You can change the minds of the armies of pseudo-populists, but only one at a charitable time. Simple satire won’t cut it. Over the next few years, your nonprofit arts organization will be tasked with trying to succeed in a local and national environment powered by zero-sum, anti-art, anti-intellectual, pseudo-populists that now hold sway. It is with that in mind that we … [Read more...] about Nonprofit Arts Success in a Changing Environment, Tip 3: Symbolism Is Cute and Clever and Performative and Futile
Development and Fundraising
Nonprofit Arts Success in a Changing Environment, Tip 2: Don’t Even THINK About Dumbing It Down
The second tip: for a nonprofit organization to work, pandering is off-limits. Take it from a notorious panderer from a family of panderers. When your nonprofit arts organization’s tax exemption comes to mind, do you believe that it is a right earned by paying money to a lawyer to file the paperwork, a privilege that requires promise fulfillment to the people of your … [Read more...] about Nonprofit Arts Success in a Changing Environment, Tip 2: Don’t Even THINK About Dumbing It Down
Nonprofit Arts Organizations: If You Can’t Beat ’Em, Join ’Em? Really?
With an empowered anti-arts, anti-education, and anti-culture base running the country, this is the time to commit to your community, not fall into the trap of cancelling them. It’s all gone topsy-turvy. We live in New America now. Ironically, the group that wanted to “Make America Great Again” has moved the country in a completely different direction than ever. We … [Read more...] about Nonprofit Arts Organizations: If You Can’t Beat ’Em, Join ’Em? Really?
The Case for Support: Voices of Our City Choir Uses Art to Succeed Where Other Arts Organizations Fear to Tread
In San Diego, one nonprofit arts organization has taken it upon itself to provide paths to success for a community whose lives exist below the sightline of typical arts audiences: the unhoused. There is a lazy maxim about unhoused people in San Diego, California. It is the idea that if people were to choose to be homeless, they might as well be homeless in San … [Read more...] about The Case for Support: Voices of Our City Choir Uses Art to Succeed Where Other Arts Organizations Fear to Tread
Measuring the Arts is Impossible – Which Is Why Funders Should Measure Charitable Impact Instead
Imagine what would happen if foundations and corporate donors funded not by grantee promises or relationships, but by their deeds and impact instead. Ah well, a man can dream, can’t he? Imagine a world in which nonprofit arts organizations are given every tool they need to succeed. Or, in lieu of that, enough money to care for their communities, provide needed services, … [Read more...] about Measuring the Arts is Impossible – Which Is Why Funders Should Measure Charitable Impact Instead