The Foundation Heimlich Maneuver

In announcing their October grant awards, the Meyer Memorial Trust made an interesting statement about their intentions to support Portland's five major arts organizations at roughly 1% of their budgets for the next 2-4 years.

Specifically, the Trust has just awarded $300,000 over two years to the Oregon Symphony, $260,000 over an unspecified period to the Portland Art Museum, and $200,000 to PCS over two years. Presumably the Opera's and Ballet's proposals are still pending, because the announcement came with this explanatory statement:

While 60% of MMT's funding has gone to organizations addressing rising demand for health and human services during this economically challenging time, we recognize the importance of supporting arts and culture groups, which contribute to the quality of life of our communities and region with both cultural and economic contributions.

Historically, MMT has been a relatively strong funder of Portland's five largest arts organizations, with a total of nearly $21 million collectively awarded to Portland Art Museum, Oregon Symphony, Portland Center Stage, Portland Opera, and Oregon Ballet Theatre since 1982. Foundation support has represented a larger portion of these arts organization's budgets because until recently, Oregon was ranked 53rd among states and territories (behind Guam and American Samoa) in government support of the arts per capita. (Oregon now ranks 40th.)

Two years ago, MMT and other area arts funders began to converse with Portland's five largest arts organizations to better understand their business models and what they need to achieve financial stability, in addition to artistic excellence. As a result of these discussions and a study by a nationally recognized arts consultant, MMT has determined it can most appropriately assist the groups with two years of operating support limited to approximately 1% of the organizations' operating budgets, with the possibility of an additional two years. During this period, MMT will not entertain additional proposals for operating and project support from these five groups.

Now before all of the other arts organizations start asking what about me, I would like to point out that the majors have been part of some difficult conversations over the past year with MMT and other grantmakers (including RACC) who have been concerned about the long-range sustainability of these groups. At the foundations' request, each organization has worked diligently to produce a plan that helps satisfy the concerns of trustees everywhere who are no longer willing to invest in organizations with chronic deficit problems. However, it is important to note that each organizations' debt situation is different, and granted some organizations are in worse shape than others, but suffice it to say that conservative lenders have legitimate and reasonable concerns about investing in any of these organizations right now, which is why they all had some 'splaining to do.

Imagine, if you've been the trustee of a foundation for the last 25 years, how many times you have heard an arts organization say that it has finally identified the formula for sustainability, only to fall back into a deficit a few years later, sometimes chronically so. And then they'll tell you, you all just need to give us more money, so they'll build a budget that assumes the contributions will magically come flowing in because their board is newly motivated to raise millions of dollars, only to find that a recession or a snowstorm or a death in the family prevents them from achieving their goal. OK, maybe that happens in one year, that's understandable. But if a board lets that behavior go on for two years, three, ten -- you can see how a foundation trustee could start banging his or her head against the wall and declare, Not another dime for this madness!

Fortunately for our arts organizations, the foundations wanted to be part of the solution. So they brought in technical assistance providers and convened arts organizations to let them know what they needed to do in order to satisfy their increasingly skeptical trustees. They asked them to demonstrate an ability to raise money at historically proven levels before moving toward bigger budgets. They asked them for evidence that they were taking their deficits seriously, with viable plans for repaying their debts. And they asked each board to be more aware of its organization's finances so that they could address the real problems together -- it's not helping anyone to sweep little messes under the rug and hide financial concerns in the balance sheet. These foundations did NOT ask them to cut their product, only to demonstrate that the product can be scaled match what the public is willing to pay for. I think of it as attempting the Heimlich Maneuver before jumping into CPR.

Fortunately, the arts organizations are coming through with strong and convincing cases. Which leads me to why I think this is a rising tide that will float all ships. For MMT to philosophically set aside funding at 1% of arts organizations budgets is a good start, but we don't know what happens after these 2-4 years have expired. Presumably, hopefully, arts organizations will then be able to apply for larger grants, not smaller ones, for unique needs they'll have in the years ahead, having demonstrated themselves as completely viable organizations with net assets on the rise. Meanwhile, smaller arts organizations are still applying for and receiving grants from MMT that represent a much larger percentage of their own budgets, sometimes as much as 20%, although these are highly competitive grants that are difficult for many to compete for given MMT's emphasis on social change and problem-solving. This is my biggest concern, does a small arts organization really have to solve a problem in order to be considered a vital charitable organization in our community?

But the MMT is re-evaluating their role, and for that I give them much credit. For the record I still think the Meyer Memorial Trust could and should invest much more money in the local arts community, but this statement about the major arts organizations is a critical first step. The performance of these five groups over the next five years could greatly influence the future of arts funding in Portland, and we are counting on them all to demonstrate extraordinary returns on investment rather than becoming just another black hole of arts funding. Let's consider this a pilot in MMT's own internal conversations about whether or not they should be supporting more arts organizations with general support in the future.

A Money Idea

As recently reported in the Detroit Free Press, the Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan launched a matching grant initiative that raised $3.75 million for arts organizations, though it was beset with some serious technological snafus.

The Foundation committed to give 50 cents for every dollar donated to any of 75 arts organizations, up to a maximum of $1.0 million total. Gifts eligible for the match could range from $25 to $10,000 and had to be made through an online system. Among the 75 eligible groups were major institutions (such as the Detroit Symphony Orchestra) as well as smaller, grassroots organizations. Each organization was limited to a maximum of $200,000 from the Community Foundation pot (or a total of $600,000 when combined with the donor gifts).

The selected arts groups promoted the matching grant to their patrons and donors in advance, with encouragement by the Foundation to use new social media tools such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and e-mail blasts. Apparently they all did so with gusto.

As the story reports, the grant program easily met its goal of generating $3 million in contributions ($2 million from donors, plus the $1 million match), but not without hitting some major snags:

What happens when 10,000 people all at once try to donate to the arts through a single Web portal? Gridlock, furious patrons, embarrassed officials and a classic good news-bad news story that saw $3.75 million raised for local cultural groups but also left a trail of anger and frustration throughout the arts community.”

The community response was so great that the online system quickly bogged down. Not only did donors run into logjams and long delays, but the credit cards of some were mistakenly charged more than once. The matching funds ran out by 3:30 p.m. after the online system opened that morning at 10:00. The Community Foundation felt so bad about the technological glitches that it added another $250,000 to the pool at 6:00 p.m. That additional match was gone within three hours.

The article doesn't mention how the 75 organizations were selected. Did they have to apply to be on the list? Was there some other due diligence performed? For every group selected, did five others feel screwed for having been passed over? Should I have made an effort to find answers to these questions? I'll answer just one of those questions: Yeah, if I was actually an investigative journalists, so get off my back.

Could Portland pull off something like this? The Oregon Community Foundation has over $700 million in assets (according to its 2008 annual report), compared to the Community Foundation of SE Michigan’s $539 million. Hmm, what do you think?

Speaking of using social media for arts marketing and fundraising, I wonder how Portland Center Stage did with its one-day sale of any 2009-2010 season ticket for $25. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, you missed out because today was the day.

More Stimulating News

I'm not dumping this story on a Friday afternoon in order to beat the news cycle or anything like that. I figure most Culture Shock readers aren't coming to us for breaking news; rather, you are ambling past when you have nothing else to do, or when you accidentally click on a link that leads here. In any case, file this one under “P” for Public Service Message. (As opposed to "M" for Mildly Entertaining Filler).

Last week we posted a list of arts organizations in Oregon which received National Endowment for the Arts grants as part of the fed's economic recovery plan. This week, the Oregon Arts Commission announced who will be receiving the share of federal funds it received from the NEA to be regranted to save arts jobs in the state. When spread across the entire state, the $306,700 in federal money doesn’t go very far. This round reached only sixteen arts organizations:

The Arts Center, Corvallis, $26,000.
Arts Central, Bend, $20,700.
Cappella Romana Vocal Ensemble, Portland, $10,000.
Friends of Chamber Music, Portland, $20,600.
Columbia Center for the Arts, Hood River, $18,000.
Eastern Oregon Regional Arts Council, La Grande, $10,000.
Ethos Music Center, Portland, $20,000.
Independent Publishing Resource Center, Portland, $10,000.
Lord Leebrick Theatre Company, Eugene, $22,500.
Museum of Contemporary Craft, Portland, $30,000.
Oregon East Symphony, Pendleton, $8,800.
Sitka Center for Art & Ecology, Otis, $30,000.
Southern Oregon Film Society, Ashland, $29,000.
Tears of Joy Theatre, Portland, $12,000.
Umpqua Valley Arts Association, Roseburg, $20,000.
Write Around Portland, Portland, $20,000.

Yay!

Arts Stimulation

The NEA just announced new grants made under the “American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.” These were grants designed specifically to save jobs--either by keeping someone from being sacked, or by allowing a laid off employee to be rehired.

You may recall that Culture Shock covered this topic months ago when we decried Republican Senator Tom Coburn’s batshit crazy attempt to restrict funding of arts and cultural projects. That coverage included this rip-roaringly hilarious parody of an NEA grant proposal.

The NEA awarded 631 grants totaling close to $30 million. Only arts organizations which had received NEA funding within the most recent few funding cycles were eligible. The NEA also allocated a share of economic stimulus funds for state arts agencies to distribute. Now that the first round of direct grants has been announced, I expect that the Oregon Arts Commission will soon be announcing who will receive funds from its pool of money.

Oregon received a total of $350,000 in nine grants. Curiously, Oregon Ballet Theatre wasn’t among them. The local winners were:

Literary Arts, Inc. $50,000
Miracle Theatre Company $25,000
Oregon Symphony Association $50,000
Portland Center Stage $50,000
Portland Youth Philharmonic Association $25,000
White Bird $50,000

Out of towners were:

CALYX, Inc. $25,000
Eugene Symphony Association, Inc. $50,000
Fishtrap, Inc. $25,000

Congratulations!

Acting!

Following up on my recent post about the Theatre Communications Group, one of the grants the organization administers is the “Resident Actor Fellowship” program of the Fox Foundation, an initiative designed to "provide substantial support for exceptionally talented actors to further their artistic and professional growth and to encourage theatre organizations to deepen their relationships with actors.”

The application, for which the deadline is June 15th, requires actors to self-identify and apply in either of two categories:

(1) Extraordinary Potential--Exceptionally talented, early- to mid-career actors who demonstrate a strong interest and a commitment to continued training; or,

(2) Distinguished Achievement--Exceptionally talented actors who have demonstrated considerable experience in professional theatre, with a substantial body of work.

You could probably translate those into "Young" and "Old" but that would be ageist. The bigger question is whether those two choices unfairly block many fine actors from getting fellowships. Personally, I’d like the Fox Foundation to expand the program to include a few more categories:

(3) Fading Prospects—Talented actors who demonstrate a strong interest in continuing to work on stage, but for whom roles are getting hard to find because, frankly, we love your work but you're not quite the look we're going for this time.

(4) Unfounded Optimism—Mediocre actors who demonstrate unwarranted hope of sustaining a stage career such that a small fellowship will sustain the dream another few months.

(5) Limited range—Exceptionally good actors with considerable experience who have been playing essentially the same role for years and years.

(6) Dialect challenged—Otherwise decent actors who just need a little help to keep from slipping in and out of an Irish accent when the role calls for Cockney.

Can our readers suggest any additions? While you're thinking about it, enjoy this video of singer-songwriter St. Vincent (Annie Clark) singing “Actor Out Of Work.” She’ll be performing at the Aladdin Theatre on Monday, May 25, 2009.

OSF wins $25K from the NEA

Congratulations to the Oregon Shakespeare Festival for snagging one of 37 National Endowment for the Arts $25,000 grants for "Shakespeare for a New Generation."

The award doesn't really come as a surprise since OSF has a thoroughly established education program and proven track record of doing what the NEA was looking for: "targeting middle and high school students, and introducing young people to the power of live theater and the masterpieces of William Shakespeare." But still. Applause.

I'll be celebrating my birthday and the 4th of July in Ashland this year, so watch for my reviews of Much Ado, Henry VIII and Music Man later this year.

For some fun Shakespeare-related reading (or not), check out Art Scatter this week.

Excuse me, but your brandscape is fragmented.

I just received a reminder of the Innotech conference (“The Business and Technology Innovation Conference and Expo”) at the Convention Center next week. This year’s keynote speaker will be Rahaf Harfoush, a new media strategist and member of Obama’s Social Media Team. She’ll be giving an insider perspective on the Obama campaign’s use of social media to win the election. While that may be fascinating and practical, I can’t imagine it being more exciting than this conference session:

Experience Strategies: Maximizing Customer Engagement in the Fragmented Brandscape

Oh my. That reminded me of a link Culture Shock contributor, cynseattle, found a few weeks ago. The Landcape Urbanism Bullshit Generator is a user friendly tool for anyone operating in the fieldscape of landscape urbanism. I used it to generate this erudite recommendation about the Rose Quarter. (By which I mean the Memorial Coliseum razing that Mayor Sam Adams is ramrodding, bulldozing, railroading and dragooning past any semblance of public process, thoughtful consideration or economic reality).*

To negotiate the urban experience, we must first bundle performative fields and extend self-organizing phase-states. Only by expediting robust synergies within an aggregated landscape grid will we effectively reclaim the hyperbolic dynamics and generate the customized networks needed to enable front-end armatures. Furthermore, as we mesh green contexts within post-urban clusters, we will begin to incentivize permeable partnerships as integrated bleeding-edge models of biodiversification.

Imagine the grant proposals that could be written with this simple tool!

* Please visit Tim DuRoche's post on this topic on his Burnside Blog.

Oy! More on the Oregon Cultural Trust

Tuesday's episode of "Think Out Loud" on OPB Radio will cover the topic of arts funding, with the theft of Cultural Trust funds dangled as a teaser. The episode, which airs at 9:00 a.m. on 91.5 (as if our readers need to be told the frequency) is titled "The Art of Hard Times."

The OPB website does not give any hints about scheduled guests. I wonder if we'll hear from Doug Stamm at the Meyer Memorial Trust. In his Oregonian column this morning ("Who Took the Trust Out of the Cultural Trust"), Barry Johnson quotes Mr. Stamm's response to the Oregon legislature's move to purloin $1.8 million from the Cultural Trust. The Meyer Trust (the legacy of Fred Meyer) has supported the Oregon Cultural Trust with big grants to underwrite efforts to raise public awareness and encourage contributions. Stamm said he was "perplexed and frustrated" by the legislature's move:

The citizens of Oregon made specific contributions to a fund and now it's being moved to fix potholes and build prisons, which may be worthy but aren't what the money was for ... It breaks the bond of faith between the Cultural Trust and its contributors, through no fault of the trust, because of actions by the Legislature."

I believe the Meyer Trust is still the largest private foundation in Oregon, so it will be interesting to see what kind of clout it has on this topic, should its leaders choose to lean on our legislators. I'd call in to the show, but I'll be driving to Salem in the morning on a non-arts related task involving armed robbery (literally), on which I will report later. (How's that for a teaser)?

Also, our friends at the Regional Arts and Culture Council(RACC) and the new Creative Advocacy Network (CAN) are calling for arts advocates to show up at City Hall on Thursday, March 12, 2008 (2:00 to 3:00 pm) to lend moral support as RACC gives its “State of the Arts” presentation to City Council. I suspect the turnout will be high and folks will be pumped up -- one positive legacy of the Cultural Trust debacle.

Mea Culpa

I need to apologize to our readers, to artists and to all who support the inclusion of arts funding in the economic stimulus package. Like you, I’ve been reading about how the “batshit crazy” rightwing anti-culturalists have been maligning arts funding as non-stimulative pork. I was just as disappointed as you to learn that Senators Wyden and Merkley voted for a stimulus bill that included this egregious amendment from Senator Coburn:

None of the amounts appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used for any casino or other gambling establishment, aquarium, zoo, golf course, swimming pool, stadium, community park, museum, theater, arts center, or highway beautification project, including renovation, remodeling, construction, salaries, furniture, zero-gravity chairs, big screen televisions, beautification, rotating pastel lights, and dry heat saunas.

I was dismayed to learn that a recent editorial in the National Review sarcastically opined that increased funding for the NEA would mean that "the unemployed can fill their days attending abstract-film festivals and sitar concerts."

Then it all started to sound vaguely familiar. I got a sinking feeling that I may have inadvertently contributed to the problem. A quick scan of my files brought the memory back and verified my complicity: Just last year I wrote a grant proposal to the NEA on behalf of a regional arts organization. (Professional ethics and common decency bar me from revealing the client's name). The proposal must have been leaked to the Republicans by a disgruntled grant panelist! Since the project is unlikely to be funded, I will share a synopsis of the proposal:

Describe the Project: [NAME REDACTED], Oregon’s leading collective of multidisciplinary dance, theater and abstract film artists, seeks NEA funding for a project through which it will engage the community in dialogue that will inform a co-creative process of examining, exploring and explicating the multidimensional intersections and interstices between consumer culture, Wall Street fraud and organized religion. The site-specific, time-based performative project will draw upon influences as diverse as Andres Serrano, Karen Finley and Robert Mapplethorpe. Seminal materials will be used. We mean urine.

The project’s artistic collaborators will construct a temporary public art installation on the eighteenth hole of the Bandon Springs Golf Resort. This site was selected to provide opportunities for broad-based cultural access to underserved rural communities. The installation will consist of two vitrines to be fabricated, in situ, by 48 glass artists using recycled wine bottles melted in massive anagama kilns. Each vitrine will measure 20’ x 20’ x 20’ (8,000 cubic feet) and will be filled with liquid.

The first vitrine will represent the primeval ocean from which all life evolved. It will be filled with sweat collected from 800 dance artists commissioned to perform an extended choreographic masterwork in a giant dry heat sauna to be constructed in the abandoned warehouses of Laika Studios. At risk youth from inner-city neighborhoods will be employed to scrape the sweat from the dancer’s bodies over the course of the 18-month dance performance.

Once the vitrine is filled with the salty fluid, hundreds of chinook salmon will be released into it. Their futile attempts to migrate and spawn will be accompanied by a techno-industrial score performed by a 32 piece sitar orchestra and four dozen unemployed construction workers with jackhammers. The salmon will then be slaughtered by marauding sea lions in a bloody orgy of classist oppression.

A live video feed will be sent by fiber optic cable to a state-of-the art Imax theater to be constructed at a remodeled Oregon Aquarium (Newport). Simultaneous video feeds will be sent to Spirit Mountain Casino (Grand Ronde) and Chinook Winds Casino (Lincoln City), where spectators will view the salmon slaughter on big screen televisions while placing bets on which fish will be the last to survive. To highlight the interconnectedness between the project sites, Highway 101 (Newport to Lincoln City) and Highway 18 (Lincoln City to Grand Ronde) will be beautified by a nighttime display of rotating pastel lights as well as abstract film.

The second vitrine will be filled with urine. Members of Portland’s burgeoning creative class will be invited to a three-day outdoor concert at which free PBR and Stumptown coffee will be served. Participants will then urinate into special holding tanks. (Many participants may choose to kiss each other while doing so). They will also be encouraged to ride bicycles to the concert site.

Once this vitrine is filled, a figure of Jesus Christ suspended in a zero-gravity chair will be smeared with dung and chocolate and submerged. The vitrine will be lit by more rotating pastel lights (or perhaps primary colors this time). The artistic co-creators will initiate intra-, extra- and inter-community dialoguing sessions to find, create and shape meaning.

The proposed project budget of $2.75 million will leverage an estimated $18.7 million in direct spending in the region, as well as an additional bunch of fiscal stimulus through the economic multiplier effect we’re always talking about. The project will create at least 1,500 family-wage jobs for artists, as well as employing construction workers and teenagers who would just as soon cut you. The long-term infrastructural improvements to roads, fiber optic networks, casinos and art centers (did we mention art centers?) are incalculable, but are sure to be sustainable. Letters of support from the big screen television, rotating light and zero-gravity chair industries are attached.

Art to Come

Figure 1: Let's look into our crystal ball, shall we?

Figure 2: The Crystal Ballroom, site of the Portland Jazz Orchestra's upcoming “Intricate Rhythms," one of 102 projects receiving funding for 2009.

While our friends at Art Scatter were shaking the money tree last Wednesday, the RACC Board was quietly approving record sums of grant funding for artistic projects in 2009. Now that artists and organizations have had time to receive their award letters (and rejections), I'm giddy to help announce the winners.

Actually, let me just link you to the full description of all projects that have received awards for the year ahead. This is one story that actually gets a fair amount of attention each year, as the media and bloggers have fun picking out the projects they are most excited to see. What's your favorite?

Two themes are especially noteworthy here, in my opinion. First, how many of these project grants would you guess are going to the "same old" groups vs. first-time winners? Would you believe 50-50? It's true.

Secondly, this is the most money ever awarded by RACC for project grants, and while the recipient artists and organizations have plenty to cheer about, I suspect it will trigger a few critical remarks from folks who think this a frivolous investment amidst serious economic woes. You'll notice that the press release was written to counter any such sentiment, but we as an arts community must be sure to respond swiftly and intelligently to any Letter to the Editor or other public document that ridicules these investments or calls for arts funding cuts. It's time to gear up for the spring budget cycle, and we have much work to do to maintain arts funding locally as well as renewing statewide arts funding, including the Oregon Cultural Trust, for the next biennium as well.

To arms!

Ka-ching!

Summer is a time when public funds -- and private donations generated by publicly-subsidized initiatives -- start flowing into the hands of our local arts organizations. The Oregon Arts Commission was first out of the gate, announcing $1.2 million in statewide grants on July 2.

Earlier this week, RACC announced $1.5 million worth of grants for arts organizations the Portland tri-county area -- which includes funds from local governments plus proceeds from last year's Work for Art campaign.

And I have just come from an event at the PCPA where Nick Fish, vice Chair of the Oregon Cultural Trust (and our newest arts-loving Portland City Commissioner) announced $1.6 million in grants for 59 arts organizations across the state. These grants are made possible because thousands of Oregonians made contributions to the Oregon Cultural Trust this past year in exchange for a tax credit (up to $500). Not a tax deduction, a tax credit. Great program!


Nick Fish (at podium) and representatives from the organizations receiving Oregon Cultural Trust grants this year.

Together, these funds provide vital working capital for our arts organizations as they set out to do all of their great work in the year ahead. Take Portland Center Stage for example: from these three sources PCS receives a combined $120,000 -- and that's no small chunk of change. The impacts are even more significant for a smaller organization like Write Around Portland, which received a combined $28,000 from these three sources this year. That's 15% of their budget! No doubt we are all in store for some great performances, exhibits, and other arts programs this year.