Cultural Policy

November 12, 2009 by Steve

A Native critique of American life, featuring the best of Indian Country Today's editorials and perspectives since 2000. Contemporary Native thinkers and writers meet the dominant issues in both Indian and non-Indian public life head-on in this unique publication. The book is a must-read for anyone who needs a contemporary view of the major issues affecting tribal communities across the country.

Available from Indian Country Today.

November 12, 2009 by Steve

This report presents key findings from a study of large foundations' giving to Native American causes and concerns. It addresses the real dollar value of grantmaking from 1989-2002, top donors and top recipients, and the general purposes to which grants are targeted. The pamphlet concludes with a discussion of what the data imply (and in particular, what action they ought to motivate) for foundations, Native-serving nonprofits, and tribal governments.

What Works

November 12, 2009 by Steve

The story of how the Boston Foundation became the first community foundation to develop and implement policy on exercising its proxy votes on investments to advance its mission.

Posted courtesy of Stanford Social Innovation Review

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What Works (5.9Mb)

Community-Based Arts Organizations

July 13, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

2009, Americans for the Arts, 21 pages. Americans for the Arts, 1000 Vermont Avenue NW, 6th Floor, Washington, D.C., 20005, (202) 371-2830, www.artsusa.org.

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Funder as Supplicant

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

As a program officer at The San Francisco Foundation, I say “No” to artists and arts organizations daily. I try to soften the blow, detailing the reality of limited resources and an overabundance of projects, seldom discussing quality or appropriateness, thinking I am kinder in vagueness.

A New Conversation about Culture

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

Bill Ivey chaired the National Endowment for the Arts from 1998 through 2001, directed the Country Music Foundation from 1971 to 1998, and was twice elected chairman of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences. He presently serves as founding director of the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt University.

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

Claudine Brown wants us to shore ourselves up with knowledge and examples of how much arts and culture are linked to everything we do. With this in mind, she offers us her own kit bag of reasons for sustaining arts and culture programsand it's a big bag.

How Can the Arts Become Central?

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

In the past two years, several prominent foundations at national, regional, and local levels have appointed new presidents. Such leadership transitions are likely to increase in the years ahead in keeping with the larger generational shift in the nonprofit sector. Very few of the new foundation leaders are likely to come from the arts sector, and many will have had little direct experience with our field.

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

When presidents and CEOs of foundations try to balance a range of equally justifiable social agendas, where are the arts? Sponsored by GIA, six foundation leaders spent a day and a half together discussing just this topic in the summer of 2008. The relevance of their conversation and the preliminary conclusions they drew are perhaps even more urgent today than they were then, as foundations face increasingly serious questions of priority.

What Is Civil Society?

April 30, 2009 by giarts-ts-admin

In The Place of the Arts in Multi-focus Foundations, Bruce Sievers writes that the rationale for supporting both the arts and the nonprofit sector as a whole is integrally linked to their capacity to advance pluralism, promote voluntary action, accommodate diversity, and champion individual visions of the public good. “Civil society,” Sievers notes, is increasingly the accepted concept to describe this sphere of social action.