Art is a universal good. No argument. Nonprofit arts organizations are not art, and therefore are not a universal good. No argument there, either.
“But Alan,” said the guy, “what do you have against art? It’s a public good. Hell, it’s a universal good. It requires funding. It deserves to be funded. Why do you tell all these arts leaders that they aren’t worth funding, when art is — by all accounts — completely worthy of funding?”
Search all you want. I have never, ever, ever, ever, ever written (or said or even implied) that art is not a universal good. It is. Art is essential, as we discussed in my second book, Scene Change: The Five Real Responsibilities of Nonprofit Arts Boards. Artists are magical. It’s arts organizations that are inessential.
There is no lack of art in your community. Look around you. From the shape of your chair to the design of a white, Styrofoam cup, art exists. All are artful things. All have been designed. The artistry of design attracted you to them. Art is essential. Like air, art is everywhere, whether you like it or not. In the literal sense, art is essential, because art is inescapable. Without it, well … there is no “without it.” It’s everywhere. Like air. The only place art does not exist is in a void.
Happily, and I think I speak for everyone, we don’t live in a void.
Art and artists are two different things. Artists create art. Artists designed your chair. Designers constructed that white, Styrofoam cup. If there is magic in the world, it is that artists create art. An artist takes an idea or a set of seemingly random objects and thoughts, uses skills (either innate or taught) and creates a thing. Sculpture. Tap dancing. Jazz. A play. A performer’s interpretation of another artist’s work — art upon art.
Then there are nonprofit arts organizations, which are neither “art” nor “artists.” Nonprofit arts organizations don’t create art at all. Theater companies, dance companies, symphony orchestras — none of them create art.
Saying that arts organizations create art is a lot like saying that restaurants cook food. People who cook food cook food. People who create art create art.
Solving or mitigating your community’s needs is not essential. After all, billions of people don’t help billions of people every day. But as a nonprofit, a charity whose purpose is to measurably provide a positive impact on your particular community, your duty is to solve or mitigate, not to produce or entertain. Don’t get me wrong: the art you produce can be entertaining. But only when you use art to solve and mitigate will you have achieved your nonprofit’s objective.
“But Alan,” said the guy, “asking an arts organization not to produce art is silly. It’s ridiculous. I mean, we’re a non-commercial venture, not a charity. It’s a legal status, nothing more than that. How are we supposed to cure cancer? That’s not what we do.”
I don’t exactly know where the usage of “non-commercial” came from, but there’s no attachment to a 501(C)(3) organization. Every 501(C)(3) organization is a “charity” or a “nonprofit.” Those are your two choices; they mean the same thing.
“Non-commercial” describes a usage for a piece of intellectual property, such as this column. It is licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0, a Creative Commons license that allows you to pull from it as long as you follow the legal edicts put forth by Creative Commons. Just click here to read those rules that shows how you can use this work, when to credit the author, and all that legal stuff. For the full text, just click here instead.
“Non-commercial” also means “not conducted for profit, cost-recovery, or re-sale.” That definition is not limited to 501(C)(3) organizations. Many “B” Corporations have that kind of setup, where the revenues pay for the costs and no more, but it does not make them a 501(C)(3).
Those organizations that have made the decision to become a 501(C)(3) have a legal responsibility to follow the IRS code, unless there has been some subsequent court case, as there was in Plumstead, where the court ruled that “a nonprofit [arts] organization can qualify for tax-exempt status under section 501(c)(3) if it operates exclusively for charitable or educational purposes, even if it engages in activities such as selling tickets or forming partnerships, as long as these activities further its exempt purpose and do not serve substantial commercial interests.”
Does your 501(C)(3) arts organization operate “exclusively for charitable or educational purposes? (click on the link to see what the IRS means by “charitable”)” Do all 501(C)(3) organizations deserve funding? Why does yours?
And that’s the most important question: why does your 501(C)(3) deserve funding? The presentation of art is not a charitable activity, so the only organizations that are thriving in 2026 and beyond are those that do engage in charity using art as a tool. These are the ones that consider the community’s needs (not its wants) first before planning any activities at all. The excellence of the art is the baseline, not the goal; who chooses not to be excellent? Hence, excellence is not only overrated, it’s irrelevant to the conversation.
There has been no time that I asked nonprofit arts organizations to cure cancer. But what if one produced a thoughtful art piece to scientists and science foundations that offered creative ways to think about certain cures for cancer and worked with those science minds collaboratively with that as a goal? What if those new thought processes that were developed by artists gave scientists the freedom to think outside the equations and discover that one particular kind of cancer was, in fact, curable? Wouldn’t that be something?
Don’t let your nonprofit arts organization fall into the trap of producing art and leaving it at that. That’s irresponsible and breaking a covenant that your organization signed with the state in which you do business. Your organization has a responsibility to make your community a better place to live in specific charitable ways. Otherwise, why do you deserve contributed money at all, let alone provide (and be provided) a tax break? In many ways, vacuuming money from the public coffers without providing charitable impact is stealing. It takes money away from those nonprofits — arts or otherwise — that do. They deserve that funding. An arts organization that steals money by refusing to do anything with art other than present it is as woeful as a dog on a cold stone floor. And what is the victory of a dog on a cold stone floor? I wish I knew….
Leave a Reply