Individual Donor

In a past report on challenges facing San Francisco Bay Area arts nonprofits (Reader, Vol. 11, No. 2), I wrote at length about space. Many nonprofits had been forced to seek new office, rehearsal, and storage space due to a steep rise in Bay Area real estate costs fueled by demand from a dot-com economy for start-up locations. The situation seems to have eased somewhat, in part due to funder- and municipally-driven programs as well as to a general downturn in the economy.

2000, CD-ROM, The McKnight Foundation, 600 TCF Tower, 121 South Eighth Street, Minneapolis, Minnesota 55402, (612) 333-4220.

This CD-ROM contains the results of The McKnight Foundation's recent study, the Cost of Culture, which polled 405 Minnesota artists about their economic and creative well-being. In 1996 the Foundation reported on the state of the arts in Minnesota, and now, as board chair Noa Staryk stated, "we felt it was time to take a closer look at the condition of individual artists."

June 2000, 89 pages, The Arts Marketing Center of the Arts & Business Council of Chicago.

October 2000, 100 pages, $16. National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC), 346 Ninth Street, San Francisco, California 94103, (415) 431-1391.

2000, 52 pages, New England Foundation for the Arts (NEFA).

Working paper writer, Mindy Levine; convening curator, Heather Hitchens

August 2000, 24 pages, Arts International.

2000, 18 pages, Minnesota Public Radio (MPR), 45 East Seventh Street, Saint Paul, Minnesota 55101, (651) 290-1262.

Minnesota Public Radio, as a collaboration between its Civic Journalism Initiative and the program Sound Money, brought together more than 100 individuals, ranging from leading thinkers in the philanthropic field to new Microsoft millionaires, last September for a day-long summit to explore what it thought would be interesting fodder for discussion: the untapped giving potential in the United States.

November 2000. Benton Foundation, 950 18th Street, NW, Washington, DC 20006, (202) 638-5770.

Cultural Policy Research was the topic of two breakfast roundtables at GIA's 2000 conference in Minneapolis. A combination of scheduled presenters and other participants gave brief summaries of current research underway. The cumulative impact of hearing about so many projects at the same time inspired Reader editors to want to share the reports with our readers. This overview does not pretend to be exhaustive, but rather is a snapshot based on roundtable participation and the ability of the following report contributors to respond quickly to our invitation. We extend many thanks to them.

In summer 2000, junior professionals working in Los Angeles County arts and culture organizations gathered to form the Emerging Arts Leaders (EAL), named to reflect their ambitions of becoming established arts leaders. The group has met bimonthly four times and is in the process of formalizing a mission statement and 2001 activities, one of which is to establish a professional development training program. EAL is composed of about thirty junior professionals from all facets of the arts (artists, arts organizations, grantmakers, for-profit enterprises, and independent consultants).