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 Philanthropy and Social Influence Panelists: Nancy M. Devine, Marian Godfrey, Rick Lowe and Justin Rockefeller Moderated by Kathleen McCarthy The following white paper is drawn from the remarks of the panelists and moderator for this session, along with the questions and responses from members of the audience. This document is intended to reflect the variety of viewpoints offered during the discussion, and to frame broadly the issues discussed; it should not be taken as a formal statement of opinion by the panelists. Private foundations are among the most important funding sources to which arts organizations must appeal for support. And just as non-profit institutions have had to respond to significant changes in their operating environments, so also have these foundations. Some of these changes are rooted in circumstances that directly affect arts organizations, such as altered audience demographics. Others involve changes in the world of philanthropy, such as increased demands for accountability and quantifiable results. But there is a dynamic relationship among the pressures felt by each side of the funding equation, with changes involving funders intimately tied to changes affecting the organizations that they fund. Pressures on foundations to increase arts funding come from the areas of both supply and demand. In terms of the supply of available funds, the significant decrease in federal and state arts support is suggested by the drop in National Endowment for the Arts funding from $59 million in 1989 to $43 million in 2006. But at the same time that public funding was shrinking, the number of non-profit organizations was increasing, growing by forty percent between 1994 and 2004. As a general trend, then, there is more competition between cultural organizations for less available funds. This situation raises the question of the viability of the large number of non-profits competing for this support, many of them highly undercapitalized. One factor that has contributed to the funding problem is that arts organizations have been unable to make a strong public case for the value to society of their work, and of culture in general. While such arguments have been presented to government agencies and policy makers, they have not been offered effectively to the citizenry. But without widespread public support government funds will not be forthcoming, especially with the predictable recurrence of criticism of the arts reminiscent of the culture wars of the early 1990s. Just as the museum community has begun to redefine itself in terms of an audience-focused mission, emphasizing museum contributions to a broad public, so the arts community in general must reorient its self-presentation so as to emphasize culture as a critical public good. The difficulty of establishing in clear terms the actual good that is achieved by arts institutions contributes to the weakness of arguments for cultural support, and it haunts the funding evaluation process. Corporate funders and government agencies increasingly are demanding quantitative accounts of the effectiveness of their grants, something that it is difficult for arts organizations to provide beyond exhibition and program attendance figures. This is one area in which foundations should provide both leadership and assistance, developing new methods of measuring success and funding the quantitative evaluations that can support organizations in making their cases to donors of all kinds. In addition to providing grants and program support in response to institutional applications, foundations can play a more active role in bringing stakeholders together in a given city or region. This is the approach taken by the Wallace Foundation in Dallas and New York City, where the foundation has attempted to design a system to foster working relationships between arts institutions, community organizations, and the school systems in these cities. Its focus has been on audience building and increased participation, and in helping organizations gather the data that they need to justify future public and private investment in the arts. New technologies have created significant challenges for arts institutions, and not only in terms of the technical needs of the organizations themselves. The internet has engendered a major change in the generating of cultural content, broadening both artistic production and access to it, and creating competition for established cultural providers. This competition extends beyond producing content to challenging the cultural authority traditionally held by arts institutions. The immense increase in the amount of artistic work and cultural resources that are available on the internet thus potentially has both positive and negative consequences for our institutions. Expanding access to art and culture of many kinds and from many places increases public awareness and interest, and hopefully broadens institutional audience. On the other hand, new modes of delivering cultural content compete for valuable leisure time and potentially undermine the centrality of local organizations. Foundations can play a creative role in this area as well, developing programs to help institutions deal with these challenges. Young people are those most actively engaged with the internet and digital media, and young people are a centrally important group to arts institutions seeking to build present and future audiences. Many museums—including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim Museum—have developed young collectors groups and special events for younger members. But developing the youth audience extends to age groups younger than young professionals. College and even high school programs, and collaborations with such organizations as GenerationEngage, which seeks to foster political involvement among young people, will be important to the success of arts organization of all types. Foundation and corporate support for such projects is essential. Understanding the changing demographics of their communities is critical to the future of arts institutions. The growth in the older population suggests the need for additional programming for that audience, but more important and more striking is the increasing diversity of the country as a whole. No longer will it be acceptable for cultural organizations to be run by and for members of a limited demographic, and foundations have a responsibility to develop programs that increase both staff and audience diversity, and that help institutions prepare for a very differently configured world than that out of which many of them arose. No arts organizations, nor foundations supporting the arts, would be possible without the artists who produce the works. Artists operate within a complex environment involving both for-profit and not-for-profit entities. In the U.S. the art market is a critical factor in their economic survival, and it is a major influence on the kind of art that is produced worldwide. But museums and local arts organizations also have an important affect on artists, who in many cases are essentially involved in arts programming in the schools and cultural institutions, and thus depend on the funding of such projects. And while federal funding for individual artists has been largely eliminated, the creation of the multi-foundation collaborative grant program United States Artists suggests that foundations might play an increasing role in developing such direct support. Stepping back from the details of how foundations can support the arts most effectively, it is important to look at the values that they bring to this broad endeavor. And here the views expressed by foundational professionals look very similar to the goals of those who make, and those who appreciate, art: personal transformation, nurturing creativity, asking questions, and cultivating beauty. For citation, please reference: http://berkshireconference.org/content/2007-philanthropy.cfm
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