Jumper

Diane Ragsdale on what the arts do and why

The role of the arts in our interdependent world: hopeful signs but there’s still work to be done

Detail of "1000 Canoes," by Marsha McDonald at the Watrous Gallery, Madison (2015)

Detail of “1000 Canoes,” by Marsha McDonald at the Watrous Gallery, Madison (2015)

While in NYC last month I attended a forum produced at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts aimed at exploring the role of the arts in an interdependent society. The forum was held in conjunction with the 13th annual Global Interdependence Day. To be honest, when I received the invitation I had no idea such a day existed and felt a bit sheepish that I had missed the first twelve. Global Interdependence Day is an initiative arising from Benjamin Barber’s Interdependence Movement. (Again, I had no idea there was such a movement afoot, although I was familiar with Benjamin Barber’s perspectives on globalization). The five-hour forum was quite worthwhile, albeit, woefully under-attended—an outcome I chalked up to timing and weather (it was held on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon).

At the same time, it’s also possible that I’m not the last person in the arts and culture sector to be made aware of the Interdependence Movement and Global Interdependence Day. If you’re also in the dark about this movement, read on.

Interdependence and Vulnerability

What is the Interdependence Movement? Here’s a description I grabbed from the take-home literature:

The Interdependence Movement, founded by Professor Benjamin Barber, is a network of citizens without borders, including artists, educators, students, politicians, entrepreneurs, civic and religious leaders and other activists, who recognize the interdependent nature of our world and advocate for new forms of constructive interdependence. They aspire to solve the multiple cross-border challenges in economics, ecology, technology, war, disease, and crime that confront us. They are doing this by imagining, creating, and practicing new, just, rewarding, human, social, economic, cultural and governance relations, and stewardship of our common climate. (Emphasis added.)

In his introductory remarks at the event, Benjamin Barber several times used the phrases “bad interdependence” and “good interdependence.” Intrigued by this framing, I did an Internet search and came across a speech by Bill Clinton published in the Interdependence Handbook (edited by Barber and Sondra Meyers) in which he gives an example of each and then talks about strategy implications. Here’s an excerpt:

I believe we live in an age normally referred to as globalization, sometimes referred to as the global information society. I prefer the term “interdependence,” because it goes far beyond economics. There’s good and bad in it. I have a cousin that lives in the hills of northwest Arkansas that plays chess over the Internet with a guy in Australia twice a week. They take turns figuring out who’s got to stay up late. On the other hand, 9/11 was a testimony to the power of interdependence. … The Al Qaida … used open borders, easy travel, easy access to information and technology to turn an airplane into a weapon of mass destruction, to murder nearly 3,100 people, in Washington, Pennsylvania and New York from 70 countries. It’s a story of global interdependence, the dark side of global interdependence.  …

So if interdependence can be positive or negative, it’s obvious what we ought to be doing. … We need a strategy that builds up the positive and beats down the negative. We need to recognize that interdependence is inherently an unstable condition, and we need to move the world toward a more integrated global community defined by three things: shared benefits, shared responsibilities and shared values.

I then went in search of a neutral definition of interdependence.

The concept, of course, means different things depending on the field (biology, economics, international relations, etc.). The most common basic definition seems to be “mutual dependence between things.”  I also came across an interesting distinction made by political science/international relations scholars between sensitivity interdependence, which refers to mutual influence, and vulnerability interdependence, which refers to mutual need fulfillment that would be costly to forego.*

That word–vulnerability–caught my attention. Perhaps because I’ve watched all those Brené Brown TED Talks. (Yep, I’m a fan.)

Bear with me here.

Though Brown has been Oprah-fied over the past couple of years (and, as a result, some may be inclined now to dismiss her as a celebrity more than a scholar) she is a legit researcher and professor at the University of Houston (her field is social work) and she has spent more than a decade studying vulnerability in individuals. If you’ve watched any of her TED talks then you know that one of her research findings is that there are two basic responses to vulnerability: people can either become fearful,  distrustful, closed-off, even aggressive in relationship to others; or they can stay courageous, authentic, open, and compassionate–what Brown calls “wholehearted.”

(It strikes me that the same could be said of countries.)

Putting this all together, here’s where I come out: there is a tremendous need for the arts in our interdependent (read: vulnerable) world. As the five projects discussed at the Lincoln Center event (below) seem to attest, the arts can be an effective tool in the face of injustices, apathy, mistrust, ignorance, and fear. The arts foster understanding, connection, empathy, a sense of common humanity, and the imaginative pursuit of beautiful solutions to our most pressing systemic problems.  Here are the five quite inspiring projects that were discussed:

  • Actor Kathleen Chalfant read excerpts from the play Guantanamo: ‘Honor Bound to Freedom, and then discussed with event moderator James Early its varying reception and impact in the UK and the USA several years back.
  • Producer Anne Hamburger and Lt. Colonel (retired) Art DeGoat showed video from, and discussed the impacts on various audiences of, the ongoing project Basetrack Live, an exploration of the impact of war on veterans and their families.
  • Mohsin Mohi Ud Din talked about the project Me/We Syria which uses handheld cameras to activate storytellers and change-makers in Syria’s Zaatari refugee camp.
  • Omar Mullick and Bassam Tariq showed excerpts from their acclaimed documentary, These Birds Walk, about a runaway boy in Pakistan and the humanitarian efforts of Abdul Sattar Edhi to save tens of thousands of orphans and abused women.
  • Michelle Moghtader discussed the collective project of Shared Studios, Portals, which places gold shipping containers in cities and villages around the world and, using immersive audio and video technology, enables individuals across the world to meet face-to-face and have a conversation as if in the same room.

We need to “keep looking and looking, until at last we see and we feel”

As I walked home from Global Interdependence Day 2015 I began mulling over performances or exhibits I had seen in the course of my life that fit this bill. The first that came to mind was  the six-hour work of French theater-maker Ariane Mnouchkine—The Last Caravansary (Odysseys)—which I saw at Lincoln Center Festival a decade ago. Based on letters and images taken from refugee camps, its epic theater approach effectuated Mnouchkine’s desire that “we keep looking and looking, until at last we see and we feel.”[1]  One of the most touching and salient techniques of the piece was that all the characters, as well as the sets and props, were transported across the massive stage on large dollies operated by stagehands/actors. Here’s how Charles Isherwood described the effect of this in his review:

These questing Kurds and Chechens and Iranians and Russians are forever in transit, drifting between familiar homes left behind and a hoped-for-refuge, and at the same time frozen in place, immobile, paralyzed by their powerlessness to shape their destiny, or event place two feet on firm earth.

Mnouchkine’s theater collective is known for using aesthetically beautiful, massive theater works to make social and political critiques of particular local and global conditions. Her work is dynamically rooted in, and responding to, the present world.

Clearly not all art is aimed at such ends–for instance, some quite justifiably simply wants to entertain and lighten the weary heart. But I would argue that in these times we desperately need courageous artists (and producers, presenters and funders who will give them a platform) and beautiful works that hook our attention, draw us out of ourselves, and compel us to look, and to keep looking until at last we see and we feel. I can name a number of experiences I have had over the past year or so that have done this (for me) including: The Public Theater/Broadway musicals Fun Home and Hamilton; the exhibition America is Hard to See that opened the new space of The Whitney; an On the Boards TV download of Young Jean Lee’s The Shipment; a stunning solo piece by the choreographer Crystal Pite called “A Picture of You Falling,”performed by Jesse Bechard of the Hubbard Street Dance Company; a cozy exhibition on how water shapes us, called Waterways, at the Watrous Gallery in Madison (pictured above) and one at the Chazen Art Museum (also in Madison) on the human figure in contemporary Chinese art; an exhibition by South African artist William Kentridge, If We Ever Get To Heaven, at the Eye Museum in Amsterdam; and the books Citizen: An American Lyric by Claudia Rankine and Behind the Beautiful Forevers by Katherine Boo.

As I think about these art works, those discussed at the Lincoln Center event, and many others–and their potential influence–I am inspired and hopeful.

And, yet, there is still work to be done.

Nurturing “public spaces that are not marketplaces”… 

Global Interdependence Day ended with everyone signing copies of the Declaration of Interdependence, which reads:

We the people of the world do herewith declare our interdependence as individuals and members of distinct communities and nations. We do pledge ourselves citizens of one CivWorld, civic, civil and civilized. Without prejudice to the goals and interests of our national and regional identities, we recognize our responsibilities to the common goals and liberties of humankind as a whole. We do therefore pledge to work both directly and through the nations and communities of which we are also citizens.

  • To guarantee justice and equality for all by establishing on a firm basis the human rights of every person on the planet, ensuring that the least among us may enjoy the same liberties as the prominent and the powerful;
  • To forge a safe and sustainable global environment for all-which is the condition of human survival—at a cost to peoples based on their current share in the world’s wealth;
  • To offer children, our common human future, special attention and protection in distributing our common goods, above all those upon which health and education depend;
  • To establish democratic forms of global civil and legal governance through which our common rights can be secured and our common ends realized;
  • To foster democratic policies and institutions expressing and protecting our human commonality; and at the same time,
  • To nurture free spaces in which our distinctive religious ethnic and cultural identities may flourish and our equally worthy lives may be lived in dignity, protected from political, economic and cultural hegemony of every kind.

Reading this statement I recognized that we need something more than the creation of bold, beautiful, socially relevant artworks.

Arts organizations in the US, in particular, must also more earnestly pursue the goal of being a “free space” (the last bullet of the Declaration of Interdependence above)—a space where people of in any given community can come together across divides and exist in relationship to one another on equal terms. Economic, cultural, geographic, and social barriers, misunderstandings, wrong beliefs, and biases persist despite much talking about them for a handful of decades, at least.

As Culturebot’s Andy Horowitz wrote recently in his post, The NEA at 50 and the Death of the Public Good:

In the absence of a meaningful commitment to, or belief in, the public good, all art – high, low, or otherwise – becomes merely entertainment product to be marketed to consumers. When we abandon the idea of the public good, we undermine our ability to create public spaces that are not marketplaces. This includes not only theaters, museums and concert halls, but also schools, libraries, and public broadcasting networks (as Sesame Street’s recent decampment to HBO reveals). The real crisis in the performing arts is the sector’s wholesale capitulation to a set of values that is inherently antithetical to the actual benefit of the arts to citizens in a democracy.

“… transforming us into people who care.”

The past couple of weeks, since attending the event at Lincoln Center, I have been thinking about my own work as a researcher, lecturer and blogger and what I am doing (or not doing) to advance the values of the Interdependence Movement.  Of everything I’ve worked on the past five years, since leaving Mellon, I have to say that the course on beauty and aesthetics that I taught last spring strikes me as being most directly aimed at fostering transcendental values like social justice, equality, sustainability, and a world of beauty. In between writing chapters of my dissertation on the American theater, I find myself daydreaming about returning to this work and thinking about what it could mean for every high school or college student to have the chance to take such a class–a class that one student characterized as, “transforming us into people who care.”

Transforming us into people who care could be one of the most critical functions of the arts vis-à-vis our interdependent world.

***

What are your perspectives?

  • Did you know about this movement? What are your thoughts on it?
  • Would you or your organization sign the Declaration of Interdependence? Or have you already? Why, or why not?
  • Do you consider yourself to be working in pursuit of goals like social justice, equality, democracy, and a world of beauty? If so, how? If not, what are your goals?

[1] July 19, 2005 review by Charles Isherwood in The New York Times – http://www.nytimes.com/2005/07/19/theater/reviews/never-touching-the-ground-in-a-constant-search-for-refuge.html?_r=0

*David A. Baldwin, “Interdependence and Power: A Conceptual Analysis” (1980).

 

Change in the arts sector. Can we speed it up or must we wait it out?

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EvolveFish

 

Devon Smith has written a smart, provocative post on a debate she engaged in at the recent Americans for the Arts Conference in Nashville. It’s called We Should Allow Failing Arts Organizations to Die and it has lit up the arts blogosphere, Twitter, and Facebook the past few days. So much so that she has added a second post responding to the internet comments. This topic is close to my heart. In 2009 I was on a panel at the Grantmakers in the Arts Conference alled Graceful Exits,What Can Funders Do When It’s Time to Pull the Plug. In 2011 I was interviewing Rocco when he made his now infamous supply and demand comment. And over the past few years I’ve written four Jumper posts on the subject.***

While one could argue that I’ve had more than my say on the topic, Devon’s terrific post, along with a recent academic article recommended by one of my PhD advisors, has inspired me out of an extended hiatus from Jumper (during which I’ve been working on my dissertation). I thought I would reflect on the following issues related to ossified organizations that fail to change or die: (1) why organizations arise in the first place; (2) why inertia sets in; and (3) how organizational change happens.

The academic article that I’m referencing is called Structural Inertia and Organizational Change and it is by Mike T. Hannan and John Freeman (who work in a realm of the social sciences known as organizational ecology).

Why organizations arise in the first place:

One of the many provocative points that Devon makes is that a lot of what counts as culture, captures our interest and imagination, and gives meaning to our lives does not, necessarily require an arts organization to be created or delivered. She writes:

I don’t have the stats to support this, but for every hour of “traditional” nonprofit arts that a consumer experiences this year, they’ll spend 20 or 30 times times that experiencing “nontraditional” arts and culture. Those experiences that reveal or question our humanity. That enable us to see the world and each other in a new light. Those experiences that delight our mind and our senses. That teach us about other cultures and expand our capacity for imagination. Because for me, those “nontraditional” experiences include going to a folk music concert, funding a poetry book on Kickstarter, appreciating the aesthetic design of an especially beautiful video game, the art of a pulling a great shot of espresso, and the craft of a great pair of raw denim jeans. All things that I’ve done these past 3 days in Nashville. And none of those experience required an arts organization to support them.

Many of them did, however, require organizations (video game companies, coffee houses, fashion houses and manufacturers, etc.). This raises a couple interesting questions. Why do organizations arise, generally? And why do we see a sector made up of arts organizations more so than a sector made up of artist collectives that are not permanently structured into organizational form?

If I asked a room of arts conference attendees this question they would probably answer that you can only get grants if you are formed as an organization and this may, indeed, be a significant part of the story. At the heart of it, organizations are means by which a collective of individuals can pursue common goals and also aggregate resources. While economists tend to explain the emergence of organizations in terms of efficiency organizational ecologists looks at it differently. They argue that organizations are favored over loose collectives because they are reliable (i.e., they can reproduce a given product at a certain level of quality) and they are accountable (i.e., they are able to rationalize their decisions and account for their actions to customers, investors, governments, et cetera).

The nonprofit organizational form, in particular, was not heavily utilized in the US until the mid-twentieth century when it became authorized (the IRS began to approve its use among arts organizations), legitimate (donors and others had begun to recognize arts organizations as having a valid educational or charitable social purpose, worthy of contributions), and materially beneficial (there were actually sources of funding that opened up that made the nonprofit form preferable to the LLC or other forms).

Why inertia sets in:

In the article mentioned above, Hannan and Freeman make the case that structural inertia (meaning a failure to change, or change fast enough, in response to changes in the environment) is an outcome of a system that tends to select organizations (over unincorporated collectives) and certain kinds of organizations (those perceived as reliable and accountable) over others.

In the arts sector, with the emergence of grants from government agencies and funders came the emergence of eligibility requirements: the presence of managerial staff, minimum number of years in existence, minimum number of weeks of programming per year, track record of producing good works as demonstrated by positive reviews, a minimum level of annual operating budget, stable operations (lack of turnover), a persuasive mission statement, clear organizational goals, and a long-range plan. These are basically signs of reliability and accountability.

And it stands to reason that within a given field it is often the oldest organizations that are perceived to be most reliable and accountable. So funding tends to gravitate toward them–funding which enables them in many cases to build buildings or hire staff, which further contribute to their structural inertia.

Not only does structural inertia increase with age and size but transformation is a gamble for organizations as it may jeopardize their perceived reliability and accountability. Big change seems to have paid off pretty well for Diane Paulus at American Repertory Theatre, but not so well at New York City Opera, where attempts to reinvent in the final years (when the organization was already in a weakened state financially) resulted in a loss of confidence among stakeholders.

For this reason, large, old under-performing organizations often resist transformation. This is the idea at the heart of the book, Permanently Failing Organizations, in which the authors essentially ask why low-performing organizations persist. They answer that it’s largely due to the fact that those who rely upon the organization for a livelihood and also have the power to make decisions (i.e., managers) keep organizations alive (so they can continue to earn a living) but fail to make necessary changes that might lead to higher performance because doing so is a gamble that could result in outright failure.

Other internal factors that contribute to structural intertia are sunk costs; political alliances; and the tendency for precedents (things that worked once) to become norms (the way things are done around here).

There’s much more I could write as it’s a complex subject but these are the key points that seem relevant for the current conversation.

How organizational change happens:

So if inertia is a consequence of these external and internal factors, and seems almost inevitable, how does change happen?

I’m oversimplifying things, but there are basically three major points of view on this: individual organizations can make conscious decisions to adapt to their environments (rational adaptation); individual organizations do change but often such change is random, rather than in rational response to goals or the external environment (random transformation); and that change tends to happen at the population level, rather than at the individual organization level. Meaning, change happens with the death of some organizations and their replacement by those with different traits (more suitable or favored in the current environment).

The last perspective is that of population ecology and the one advanced by Hannan and Freeman.

While these are divergent points of view on organizational change it is also fair to say that all three types of change can be observed. Those who advance the idea of population ecology, for instance, also recognize that there are types of organizations, and points in the life cycles of organizations, when organizations can and do change individually. A population ecology perspective would also suggest, however, that this type of change can be challenging and risky (as noted above).

So if I put this all together and reflect on Devon’s post, here’s the picture:

  • Generally speaking, organizations are favored over those entities that are not organized.
  • Selection systems also tend to favor organizations that are older as they are perceived to be both more reliable and accountable.
  • Structural inertia is a consequence of both this selection process (which favors older organizations) but other internal factors.
  • While it is possible for arts organizations to change, generally speaking change (particularly in attributes of an organization that are deeply tied to identity) is likely to be resisted. Why? Because of the expectations of funders, donors, and audiences for reliability and accountability, because of investments in large concrete venues, because managers and musicians want to keep their jobs, because board members want to protect their investments and social standing, and because the general lack of risk capital in the sector makes it less likely that any change that is attempted will be successful (and more likely that the organization will fail).
  • Thus, it is perhaps more likely that change in the arts sector will happen at the population level, with the death of old forms and the birth of new ones.

Can we facilitate or speed up the death of old forms?

The short answer, from what I’ve read, is that permanently failing organizations are hard to kill. Having said that, I do wonder whether there are changes that could be made at the field level that might influence the pace of evolution in the sector.

Here are a few ideas:

(1)    Shift grants away from large organizations to midsized and smaller ones: If you are an avid reader of the annual Grantmakers in the Arts funding reports you will have noticed a couple stagnant trends the past ten years: the “average” arts grant is (and has been for some time now) around $25,000 per year and the majority of contributed income tends to flow to the largest organizations in the sector. When I was still at Mellon I began to wonder whether the arts sector would look different today if (over the past 30 years) arts organizations with budgets over a certain threshold (say $10 million for argument’s sake) had not been eligible for grants from government agencies or foundations.

The rationale for such a norm in the arts sector is that if an arts organization has been able to grow its annual operating budget to $10 million (perhaps larger in some disciplines) it has most likely done so either through increased earned revenues or individual contributions. This leads me to a normative proposition: organizations that have the capacity and stature to attract financially and socially elite board members, large individual contributions, corporate sponsors, or large levels of earned income should cease to be the recipients of grants from government agencies and private foundations. Instead, such funding should be channeled to organizations that do not yet have the stature or size to garner such support from their communities or whose mission prohibits earning large revenues.

If such a threshold (as I’m proposing) were normalized then donors would not interpret the loss of NEA and foundation grants, for instance, as a demerit or loss of legitimacy (which is often the rationale for maintaining tiny NEA grants to big organizations); they would see such as loss as a natural consequence of growth. Funds redistributed to smaller organizations could help to encourage the scaling of artistic innovations and the development of new forms of organization (which often fail to gain traction because they are unable to capture significant grants). And in the long run, perhaps such a rule would also act as a counterweight to the general incentive toward growth that is embedded in the system. How many organizations might cap their growth at the $5-$10 million level if such a norm were to be enacted?

(2)    Taxing the assets of the big and redistributing in the form of income to the small: I’ve just started Pikkety’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and so am thinking quite a bit about assets versus income, the problem of inequality, and (related to this post) how a small number of organizations in the arts sector accumulate signicant assets while the rest of the sector is living in relative poverty. In the nonprofit arts sector, in many states, 501c3 organizations are freed from the burdens of both property tax and income tax. What if a property tax on arts facilities were instituted, paid to the local authority, and then redistributed in the form of grants to organizations that do not own buildings but do pay rents. As a side benefit such a shift might provide a nice disincentive for continued facility expansion in an already overbuilt arts sector.

(3)    Term limits in most organizations: What if the following positions were all limited to 7 years: artistic leaders (once the organizational founder has left), managing/executive leaders (once the organizational founder has left), board members, foundation program officers, and government agency program directors? The benefits of term limits are not only the opportunity for a fresh perspective in the organization but also an opportunity for “gates” in the system to open to those not favored under previous regimes. Funders and artistic directors amass considerable power (whether by design or not) and term limits are a way of dealing with that inevitability. This is a sensitive proposition (particularly given that not many people working in arts organizations have pensions); but if we are resistant to it I think it is important to put on the table the reasons why, beyond job security (which is valid, but may not be a sufficient reason for avoiding term limits).

***

So after thinking through these options, and possible reactions to them, it occurred to me that there is another option.

We could wait out the change that is coming.

Population ecology theory tells us not only that change often happens at the population level (rather than at the individual organizational level) but also that it often takes a long time.

So here’s an alternative vision.

There will continue to be the occasional deaths (and I suspect they will increase over the next 15-20 years) and new organizations will continue to be born. And some of those new organizations will have different traits–traits potentially more suitable for the 21st century. There is and will continue to be turnover at foundations and government agencies. There will also be an inter-generational transfer of wealth. New people—with new perspectives and views on the world–will be hired to run organizations, or will serve as grants managers and board members, or will have significant personal resources to invest in the sector. Some (maybe many) will see the merits in new organizations that are cropping up and will choose to redirect money to them. Dynamic leaders running these younger arts organizations will garner attention and legitimacy and either their organizations will grow in stature and size, or they will be hired to bring their values, ideas, principles, and new modes of operating to larger organizations already in existence.

It wouldn’t be entirely smooth and it wouldn’t be fast. There would be failures, tragic deaths, and some zombies would go on stalking the landscape. But change would happen.

So am I suggesting we just wait it out?

While I tend to be in favor of making structural changes to influence both the direction and the pace of change (I’d love to see all three of the ideas above explored and debated) I also recognize how difficult such changes (and those Devon suggests) would be in reality.

Waiting it out may be the only realistic option.

Does this depress me?

Not really–in large part because I have tremendous faith in the younger leaders that I see coming up through the ranks of larger institutions, or leading their own enterprises, or stepping into influential policy and funding positions. Last week I gave a talk on Civic Leadership for the fellows of the renowned Clore Leadership Programme in the UK. I was utterly impressed by the work these fellows are doing, by their deep thinking, and by their energy and courage. I see that young leaders have (in spades) the motivation and desire, networks, and capacity to potentially lead the changes that are needed. Smart boards and organizations are already investing in these young leaders (and young, in my mind, ranges from 25-45) and implementing their ideas.

In the meantime, I think that Devon has given us such great food for thought.

We are all accountable for the shape of our sector. 

Whenever a permanently failing organization is allowed to continue cranking out mediocre programming while capturing precious sector resources it should trouble us. I imagine that many of us recognize these organizations in our midst. Some of us shrug our shoulders and some of us blog about them in the abstract. But perhaps these are cowardly moves. It’s easy to criticize in the abstract and it’s easy to shrug off truly discouraging developments in organizations as inevitable. I’ve been guilty of both.

Calling out the zombies (in the blogosphere, in any event) seems mean and destructive and I’m not sure it would lead to any positive developments.

Perhaps a better route is to ignore them entirely, trust that they will die or change eventually, and (as Devon suggests) turn our attention and channel our resources to the those that are knocking our socks off. I think if foundations, government agencies, corporate sponsors, high profile artists and arts leaders, traditional arts media, bloggers, and influential board members led the way, and shifted their attention and resources, they would have tremendous influence on others.

And such a shift doesn’t have to happen en mass.

One person at a time will work, too.

*** Previous Jumper posts related to this topic: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Beyond repair? On the loss of structural integrity …

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geodesic dome and fullerThere is an arts story that has been nagging at me the past couple months. It’s the recent announcement of the revised plans for the NYC Performing Arts Center planned for the former World Trade Center site.

The plan for an arts center at Ground Zero began more than ten years ago. At first the center was to house four arts organizations but three of the four were tapped out several years ago. Only one (the Joyce Theater) still remained as of last year. The project has never really gotten off the ground and plans have changed so many times I couldn’t begin to recount them all. The February announcement basically conveyed that things are changing again: a temporary artistic director (David Lan from the Young Vic in England) has been hired; rather than creating a dance center the new plan is to create a music, theater, and dance center on the model of the Young Vic, but more ambitious; the estimated costs of the project are unknown (though previously were projected between $300 and $700 million); it seems the lack of clarity about the budget may be related to the fact that the architectural design by Frank Gehry may need to be ditched because it was created when the plans for the project were still hazy (hmmm, that’s an expensive mistake); Gehry himself didn’t seem to be aware of this, though, since no one involved with the project had spoken to him in months; and the Joyce Theater may or may not have a future programming role, depending on who you ask.

The situation at the WTC PAC is frustrating and disheartening on multiple levels. I respect many of the people involved, so this is not a concern about individuals or their capacities as directors. Specifically, it’s not about a British director rather than an American being hired for the project (although given the symbolic significance of this project, I am surprised they did not hire someone from New York). And it’s not about whether or not a multi-disciplinary space with three small theaters and a cafe is better than a dance space with 1,000 seats and classrooms, or any of the other plans for the PAC site that have been presented over the years.

It’s about the time for this project having come and gone.

It’s about organizers having, long ago, lost the plot.

More than anything, it’s about having used up all of the do-overs a single entity can reasonably ask of its community.

Not that the community was ever consulted.

Here are my questions:

  1. Who still wants this space? Whose interests does it/will it serve? And given the numerous changes should the citizens of NYC have the opportunity to voice their thoughts on whether this project should still go forward?
  2. What role will it fill in the cultural landscape that is not already being more than adequately filled by other (potentially under-capitalized) organizations? As the article rightly points out the landscape has changed dramatically in the past ten years and there are spaces now available–Park Avenue Armory, the new TFANA space in Brooklyn, the Lincoln Center theater that was previously housing NYCO–that were not available when the PAC was first being planned.
  3. How much has been spent on this project over the past ten years? And on what? Should the public be given an accounting of all the private, tax deductible contributions and government funds that have been received and expended to date?
  4. Is the center the best use of half a billion dollars, or however much it will cost, given other options? And after raising the money to build it, how will it be sustained–particularly if it has a programming strategy modeled on the Young Vic (which seems to be suggested in the article). +
  5. Finally, why has this project had such an extraordinarily difficult time getting off the ground? Shouldn’t this be understood and addressed before additional resources are invested?

On Buckminster Fuller and Structural Integrity

About a month ago, I was reading about Buckminster Fuller and came across a concept that he applied in both his work as an engineer (designing the geodesic dome) and also in his quest as an “ordinary human being” trying to have positive influence in the world. It is the performance characteristic called structural integrity. From an engineer’s perspective structural integrity refers to the ability of a given structure to withstand a designed load under anticipated conditions. In a more metaphorical sense, Fuller used the term structural integrity to refer to a person’s accountability (to the ability to be counted on to do what one has said one will do).

Further describing Fuller’s take on integrity in his 2011 book, A Fuller View, L. Steven Sieden writes:

Bucky’s definition of integrity is structural. Anything that has integrity holds its shape regardless of external circumstances.

In the same book, Jim Reger and David Irvine also reflect on Fuller’s concept of structural integrity, and how it relates to leadership:

Integrity comes from the word “integer,” which means wholeness, integration, and completeness. Being integrated is a necessary condition for self-respect, and self-respect is the basis for creating a respectful environment. Integrity means having clear, explicit principles and doing what you say you’re going to do. It’s about being honest with yourself and others.

After reading these essays on Fuller I began thinking about two things.

The first was about accountability and how this manifests in organizations with no owners. Do nonprofit arts organizations feel accountable to the public? I’m not sure they do. When civic leaders and other community members pleaded for an end to the Minnesota Orchestra lockout, which was harming the local culture, did MSO, Inc. (i.e., the board and leadership) feel accountable to end the lockout and make good on its mission to “enrich, inspire and serve its community” by producing the concerts it had promised (and accepted tax-deductible funds to produce)?  It certainly didn’t look like it from the outside. The musicians did play concerts, however–and the community, unsurprisingly, largely stood behind them. More recently, San Diego Opera didn’t seem to feel the need to keep its community informed about its apparently rapidly deteriorating finances. A couple weeks ago it sent out a puzzling announcement about plans to shut down–a decision that seems to have taken its community by surprise and to have raised hackles, particularly given that everyone had been led to believe that the opera company was doing quite well. Arts organizations talk about accountability to the public; but do they feel it?

The second thing I began to think about after reading a bit on Fuller’s concept of structural integrity centered around the causes of structural failure in nonprofit cultural organizations. When organizations or projects collapse there is a tendency to scrutinize the actions of the current cast of characters and the financial and programming decisions made in recent years; but perhaps in nonprofits–perhaps in cultural nonprofits in particular–the fatal mistakes are the ones we don’t tend to flag … because they don’t hit the P&L statement and the box office totals in the short term.

Perhaps they’re the ones that destroy something more essential to a cultural organization.

Its soul.

Its relationship to its artists and its community.

Its integrity.

The quiet harms that are done to those nonprofits exist to support and serve–the neglect, the taking for granted, the opportunism–may take time to fully register. But when they do, perhaps there is no going back and fixing the damage that has been done.

***

I don’t know when it happened, or how, but (from where I sit) the PAC at the World Trade Center site long ago lost its structural integrity. Or perhaps it never had any? I don’t know. The question now is, can this ever-collapsing structure be turned into something beautiful for the city of New York and the rest of the world, or would it be best to let this cursed project go and allow for the possibility of something entirely new to be created from the ground up.

 

+According to an annual report from 2006 that I located, the Young Vic cost 12.5 million (gbp) to build and its annual turnover was around 3.6 million in 2006, about half of which was funded from the government. It still receives about 1.75 million per year.

 

 

 

On organizations evolving: when short-term coping mechanisms become the new way of doing business

icebergsA couple weeks ago, one of my favorite arts bloggers, Andrew Taylor (a/k/a The Artful Manager) wrote a post whose title conveys a pretty strong thesis: Organizations don’t evolve; they cope.  While I share Andrew’s skepticism of the field’s use of natural world metaphors (ecosystem, ecology, evolve, adapt, sustainability, etc.) it’s not because I think the metaphors don’t apply (within limits); it’s because I think we sometimes misapply them.

Andrew begins his analysis with a comparison between individual organizations and individual organisms, writing:

We’re calling on existing organizations to evolve to the new environment, as living organisms evolve to theirs. Only, individual organisms don’t evolve. They only cope. So, we can tell a nonprofit corporate organization to evolve just as effectively as we can tell a fish to grow opposable thumbs. Its traits and tendencies were inherited at birth. It can adjust its tendencies, it can retrain its reflexes, but it’s still a nonprofit corporate organization, even if it can do new tricks.

He then rightly points out a couple paragraphs later that there are differences between an organization and a fish:

An organization is a bundle of people, things, processes, and traditions, bound by contracts and covenants, and restricted in its operation by laws, codes, and norms. A fish is, well, a fish.

The distinctions that Andrew makes between an organization and a fish are critical; indeed, it is these very distinctions that would seem to make it possible for an organization to evolve and impossible for a fish to do so.

Moreover, I would argue that (legally constraining, in principle, as the form may be) the nonprofit corporation has demonstrated that it can be rather easily manipulated to ends (goals) other than the (educational or charitable) ones which any given 501c3 organization is presumably formed to pursue. In other words, where there’s a will to evolve, there seems to be a way.

***

Organizations are socially-constructed systems with goals, presumed to be shaped by the contexts in which they are established. Typically, variations in organizations have been perceived to come about primarily through the deaths of old forms and the births of new ones. With the birth of new organizations, variations may be introduced, some of which will be retained in the population.

The introduction of the nonprofit form in theater is a nice example. In the first half of the twentieth century it was relatively rare to find a professional, nonprofit theater company in the US. With the emergence of funding from the Ford Foundation, and later the NEA, the nonprofit form became (in the words of Arena Stage founder, Zelda Fichandler) the apava for resident theaters across the US. In a 2011 talk, she remarked:

There’s an expressive word, I believe it’s Sanskrit – and the word is apava – that translates as “the effective means to make a vision concrete” or workable or real. Our apava, strangely enough, turned out to be the nonprofit corporation. Some of us might take that fact for granted, but we shouldn’t. It’s the basic reality of our existence. Before nineteen hundred and fifty something, theatre was excluded from the benefits given to science, universities, charities, the church, opera, and maybe dance – but not theatre, because it made a profit. We knew that without the nonprofit blanket we could not exist, for it allows us to receive gifts and grants and to be free of taxes on tickets.

Beginning in the 1960s there was an exponential growth in the number of nonprofit theaters. Organizational ecologists would suggest this was a reflection of the legitimacy of the form over other forms and that this growth would continue until the population had reached its carrying capacity, and then it would begin to decline. The carrying capacity is the maximum population size that an environment can sustain indefinitely given available resources.

As an example of the growth and decline in a population, as part of HowlRound’s recent weekly series on Black Theater in the US, Sade Lythcott noted in her essay that “in the roughly ten-year span of the Black Arts Movement in New York alone (1965-1975), over two hundred black theaters emerged; today there are less than ten.” The decline in that population (not only in NYC but across the US) has been considered by some in the theater field to represent the struggle of black theaters to attain legitimacy, resources, support, meaning, etc: they were birthed in a certain context and as the environment around them shifted they were unable to compete and survive.

Likewise, it is rare these days to see a young contemporary choreographer form a permanent company in NYC with a large number of dancers on the payroll, or a resident theater company (in any city) formed with a permanent acting company.

And it’s not just certain forms of arts organization that are now harder to sustain; reading the “bracing” conclusion of the executive summary of the 2010 National Arts Index (as reported by Ben Davis), one wonders if we have reached the carrying capacity for the nonprofit form in the arts generally:

Given the profusion of underfunded organizations, the nonprofit model may have to be abandoned in favor of more experimental or market-oriented business models for the arts.

This is frequently how evolution in an organizational population is seen to occur: through the death, birth, and (importantly) growth of some organizations (and not others) in response to a shifting environment.

But as we have seen now and then, and as more recent research has theorized, it’s not only populations that can evolve. Individual organizations themselves can transform (sometimes dramatically, sometimes incrementally) and do. While a fish may not be able to grow a new central nervous system, an organization, in essence, can.

An organization can “unlearn” practices and beliefs and norms and strategies, and learn new ones. It can shift its “dominant logic.” One paper on this topic (Bettis & Prahalad, 1995 – The Dominant Logic: Retrospective and Perspective) asserts that this “unlearning” and “shift in logics” may be more likely to occur out of a period in which an organization experiences a high degree of instability. (Of course, this is not always the case: other possibilities arising from instability are that the organization will survive and revert back to the status quo, or simply fail entirely).

It’s not hard to identify arts organizations that have been transformed out of periods of duress. The Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestras is a musician-owned and –led orchestra that formed after the demise of the New Orleans Symphony. The fact that the name has changed is less important than the fact that many of the same people re-organized and re-formed with new goals and a different structure and relationship between management and musicians.

Or consider the new strategies introduced in the opera world when Peter Gelb traveled from Sony to the Metropolitan Opera (which was, at the time, struggling with declining audiences and financial challenges). Consider the way the HD broadcast adaptation, specifically, has begun to influence the creation, production, and distribution processes not only at the Met but in other organizations, as well, and has begun to change the relationship of audiences to the art form of opera.

Or look at how Diane Paulus has radically re-interpreted the mission of the American Repertory Theatre. She has changed the goals, relationships, identity, structure, and strategies of the organization in response to not only a changed “world” (i.e. larger societal context) but also changed expectations from ART’s “host,” Harvard University.

Of course, organizational evolution is rarely this dramatic. More often, it happens so slowly we don’t recognize it. Paulus did in one season what other theaters took two decades to enact.

We tend to talk about the arts and culture sector these days as though it is “stuck” – unable or unwilling to change – but it might also be useful to consider how the present state is a function of small adaptations (in structure, people, processes, culture) in response to a shifting environment and the persistence of some of those changes over time (i.e., those that were perceived to increase the chances of survival).

Evolution occurs both through adaptation and through the perpetuation of whatever is working well. In The Resilient Sector, Lester Salamon has suggested that we have been witnessing a long creep towards commercialism in the nonprofit sector in the US generally (not only in the arts), because this is, essentially, what the slings and arrows of the US system encourages.

With the lack of subsidies and increased competition for funding, what options exist for staying alive? Do an enhancement deal and produce a new musical; reduce production expenses and beef up the development and marketing staff; find a corporate sponsor and produce a sensational exhibition of some kind; hire a celebrity and charge $300 for tickets; avoid producing works that require a large number of actors or musicians or dancers and more than the standard amount of rehearsal time; replace an unknown work by an emerging playwright with last year’s Tony Award-winning work; or better yet, a revival of a well-known title by a household name.

These strike me as coping mechanisms. Tactics to enable short-term survival.

In this sense, I agree with Andrew. Organizations often adopt coping mechanisms in response to changes in the environment and uncertainty. However, sometimes a coping mechanism, perhaps because it’s working in the short-term, becomes a longer-term strategy. It gets re-framed as a process innovation and becomes a new way of doing business — a model for existing organizations, or new ones being formed, to replicate. Eventually, one adaptation can begin to have repercussions on the audience, the art, and the identity of not just one organization, but on an entire organizational field.

Some of these changes may strengthen nonprofits and their ability to realize their missions and goals. Some may not.

Therefore, from my perspective, the question is not whether or not organizations can (and thus should be expected to) evolve; they do evolve. The question is how, and in response to what?

***

BTW, closely related to this blog, I’ve endeavored to tackle the concept of sustainability in the arts in a recent talk that I’ve given in Minneapolis, Lyon, Salzburg, and Belfast. It’s called, “Holding Up the Arts. Can We Sustain What We’ve Created? Should We?” There is a permanent link in the sidebar “Stuff I’ve written”.

Renegotiating the value of a museum

Over the past couple of weeks quite a few people have weighed in on the Detroit Institute of Art’s successful appeal to three counties in Michigan to pass a “millage” (a property tax) which would provide $23 million per year for the museum (91% of its budget) over ten years, while it raises $400 million for its endowment to replace the tax revenues when they run out. One of the most interesting aspects of this strategy is that the DIA offered free admission to the museum only to people living in the counties that passed the levy (which equates to approximately $20 per year tax on a home with a market value of $200,000 and a taxable value of $100,000) and threatened to shut down galleries and close the museum on weekdays if the levy did not pass. If you have not been following the story, on August 7th the levy was passed in all three counties. Despite my instinct to be cautiously optimistic, I find myself mulling over this case and wondering whether it is the hands-down financial and moral victory that it seems to be on the surface.

For background and more details about the plan read an excellent overview by Judity Dobrzynski and also one by Mark Stryker. Additionally, Lee Rosenbaum (Culturegrrrl) has written a thoughtful post reflecting on the circumstances at the DIA and her perspective that it was (perhaps uniquely) well positioned to pull of such a feat and deserving of the public support. Terry Teachout astutely assessed the keys to DIA’s success, framing them as good lessons for other arts organizations in trouble. Likewise, Benjamin Genocchio examined the financial crises at DIA and LA MOCA to exhume strategies for other art museums on the brink. And one blogger asked (without much elaboration) whether DIA’s rescue can serve as a model for others.

From everything I have read about the executive director of the DIA, Graham W.J. Beal, he appears to be a very smart and capable leader. The word heroic came to mind several times as I was perusing articles about his tenure at the DIA and what he has accomplished. And I am sincerely impressed by the successful passing of the millage—it was a bold solution to a long-term structural deficit, it was executed responsibly and well, and the favorable response from the community (I presume, though I could be wrong) would seem to represent sizeable goodwill towards the institution, respect for its collection and trust in its management, or value for the arts in general.

Having said this, I have some questions:

First, I wonder what the annual net gain of this millage is estimated to be once possible reductions in contibutions, memberships and admissions are considered? I notice that the membership fees (for individuals and families) on the DIA’s Website are pretty steep relative to the $20 per year per household tax assessment: $60 for Senior Citizens; $65 Individual; $80 Companion; and $110 Family Plus. In 2009, DIA had membership revenues of nearly $4 million. Is there a risk that some (many?) of its current members will now feel that they have “already paid” and will not renew their memberships, or that the tax will crowd out future membership growth? Additionally, the DIA shows another $2 million in admission fees on its 990, some percentage of which one estimates could be lost because of the tax. Finally, it’s not unreasonable to think that some donors may now consider the DIA to be safely harbored with its millage and may reduce their contributions or choose to redirect to other organizations that do not have the heft to win such a tax.

Second, I am more familiar with such taxes being passed to support a range of nonprofit institutions, sometimes in the arts or sometimes across sectors. While I understand that a proposed tax to support 17 institutions in Detroit failed some years earlier (some suspect because it was too high), I wonder whether a tax to support a range of institutions in Detroit might have been a smarter and more ethical solution in the long run? For one, I have begun to worry that large investments in large institutions can come at the expense of the health and vitality of (arts) communities as a whole. For another, I am skeptical that many individual organizations could actually pull off this sort of feat. I agree with Lee Rosenbaum that when you read DIA’s history and track record in recent years it seems to be both deserving and well positioned for this reprieve. Could any other arts organization in Detroit successfully undertake anytime soon a similar effort now that DIA has gone this route? Is this a strategy that favors first movers only? Is it really the model that some seem to think it is?

Third, is the DIA setting itself up for an awkward renegotiation of its relationship to its community when the levy ends? Imagine a scenario ten years from now in which DIA has been unable to raise the $400 million in its endowment—a scenario that seems quite possible given the extraordinary ambition of the goal, the poor financial condition of the city, and the tremendous competition for contributions since many public services have been cutback and many nonprofits are struggling to stay afloat. DIA has already said it will not try to get the tax renewed. If it is not as flush as it hopes to be in ten years will it be forced to cut services and institute admission fees again? And will community members that have been going for free be willing to pay?

Fourth, what motivated people to pass the tax? As I understand it, the millage was not expected to be a slam dunk in all three counties. Was it civic pride and sincere appreciation for the institution/art? Competition among the counties? A logical reasoning that $20 per year to gain free admission for one’s entire household to a public museum that normally charges $4-$8 per ticket is a good deal? I wonder whether there is something we can learn from better understanding what motivated people to vote “yes” – and also how those who may have voted “no” are now feeling about the museum? Resentful because they feel that education, pubic safety and health and human services should be prioritized over art (as more than a few comments by readers of the Detroit Free Press seemed to suggest)? Or perhaps more inclined to attend and take advantage of the resource?

Fifth, what are we to make of the tripling of attendance in the week after the millage was passed? Is this a sign that even a $4 to $8 admission fee (the range of prices listed on the DIA Website) is a barrier for many, many people? That people wanted to “get their due”, or perhaps felt a newfound sense of “ownership”? That people wanted to “celebrate” the millage? I wonder if the DIA or anyone else has polled these visitors to try to determine how the millage may already be affecting people’s perceptions of the museum and their relationship to it.

Finally, and perhaps most of all, I am intrigued by DIA’s quid pro quo deal with its community. I wonder whether DIA has set a precedent that may begin to recalibrate the perceived relationship between nonprofit arts organizations and their communities and the expected ROI from future investments in the arts. This seemed to be the argument underpinning the DIA strategy: Those arts institutions that want their communities to step up and support them will need to put more than the importance of art, quality of life, and general econmic impact on the table – the people expect and deserve a tangible private benefit in return for sharing some of their hard-earned wages. And, likewise, communities that do not demonstrate support for the arts can no longer expect to receive the same levels of service or access as those that do.

Was this simply the new deal between the DIA and its community? Or does this represent a new line in the sand … a raising of the bar for all of us in the arts?

I admit to knowing only what I’ve been able to glean from newspaper accounts and blogs. I heartily welcome information and perspectives from others on these issues. in the meantime, I offer congratulations to the DIA and the greater Detroit metropolitan area for the win. It is a vote of confidence in the arts, which has clearly been heartening to many.

PS – Many thanks to all who have continued to post comments on my last three posts. I am heartened by the terrific conversation/debate. I do expect to return to some of these issues in the future.

Nonprofit Arts Orgs and the Boards That Love Them

Last week I read an article by Pablo Eisenberg in the Chronicle of Philanthropy in which he argues that greater oversight of nonprofits is needed because nonprofit boards can no longer be trusted to make sure the institutions they govern are serving the public interest, which they are legally obliged to serve. Eisenberg mentions hospitals and universities in particular, citing the recent debacles at University of Virginia and Penn State as evidence for why we can no longer put our faith in boards. However, I think it’s fair to say that the arts sector is not immune to “poor performance, corruption, and a lack of public accountability.”

Let me ask you: Do these seem to be reasonable questions to be asked of a nonprofit arts organization?

Why was the board unaware that the organization had been, for years, overspending? Who made the decision to spend funds that were restricted and on what were they spent? What is motivating what appears to be a radical shift in the programmatic strategy for the theater? How do you reconcile your mandate to be accessible with the fact that you are charging over $100 per ticket for this show? Why did you cancel the new play scheduled for this season and replace  it with a revival? Can you explain why, over the past five years, administrative salaries and costs have grown at a faster rate than artistic salaries and costs? Do you think audiences may be declining because the quality of the programming has declined? Why did the board approve significant raises for the executive and artistic director even though the last three seasons have ended with deficits? Why are no female writers, or writers of color, featured in the upcoming season? Is it true that the work of a political artist was censored by your chief curator?

I think these are reasonable questions–difficult and complex to answer as they may be.

And yet, nonprofits often seem unable or unwilling to answer such questions directly, or they bristle at the idea that someone (a funder, a journalist, a new board member) would ask them in the first place. But one could argue that nonprofits shouldn’t need to be asked such questions at all–that they should be more transparent in the first place about the decisions they take, presumably in the public interest.

Which raises more questions: How seriously do nonprofit arts groups take their ‘public interest’ mandate? Do board members actually see themselves as representatives of the community’s interests (which they are)? Or rather do they consider themselves to be primarily advocates for the needs and goals of the institution?

Here’s Eisenberg on why boards cannot be trusted to look out for the public interest:

The reasons we can’t trust boards are most obvious at colleges and hospitals, which account for a large share of the assets of nonprofit institutions.

Most trustees at public universities and nonprofit hospitals are essentially political appointees, named by governors and state officials because of their political connections, as financial supporters, party members, or close allies to universities and the medical profession. The large majority are not experts in either health or education. Nor are they a cross section of their communities. They are among the wealthiest people in America, and they largely serve as lobbyists to attract more government aid to their institutions.

And at most colleges, public or private, it’s rare for boards to include students, professors, or members of the public in their boards, although some hospital boards include patients, nurses, and people who represent the community.

Also missing from the boards of most national and regional, and even community, groups are the blue-collar workers, teachers, small-business owners or grass-roots community leaders. It may be a cliché to say that we have become much more of a class society, but increasingly the nonprofit boards reflect that truth, and with it the problems of democratic representation and public accountability.

Instead, most trustees of large nonprofits mirror corporate America.

With the exception of the phrase about “political appointees” much of the same could be said of the boards of the largest arts organizations in the US.

Reflecting on Eisenberg’s article, I wonder:

  • Is  this failure of nonprofits to look out for the public interest a new phenomenon? Or is it possible that boards and executives have always used nonprofits to achieve institutional rather than public aims? Put another way, is the problem with the nonprofit form itself (and the fact that it lends itself to manipulation) or with board members who have become, perhaps, more likely (for whatever reason) to use it to misguided ends? Or both, perhaps?
  • If a nonprofit fails to act in the public interest, what can the public reasonably do in response? If a community decided that a nonprofit was not well run what would its options be? A leveraged buy-out would clearly not be possible but is there an equivalent for nonprofits? And if not, why not, and do we need such a process?

Eisenberg’s suggestions for improving nonprofit oversight include: requiring all nonprofits with budgets over $5 million to appoint an inspector general or hire an ethics or compliance officer; appoint an independent ombudsman to investigate complaints by whistle-blowers; or appoint an oversight committee of citizens to communicate with boards about possible infractions.

The arc of the first five comments (each made by a different person) posted by readers in response to Eisenberg’s article made me chuckle:

“I’d like to be one of those new Ethics Officers. I would imagine that to be a $2m/year job, with the primary role being to not object to the Board’s or my own salaries.”

“No more regulators or regulations or layers of accountability.”

“Regulation on top of regulation is useless. As soon as one of Eisenberg’s ethics officers cheats or steals, we’ll need ethics officer overseers. Yes, some boards will be inept — so are some professors, and writers, and editors. Over-regulation solves nothing.”

“Sure…let’s pile bureaucracy on top of regulation on top of oversight on top of more bureaucracy. And while we’re at it, make sure we never, ever trust the private sector to govern itself. Typical academic clap-trap! I guess Eisenberg proves that when your only tool is a hammer (bureaucracy), then every problem looks like a nail. We already have more-than-sufficient regulation. Let’s start by simply enforcing the existing rules. The last thing we need is more government inserting itself into the situation.”

“I can’t help but think that the previous comments are not coming from people who provide the funds for the charities.”

Reading through the comments posted in response to his article, I noted that many people were skeptical of Eisenberg’s suggestions. Nonprofits are often offended or annoyed by the suggestion that greater oversight is needed, and assert that they are capable of self monitoring. But Eisenberg asserts that boards have proven over and over again that they are not.

In last week’s post I shared the Marshall W. Meyer and Lynne G. Zucker theory of permanently failing organizations: organizations that persist despite the fact that they are not achieving their goals. Arguably, permanently failing nonprofit organizations do not serve the public interest. But as the responses to Rocco Landesman’s 2011 supply/demand salvo showed, arts organizations seem to find it unacceptable that the NEA or the IRS or state arts agencies or any outside entity, really, would weigh in and mandate the closure of some organizations.

Thus, it seems that if permanently failing organizations are going to be encouraged to either take the necessary risks to become high performing, or acknowledge defeat and close their doors, board members are the ones that need to make that demand–on behalf of the public interest. Board members are in the driver’s seat when it comes to approving organizational plans, budgets, and (often) finding resources that allow an organization to persist.

Of course, if you were appointed to a board exclusively because of your ability to give or get money, or if you mistakenly believe your job is to keep the institution alive rather than on mission, or if you are reluctant to admit defeat “on your watch” … well, it’s easy to see why nonprofit board members may be prone to tolerate a permanently failing existence.

I’m not sure how to address the failure of nonprofit boards to, at times, do their jobs (and for the record I do not think all boards are failing in their responsibilities to the public); but it would seem that if the public is, indeed, losing trust in the ability of boards to act in their interest then we might very well expect increased calls for greater oversight to be imposed–for the ultimate good of the nonprofit and the public it serves.

Nonprofits and those who love them, eh?

 

 

Are feasibility studies a racket? If not, then why do so many capital campaigns derail?

Last Friday, I read a story posted on AJ about Michigan Opera getting a one month reprieve on the $11 million it must pay to Chase Bank if it is going to avoid a possible bankruptcy related to delinquency on a bond obtained for a capital expansion in 2004. How did this arts organization get here? I’m assuming there was a feasibility study at the outset and that the feasibility study gave the arts organization a green light, right?

So how did it end up several million dollars “short” on its campaign? How did we end up hearing yet another story about another arts organization struggling under the debt service associated with a new building, or struggling to maintain higher than expected operating costs following the opening of a new building, or struggling to maintain the minimum amount of cash on hand required for a bond agreement? The recession, I’m guessing, is the party line. But as we all know, there’s always more to it than the recession. Besides, don’t feasibility studies account for the possibility of economic decline when they are giving their assessments? If not, perhaps they should.

Is it possible that either feasibility studies cannot be trusted or arts organizations cannot be trusted to heed the findings from them?

I have never led a massive capital campaign for a building or endowment. I have, however, worked at an organization struggling to operate after such a campaign related to a building expansion. And I have worked at a foundation that was continually approached by organizations seeking increased support for ongoing operating costs after their new buildings were opened. Here is my slightly tongue in cheek characterization of a typical conversation with a feasibility study consultant when I was working at a foundation:

Consultant: As I believe you are aware, Leading Arts Organization has the phenomenal opportunity to build a new facility, which will blah, blah, blah.

Me: Yes, I do know this.

Consultant: Have you seen the plans?

Me: Yes, I’ve seen the plans.

Consultant: It’s going to be a phenomenal venue, don’t you think?

Me: The architecture is pretty stunning.

Consultant: I’m sure you know why we’re calling you. You have long been a supporter of Leading Arts Organization. May we assume that this means you see value in what they do?

Me: Yes, we tend to make grants to organizations that we perceive to be doing great work and that fit within the limited priorities of the foundation.

Consultant: Would you say that your grants are competitive?

Me: Yes, in the sense that we have limited means so we cannot fund everyone doing great work.

Consultant: Of course, so it’s all the more meaningful that you provide support to Leading Arts Organization.

Me: I suppose.

Consultant: Over the next X years, Leading Arts Organization will be seeking to raise an Ungodly Amount of Money Given the Size of Its Operating Budget. This amount will support both the new facility and an operating endowment. This expansion will make it possible for blah, blah, blah. I know you currently provide programmatic support to Leading Arts Organization. Would you also consider a meaningfully sized gift to the campaign within the next two years?

Me: No that is not something we are able to consider.

Consultant: I understand, and had been told that, but just wanted to confirm that information. In that case, as you can imagine, Leading Arts Organization’s operating budget will significantly increase with the move to its new building. To sustain all of the great new educational programs and ambitious, large-scale works that will be made possible once the facility is completed, it will be counting on increased support from its most loyal donors. Would you consider increasing your annual programmatic support to Leading Arts Organization?

Me: We do not promise funds in perpetuity to organizations nor can we commit to increasing the level of support that we provide in the future because an organization’s operating budget is increasing due to a facility expansion.

Consultant: I see. I notice that you made a grant to An Organization Like Ours in the past to support new programming after its new building was opened.

Me: Yes, we did. But, again, we cannot promise today that we can do such a thing in the future for another organization.

Consultant: But it is not impossible to think that, four years from now, when the building is completed, that Leading Arts Organization could apply for similar support for some of the new programs that it is planning and that you would respond favorably to that request?

Me: No that is not impossible; but I would stress that the organization should not count on such support when doing its planning.

Consultant: I see.

Then generally a bit of chit chat as the consultant reiterates the need for the facility, all of the benefits to the community, and perhaps asks a couple more questions. Then, inevitably, the call would end like this:

Consultant: So, I understand that the foundation cannot support the current capital campaign; however, it is fair to say that you think highly of Leading Arts Organization, that you understand the need for the expansion, that you are committed to continuing programmatic supporting for Leading Arts Organization through the campaign, and that you would consider increased support for new programs when the campaign is completed.

Me: No. I’m sorry if I was not clear. Leading Arts Organization should not plan on increased support from the foundation in the future. That’s what should be conveyed.

Consultant: Mmhm.

My hunch is that the large majority of feasibility studies conducted are irrationally exuberant and portray campaigns and the expansions that they support as being sustainable when, in fact, the large majority of them are not. Why would they do this? Well, the cynical side of me assumes it is because (a) consultants are not generally hired to deliver the truth; rather, they are hired to legitimize the choices that arts organizations and funders have already determined to undertake and/or (b) feasibility consultants often stand to gain from campaigns that go forward as many of them offer ongoing fundraising or building consulting services.

One thing I do know from doing a number of these interviews is that these plans are always notoriously vague. No one will ever say to a potential donor:

Here’s the deal, if we go forward, we will need you to give support from now until you die and we will need for your annual commitment to us to increase by 300% over the next three years and then by 15% every year thereafter. And if you and many other people do not do this then we will be on the verge of bankruptcy within 5 years and will need to do a special emergency campaign. At which point we will go back to everyone that gave to this campaign in the first place and make them feel obliged to throw good money after bad and keep us in this building that we cannot afford for another year or two by making what we will call a “one-time stretch gift”. Of course this is a somewhat deceptive term as we will keep coming back to you and doing this as often as is necessary to keep us in this building, for as long as we both shall live. (PS: We are, of course, counting on the fact that you will consider a bequest, as well).

So what’s the solution?

I’ve been thinking for a few years that perhaps we need feasibility studies undertaken on behalf of “the people” of the community—paid for with local government funds but hired and supervised by an independent committee. Think of it as spending a little to save a lot. Not only are many facility campaigns kicked off with massive grants from local governments but many local and state arts councils award grants on a formula basis (meaning the larger your budget the larger your grant, relatively speaking). Thus, once the facility is completed the people might expect that even more dollars will be flowing to the arts organization on an annual basis.

This audit (which could be in addition to the audit commissioned by the arts organization) would be aimed at:

  • Accurately projecting the capital campaign costs (assuming the delays and inflation that are inevitable), the size of operating endowment that would be needed to cover costs related to the facility, and realistic income and expense projections the first 15 years in the building.
  • Determining to what degree there is sufficient commitment in the community to support both the costs associated with creating or renovating the facility and the ongoing operating costs.
  • To calculate the anticipated increased amounts that would likely need to be given by the local government, major arts foundations, and key major arts donors over time (i.e., the ususal suspects that often end up holding the tab on these projects, especially when they go south).
  • To assess the feelings of the local community about a potentially significant amount of government dollars being invested in the organization if the building were to go forward (and the opportunity costs associated with that commitment). For instance, there could be a question such as: “The city is trying to decide between investing funds in a new opera venue or a new aquarium. Which of these would be more valuable to you and your family?”
  • Finally, such an assessment could assess not only the feelings of those living in the area that would be on the receiving end of any building planned for the future, but the people on the losing end, so to speak (that is, those living in the neighborhood that will lose the arts organization when it moves).

[A brief tangent related to this last bullet point: In response to my post last week on the new Barnes one of my favorite bloggers, Scott Walters, posted the comment, “While Montgomery County is certainly not rural, Merion is an unincorporated town. The move to Philadelphia continues the urban centralization of the arts.” I wonder: How did the people in Merion feel about their museum being taken away? How will the loss of the collection impact their local community? Were their voices heard in this process?]

Are capital expansion feasibility studies a racket—a deception between organizations and consultants that stand to benefit from positive assessments? If so can we fix this? Would feasibility studies commissioned by local governments help, or would those be just as corrupt? Why do so many campaigns derail and run out of steam? Why are the expansions so impossible to sustain over time? How do we get a better picture of the total costs of ownership of these buildings? How do we recognize a potential disaster in the making before loans are issued, grants are awarded, and architects are hired? And if the problem is not with the way these feasibility studies are executed and interpreted then are we to assume that donors lie when asked about whether they’ll support an organization’s expansion plans—that they promise generous support but then change their minds?

Or what else could it be? And, equally as important, who should be held accountable when these projects end up millions of dollars in debt?

I would love to be proven wrong about my suspicions in this realm and hope that those that undertake such studies, arts leaders, consultants, and donors to these campaigns will weigh in and share their thoughts.

Is Opera a Sustainable Art Form? Excerpts from a new keynote …

I’ve been on hiatus in order to concentrate my time on the weekends to learning Dutch (state exam coming up). My last post was before Mike Daisey unhinged Ira Glass and Ira Glass exposed Mike Daisey and the whole world wrote about it. I’m not going to write about Mike Daisey. Instead, because I’m still concerned about the state of the arts and culture sector in the US (despite its “turnaround” according to Americans for the Arts), and because I’m still studying Dutch and neck-deep in my research at the moment, I’m going to share an excerpt from a new talk that I gave in February at the Opera Europa Conference. The conference asked me to do a keynote on the topic, Is Opera a Sustainable Art Form?  This is just one section (from an hour-long keynote), in which I discuss the paradoxes of sustainability. I’ll be back next week.

Is Opera A Sustainable Art Form? (Excerpt)

I recently came across a paper, Paradoxes of Sustainability, by a scholar named Alexey A. Voinov from the Institute for Ecological Economics. Here are four key points from Voinov’s paper:

  1.  After examining the definitions of sustainability of many scholars, Voinov determined that all of the definitions had one thing in common: an assumption about “keeping something at a certain level” – that is, a resource, system, condition, or relationship. In other words, a goal of “avoiding decline.”
  2. Voinov says, however, (and here’s where the first paradox comes in), that this kind of behavior—the sustaining of something at a certain level or state—seems to belie the fact that living systems tend to go through life cycles: growth, followed by conservation (or inertia), followed by release (obscurity or death), followed by renewal and new growth. This life cycle is what contributes to evolution in response to a changing environment.
  3. Sustainability is, thus, an unnatural attempt to break this cycle and extend a certain stage of the life cycle and avoid decline. Whereas renewal is about development; sustainability is about preservation. The term sustainable development, thus, contains a paradox.
  4. Furthermore, there is a hierarchy of systems; and here’s where the second paradox comes in. Sustainability of a certain level of the hierarchy may impede sustainability of systems at a higher level that are potentially more important. For any ‘supersystem’ to evolve and renew its sub-systems or components must be set free to recombine.

So, what is Voinov talking about? Forest fires naturally occur and burn down portions of ecosystems so that the forest ecosystem as a whole can persist. If we begin to prevent forest fires we damage the forest ecosystem.

And so what, specifically, could this mean for the opera world and the question at hand? Well, if we agree with Voinov and think his ideas could apply to organizational systems and not just natural ones, it means that we should ask ourselves where we may be seeking the “unnatural perpetuation of what might otherwise die”? It means that we need to think very carefully about which level of our ecosystem we are seeking to sustain. So I want to return to the question at hand, which I find compelling, in large part because of the way it is phrased. Is opera a sustainable art form? It begs a question: What shall we permit to be a legitimate and sufficient form for the passing on of the opera genus?

  •  Does vinyl count? A CD? A digital download?
  • What about a diehard opera lover who has an extensive collection of recordings, listens to opera broadcasts on the radio throughout the day, and even sings it in the shower every morning?
  • What if this diehard opera fan never purchases a ticket to see a production at his local professional grand opera house?
  • What about an amateur opera company that performs in, say, churches, community centers, or senior centers?
  • How about a children’s chorus? Or 5th graders composing and performing puppet operas?
  • What about independent artist collectives creating avant-garde and experimental works?
  • Or smaller chamber companies?
  • What about the Philadelphia Opera Company’s Hallelujah Chorus Flash Mob performed at the department store Macy’s, which has been downloaded more than 7.75 million times on YouTube?

Are these what we mean by sustaining opera as an art form? Or when we talk about wanting to achieve sustainability, are we really, pretty much exclusively talking about … well, your opera house? Or even better, all of your opera houses?

So then how do we feel about San Francisco Opera’s broadcasts at the baseball park, one of which, evidently drew 32,000 people to see Aida (see picture above)? Or The Metropolitan Opera broadcasts in movie theaters which continue to expand in reach and numbers (and as I understand it, earning higher revenues and profits) year after year?

On the one hand, we need the San Francisco Opera and the Metropolitan Opera to create those broadcasts. But, over time, one could also imagine that some people would start to go to the movie theater exclusively, and not to their local opera house. Perhaps there have even been moments when we have wondered at two in the morning, sweating in our pajamas, whether the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts in a movie theater might, in fact, eventually displace some opera companies somewhere?

Is opera a sustainable art form? It’s a different question from ‘Is opera a sustainable industry?’ Or ‘Are nonprofit opera houses sustainable?’ Or even ‘Is my opera company sustainable’?

When we say we need to try to find a way to make things “more sustainable,” what are we talking about? Sustaining the reputations, salaries, and vacation packages for directors and other professional arts administrators that have them? Sustaining all historically leading institutions? Sustaining our buildings? Sustaining a canon of great works through the recording or ongoing performance of certain works? Sustaining very specific productions, or performance practices? Sustaining the capacity for artistic risk-taking? Sustaining a pool of talented artists who, perhaps, even have the resources to self-produce their works, independent of major institutions? Sustaining broad and deep community engagement with the opera? The “what” is really important.

One of the things that is most interesting to me about the conversations in the arts sector about sustainability is that the implicit goal seems to be preservation of the oldest and largest companies, and often their venues. While we seem to recognize that some deaths are inevitable, history and good sense tell us that the renewal in the sector should happen in the ongoing churn of small organizations.

That’s natural.

As opposed to the collapse or 180-degree transformation of established, historically leading institutions, which we would find not only unnatural but probably truly alarming. Hence, one concludes, the strategy of the Dutch government and others. Sustain the large institutions and let the rest of the sector churn, which we presume leads to innovation, and not to the loss of innovation from the sector.

There is an assumption that the ‘supersystem’ we are trying to sustain and grow is the infrastructure of existing large, leading professional opera houses. But what if the ‘supersystem’ is the relevance of opera as an art form as demonstrated by its ongoing practice and enjoyment? That could mean that everything else (large, historically leading companies, smaller amateur companies, training programs, the recording industry, and on and on) is part of a sub-system and may need to evolve in order for opera as an art form to be sustained.

Voinov, A. (1998). “Paradoxes of Sustainability” in Journal of General Biology, 59:1, pp. 209-218.

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