Americans for the Arts

Jeff Poulin

Earlier this summer, you may have read Kristen Engerbretsen's, Americans for the Arts' Education Program Manager, blog post about the final event of the 2013-14 Vans Custom Culture program in NYC. It was an exciting, inspiring and high-octane event honoring some of the most innovative shoe designs I have ever seen. Being able to spend time with Vans employees – a company that values the arts as a vital part of education, community and life as told by their Brand Manager in this blog – and the students whom they work with as part of this program, was definitely one for the books!

However, did you know that the Custom Culture program doesn’t end with a big party in NYC?

Lydia Zacharias

Many of the companies we work with at ArtsKC are engaged in a variety of programs, including our Now Showing program for emerging artists and businesses, Advocacy efforts, and workplace giving for the ArtsKC Fund. These corporate partners are not only passionate about supporting the arts in the Kansas City region, but are also achieving true employee engagement. Through their partnerships with ArtsKC, companies are able to provide unique engagement opportunities that encourage people to stay with the company longer, report higher levels of job satisfaction, and increase productivity through teamwork and a sense of personal investment from management. Many people are now more interested in working for companies in which they feel valued, and in which a certain level of work/life balance is encouraged, than ones that simply provide a paycheck. So, support of the arts is not only good for your corporate philanthropic efforts, it’s also good for your talent recruitment and retention efforts!

I live in a community that clearly values the arts and creativity – arts participation in Portland and in Oregon is among the highest in the country according to the NEA. Even so, private philanthropy lags significantly behind the national average.

How can we convince more Oregonians to support the arts? Anytime we launch a new private sector initiative, we turn to our government partners first. (Perhaps that’s partially because our local arts agency, the Regional Arts & Culture Council, was a city bureau until 1995.) In any event, public-private partnerships have become the standard way of growing the Portland metro region’s arts community.

Maud Lyon

If you want to know why art matters, look at Detroit. Art has become the centerpiece of the plan for Detroit to emerge from municipal bankruptcy. The visionary plan began to take shape last fall with three goals: protect the city’s retirees from disastrous cuts in their pensions; avoid years of contentious litigation that would hamstring efforts to rebuild Detroit; and avoid selling the collection of the Detroit Institute of Arts (DIA) to pay the city’s debts.

Dubbed the Grand Bargain, indeed it is. Everyone has to contribute in one way or another, and everyone gives up something to make it work. A group of more than 13 foundations, national and local, have pledged $366 million over the next 20 years to support the pension fund. The State legislature approved $195 million in current dollars for this special fund (equivalent to $350 million over 20 years). The DIA’s board voted unanimously to raise $100 million, not for the DIA, but for the pension fund, and as of mid-July, have achieved pledges for 80% of that goal.

Tim Bresnahan

Serving on a “working board” is challenging. Rewarding, but challenging. I recently had the honor of taking over the reigns as the Board President for Rivendell Theatre Ensemble, a small but mighty theatre in Chicago with a mission focused on promoting women theatre artists.  As we like to say at Rivendell, “It’s women’s work!”

Without a doubt, one of the greatest challenges we’ve faced as a board during my tenure has been attracting and retaining qualified board members.

Let me repeat: attracting AND retaining.

I understand that we need to build and sustain a deep and dedicated board of directors in order to build a sustainable organization that is positioned for long-term growth.  But I also understand that achieving this goal could be more easily attained if we had help. So I have a small but simple request.

There is never money and there's always money. I have never met a mayor, a city manager, or a school superintendent who ever had any money, but I have never seen one who quit spending it. A lack of money is not the key problem. In my opinion, creativity is the problem. Money follows ideas. Arts administrators need to be as creative as we expect our artists to be.