How does philanthropy stay accountable to the values we claim to espouse? Over the past seven years, ArtPlace America invested $87 million in supporting artists as allies in equitable community development. The National Creative Placemaking Fund (NCPF) funded 279 creative placemaking projects in 208 communities of all sizes across the United States. As that fund came to a close at the end of 2017, we decided to interrogate how effective we had been at aligning our values with our assumptions and philanthropic practice.
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The GIA Library is an information hub that includes articles, research reports, and other materials covering a wide variety of topics relevant to the arts and arts funding. These resources are made available free to members and non-members of GIA. Users can search by keyword or browse by category for materials to use in research and self-directed learning. Current arts philanthropy news items are available separately in our news feed - News from the Field.
Successful cultural organizations masterfully manage contributed and earned income. This income mix can include corporate grants, endowment income, foundation grants, government grants, individual donations, membership fees, ticket sales, and unrelated business income (National Endowment for the Arts 2012). Although Alicia Schatteman and Ben Bingle (2017) have suggested that government funding is the most stable of these sources of income, foundations have played a significant role in the development of the US cultural sector (Renz 1994; Negley 2017).
Having worked with panels since my first job in philanthropy at the National Endowment for the Arts, thirty years ago, I am always interested in learning more about how to make the panel system better. Discussions about process, scoring systems, panel adjudication methods, conflict of interest, panel recruitment, multistep review processes, criteria, and more are infinitely fascinating to me and at the heart of improving our own work at the Jerome Foundation.
In February 2018, the portrait of former First Lady Michelle Obama was unveiled at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C. Within this institution of power, a Greek Revival building lined with marble floors and white columns, images of presidents and other US leaders are captured in traditional oil paintings. In envisioning their own portraits, the Obamas made bold choices, which differed from most of their predecessors’ in the artists who were chosen to paint them and the styles in which they were portrayed.
Have you ever begun to just notice something and then suddenly you see it everywhere. Then you wonder, have I been out of it, or did this just become a thing?”
The arts and culture sector continues to have conversations on multiple levels about how to advance the causes of equity, inclusion, and diversity. The discussion is not new, but the momentum toward implementing clear action steps is building. A new level of understanding of the ways in which racial and social inequities are the result of complex systemic issues has given rise to a realization that the path to truly effective solutions will require deep, and deeply challenging, institutional change.
How MAP took concrete steps to enact greater racial equity in our grantmaking by incorporating Agile practices in our application processes
Social movements need the arts. Should we ask tougher questions to optimize their influence?
Creative voices, widely and rightfully credited as moving “hearts and mind,” are increasingly understood as playing a core role in speaking to, supporting, or even triggering broader social change. Talented storytellers are disrupting the status quo, fostering new connections, challenging dominant narratives, sharing bold visions for equitable and joyful futures, and creating vehicles for action.
These remarks were presented by Rip Rapson, president, The Kresge Foundation, to the closing plenary of the 2017 GIA Conference in Detroit, Michigan, on October 31, 2017.
Thank you, Eddie, for such a gracious introduction.