Foundation management

When I applied for a position at the Howard Gilman Foundation in the summer of 2014, there was very little I could do in the way of research or preparation. Online material about the late Howard Gilman was sparse. His foundation appeared to have a website, but upon closer inspection, it was just a single home page, and even that seemed out of date.

Digging Up

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.

“The board meeting is not going well. (...) To the consternation of some board members, the executive director suggests that increasing staff diversity is a top priority.” One exasperated member says to the executive director, “You want to spend your time on that? We have so many more-pressing problems!”

The Surdna Foundation has announced that Don Chen will serve as the new president of the foundation. Chen currently leads the Just Cities and Regions team at the Ford Foundation and has been with the foundation since 2008.

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   Arts Funding at Twenty-Five (318Kb)

Introduction

The easy convenience of typing a few key words into a search box and promptly being immersed in data can make one forget that this capability has existed for a remarkably short period of time. Just twenty-five years ago — a point in time well within the recollection of most members of the arts and culture sector — Stanley N. Katz, then president of the American Council of Learned Societies, observed, “the serious study of arts philanthropy is less than a generation old, and we are just beginning the sorts of data collection and analysis…we need to make sound judgments about the field.”¹

The quest for support for the arts is continuous. We search for ways to seed or increase the flow of dollars, looking for more philanthropic capacity from every purse. It is never as bounteous as the need.

July 2017, 37 pages. Surdna Foundation, 330 Madison Avenue, 30th Floor, New York, NY 10017. (212) 557-0010. http://surdna.org.

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What do you believe the arts sector ought to look like twenty years from now? This is a question that every arts funder should be able to answer with a healthy amount of specificity. Whether arts funders choose to acknowledge it or not, much of what we do shapes the future of the field. This point is not intended to give arts funders more power than we actually have but to acknowledge reality. Funders’ actions — including when we choose not to act — prioritize, privilege, and capitalize particular models over others.

Many foundations are considering adding impact investing as a tool to complement their grantmaking activities. This article explains the practice generally and as it applies to funders working in the arts and culture sector. We will begin by introducing the terminology and motivation for impact investing, then provide an overview of the options, and conclude with examples from four foundations that have made impact investments in arts and culture.

Understanding the Language