GIA Blog

From Felicia R. Lee, writing for The New York Times:

By Janet Brown from her blog Better Together:

A very smart woman once told me there are two motivating factors in the world: love and fear. I’ve spent the past several years analyzing actions, events, and people under this framework and trying to assess my own motivations in different situations. It holds up.

Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) has released new analysis of its 2014 survey of nonprofit organizations, which includes responses from 919 arts organizations nationwide. The State of the Arts and Culture Sector report captures the challenges and triumphs of nonprofits grappling with financial pressures, changing demographics, new technologies and new opportunities to expand the reach of their programs and services.

The Surdna Foundation is issuing a request for proposals to individual artists, culture bearers and nonprofit arts organizations. These funds are designed to support projects developed in response to communities’ specific challenges and to support artists and organizations whose long-term, deeply-rooted work has increased social engagement without necessarily being explicitly “activist.” The foundation will consider all artistic disciplines, including cross-disciplinary work. The deadline for submitting a proposal is November 12, 2014 at 11:59 pm EST. Grants will be announced in April 2015.

Grantmakers in the Arts is pleased to announce the public release of A Proposed National Standard Taxonomy for Reporting Data on Support for Individual Artists. Two years ago, GIA launched an initiative to develop a taxonomy of artists support that can serve as a national standard for collecting, comparing, and analyzing data on support programs for individual artists.

For the month of September, ArtsFwd will explore how different organizations build and use funds to adapt and change. Those of you familiar with GIA’s work promoting capitalization know that change capital allows organizations to remain innovative, creative, and adaptive — and as a whole, can keep the arts sector in a position to thrive. Follow the start of ArtsFwd’s conversation here.

Join the Community Partnership for Arts and Culture on October 29 and 30 for the Creative Minds in Medicine Conference to explore the fusion of arts and healthcare in Cleveland. Speakers include Gary Glazner, Alzheimer's Poetry Project; Sunil Iyengar, National Endowment for the Arts; Mel Chin, Operation Paydirt; and Nadine Licostie, Red Thread Productions.

Bloomberg Philanthropies has announced the expansion and rebranding of Bloomberg Connects (formerly known as the Digital Engagement Initiative). Bloomberg Connects provides funding for the development of technology to increase access to cultural institutions and enhance visitor experiences. The expansion includes a new $17 million commitment to support the American Museum of Natural History, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cooper-Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay, and the Science Museum in London to produce innovative projects like immersive rooms, interactive devices and mobile applications that use cutting edge technology and enable visitors to share content.

Barry's Blog returns with its annual listing of leaders in the nonprofit arts community. The list is rich with GIA members:

The National Endowment for the Arts will host an arts education webinar featuring Rich Harwood, a leading authority on public innovation, who will discuss how to authentically engage local communities in collective impact. This webinar is part of a series on collective impact organized by the NEA’s Arts Education office. The webinar takes place on Wednesday, September 24, 2014 beginning at 3pm EDT / noon PDT.