Americans for the Arts

Paul Miller

Founder’s Beware! Do you have a great idea to found a program to help others in need or benefit a worthy cause or a unique artistic goal? If so please ask yourself the following questions:

•    Should you establish a nonprofit, a for-profit, or a low-profit organization?

•    Are your ideas protected?

•    Do you have a clear exit strategy?

•    If you’re successful and your project takes off, will you be ready to deal with people who have  power and resources and are used to getting their way but who do not understand the creative process? 

(This title and entry is not meant to insult any one artist, institution, or dog.)

From my perspective, many artists originally incorporated because they saw other people doing it; other people getting grant monies to support their work and determining 501(c)(3) must be the way to go. These same artists somehow persevered, endured, and/or emerged as institutions thirty or forty years later and feel the nonprofit ball-and-chain is something that somehow happened to them. Is this need for alternative models a real issue or is it a midlife crisis for the incorporated arts field? 

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Adam Huttler

[During last week’s Private Sector Blog Salon], fellow guest blogger Diane Ragsdale got me thinking after she posed the question: what would have happened if the nonprofit regional theatre movement had embraced (and had the opportunity to embrace) the L3C instead of the 501(c)(3) corporation?

This is an interesting and subtly radical thought experiment. Diane is effectively proposing that we rewind history and build what we now think of as the nonprofit arts sector as a socially-conscious for-profit arts sector instead. Has the horse left the barn or is it really possible to reinvent ourselves at such a fundamental level?

In truth, I’ve always believed that the alleged conflict between artistic purity and commercial success was largely overblown. If anything it’s a healthy tension, not an insurmountable chasm. Certainly there are arts organizations whose missions are to push aesthetic envelopes and operate at the leading edge of craft and artistry. They will always need philanthropic subsidy to survive, and so they should probably be 501(c)(3)s regardless. But these brave, unpopular pioneers are the exception, not the rule. Most of us operate in the vast middle ground between Broadway and The Wooster Group. 

Colin Tweedy

I sense a sea change in the way the arts are funded. There is no doubt that many countries in Europe are cutting their culture budgets. A recent leader in the Financial Times concluded:

“Cultural organisations also need to do more to help themselves. A new act is unfolding in the drama of arts funding – and artists must play their role to the full.”

Arts organisations are entrepreneurial by nature. Many of the largest arts organisations are becoming more commercially savvy.

In London, where the lion’s share of all private cultural investment is raised, major bodies have seen the light. The Royal Opera House joined forces with RealD, a film and production company to provide 3D movies of their productions worldwide; the National Theatre is producing films of its block buster productions to 380 cinemas across the globe. The public grant percentage of their income has been reducing annually. 

Rebecca Novick

The reason for the tax break for nonprofits is that nonprofits are meant to provide a “community benefit."

When you apply for nonprofit status, the forms you have to fill out include making a case that the benefit you will provide (often expressed in your mission statement) is worth the state letting go of your potential tax revenue.

If you’re starting a homeless shelter, it’s pretty obvious that it is (“lessening the burden of government” is explicitly listed in the IRS guidelines for exempt purposes). But what about your small theater company? Your chamber ensemble? Your single-choreographer dance company? What are you explicitly doing to (more from the IRS language) relieve the poor and distressed, advance education, and combat community deterioration?

Does art in general help achieve these aims? 

Taboo Cards

Some artists, if you mention the word “business” at all, they recoil, but let us play a field-wide game of Taboo, and have a brainstorm discussion about the future of the arts sans these words or any derivation of them:  “innovation” and “business models.”

Could the private sector keep itself from using all the jargon accumulated in business school and really talk about what they want to accomplish and how to do it?

So often, organizations of all kinds create job descriptions or individuals write their resumes hiding behind platitudes of these perceived “good” business skills without being specific. That or trying to identify a new direction for one’s organization can feel like when we were little kids and played “office” or “school” or “house.” You weren’t exactly sure what you were supposed to be doing, but you emulated what you saw and played out whatever notions you had about working in such a place.