My mission today is to offer my perspective on united arts funds. In doing so, I'd like to center all of my comments on the one aspect which can spell the difference between mediocrity and success, both in administration and in fund raising. That's the issue of leadership.

Leadership means recognizing that the arts community and the business community are both integral parts of a city's whole with mutual self-interest and mutual respect; one isn't Cinderella doing the fetching and toting for the other. Leadership means that united arts funds do more than collect money. They can't be mere pass-throughs for money from a donor's pocket to the donee's purse. They must add value to both.

Leadership involves judgment and accountability, accepting responsibility for making decisions which may not be popular. That means taking stands. Leadership also means building bridges, creating coalitions that link emerging alternative arts groups with established ones. Recognizing that labor needs to be involved just as much as business. Reaching out and pulling in persons of color and non-European cultures. It means that the expression the arts are for everyone is given more than lip service.

It means we recognize that the arts represent that slim but vital difference between being good and being exceptional. Between a corporation's culture being dull or being invigorating; between a community's being complacent or vibrant. The key, however, is to get the corporation as well as the community to recognize that the arts must be an active partner in the process.

An address delivered at the 1988 United Arts Fund Conference, Orlando, Florida, August 5, 1988, by Ian M. Rolland, President and CEO, Lincoln National Corporation. (p. 2-3)