Funding Research

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).

See them in snow under a full moon
they told me.
The shadows will take you out of
yourself to when
the Stones were erected, the time it
took and the reason
we try to guess today.

Richard Hugo, from "The Standing Stones of Callanish"

Poets know that how we ask a question determines how we see the answer. The Murdock Charitable Trust, in its ambitious new study of arts funding, is learning the same thing. It's often your landscape of assumptions that determines what you can see.

The Potrero Nuevo Fund is a donor-advised fund housed at the Tides Foundation in San Francisco. Established about five years ago by Bill Laven and Christine Pielenz, the Fund supports projects in the arts, the environment, and sustainable architecture. While the Fund's giving to environmental and sustainable architecture projects is international in scope, the arts giving is focused on the Bay Area, and primarily on individuals and arts education.

The Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation was established in 1985 to provide supplemental instruction to promising young artists and financial assistance to visual artists of demonstrated talent. Today, the Foundation awards approximately $500,000 annually.

Filmmaker, painter, and composer Jerome Hill established the Jerome Foundation in 1964, and was active in its operation until his death in 1972. The Foundation makes grants to support the creation and production of new artistic works by emerging artists, and contributes to these artists' professional advancement. The Foundation states its "belief in the vigorous and distinctive voices of artists whose works challenge our thinking and add meaning to our lives.

2000, 218 pages, $19.95, Jossey-Bass

Don't let the medical bag with the big Red Cross on the cover of Alvin Reiss' CPR for Nonprofits fool you, the book is not about rescuing dying nonprofits. Instead it offers self-help for those willing to follow Reiss' prescription for breathing new life into organizations by identifying Challenges, developing a Plan and achieving Results.

Sitting around tables at a conference center last May, we each joined five other participants in imagining and illustrating possibilities for artists who work in community arts programs for youth. We were part of a group of around thirty people convened as a working group first in San Jose, California in May 2000 and again in October in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Our aim was to explore how to build understanding and action toward the sustainable involvement of artists and arts professionals in youth and community development.

2000, 16 pages, Business Committee for the Arts, Inc., 1775 Broadway, Suite 510, New York, New York 10019, (212) 664-0600.

Consider using arts images in advertisements to associate your company with quality and performance, giving a museum membership to new employees as a signing bonus, having an arts and crafts event in the workplace for employees' children, or inviting artists to show their work in your office or retail space to create traffic.

October 18-20, 2000, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, co-sponsored by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and Heinz Endowments.
November 13-15, 2000, San Francisco, California, co-sponsored by the Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund and Walter and Elise Haas Fund.

March 2000, 29 pages, executive summary; 126 pages, narrative report. ArtsMarket. Copies are available from Walter and Elise Haas Fund, One Lombard Street, Suite 305, San Francisco, California 94111, (415) 398-4474.