Craft Emergency Relief Fund has published Studio Protector: An Artist’s Guide to Emergencies. The fun-to-use, indispensable wall guide and companion web site, www.studioprotector.org, is for artists who want to cover their A’s (their art, assets and archives, that is) in the event of an emergency.
Nationally known paper engineer Carol Barton and a team of artists [...]
This exploration of best practices, by Lydia D. Bell, draws on the studied observations of nine leading arts and culture funders to ascertain opportunities for encouraging increased diversity, inclusion and equity in society through grant making in the creative fields. Grantmakers in the Arts and its former president Claire Peeps, executive director of the Los [...]
Bolder Giving is offering a series of free hour-long telehone conversations with remarkable individual dnors. Founded by GIA member Anne Ellinger ( Zing Foundation), the first conversation will be with Mike Schaefer, the surviving life partner of an early Microsoft pioneer, who has distributed more than $180 million – nearly 100% of their assets – [...]
“White Gold,” the ragged musician turned rock god thanks to the transformational powers of milk — is back in the spotlight. Today, White Gold launches his very own rock opera, Battle for Milkquarious, and the White Gold Milkdonkulous Giveaway — a contest that gives California teenagers and their public high schools the chance to win [...]
Here’s an interesting conversation between Andrew Taylor, Director of the Bolz Center for Arts Administration in the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Business, and choreographer Elizabeth Streb. Streb discusses her work reimagining the ways that performers and audiences interact and the nature of the physical spaces designed and built for performing arts. Streb will be [...]
In the Face of Fear
Buddhist Wisdom for Challenging Times
Edited by Barry Boyce
Shambhala Publications
ISBN 978-1-59030-757-1
“Most of us have never experienced such deep anxiety and uncertainty in the world as we are in these current times; this anthology of Buddhist teachings offers an antidote. While we can’t control the home foreclosures, job losses, dwindling savings, and the [...]
Yesterday the Boston Foundation unveiled major changes in its grantmaking strategy and announced that “the most dramatic change is a shift of emphasis to unrestricted operating support.” You’re not hallucinating, and it’s not a typo.
….
Hallelujah. This is the nonprofit sector equivalent of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I remember when the Red Sox won [...]
Does education in the arts transfer to seemingly unrelated cognitive abilities? Researchers are finding evidence that it does. Michael Posner argues that when children find an art form that sustains their interest, the subsequent strengthening of their brains’ attention networks can improve cognition more broadly.
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The Allentown Art Museum hung an empty frame in its lobby on Wednesday and will leave it there to draw attention to what the museum would look like if drastic cuts are made to the Pennsylvania Council of the Arts $14 million grant budget. Under Gov. Rendell’s proposed 2009-10 budget, more than $1 million would [...]
Andrew Taylor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has made an inspired leap with his course ‘Arts Enterprise: Art as Business as Art,’ by offering audio files of parts of the course presentation to the general public free on iTunes University.
Here’s the link to the first installment.
Not sure how this might apply to cultural philanthropy, but it is a great story.
Thomas Siebel does philanthropy differently from other donors. As the founder of the software company Siebel Systems Inc., he is one of a handful of philanthropists who have the resources to devote substantial time and money to charity. His approach and [...]
Here’s a wonderful essay….
When it comes to ambulatory life-forms, the developmental timeline is shorter, but the same principle pertains: it is a good idea for human beings to pay attention to systems and solutions that have evolved over time in natural contexts, because something very like them may work just as well in cultural contexts.
That [...]
Jordan Levin in the Miami Herald
Two South Florida dance companies closed recently. West Palm Beach’s lively, lovely Ballet Florida filed for bankruptcy two weeks ago, and Miami-Dade’s gallant Ballet Gamonet, after months of financial struggle, suspended performances in March and seems unlikely to return.
Meanwhile, American Idol host Ryan Seacrest will get $45 million to stay [...]
Earlier this year several Seattle Native nonprofit groups came together to both learn more about the work that they each do and to find ways in which they can support each other in these difficult times. The meeting arose out of a brief gathering that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation hosted to discuss the [...]
Kinshasha Holman Conwill IN THE ART NEWSPAPER
The US art world is abuzz over the White House campaign to bring a greater diversity to its art collection—including more works by African American artists [the Obamas have been quietly notifying an array of public institutions, dealers and collectors that they are looking to borrow first-rate art of [...]
An inspired program from Worldchanging:
Attention philanthropy is a gift of notice. In a noisy world, deluged in advertising, overrun with PR flacks and crowded with the superficial, one of the biggest barriers to success for a small, good idea or noble enterprise can simply be getting noticed in the first place.
Attention philanthropy is all about [...]
This is firefly season in Washington, the best and brightest in several years. Scientists say a wet spring has made a lightning-bug-friendly region even more so, and hordes of the insects are now spending the last days of their lives floating over lawns and blinking in treetops.
This spectacle holds even more magic if you know [...]
Albert Ruesga on Courtesy White Telephone Blog
Those of us in the business of grantmaking often get so caught up in the mechanics of our work that we lose sight of the transformed lives and communities we strive to bring into being. We forget the good we set out to accomplish. This is a great shame. [...]
Ben Donenberg in the LA Times
Irecently sent an article to a local philanthropic leader about the importance of helping arts organizations during the recession. I thought he might draw inspiration from it, but that was too optimistic.
“I don’t need inspiration,” he quickly responded. “We aren’t supporting the arts; we’re supporting essentials.”
I know [...]
The James Irvine Foundation will award $3.35 this year in the form of innovation grants, which CEO James Canales characterizes as “risk capital” to spur a strategic rethinking of the way these organizations deliver art.
The grants grew out of a series of conversations Canales had with some of the foundation’s major grantees after he became [...]
