Family Foundation

In June 1998 the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers held a forum on "Conflicting Visions of Philanthropy" and I was invited to place the recent criticism of the field of philanthropy in historical perspective. [See page 44 for a short report on the session as a whole.] My objective at the forum, and in this revision of those remarks, is to put the problem in bold historical relief and to provide a context for understanding the long tradition of criticism of foundations and philanthropy. In doing so, I want to make five basic points.

1.

Management Consultants for the Arts, Inc., 132 East Putnam Avenue, Cos-Cob, Connecticut 06807, 203-661-3003

The Cleveland Foundation, founded in 1914, is the nation's oldest community foundation. In 1998, the Foundation's assets totaled $1.5 billion and it made grants totaling $47 million.

At Target Community Relations, our weekly staff meetings culminate with the presentation of the week's "Pepper Grinder Award." Any staff member who has made a gaffe of significance is encouraged to self nominate, disclosing his or her outlandish act of stupidity to the rest of the staff. The winner (or loser, depending on your point of view) is presented with a gauche pepper grinder that must be prominently displayed in his or her office until the next meeting.

Classical musics are comparatively rare; they seem to need for their existence not only a leisured class able to command a quantity of surplus resources but also a situation where that class is to some degree isolated from the majority of the people and possesses the social power to represent its own tastes as superior.

Wolf, Keens, and Company, 8 Francis Avenue, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02138

What is the financial health of the nonprofit sector and how do arts organizations compare with other nonprofits? A year-long study of the financial health of Illinois state's nonprofit sector — including the arts — provides a tool to begin answering such questions.

The full text of this article is not yet available on this site. Below is a brief excerpt.

Annual GIA Conference
November 16-18, 1998
Titled "Art Under 21: At the Crossroads of Community and Youth Development," the 1998 annual conference of Grantmakers in the Arts will be held November 16-18 in Chicago. See related article in this issue. For more information call Marion Goldfinger, MacArthur Foundation 312-726-8000.

Call for Roundtable Topics

This past April, physicians, hospital administrators, therapists, artists, and healthcare designers from all over the country arrived in Grand Rapids, Michigan, for the ninth annual meeting of the Society for the Arts in Healthcare, being held this year at Spectrum Health. This year's conference, The Art of Becoming, drew 124 participants, including twenty-seven speakers.