I’m just trying to help save the nonprofit arts industry from its own worst impulses. Where’s my utility belt, Alfred?!
It always happens.
Whenever I am asked to speak to a group or I write an article or a book, there are those that get caught in the invectives. They get angry because they feel attacked rather than advised. And inevitably, these are the people in the crowd doing the right things in leading their nonprofit arts organizations, or at least enough of the right things. They may not be perfect (no one is, and no organization is), but they understand that their community is the one who granted them the power to be exempt from some taxes and therefore are their bosses.
Sadly and predictably, the larger “flagship,” “venerable,” and “longtime” organizations — the ones who practice the kind of toxic leadership, elitist donorship, and non-charitable activities — are the same ones who believe that these invectives are definitely not about them. They almost always are.
It’s an easy concept to understand and, to quote Professor Robert I. (Bob) Sutton, one of the great leadership thinkers in the US:
“The best leaders and experts have confidence to act on what they believe, and the humility to know (and act) as if they might be wrong. To ‘argue as if they are right and listen as if they are wrong.’ I confess, however, that — for me — saying this stuff is a lot easier than doing it.”
Saying this stuff is a lot easier than doing it. I should know; I worked in the nonprofit arts industry for about 30 years, and I didn’t get it until after I was done. When I am asked in an interview or a podcast about the audience for my books, my quick response is that I’ve written them for the 30-year-old me, that guy who’d just become a department head for the first time. If I knew then what I know now, as the saying goes…
Some readers have railed, “you are a bomb-throwing provocateur,” “you’re out of your mind,” “you’ve gone off the deep end,” and simply “you’re angry at everybody.” I’ve been told that my work is somehow revenge-driven and, more than once, I’ve been accused of never having been in the business in the first place (and therefore, unqualified to write about it).
I might be some of those things. Not the last one, of course, because 30 years is 30 years, good and bad. Certainly, it has not been an easy task to call attention to bad acts of an entire industry in order to stop it from closing prematurely. Or to call out people who are ruining it for everyone.
It’s not about now; it’s about the future.
Alas, I can see a future — one or two generations from now — in which people look back on live performances and exhibits with a warm glow, as something that used to happen and “wasn’t that nice.” Like talking on the landline with your girlfriend or boyfriend for hours at a time. Or watching television as an appointment event, knowing that Friends or Cosby was on Thursday nights. Just like our parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents looked back on vaudeville, Jack Benny, The Marx Brothers, The Shadow, and sitting at the table at dinnertime to discuss the day. And previous generations looked back at ice cream socials, talking with neighbors from the front porch, and telling family stories at the big Sunday dinner at the patriarch’s and matriarch’s house every week.
Future generations might look back on live performances and exhibitions as quaint reminders that art used to be used as a tool of meaning, not as a panacea for stress. Attending was inconvenient, and yet the inconvenience was worth it because of the stories that changed your life for the better. You had to sit in a room bedecked with red velvet or go to a strange thing called a museum or gallery and walk around with strangers looking at paint or steel or wax or marble or some other medium becoming something else.
Soon enough, all art will be accessed individually, either electronically or through some technology yet to be invented, and it will serve those who sell it, not those who see it. Yet, there will be those who, like the famous frogs-in-boiling-water parable, will not notice the elimination of the public spirit until it’s too late.
I hate having that thought.
Hence, I’m going to continue to shout about using art as a tool (and not as a product) to battle inequity, insecurity, injustice, and lifting the lives of those at the bottom of Maslow’s Hierarchy until dementia forces me to stop knowing what words mean. Lord knows I don’t make money at this, nor do I expect to leave some legacy. I just believe, as so many of you tell me you do on those good days, that the nonprofit arts industry was meant to use the 501(C)(3) code as a guide. Nonprofit arts organizations don’t have to do that to maintain nonprofit status (there was a court case that said so); but they’re just lousy when they don’t and, it follows, don’t deserve to be funded just by being large or branded as a 501(C)(3).
Just because a restaurant exists doesn’t mean you have to eat there, even if it’s been there a long time and used to be good. And just because a large nonprofit in your community — your venerable orchestra, your flagship theater, your established opera, your 75-year-old ballet, your city-branded museum, etc. — is legally a nonprofit doesn’t mean that their activities are worth supporting if they don’t help anyone but the donors that contribute (plaques on the wall, names on the seats, better seats, dinner with the director, etc.).
If you are a funder, all I ask is that you treat your nonprofit arts organizations the same way you treat all the other nonprofit organizations in your community — looking at their impact, not their paid attendance, economic impact, or national data on education issues. You’ll discover that there are a few organizations doing charitable things for people who need them. If you’re a government funder, stop asking about irrelevant metrics like tourism results (out-of-town ticket sales) and focus on your own community. Tourism is not a nonprofit metric and any nonprofit arts organization that uses tourism results as a primary goal is not really a charity, is it?
If you run one of the worthy organizations, keep it up. No one’s mad at you, for Pete’s sake. In fact, let me know how I can highlight your impact on your chosen community. Tell me what you did, why it was important, and how people benefited from your art in tangible terms. I’d be thrilled to pass along those data.
As larger organizations continue to drown in the toxic, elitist toilet they’ve built for themselves, our job is to save the industry from their bad acts. Gravitational irresponsibility is strong among grand, meaningless companies. Unfortunately, it might even sweep your company (good as it is) down the whirlpool of irrelevance along with them. So, it’s important to make noise as well, even if you’re already doing the right thing. Otherwise, vaudeville.
Now, back to the Bat Cave to celebrate my birthday today (May 14). I will have pie, not cake. I like pie. Now, where did I put those darn bomb fuses…?
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