This lyric from Queen and David Bowie (“Under Pressure”) says it all for the fight between “doing what we know” and “doing better.” Who are the casualties of battle?
In the United States, Memorial Day is a federal holiday. Like most, it is spent buying things on sale, because America.
The American people don’t really distinguish between Memorial Day, Independence Day, and Veterans Day. Somehow, each holiday is, er, um, for the troops. Oh, and buy a mattress or a blender. There are actual differences in the meanings of the three days, but most Americans don’t know or care about them, even if the differences are in the actual names of the holidays.
This particular article has been posted May 30, the day after Memorial Day 2023. If you happen to be reading it much later than that, just know that the confusion of the holiday partly informed this piece. And the pressure that the confusion brings to the people of the US.
Memorial Day only became a national holiday in 1971, partly because it was created in the 19th century to honor the Union soldiers who died in the Civil War. In case you don’t know, the US defeated its enemy, the Confederacy, in 1865. And yet, the Confederacy lives on with statues of heroes/traitors (depending on your outlook of the war itself), heroism/continued civil disobedience emanating from large sectors of all former Confederate states (again, depending), and some of the strictest beliefs of natural law/bigotry (again again, depending) in the world.
As stated in this column before on a few occasions: when Lincoln said that “a house divided against itself cannot stand,” he was right. It did not stand. It had a crumbling foundation, cleaved in two down to the center of the earth. For the United States, winning the Civil War really only brushed a coat of paint over a huge crack. Which is why, like a long marriage kept together for the kids, for show, and for pride, we’ve bickered among ourselves every day for about 250 years.
Bickering causes tension and stress, more so for the witnesses of the bickering than the bickerers themselves. In the nonprofit arts world, the bickering has reached a volume and constancy at which the foundation of support has been weakened to its core. The cracks are numerous, large, and probably deadly for the industry—at least for those who choose not to serve their respective communities by asking what they need.
It’s a standoff.
On one side of the nonprofit street, tradition. Mickey and Judy and “Let’s put on a show!” Phrases like “art for art’s sake” and “leading the audience” and “nurturing the soul.” Expensive spectacle and intimate experiences. Rich donors artswashing their tarnished reputations. White folks. Lots of old, rich white folks clapping civilly in an expensive venue with their names on every chair, every wing, every private room. Even the artists have been bought with donations, the John D. Rockefeller Associate Conductor; the R. J. Reynolds coloratura soprano; the Sackler Family Artistic Director. Taking the show to Broadway, to London, to Beijing. Importing shows from Broadway, from London, from Beijing.
On the other side of the nonprofit street, your community. They need help. Real help, or people die. Between the two sides, an unlevel playing field. Guess which way it’s slanted?
I don’t know. The stakes seem awfully high to be using the vision of a particular artist as the guiding principle of a charity when people might actually die.
Under pressure, people tend to make choices that don’t benefit the people around them. Psychologists have found, for example, that, under stress, people tend to pull things toward them. They seek control over the physical areas near them. They lose empathy or even sympathy toward the plight of others. They hoard supplies. They descend upon food stores and buy up all the toilet paper. They beat the hell out of each other for a gallon jug of water.
Predictably, during the pandemic, a significant number of people went more than a little nuts, trying to force the existence of a world where the current stressors did not exist. Incredibly, they were open to the idea of storming the Capitol, killing people, and then lying about it – even believing the lies themselves. It’s a form of hoarding; delusionally stockpiling a past that no longer exists (thankfully).
How has the stress of low attendance, contrived DEI planning with no community impact, and a global pandemic affected nonprofit arts organization decision makers in the US? All we kept hearing from too many organizations—especially the larger ones who already had a few shekels in the bank—was a yearning to re-open. Did the nonprofit arts community really believe that its organizations were essential? The public certainly didn’t believe so, regardless of the proclamations from arts organizations leaders.
The public still doesn’t believe it. So here we are: an entire portion of the nonprofit sector that bristles at the idea that, as charities, helping the underserved has to be their primary intent. Nonprofit leaders are certainly under pressure, but it’s not the kind of pressure that comes from without. It comes from within.
Within the heads of these heads are ideas that the nonprofit arts structure of old is something to protect. And yet, the production, presentation, and reason for art over the thousands of years of its existence changes constantly.
The logical thing to do, then, is to evolve. Even if it means that you have to disassociate with those things you’ve thought or said over the years. Even if it means that something in which you were passionate in regard to arts administration might be in question. Even if your long-held beliefs about the issues that are causing your pressure may have been true in the past. Or even if you still believe they’re true now. There’s a tsunami of change—social, societal, and in the behavioral habits of those your charity needs to serve—that insists on informing you about what to do next. Tsunamis have no sense of compassion or consideration. They’re unfair. It doesn’t matter.
Holding a stern shoulder against a rice-paper wall to hold back that tsunami of change won’t work. It never has. There’s too much pressure involved. Better to move to a more beneficial location of thought. Progress. The high ground, ethically speaking.
“Turned away from it all like a blind man/Sat on a fence but it don’t work…”
Based in Kirkland, Washington, Alan Harrison is a writer and speaker specializing in nonprofit organizations, strategy, the arts, and life politics. His columns appear regularly in major publications. Contact him directly at alan@501c3.guru.
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Hmm…. As I recall not-for-profit means non-commercial which doesn’t necessarily translate into a requirement to aid the “underserved”. Certainly good if one can do both, but, in my mind, not the primary goal for not-for-profit arts organizations.
Len, that’s a common misconception. Not-for-profit and non-commercial are unofficial terms that have no legal meaning. Nonprofit is a term that describes organizations whose work is covered under Section 501 (C) (3) of the IRS tax code. I suggest you give it a re-read – you’ll find that among all the relatively specific activities listed, the arts are absent as a qualifying activity that exempts a company from paying taxes. Given that, the only bucket in which an arts organization falls is as a “charitable organization,” which also has specific descriptions, most of which have to do with quantifying its work with communities on service. Secondly, and perhaps more important right now, in this Pre-Post-Pandemic Era, the public has voted on what is essential and what is not, and right now, arts organizations are not deemed essential. As such, they have to start acting like the charities that they are in order to gain essence, and in turn, gain (sadly) relevance. At the heart of the book, “Scene Change,” is all of this. Art for art’s sake is the opposite of charitable work.
Fund-raising requires convincing any potential donor that his or her donation of time or money is needed and appreciated. That it’s a way to give back, now that they are in a position to do it. There is simply no point in identifying the targets of one’s solicitation efforts as people who are “rich donors artswashing their tarnished reputations. White folks. Lots of old, rich white folks.”
What kinds of strategic solutions is Harrison peddling that will have much success for these causes closest to his heart? The reality is that people contribute to causes they believe in, or are persuaded to believe in. Typically for a donor, it is a way of giving back to organizations or neighborhoods that helped the donor materially, or that helped the donor form a life path in crucial early years. Maybe it was church or a little league or an after-school program of some kind, maybe a neighborhood cleanup project, a summer camp, a library bus, a debate club, an aunt.
Harrison’s anger is sincere. That’s a lot of energy there. But there are more effective ways to channel it on behalf of non-profits. Many people of significant means give to fifty or more non-profits annually. Once you’re in the door, you’re in the door, often as not. Why not take the “include me in” approach? The “not them” approach, the “rather our cause” approach, seems counter-productive,