and this endeavor is often integral to their mission. However, what the organizations most need is operating support so they can best realize their art, which is their raison d’être. Developing community-oriented programs purely for the sake of attracting more donations may very well distract from their core mission. Attention must be paid to this concern,

Trackbacks

  1. Defining the Role of the Arts in Dangerous Times | Hidden River Arts says:
    October 1, 2017 at 5:20 pm

    […] Hidden River Arts has never pursued grants or funding from organizations that would then claim the right to have oversight of our choices or our activities. We have only held one small fundraiser in our entire 20 year history. That will change this year, since the expansions will require that we hold some crowd-funding activities. But pursuing that kind of fundraising means that the power remains in the hands of the people who are members of our community, not in some hierarchical power structure to which we have to answer. It also means that the power to make their own kind of art lies within the purview of the artists themselves. Art by and for the people, not for the powers that fund. […]

    [WORDPRESS HASHCASH] The comment’s server IP (192.0.100.231) doesn’t match the comment’s URL host IP (192.0.78.12) and so is spam.

About Doug Borwick

Doug Borwick is a past President of the Board of the Association of Arts Administration Educators and was for nearly 30 years Director of the Arts Management and Not-for-Profit Management Programs at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC. He is CEO of Outfitters4, Inc., providing management services to nonprofit organizations and ArtsEngaged providing training and consultation to artists and arts organization to help them more effectively engage with their communities. [Read More …]

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 1,535 other subscribers

About Engaging Matters

The arts began as collective activity around the campfire, expressions of community. In a very real sense, the community owned that expression. Over time, with increasing specialization of labor, the arts– especially Western “high arts”– became … [Read More...]

Books

Community Engagement: Why and How

Building Communities, Not Audiences: The Future of the Arts in the United States Engage Now! A Guide to Making the Arts Indispensable[Purchase info below] I have to be honest, I haven’t finished it yet because I’m constantly having to digest the ‘YES’ and ‘AMEN’ moments I get from each … [Read More...]

Gard Foundation Calls for Stories

The Robert E. Gard Foundation is dedicated to fostering healthy communities through arts-based development, it is currently seeking stories from communities in which the arts have improved the lives of citizens in remarkable ways. These stories can either be full descriptions (400-900 words) with photos, video, and web links or mini stories (ca. 200 words) […]

Share this:

  • Click to email a link to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Facebook (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on Twitter (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)
  • Click to print (Opens in new window)

Archives

Recent Comments

  • Alan Harrison on Deadly Sin: II: ““Yes, but it’s Shakespeare!” is a phrase I heard for years in defending the production of the poetry from several…” Feb 17, 19:38
  • Doug Borwick on Deadly Sin: I: “Excellent question.” Feb 11, 16:08
  • Jerry Yoshitomi on Deadly Sin: I: “When I first came into the field and I met our leadership, it seemed to me that ‘arrogance’ was a…” Feb 10, 15:36
  • Doug Borwick on Cutting Back: “Thanks for the kind words. Hope you are well.” Oct 2, 06:58
  • James Undercofler on Cutting Back: “Miss you, Doug! Good heavens, 70! Thank you so very much for what you stand for, and what you have…” Oct 1, 16:28

Tags

arrogance artcentricity artists arts board of directors business model change community community engagement creativity dance diversity education equity evaluation examples excellence funding fundraising future governance gradualism implementation inclusion instrumental international Intrinsic mainstreaming management marketing mission museums music participation partnership programming public good public policy relationships research Robert E. Gard Foundation simplicity structure terminology theatre
Return to top of page

an ArtsJournal blog

This blog published under a Creative Commons license

Copyright © 2023 · Magazine Pro Theme on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in