{"id":648,"date":"2011-10-26T10:29:57","date_gmt":"2011-10-26T14:29:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/?p=648"},"modified":"2011-10-26T10:29:57","modified_gmt":"2011-10-26T14:29:57","slug":"arts-2-0-the-power-to-give","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2011\/10\/arts-2-0-the-power-to-give\/","title":{"rendered":"Arts 2.0: The Power to Give"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"My neighbor from down I-85 (or I-40\/I-77, I get to choose) has made a big splash recently with a great project for bringing the arts industry into the social media\/networking age with respect to fundraising. The Arts and Science Council of Charlotte<\/a> has introduced a new program, Power2Give<\/a>. In his October 17 post (The Power to Give<\/a>) on the NEA’s blog, Art Works<\/a>, Scott Provancher, President of the ASC, introduced this new online giving\/crowdsourced fundraising vehicle. I’ll let you read the post and explore the website, but in a nutshell, P2G is a robust fundraising tool that has grown out of the experience of such online funding mechanisms as Kickstarter<\/a>. It is a website that “allows anyone to easily give a gift to the organizations and projects they are most passionate about. The site provides the option to give to an arts organization’s specific project or to buy gift cards in support of local arts organizations.” The Give to a Project<\/a> page looks very much like Kickstarter, complete with dollar goals, giving percentages, and a countdown clock. (Kickstarter projects are all-or-nothing; they must be fully funded within a certain period of time or none of the money is released. This is not true of Power2Give. A donation is a donation.) Here is the most eye-opening passage from Scott’s post:<\/p>\n

[I]n the first seven weeks since the launch of the site in Charlotte, we have fully funded 37 projects, raised over $150,000, and attracted over 650 donors. Several of the organizations who have posted projects have individually raised $15,000 or more and one group even reported that their $3,000 project was fully funded by ALL NEW donors!<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course a part of the initial success is that the Knight Foundation is making a 1:1 match of all gifts at this stage. Clearly that’s helpful. However, this strikes me as a funding mode that will succeed even after the match has run out.<\/p>\n

You will be hearing more (much, much, much more, I imagine) about this in the coming months. This may be as big an innovation in the arts as Subscribe Now!<\/a> was all those years ago. (The youngsters in the crowd can now ask someone who Danny Newman was.) That by itself would be enough to get me to lend kudos here to ASC. However, this blog is primarily about community engagement and I’d like to make an observation or two about this.<\/p>\n

In my reading of the Art Works post, the emphasis is on expanding the contributor\/participant base somewhat\u2013to younger, technologically oriented people. That is a good thing, but the “product” is largely still envisioned as “that which is.”\u00a0 Of course, that is only natural. This is a new program and the organizations posting projects are established ones. What intrigues me is the potential this has for influencing arts organizations to develop programming that more directly touches the lives of non-usual suspects. The dependence of the arts (as well as the entire not-for-profit world) on major donors means that the interests of those people are the ones that hold the most sway. Like the small donor funding of the Obama campaign in 2008, Power2Give has the potential to spread the base of support. This, in turn, could well lead to arts programming that is meaningful to greater numbers of people. I’ll have more to say on this later.<\/p>\n

———————<\/p>\n

In the meantime, I’ve been waiting for a good excuse to highlight this example and now seems a perfect time. Amy Martin<\/a> is a Montana-based performing artist supported by Fractured Atlas<\/a>. (I’ve really got to talk about them in a post one day. For those of you who have not heard of FA, it provides fiscal sponsorship to non-501(c)(3) organizations and individuals so those organizations and individuals can receive tax deductible donations and foundation grants.) Amy has established something she calls Patronopolis<\/a>. It is a crowdsourced fundraising vehicle to support her work. People give her money and she creates: patronage in small bites. This is incredibly entrepreneurial. And, while some might view it as presumptuous, no one is forcing anyone to give. Clearly, if her work gets funded, it will be because it has meaning to those who support it. I don’t have much of an opinion, one way or the other, about her work. I’ve not viewed\/heard enough of it to have one. But I do think this concept is cool and has potential for individual artists (with or without the fiscal sponsor aspect: Kickstarter donations are not tax deductible). Creatively done, Amy.<\/p>\n

Engage!<\/p>\n

Doug<\/p>\n

Photo: \"Attribution\"<\/a> Some rights reserved<\/a> by James Cridland<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

My neighbor from down I-85 (or I-40\/I-77, I get to choose) has made a big splash recently with a great project for bringing the arts industry into the social media\/networking age with respect to fundraising. The Arts and Science Council of Charlotte has introduced a new program, Power2Give. In his October 17 post (The Power […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","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":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[9,5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-648","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-arts-2-0","7":"category-principles","8":"category-the-practice-of-engagement","9":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1G6h9-as","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":2761,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2013\/04\/engaged-fundraising-ii\/","url_meta":{"origin":648,"position":0},"title":"Engaged Fundraising: II","author":"Doug Borwick","date":"April 10, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"When last we met, I talked about community engaged fundraising providing the option of gaining us access to more diverse funding sources. 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Not smaller pieces; rather, bake more pies.","rel":"","context":"In "The Practice of Engagement"","block_context":{"text":"The Practice of Engagement","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/category\/the-practice-of-engagement\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/03\/Pies-e1502213568579.jpg?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":5082,"url":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/engage\/2017\/11\/external-connections\/","url_meta":{"origin":648,"position":4},"title":"External Connections","author":"Doug Borwick","date":"November 15, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"Fundraising, sales, education, and engagement are how we \"connect.\" They are all important to the current and future health of our organizations. 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