Grantmakers in the Arts

Rick Moyers, from The Chronicle of Philanthropy:

The general aversion of many boards to talking about finances in any detail creates an initial roadblock to conversations about reserves. And the lack of a widely understood and commonly used definition of operating reserves doesn’t help. It’s hard to talk about something if you don’t know what it is.

In an article for boston.com, Michael Rezendes outlines Boston's updated tax-related-non-taxing of the city's larger education, health, and cultural nonprofits. He explains:

On Tuesday, the university plans to announce that Joichi Ito, known as Joi, will become the fourth director of the M.I.T. Media Laboratory, which was originally founded by the architect Nicholas Negroponte in 1985 and has since become recognized for its willingness to take risks in developing technologies that are at the edge of the computing frontier.

"First, whenever I hear that an arts organization has had recurring deficits (often leading to the accumulation of excessively high debt), my first question is: does this organization’s trustees know how to read an audited financial statement and a cash flow statement? This is a sincere question."

Last fall, I blogged about the launch of Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes' nonprofit social networking site, Jumo. Since then, over 15,000 nonprofits and NGOs have created profiles on the Facebook-intertwined Beta site. Kerry A. Dolan interviewed Hughes and reported yesterday on the website's progress for Forbes:

A variety of events from April's Arts Advocacy Day are now available from Americans for the Arts and Ovation TV, including Kevin Spacey's Nancy Hanks Lecture, but also including Spacey, Alec Baldwin and Hill Harper speaking to the advocates for Congressional Arts Kick-Off on Capitol Hill and a flash mob performance of “America the Beautiful.”

See it all here.

On April 27 - 29 in Chicago, more than 50 Mayors along with design and development experts will convene at the Chicago Hilton for a National Summit on City Design to identify challenges, opportunities and funding sources for cities that work well. Participants will examine the power of arts and design to transform cities while celebrating the Mayors Institute of City Design (MICD) – a collaboration of the National Endowment of the Arts (NEA), The U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), and the American Architectural Foundation (AAF) – and honoring the design legacy of former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley.

An April 2011 report by the American Association of Museums outlines the major findings of a survey completed by 383 AAM members. Drawing from a cross-section of U.S. museum and collection types, the authors of U.S. Museums Continue to Serve Despite Stress identify a series of common practices and challenges: