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Hi, Alan, how are you?
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I'm holding up well.
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Thank you for joining.
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I like to dive right in.
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And you and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago and I realized that I've been
guilty of something that I didn't realize that I was guilty of until we spoke, which is
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often when lobbying for funding for the arts, I will say the arts aren't charities.
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We don't expect handouts.
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We are businesses.
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We just happen to be businesses in the creative economy.
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But Mr.
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501C3 Guru oh
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So here's the deal.
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uh They're not, know, being a business and being a charity, those are not exclusive of
each other.
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This is a business that is a charity.
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uh 501c3 is nonprofit.
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Nonprofits are charities.
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I used to think otherwise, by the way.
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I used to think the same as you is that, well, you know, it's not really a charity, it's a
nonprofit.
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Or I'd use those euphemisms that we've used over the years like non-commercial or what's
the other one?
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not for profit.
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uh Those are just made up terms.
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I mean, they're not made up, but they have no legal standing.
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The legal standing is the word nonprofit, which has uh exemption requirements by the IRS.
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That's who sent that little letter that allows you to raise money and all of that.
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The problem with nonprofit arts organizations over the years has been that they've
abdicated their charitable status.
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And that's not just a problem in theory or in uh style or in my opinion.
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That's just, that is fact for the most part.
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primarily for the largest arts organizations, that they act like the commercial versions
of themselves.
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For charity to be a charity, it has to follow the rules of charity.
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And those rules are stated in Section 501C3 of the IRS Code.
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501c3 is not just a bunch of letters and numbers thrown together.
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It's part of the code.
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And the oddest part is I ask people all the time, have you ever read section 501c3 of the
IRS code?
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You know that thing that says that you're allowed to raise money?
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It's a pretty basic piece of information.
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No, is the answer.
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The most I've ever gotten as a response for that in groups is about 10%.
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And it's odd because it's only four sentences, four or five sentences.
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That's it.
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It's not long.
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It's not written in legalese.
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It's pretty standard stuff.
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The second part of this, and before people start rushing to the phone and calling you and
saying, but we're allowed to be nonprofits because of that court case.
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Yes, there was a court case in 1980.
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I used to know what it was, Plumstead, that's it, Plumstead Theatrical Society versus
basically the IRS.
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And the IRS had denied them funding because they weren't doing any charitable.
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exemption charitable works as spelled out in the code.
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They sued saying that we are a public charity.
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The ruling was that you could become a non-profit arts organizations merely by producing
art.
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Now we go into 2020 and forward.
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The act of producing art might qualify you
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to be a nonprofit, but doesn't qualify you to be a good nonprofit or a worthy nonprofit or
one that deserves funding.
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Frankly, in this society, if that's all you're doing, you really don't deserve funding.
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ah Your goal should be to the betterment of the people in your community.
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If you can do that, you're gold.
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Even now, as we speak, as hundreds of people are tendering their resignations from the NEA
because it's likely going to close by next year or something like that.
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And the NEH, by the way, and museums and libraries and all of that stuff.
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And it's horrific, but not unexpected.
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So anyone who is shocked by it, I really don't get because...
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He said he was going to do that and so it's happening and he has the full support of the
Congress so he can govern by edict all he wants and so there he goes.
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so the question I have always said is what happens in a post-NEA world and I wrote an
article about that in January and really it was an interesting thing that people were
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still in denial that that was going to happen even though it was really obvious that that
was going to happen.
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But as we look in our post-NEA world, ah the thing that's going to make sense to everyone
and why you would deserve funding is if you're achieving measurable results of charitable,
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underlined, in bold, in italics, charitable goals.
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ah Are you helping with social services?
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What kind of social services?
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What was the result of that help?
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A lot of times arts organizations, for example, will do educational programs and then tell
the world that they're an educational organization.
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It's not true, but they'll say it.
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And the reason why they'll say it is because they haven't discovered the distinction.
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And it's a really important distinction between teaching and educating.
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uh
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So putting on an education program is lovely, but if you're not measuring the results of
that program, and I don't mean how many people came or took part, I mean what did they
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learn from it, then you're not an educational organization.
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An educational organization, say, I don't know, the Ohio State University and you're part
of the world.
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So the Ohio State University uh measures its educational achievement.
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They have tests and grades and
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uh status and a steady set of guidelines that get you to a certain thing called a degree.
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then there even afterwards there's alumni and there's networking and there are
possibilities that exist to better yourself even after you've gotten the initial
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education.
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you, the school has proved its worth by issuing these grades and evaluations and whatnot.
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They're not done to torture the students.
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They're done to measure the effectiveness of the education that's going on, not the
teaching that's going on, the education that's going on.
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So when ah arts organizations put on education programs and say, you know, hundred kids
came and that's it.
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So what?
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What did they get out of it?
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If you can prove through real data what the kids got out of that.
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and say, look, here are the things that happened because of that.
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And not just quote some national study on the test scores going up because they've.
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Partly because generally speaking, people who go to after school music programs get better
test scores.
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That's national data.
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Show me your organization's data and that's where it'll happen for you in a post-NEA
society.
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Because you stop being an arts organization and you start being a movement and a cause.
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here?
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We got here through, some of it is laziness, some of it is inertia.
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uh You know, there's a great big difference between art, artists and arts organizations.
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And that's the seminal reason why we've gotten here is that it got blurred.
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The truth is this, art, art.
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is essential in the literal sense of the word.
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Essential meaning uh you can't not have it.
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It exists whether you created or not.
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uh I remember there was an old comedian who used to talk about, we were so poor that on
the 4th of July, we couldn't afford to go to the fireworks, so we just closed our eyes and
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did this.
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uh
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Even that's art, you know, not the joke.
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That's art too, but the this, the what you see is art.
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Everything you see it.
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Look at like the least uh artistic thing around you.
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Think of it as a, oh, a styrofoam cup.
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There's a good one.
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Nothing artistic about it.
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However, it was designed by somebody and design is art.
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Therefore it is essential.
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Artists, while not essential, are magical.
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because what they can do, and I really mean that, artists can take disparate pieces of
life, of media, of other art, and put them together and combine them and present something
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that is...
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a new art that has new value to it, it has an artistic value that is greater than the sum
of its parts, or lesser than the sum of its parts, but it's certainly different from the
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parts themselves.
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That's what artists do.
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They're amazing and they need to be supported to do that because that's how we create em a
better life for ourselves.
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Richard Florida did all that studying way back when about the creative class.
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uh It was a good book and I think people should read it.
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basically what it said is that the most progressive cities in America, not progressive
politically, progressive meaning they were getting things done, were the ones that had the
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most artists in them.
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And that was not, that it happened.
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He looked at it as a coincidence at first, but then he started digging into it and seeing
that the creative class includes people who are not traditional artists, people who have
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to be creative in their thinking on a daily basis.
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So that's the tech uh industry, that's lawyers, that's a lot of people who have to find
ways to make things work.
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And then there's arts organizations.
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the traditional 501c3 arts organization.
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Totally inessential.
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Not essential for art to exist, not essential for artists to do their work.
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Artists were doing work before there were organizations and they would do it if every
organization closed.
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Artists would still do their work.
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New art, new valued art would still be created.
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So for the nonprofit arts organization to be essential in its own community, right?
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It's owned by the people of the state in which the nonprofit was established.
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That's who owns your nonprofit arts organization.
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Not your board, not your executive director, and certainly not your artistic director.
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They don't own your company.
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Your company is owned by the people who pay your taxes for you.
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and that's the people of the state in which you do business.
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And what they're asking you to do is to provide value that they cannot create through
government support for just government uh things.
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They're looking for some sort of value in the charitable aspect of what you do, things
that don't make money.
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So,
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The idea that arts organizations over the last 50 years, and this is where it's fallen
apart, have relied on a three-legged stool of financial support that is distinctly
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non-charitable.
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The three-legged stool being one, butts in seats, totally nonsensical as a metric for
charitable uh impact.
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uh If that were a metric, then...
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we'll go back to Ohio, the Columbus Blue Jackets, we'll put it that way, would be a
nonprofit organization because they draw 20,000 fans a game and they even draw millions of
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people on television and they can prove that.
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In fact, I don't know what they are, but I'll betcha.
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that because I know the National Hockey League does it, but I'll bet you Columbus Blue
Jackets have a charitable arm of what they do.
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So you might even say that they're more charitable than the arts organizations that
they're helping.
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That's what charities do.
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So butts in seats, not a metric.
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The second metric, positive economic impact.
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You see Americans for the Arts pushing this one.
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uh
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And then every city seems to do it through their own arts councils because the cities
themselves are interested in economic advancement, which is great for the cities, but it
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has nothing to do with charity.
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If that were the case, every restaurant could claim to be a nonprofit because when you go
to a restaurant, you also pay a babysitter and you also buy parking sometimes.
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And sometimes you buy tickets to a ballet.
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So you're supporting the community through that economic impact, that positive economic
impact.
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So it makes that whole argument of, well, know, people spend $20 on top of their ticket.
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Again, basing something on a paid admission on top of that, you know, that's even beyond.
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bad data gathering.
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And then the third piece of bad data gathering I mentioned earlier, and that's the
national data, using national data to support a local organization.
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You know, students get better, but test scores when they go to, when they experience
music.
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Okay, that's nice.
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Prove that your organization does and we'll have a better discussion.
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Not that, you generally speaking nationally, because, you know, just because some national
survey said that doesn't mean that your organization is doing diddly squat.
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So that's where we fell apart.
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uh The arts themselves, the arts organizations themselves, you know, is it laziness or is
it just the concentration on doing what they really wanted to do was, which was art?
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uh It's a game of I wanna.
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and the artists want to do art, which is great, that's what they do, but then you put an
artistic leader involved and he just wants to do art too, or she.
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And it's been he too often, but, and she.
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uh And so there's this weird...
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following of an artistic vision, which has nothing to do with a charitable impact.
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Artistic vision has nothing to do with that.
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Artistic vision, if your organization changes because your artistic leader leaves, that
means you weren't an organization to begin with.
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At a food bank, if somebody leaves and some new executive director comes in and says, you
know, I want to make this a homeless shelter, that doesn't happen.
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It stays a food bank no matter what.
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ah And even so, their goal is to feed people or to solve hunger, not to pretty up the
shelves.
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Anyway, that's where we are.
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And that's the problem.
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And it's invited a system in which the only ones who are donating, basically, and again,
this is mostly about the larger organizations, but there are some middle and small ones
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that do this too.
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The only ones who are supporting arts organizations are those who participate in it.
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So the donor is donating so that the donor may attend.
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ah That's a problem.
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That's kind of a textbook elitism example.
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And if the donors are in fact the beneficiaries of their own donation, then something is
really, really wrong.
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You're not doing all that well.
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And so donors who do that have been holding, many of them have been bad people, or not bad
people necessarily, but have been holding the company's hostage and saying, well, I'll
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give you the $20,000, but you have to give me a private room.
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There's one organization that I worked with, a couple did exactly that, did a multi-year,
20,000 a year.
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uh gift and in return they got a room in a public building got a room named after them and
which is fine but then anytime they were there they could close off the room and put an
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armed guard at the door to keep the riffraff out come on
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That's toxicity.
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That's a toxic donor in your midst.
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That's the person that when they walk in the room, everybody in the development office
suddenly finds something else to do.
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That's the person that when they get assigned to the development director or to the
executive director or to a board member to go, I had a, I worked with a woman who used to
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talk about the care and feeding of donors.
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If that's how you're looking at it and this person is just trouble and you know they're
trouble, then they in fact are toxic to your organization.
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And even though they're giving a lot of money, they're also taking away from your
charitable impact.
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So you can't just do that dance.
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You have to lay down some ground rules when it comes to that.
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But you can't do that if you're not doing any charitable activity.
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So it just goes on and on and on.
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How do we unravel this?
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How do we stop this from happening?
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Because it's a stop, it's not an unravel.
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ah I think, uh so there's a theory out there that the reason it took 40 years for the Jews
to leave the desert is that a whole generation of people who thought they were slaves had
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to die off ah before they could go into the promised land.
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It's an interesting theory.
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ah
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If any of that happened, it's certainly an interesting story and one of many morals you
can pull out of that story.
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Maybe true, maybe not, who knows.
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I'll buy that as a pretty good reason.
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uh
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I think that the only way this is going to really work is if organizations backs to the
wall broke about to close, decide to do this.
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To decide to, well, we'll stop being that big, expensive, uh hoity-toity, toxic nonprofit.
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arts organization that hoovers out all of the money from foundations and such, money that
would be worth a hell of a lot more in the hands of several of the smaller nonprofits that
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have very specific charitable goals attached to them.
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Unfortunately, it's going to take that back against the wall thing.
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The amazing thing is there are organizations that have already done this.
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that have already and they sometimes it's with their backs against the wall, sometimes
not.
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ah I think of the Louisville Orchestra as a prime example of an organization that wins, ah
got $8 million, I think so far in state funding in a very red state of Kentucky to tour
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the orchestra all over the state.
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They play in every single city.
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They do work in the schools.
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They do work in libraries.
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do work to, they do free performance.
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They're all free performances outside of Louisville.
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And they've cut the Louisville side of their performance schedule down all the way down to
like 17 performances.
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And many of them are bunched around Christmas.
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And while they're important to the orchestra to have a quote unquote home in Louisville,
it's in a big scary art center.
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as opposed to in your high school, your local rural high school's gym, where kids are
discovering music can be a down regulator for all the anxiety that they're working with.
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And then they have the data to prove that that's exactly what's happening.
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So I would argue that these large organizations would say that they are doing what you're
saying they should be doing.
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I think a lot of them have.
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fooled themselves, to convince themselves that they are doing the good work.
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They're wrong.
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They're just flat wrong.
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They're not.
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I look at the largest organizations.
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I mean, I'll take New York out of the picture because New York is a different animal.
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But if you, because of the huge commercial uh arts environment that it's a very different
thing, New York City than the rest of the country.
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So if you look at the rest of the country and you're looking at the largest arts
organizations in those places,
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There's a reason why they're losing their funding.
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There's a reason why they're talking about how their audience is growing because they're
comparing it to pandemic numbers.
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Yeah, know, when you had zero and you go up to a hundred in your theater of a thousand,
yeah, you got,
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oodles of more people coming to your organization.
255
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So come on, don't give me lousy data.
256
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Why don't you tell me that you've created a literacy program and 35 kids in this class
alone learn to read because of your participation in that program?
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So you talk about having your back against the wall.
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I thought the pandemic was the back against the wall.
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And I was...
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funding.
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There was some government funding that kept them open.
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Shuttered venues, things like that.
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yes, that and personally, I led a coalition in Ohio where we fought it took two years to
get $50 million in ARPA for specifically nonprofit arts.
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I was told by many, you'll never do it.
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You'll you not in the most conservative Republican caucus in state history.
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And seeing that it so actually, I'm now chuckling because
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They got the check.
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I had a mentor of mine who ran an arts council for 30 years and he often said to me,
Angela, at the end of the day, they just want the check.
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They don't care.
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They just want the check and that's all that matters.
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So as I'm asking you this question and I'm explaining my experience, they got the check.
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Therefore, there was no need to change.
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We just go back to the way we were before the pandemic.
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100%.
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That's exactly what happened.
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So here we are today.
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And I said, you know, we're going to hit smack head first into a brick wall at some point.
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And I agree with why are we surprised that we are here where we are today?
279
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And I often say if the story you're telling isn't getting you results, it's time to tell a
new story.
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The story was economic impact.
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The story was measuring outputs.
282
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The story was everything that you just spelled out.
283
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So why do you think over the last 30, 40 years, we haven't had, I'm asking you the same
question that we just answered, a movement to measure outcomes, assess how we're
284
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transforming lives like other industries have?
285
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Yeah, I wrote an article recently about how arts advocacy has failed us.
286
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And I think that's part of it.
287
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You have groups, well-meaning, but really poorly run groups like Americans for the Arts,
like Theater Communications Group.
288
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And I don't blame the leaders of those groups.
289
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Well, maybe a little bit on Americans for the Arts, but they have a new leader, so I'd
like to give her a chance.
290
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ah TCG, uh
291
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by itself is just there to support theaters and they don't care if they're commercial or
non-commercial.
292
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So it's a little different there.
293
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But the arts councils in every state, the arts uh in Seattle, we have another group called
Arts Fund, which used to be a corporate council for the arts.
294
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All of these groups have been measuring their giving, this includes some foundations too,
by...
295
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uh metrics that have nothing to do with what a nonprofit arts organizations are doing.
296
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I remember having a discussion many years ago with the people, with the guy who was the
CEO of Arts Fund, which is again that corporate council for the arts in Seattle.
297
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And we were talking about mission statements, which I find to be
298
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fascinatingly underused, undervalued pieces of information.
299
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And I asked him about mission statements.
300
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He says, my god, we get all these mission statements from all of our.
301
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all of the applicants who have to fill out, by the way, 32 pages worth of stuff.
302
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And we really only give to six organizations, the six biggest, and then that's 85 % of our
giving and 15 % gets scattered among the 200 or so that on top of that, which is wholly
303
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awful.
304
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But he said that the missions are all versions of we do great art, you should support us.
305
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And I said, that's not a mission.
306
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At best, it's a description.
307
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But even that, what is great art?
308
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We produce excellence.
309
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The idea of artistic excellence is completely subjective and therefore goat crap.
310
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uh It's not a measure.
311
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It's not a metric.
312
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It's not.
313
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You should be doing that.
314
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Why wouldn't you want to do artistic excellence?
315
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That has nothing to do with your charitable status.
316
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Nobody's out there saying, well, at least we don't have to be excellent.
317
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So nobody is saying that.
318
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Anyway, ah so to your question, which is, again, dealing with
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why this continues to happen, why this happened, why this continues to happen is we have
the wrong, to use a Jim Collins phrase, we have the wrong people on the bus, we have
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really the wrong people driving the bus, and we need to change our value system.
321
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And I don't know how fast that happens.
322
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ah I really don't.
323
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I don't have faith that the people who are currently in charge of these larger
organizations will actually
324
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make those organizations worthwhile.
325
00:28:34,788 --> 00:28:41,723
They'll just make them sellers of tickets just like they are now and they'll just do it as
you say for the money and that's all.
326
00:28:42,776 --> 00:28:48,381
Did I tell you about the logic model, the measurement tool that we've been working on this
last year?
327
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I can't remember.
328
00:28:49,986 --> 00:28:50,786
So.
329
00:28:50,786 --> 00:28:55,096
Yeah, you did talk about it to me, but what is everybody else talking about?
330
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Well, I talk about it anytime that I can because I feel that data is the future of funding
and being on the front line of sitting across.
331
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Well.
332
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We're not using it, we're not collecting the data that we should be collecting in order to
get the funding.
333
00:29:10,558 --> 00:29:16,480
So what I'm saying is the data that you think you have the butts in seats, the size of
your budget.
334
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That's not data.
335
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Those are outputs.
336
00:29:19,321 --> 00:29:20,941
That's not outcomes.
337
00:29:20,941 --> 00:29:24,762
And so to to assess outcomes.
338
00:29:25,016 --> 00:29:30,788
from these organizations in a way that other industries do is the tool that we've built.
339
00:29:30,788 --> 00:29:46,125
So measuring empathy, reducing loneliness, connecting to communities, the 21st century uh
four C's skills, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, all of these
340
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things that we know that the arts contribute to and grow.
341
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We are now beginning to measure
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verifiably through scientific data experts putting constructs together specifically for
the arts so we can now measure not how many, but what happened, what happens to the many.
343
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And I envision a future where we deploy artists.
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and pay them through public funding to, let's think of a creative corp where we're going
to the critical parts in the city or community or state where we are trying to solve
345
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critical challenges, human service struggles that we know that the arts can help
contribute and solve and make stronger, healthier.
346
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communities for us all to prosper in.
347
00:30:48,262 --> 00:30:55,942
And so it is, I think it's that shift that you have so wonderfully spelled out the
challenge.
348
00:30:55,942 --> 00:31:03,422
Again, I think a lot of what you're saying, I know people in my head, I'm thinking they're
not gonna wanna hear that, they're not gonna like hearing that.
349
00:31:03,422 --> 00:31:12,294
But at what point do we get to that where it says, you have no choice or you're going to
go away and.
350
00:31:13,366 --> 00:31:24,695
That's even a greater disservice because the likelihood of a theater coming back or a
symphony coming back or, you know, after you've gone under is not, it will take decades to
351
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build that.
352
00:31:25,768 --> 00:31:28,761
So here's the pushback, a little bit of pushback on that.
353
00:31:28,761 --> 00:31:37,619
At your very last point, nature abhors a vacuum if an organization goes out of business,
generally speaking, after a while.
354
00:31:37,619 --> 00:31:47,020
And if an organization goes out of business and there's demand that exists, so the and
part is important there.
355
00:31:47,020 --> 00:31:49,651
then another organization will take its place.
356
00:31:49,651 --> 00:31:51,061
It won't be the same organization.
357
00:31:51,061 --> 00:31:52,312
It will be a different organization.
358
00:31:52,312 --> 00:31:56,964
And perhaps that organization will be more community-minded, and that's why they're going
to succeed.
359
00:31:56,964 --> 00:32:02,106
uh Or not just more community-minded, community-minded in the first place.
360
00:32:03,547 --> 00:32:06,488
The first part of the pushback I would have is this.
361
00:32:06,969 --> 00:32:15,692
If you can measure those attributes, ah I know those are soft.
362
00:32:15,912 --> 00:32:17,633
They're called soft skills.
363
00:32:17,633 --> 00:32:18,733
I'm not calling them that.
364
00:32:18,733 --> 00:32:20,154
That's what they're called.
365
00:32:20,814 --> 00:32:25,256
And I hold those to be very dear skills.
366
00:32:26,097 --> 00:32:42,804
But if you can figure out a way to modify your data to match the IRS description of what
an exempt organization has been mandated to do,
367
00:32:43,868 --> 00:32:54,474
and to take the arts exception, the arts organization exception out of the data and say,
no, this is a real charity doing these things.
368
00:32:54,474 --> 00:32:56,595
Here's the social justice aspect.
369
00:32:56,595 --> 00:32:59,326
Here's the social service aspect.
370
00:32:59,326 --> 00:33:02,978
Here's the part where taking the place of government.
371
00:33:02,978 --> 00:33:10,352
Here's the part where education is actually happening and prove that it's all happening.
372
00:33:10,352 --> 00:33:13,918
Then you have what I call in my first book, uh scene change.
373
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what I call impact squared, which is, or maybe that's in the second book.
374
00:33:18,909 --> 00:33:19,910
It's in one of the books.
375
00:33:19,910 --> 00:33:25,131
uh Impact squared is the impact of your impact.
376
00:33:25,231 --> 00:33:35,314
And while generally speaking, most nonprofit organizations don't aim for the impact of
their impact, that's where the gold is.
377
00:33:35,314 --> 00:33:43,668
That's what makes your organization important, not essential, but important to your
community.
378
00:33:43,668 --> 00:33:50,848
and makes it so that you can prove to the world that you are making a difference.
379
00:33:52,028 --> 00:33:54,328
So Impact Squared works kind of like this.
380
00:33:54,328 --> 00:34:02,388
I had a friend who ran, this is again a few years back, Food Lifeline, which is the
biggest food bank in Seattle.
381
00:34:02,388 --> 00:34:03,828
And it's in North Seattle.
382
00:34:03,828 --> 00:34:07,888
And I asked, what is your $1,000 ask?
383
00:34:08,488 --> 00:34:10,196
And she said, oh.
384
00:34:10,196 --> 00:34:22,796
Well, when I tell people that we fed 100,000 people last year, 100,000 separate people and
we collected data on all of them so that we know it was over 100,000, that's usually good
385
00:34:22,796 --> 00:34:24,476
for a $1,000 gift.
386
00:34:24,776 --> 00:34:28,596
I said, yeah, it might be worth more than that, but OK.
387
00:34:28,596 --> 00:34:29,716
So there's 1,000.
388
00:34:29,716 --> 00:34:32,416
If that's your 1,000, what's your $10,000 gift?
389
00:34:32,416 --> 00:34:39,156
Oh, when I tell them that 40,000 of those people are no longer on unemployment because
they used us as a scaffold.
390
00:34:39,326 --> 00:34:47,763
to keep their families fed while they looked for work, while they looked for a place to
live, while all of that happened, they now do have work, they now do have a place to live
391
00:34:47,763 --> 00:34:49,705
and are contributing back to society.
392
00:34:49,705 --> 00:34:52,046
That's the $10,000 gift.
393
00:34:52,047 --> 00:34:55,930
That's Impact Squared, the impact of the impact.
394
00:34:55,930 --> 00:35:06,459
And if you can show your organization has impact of impact, there's a great organization
down in San Diego, Voices of Our City, has the impact of the impact.
395
00:35:06,459 --> 00:35:08,070
So they have it in
396
00:35:08,112 --> 00:35:13,034
entire choir made up of people who are unhoused.
397
00:35:13,034 --> 00:35:19,235
And not only are they helping them within, they're not just featuring them like, look at
the monkeys.
398
00:35:19,236 --> 00:35:28,018
They're actually working with these people to find them housing because no one wants to be
unhoused regardless of what anyone says.
399
00:35:28,018 --> 00:35:31,479
No one wants to be homeless, okay?
400
00:35:31,479 --> 00:35:33,850
Let's get that out of the way now.
401
00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:42,224
but they work with these people to find housing, to find avenues, to find support, to find
community in themselves.
402
00:35:42,224 --> 00:35:47,947
And they sing as a choir and they've made the finals of Star Search, or not Star Search,
the other one.
403
00:35:47,947 --> 00:35:50,668
uh America's Got Talent.
404
00:35:51,549 --> 00:35:54,510
So, because they're really good at what they do.
405
00:35:54,510 --> 00:36:02,855
So the musician who is running the organization is a musician, absolutely a terrific
singer and has her own...
406
00:36:02,855 --> 00:36:03,700
uh
407
00:36:03,700 --> 00:36:12,706
career going on as that, but also really just cares about this very large unhoused
community in San Diego.
408
00:36:12,987 --> 00:36:18,391
She's not trying to solve the unhoused community in Los Angeles or San Francisco or
anywhere else.
409
00:36:18,391 --> 00:36:20,672
She is working with her own community.
410
00:36:20,672 --> 00:36:26,156
And so they receive funding, not just from arts sources.
411
00:36:26,156 --> 00:36:32,200
In fact, they receive very little funding from art sources because they look at it and
say, well, you know, it's
412
00:36:32,336 --> 00:36:35,678
It's not the old Globe Theater, right?
413
00:36:35,678 --> 00:36:44,404
uh But they do receive a ton of funding from all of these other foundations that support
just people being better off.
414
00:36:44,464 --> 00:36:46,606
Out-of-hand theater is the same way in Atlanta.
415
00:36:46,606 --> 00:36:49,868
And they just got murdered on two fronts.
416
00:36:49,888 --> 00:36:52,050
They were receiving NEA funding.
417
00:36:52,050 --> 00:37:01,566
That was rescinded the day before yesterday uh for their Shows in Homes program, which uh
where they
418
00:37:01,566 --> 00:37:14,269
perform in people's living rooms stories of social justice because honestly they're really
a social justice organization that uses theater as a tool to make things happen and not
419
00:37:14,269 --> 00:37:16,670
just to kind of show it and talk about it after.
420
00:37:16,670 --> 00:37:25,529
They do that but then they ask for commitments from the people who have seen it to see how
things get better and then they measure the commitments, they measure the data.
421
00:37:25,529 --> 00:37:31,834
They're very good at gathering the data that moves things forward not just leaving it at
well we did a show.
422
00:37:32,358 --> 00:37:35,910
in somebody's home, but that their NEA funding got cut for that.
423
00:37:35,910 --> 00:37:38,292
That was about, I don't know, probably 25,000.
424
00:37:38,292 --> 00:37:51,711
And then because they were doing a program on vaccinations, because the black community in
Atlanta is under vaccinated, is underrepresented among vaccinations because there's a
425
00:37:51,711 --> 00:37:58,306
great deal of mistrust with the black community traditionally in Atlanta and the medical
community.
426
00:37:58,306 --> 00:38:02,148
And why wouldn't there be the medical community used to use the black community?
427
00:38:02,148 --> 00:38:14,713
ago as know guinea pigs and pin cushions so now there's no there's very there's a lot of
lack of trust involved with that so they were executing a vaccination equitable vaccines
428
00:38:14,713 --> 00:38:24,638
program that was funded in part by the CDC well the CDC got its funding cut therefore they
got their funding cut and had to discontinue the program so which means that people are
429
00:38:24,638 --> 00:38:29,822
not getting vaccinations now that would have been otherwise so there's a real harm
430
00:38:29,822 --> 00:38:31,653
done by the cutting of that.
431
00:38:31,653 --> 00:38:33,693
So they've gotten hit twice.
432
00:38:33,693 --> 00:38:39,445
So they're going to have to make up for it in uh the private community.
433
00:38:39,445 --> 00:38:47,197
And with any luck, the foundations that have provided them support and the individuals
will continue to do so and will make up their funding.
434
00:38:47,197 --> 00:38:49,838
But they deserve it more than anybody else in Atlanta.
435
00:38:49,838 --> 00:38:57,599
And in fact, as an arts organization, they're now the second largest arts organization in
Atlanta behind the Alliance.
436
00:38:58,380 --> 00:38:59,290
theater.
437
00:38:59,326 --> 00:39:01,478
program in Atlanta, nonprofit theater.
438
00:39:01,478 --> 00:39:04,641
uh The ballet is bigger and the orchestra is bigger.
439
00:39:04,641 --> 00:39:18,242
uh that's because their work in the community has been so phenomenally, phenomenally
successful that people need to give to places like out of hand theater.
440
00:39:20,583 --> 00:39:34,754
What if any responsibility or action do arts councils, arts agencies have in this
ecosystem solving the problem?
441
00:39:36,812 --> 00:39:42,284
What comes to mind is I feel as if everyone is waiting for someone to come rescue them.
442
00:39:42,846 --> 00:39:52,396
Yeah, well don't look at the people who are there now because they're being told, okay, so
I'm not just ratting on people.
443
00:39:52,396 --> 00:39:56,970
I'm just telling you that on the larger organizations, who's on the board?
444
00:39:57,151 --> 00:39:59,332
Who's on the board of these organizations?
445
00:39:59,873 --> 00:40:06,568
Generally speaking, you've got the toxic folks, the same toxic donors who are buying rooms
for themselves.
446
00:40:06,568 --> 00:40:08,479
And then the other side are the corporate folks.
447
00:40:08,479 --> 00:40:15,412
The corporate folks who are looking at corporate America as a model for how nonprofits
should run more like a business.
448
00:40:15,412 --> 00:40:23,255
uh I always think of Jim Collins' retort.
449
00:40:23,396 --> 00:40:29,498
He was sitting in a nonprofit boardroom and there was somebody who said that at the board
table.
450
00:40:29,498 --> 00:40:32,039
said, we need to run this more like a business.
451
00:40:32,894 --> 00:40:40,248
He said, you mean, well, you 95 % of the businesses in America are mediocre and most of
them lose money.
452
00:40:40,848 --> 00:40:42,449
You want us to do that?
453
00:40:42,489 --> 00:40:54,636
Because I thought nonprofits, because we have a goal of helping people become more whole
or helping communities become better off because there's a big problem.
454
00:40:54,636 --> 00:41:01,680
I thought our goal was to be great so that we could make a community better off rather
than just.
455
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:06,894
existing for the sake of existing and the other guy got all huffy about it.
456
00:41:06,894 --> 00:41:12,218
But I always think of that response when people say you got to run this more like a
business.
457
00:41:12,218 --> 00:41:14,069
Well, like a mediocre one?
458
00:41:14,069 --> 00:41:14,469
No.
459
00:41:14,469 --> 00:41:18,292
uh Nonprofits are businesses.
460
00:41:18,652 --> 00:41:20,994
Let's stop that discussion that they're not.
461
00:41:20,994 --> 00:41:26,358
They do run differently than what a corporate business would do.
462
00:41:26,358 --> 00:41:28,199
And that's been the problem.
463
00:41:28,279 --> 00:41:29,990
In a corporate world,
464
00:41:30,502 --> 00:41:33,993
In a for-profit world, what's the most important thing?
465
00:41:33,993 --> 00:41:38,354
It's right there in the words, for-profit, make money.
466
00:41:39,174 --> 00:41:44,936
In a non-profit world, the most important thing is impact.
467
00:41:45,556 --> 00:41:49,177
Make things better.
468
00:41:50,138 --> 00:41:59,520
And until non-profit arts organizations choose to make things better before anything else.
469
00:42:00,328 --> 00:42:03,629
they're going to continue to fall down this hole.
470
00:42:03,629 --> 00:42:17,733
And in fact, when they decide to close, they'll have that line on their lips that was in
The Simpsons one episode when they were talking about Ned's background as a kid when he
471
00:42:17,733 --> 00:42:19,713
was horrible.
472
00:42:19,713 --> 00:42:20,804
He was a horrible child.
473
00:42:20,804 --> 00:42:22,454
He was worse than Bart.
474
00:42:23,114 --> 00:42:29,416
And the parents who are hippies throw up their hands and say, well, we tried nothing and
we ran out of ideas.
475
00:42:30,292 --> 00:42:34,781
And I think that's what's gonna happen in the boardrooms across arts organizations in
America.
476
00:42:34,781 --> 00:42:36,343
We tried nothing.
477
00:42:36,966 --> 00:42:38,578
We ran out of ideas.
478
00:42:41,835 --> 00:42:49,382
What advice would you give right now today to nonprofit arts organizations?
479
00:42:53,150 --> 00:42:53,997
Dare.
480
00:42:58,054 --> 00:42:59,907
Be a non-profit.
481
00:42:59,907 --> 00:43:02,931
Lean on the non-profit before you lean on the art.
482
00:43:02,931 --> 00:43:04,533
The art's gonna happen no matter what.
483
00:43:04,533 --> 00:43:05,854
It's essential.
484
00:43:06,235 --> 00:43:13,154
Artists are gonna put together things because they're magical, but your organization is
not even important.
485
00:43:14,874 --> 00:43:25,033
until you're following what a charity would do with that information, using art as a tool
and not as a product.
486
00:43:25,033 --> 00:43:31,384
ah I talk about that a lot in both of these books, Scene Change and Scene Change 2.
487
00:43:32,399 --> 00:43:35,252
I tell you that not because I want the world to buy the books.
488
00:43:35,252 --> 00:43:37,243
I don't make any money off the books.
489
00:43:37,243 --> 00:43:42,948
I hope they will do it because the message that is in it is
490
00:43:44,180 --> 00:43:53,560
such that if they followed that, if they looked at the ideas there, even if they don't
necessarily agree with them right now, they need to bounce these things off each other.
491
00:43:53,560 --> 00:44:06,040
There are a series of discussion prompts in the second book, for example, which is meant
for board members, the five real responsibilities of nonprofit arts boards, to have these
492
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:09,480
discussions, to say, what are we actually doing for the community?
493
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:14,140
And putting on shows isn't Putting on shows is not it.
494
00:44:14,224 --> 00:44:22,026
It might qualify you as a technically as a nonprofit, but doesn't qualify you as a worthy
one that deserves a dime.
495
00:44:22,966 --> 00:44:32,729
What qualifies you as a nonprofit that deserves money is when you say these people are
better off by X, Y, and Z data.
496
00:44:33,849 --> 00:44:43,572
And here are some stories that back that up because we can't tell the stories of the
people then it then it just becomes a data blur.
497
00:44:44,564 --> 00:45:03,072
ah And you tell the stories of the arts organization in San Francisco that used to octets
under a bridge, under an overpass ah for unhoused people and unhoused communities, tent
498
00:45:03,072 --> 00:45:04,472
cities and the like.
499
00:45:04,472 --> 00:45:07,894
And they would work with the social service organizations in their area.
500
00:45:07,894 --> 00:45:14,156
So they would bring the chairs, they would bring a bottle of water for everybody, and they
would bring uh
501
00:45:14,472 --> 00:45:26,471
their own bodies and instruments and such so that when they played, and amplifiers because
it's allowed under an overpass, and so when they played, the other social service people
502
00:45:26,471 --> 00:45:36,188
would encourage folks to get out of their tents, to come sit down, have a bottle of water,
listen to a show, and then at intermission, if that's what you'd want to call it, they
503
00:45:36,188 --> 00:45:39,891
would, these same social service people would say, okay, so what do you need?
504
00:45:39,891 --> 00:45:41,992
Do you need a shower?
505
00:45:42,388 --> 00:45:43,448
Do need some clothes?
506
00:45:43,448 --> 00:45:46,852
Do you need an address so that you can do a job application?
507
00:45:46,852 --> 00:45:48,593
Do you need a phone number?
508
00:45:48,934 --> 00:45:59,763
There are places in your social network that can, in the social net, that can take care of
this, that can help you with this.
509
00:45:59,763 --> 00:46:10,228
And then when the arts organization can turn to the social service people and help gather
data about these folks and find out that instead of...
510
00:46:10,228 --> 00:46:14,839
5 % achieving housing in a year, 20 % achieved housing in a year.
511
00:46:16,658 --> 00:46:17,830
I'd give them money.
512
00:46:17,830 --> 00:46:31,401
I mean, that's what's important, not what you might think is artistic excellence or the
latest idea or the show that, the worst one among the theaters is the show that's gonna go
513
00:46:31,401 --> 00:46:32,332
to Broadway.
514
00:46:34,378 --> 00:46:43,283
So again, this goes back, I'm thinking of Arts Council's funders or what I call funnelers,
because they're funneling the funding that we're getting from the public sector.
515
00:46:44,624 --> 00:46:46,275
Do they have a responsibility?
516
00:46:46,275 --> 00:46:47,705
Can they help in this?
517
00:46:47,705 --> 00:46:48,876
You know, they're the ones.
518
00:46:48,876 --> 00:46:50,057
criteria.
519
00:46:50,657 --> 00:46:51,988
They can absolutely help.
520
00:46:51,988 --> 00:47:04,083
They can change the criteria tomorrow and ask for data that proves that they are acting as
charities in their communities.
521
00:47:04,243 --> 00:47:06,184
forget about the tourism side.
522
00:47:06,184 --> 00:47:09,035
Forget, because tourism is not a nonprofit activity.
523
00:47:09,035 --> 00:47:12,046
That's just something that some folks like.
524
00:47:12,167 --> 00:47:13,067
States like it.
525
00:47:13,067 --> 00:47:13,807
Cities like it.
526
00:47:13,807 --> 00:47:15,888
But it has nothing to do with
527
00:47:17,116 --> 00:47:19,177
you know, helping your local people.
528
00:47:19,177 --> 00:47:30,007
ah They don't care where your actors come from, although they assume the assumption has
always been our actors or musicians or whomever.
529
00:47:30,007 --> 00:47:32,289
They are assuming that they're all coming from your city.
530
00:47:32,289 --> 00:47:38,645
There was a company in Oregon that was touting the fact that, 80 % of our of our
performers come from Oregon.
531
00:47:38,645 --> 00:47:41,756
And the response was, you mean, it's not 100%.
532
00:47:41,756 --> 00:47:45,198
So
533
00:47:45,728 --> 00:47:47,950
You know your expectations out there.
534
00:47:47,950 --> 00:47:50,813
then stop worrying.
535
00:47:50,813 --> 00:47:55,717
If you want a diversifier on it, you're sitting there saying, how do I get black people to
come to my shows?
536
00:47:55,717 --> 00:48:00,760
Maybe if I do, again, my background's in theater, so a lot of my examples are theater.
537
00:48:00,781 --> 00:48:11,349
So if I do 1 August Wilson a year, that'll get the black people in, and then they'll stay
to see the Moliere piece that's right after that, right, with an entire white cast.
538
00:48:12,110 --> 00:48:14,790
No, they won't.
539
00:48:14,790 --> 00:48:19,263
And if you thought they would, you're an idiot is kind of my response to that.
540
00:48:19,503 --> 00:48:23,856
Or the folks who do a Christmas Carol and say, well, see, we're doing it because they're
in the building.
541
00:48:23,856 --> 00:48:26,348
And anytime they're in the building, that's a good thing.
542
00:48:26,348 --> 00:48:32,232
And if they come into the building, we'll send them all subscription and season ticket
options.
543
00:48:32,232 --> 00:48:37,325
And none of them buy them because that's not why they go, went to your building.
544
00:48:37,325 --> 00:48:38,426
They went to see a Christmas Carol.
545
00:48:38,426 --> 00:48:40,357
They didn't go to see your building.
546
00:48:40,698 --> 00:48:44,920
Buildings are not all that important as we have come to find.
547
00:48:45,460 --> 00:48:49,800
uh So if you want to diversify your audience, go diversify it.
548
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:54,082
Go do performances in areas of your community that are underserved.
549
00:48:54,182 --> 00:48:56,143
You'll diversify your audience.
550
00:48:56,603 --> 00:49:02,705
You won't get any ticket money out of it, but that's okay because that's not the point.
551
00:49:02,705 --> 00:49:04,925
The point is to help your community.
552
00:49:04,925 --> 00:49:12,007
And generally speaking, if you start doing that, uh funding will come for that.
553
00:49:12,427 --> 00:49:14,728
That's what people want to fill.
554
00:49:15,688 --> 00:49:20,751
fund is they want to have a hand in that.
555
00:49:20,751 --> 00:49:22,833
my God, all these people got bad.
556
00:49:22,833 --> 00:49:28,416
Talk to this young girl and I'm going to tell this story because it made me cry at first.
557
00:49:28,757 --> 00:49:31,579
So now I can say I'm not crying, you're crying.
558
00:49:31,579 --> 00:49:45,542
uh High school student in a rural town in Kentucky and it was a night of a performance of
the Louisville Orchestra, free performance.
559
00:49:45,542 --> 00:49:48,654
And I asked her, you know, why are you here?
560
00:49:48,654 --> 00:49:57,760
And she said, well, last year they came to a friend of mine's high school and she invited
me to come and I didn't want to, but I went anyway.
561
00:49:58,661 --> 00:50:06,797
And I saw this and I saw them using not just classical music, which is really nice.
562
00:50:06,797 --> 00:50:13,131
And we don't get that a lot here, but they also brought out a bluegrass band to play with
the orchestra.
563
00:50:13,131 --> 00:50:14,708
So I got sort of.
564
00:50:14,708 --> 00:50:23,811
personal touch, Kentucky music played right back at me in a way that I'd never experienced
before.
565
00:50:24,371 --> 00:50:35,394
And all of sudden, my depression kind of subsided and my anxieties subsided for the time
that I was in the building like they had never before.
566
00:50:36,374 --> 00:50:40,346
She told me she was an A student, all AP classes.
567
00:50:40,346 --> 00:50:42,056
She's a senior at her.
568
00:50:42,056 --> 00:50:48,218
local high school, but that she's probably gonna end up working on a farm, ah on the
family farm.
569
00:50:48,518 --> 00:50:52,039
And she didn't really want to, but she didn't see any way out of that.
570
00:50:52,039 --> 00:50:56,120
uh She didn't like it and she was felt trapped by it.
571
00:50:56,281 --> 00:51:01,582
Well, once she saw the orchestra, the first thing she did when she went back to her high
school was join band.
572
00:51:02,062 --> 00:51:06,023
And when she joined band, she found that she could have that music every day.
573
00:51:06,464 --> 00:51:07,282
She...
574
00:51:07,282 --> 00:51:17,715
went every day to the band room, even when there wasn't a class, just to work on her
instrument and to listen to music and to kind of relax in those moments that she had never
575
00:51:17,715 --> 00:51:19,175
had before.
576
00:51:19,275 --> 00:51:21,606
She was all about depression and anxiety.
577
00:51:21,606 --> 00:51:23,856
She was clinically depressed.
578
00:51:23,856 --> 00:51:29,418
uh And she'd had, she told me suicidal ideations.
579
00:51:29,658 --> 00:51:35,780
Cause I said, where would you be if you hadn't gone to the show last year and therefore
didn't come tonight?
580
00:51:35,780 --> 00:51:36,680
She said, I...
581
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:39,081
don't want to get dark, but I'd probably be dead.
582
00:51:39,522 --> 00:51:41,503
I'd already thought about how I was going to do it.
583
00:51:41,503 --> 00:51:44,524
I knew that, you leaving school, I was going to go into the farm.
584
00:51:44,524 --> 00:51:52,928
And while I love my family and I understand why they need me at the farm, it was just not
a life I want or wanted.
585
00:51:53,769 --> 00:52:05,426
But now that I have music, I'm alive and happier and figuring out life and trying to
discover a way that maybe I can go to college and get an ag degree and be a better farmer
586
00:52:05,426 --> 00:52:06,766
for my family.
587
00:52:06,846 --> 00:52:10,296
than if I had just gone out and worked the fields at the age of 18.
588
00:52:11,018 --> 00:52:17,342
So I took that story back to the staff of the Louisville Orchestra at a staff meeting.
589
00:52:17,342 --> 00:52:19,163
And I said, you saved a life.
590
00:52:19,523 --> 00:52:20,984
You saved a life.
591
00:52:20,984 --> 00:52:24,026
This young woman would be gone.
592
00:52:24,026 --> 00:52:27,468
And it doesn't even matter on some level that it's a pretty good life.
593
00:52:27,468 --> 00:52:35,812
Smart girl wants to work with her family, but also wants to get an education, wants to be
a part of society.
594
00:52:36,584 --> 00:52:39,852
You saved a life with music.
595
00:52:40,536 --> 00:52:42,640
Do that, you win.
596
00:52:44,348 --> 00:52:53,050
I think some of the discussion, Ben Cameron used to talk about how the arts are a powerful
progressive force and cause no harm.
597
00:52:53,050 --> 00:53:10,015
And I say, maybe the idea that harm, causing no harm isn't enough, but defeating harm is
something more and something uh better for the community, better for the society at large.
598
00:53:10,455 --> 00:53:12,036
Go save lives, people.
599
00:53:12,036 --> 00:53:13,116
It's much.
600
00:53:13,352 --> 00:53:27,385
You'll feel better about what you do instead of doing the greatest next play, the greatest
next opera, or not even the next opera, it's some 200 year old Italian thing.
601
00:53:28,106 --> 00:53:35,282
But you know, there's that baritone from Italy that we were able to get, not important.
602
00:53:38,240 --> 00:53:40,550
Alan, thank you so much for your time.
603
00:53:40,550 --> 00:53:41,841
My pleasure.
604
00:53:42,081 --> 00:53:43,162
I'm here anytime.
605
00:53:43,162 --> 00:53:45,654
hope people get in touch with me.
606
00:53:45,654 --> 00:53:47,385
I'm in Arts Journal.
607
00:53:47,846 --> 00:53:50,388
I write a weekly blog for Arts Journal.
608
00:53:50,588 --> 00:53:55,020
And of course, there these two books, Scene Change and Scene Change 2.
609
00:53:57,222 --> 00:54:00,293
And you can, you know, I'm really very approachable.
610
00:54:00,293 --> 00:54:02,014
You can call me anytime.
611
00:54:02,014 --> 00:54:16,359
And Angela calls me and I take her call every time because among the people in the world,
there are very few that understand that, oh, all we have to do is change and it'll work.
612
00:54:16,359 --> 00:54:18,780
And Angela gets that better than most.
613
00:54:20,012 --> 00:54:21,173
I appreciate you, Alan.
614
00:54:21,173 --> 00:54:30,673
I will have all of the contact information, book information, everything in the show notes
for anyone who would like to reach out and learn more about you and read your fantastic
615
00:54:30,673 --> 00:54:31,193
books.
616
00:54:31,193 --> 00:54:31,791
Thank you.
617
00:54:31,791 --> 00:54:32,104
you.
618
00:54:32,104 --> 00:54:33,568
Thank you so much.
00:00:01,058 --> 00:00:02,679
Hi, Alan, how are you?
2
00:00:04,900 --> 00:00:05,801
I'm holding up well.
3
00:00:05,801 --> 00:00:07,601
Thank you for joining.
4
00:00:07,698 --> 00:00:09,483
I like to dive right in.
5
00:00:09,483 --> 00:00:22,730
And you and I had a conversation a couple of weeks ago and I realized that I've been
guilty of something that I didn't realize that I was guilty of until we spoke, which is
6
00:00:22,830 --> 00:00:29,654
often when lobbying for funding for the arts, I will say the arts aren't charities.
7
00:00:30,156 --> 00:00:32,288
We don't expect handouts.
8
00:00:32,509 --> 00:00:33,820
We are businesses.
9
00:00:33,820 --> 00:00:38,093
We just happen to be businesses in the creative economy.
10
00:00:38,735 --> 00:00:39,185
But Mr.
11
00:00:39,185 --> 00:00:42,438
501C3 Guru oh
12
00:00:43,900 --> 00:00:45,061
So here's the deal.
13
00:00:45,061 --> 00:00:52,705
uh They're not, know, being a business and being a charity, those are not exclusive of
each other.
14
00:00:52,705 --> 00:00:54,946
This is a business that is a charity.
15
00:00:54,946 --> 00:00:57,708
uh 501c3 is nonprofit.
16
00:00:57,708 --> 00:00:59,078
Nonprofits are charities.
17
00:00:59,078 --> 00:01:01,430
I used to think otherwise, by the way.
18
00:01:01,430 --> 00:01:06,473
I used to think the same as you is that, well, you know, it's not really a charity, it's a
nonprofit.
19
00:01:06,473 --> 00:01:13,010
Or I'd use those euphemisms that we've used over the years like non-commercial or what's
the other one?
20
00:01:13,010 --> 00:01:14,080
not for profit.
21
00:01:14,080 --> 00:01:18,472
uh Those are just made up terms.
22
00:01:18,472 --> 00:01:21,973
I mean, they're not made up, but they have no legal standing.
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The legal standing is the word nonprofit, which has uh exemption requirements by the IRS.
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That's who sent that little letter that allows you to raise money and all of that.
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The problem with nonprofit arts organizations over the years has been that they've
abdicated their charitable status.
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And that's not just a problem in theory or in uh style or in my opinion.
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That's just, that is fact for the most part.
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primarily for the largest arts organizations, that they act like the commercial versions
of themselves.
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For charity to be a charity, it has to follow the rules of charity.
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And those rules are stated in Section 501C3 of the IRS Code.
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501c3 is not just a bunch of letters and numbers thrown together.
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It's part of the code.
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And the oddest part is I ask people all the time, have you ever read section 501c3 of the
IRS code?
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You know that thing that says that you're allowed to raise money?
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It's a pretty basic piece of information.
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No, is the answer.
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The most I've ever gotten as a response for that in groups is about 10%.
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And it's odd because it's only four sentences, four or five sentences.
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That's it.
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It's not long.
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It's not written in legalese.
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It's pretty standard stuff.
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The second part of this, and before people start rushing to the phone and calling you and
saying, but we're allowed to be nonprofits because of that court case.
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Yes, there was a court case in 1980.
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I used to know what it was, Plumstead, that's it, Plumstead Theatrical Society versus
basically the IRS.
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And the IRS had denied them funding because they weren't doing any charitable.
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exemption charitable works as spelled out in the code.
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They sued saying that we are a public charity.
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The ruling was that you could become a non-profit arts organizations merely by producing
art.
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Now we go into 2020 and forward.
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The act of producing art might qualify you
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to be a nonprofit, but doesn't qualify you to be a good nonprofit or a worthy nonprofit or
one that deserves funding.
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Frankly, in this society, if that's all you're doing, you really don't deserve funding.
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ah Your goal should be to the betterment of the people in your community.
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If you can do that, you're gold.
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Even now, as we speak, as hundreds of people are tendering their resignations from the NEA
because it's likely going to close by next year or something like that.
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And the NEH, by the way, and museums and libraries and all of that stuff.
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And it's horrific, but not unexpected.
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So anyone who is shocked by it, I really don't get because...
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He said he was going to do that and so it's happening and he has the full support of the
Congress so he can govern by edict all he wants and so there he goes.
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so the question I have always said is what happens in a post-NEA world and I wrote an
article about that in January and really it was an interesting thing that people were
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still in denial that that was going to happen even though it was really obvious that that
was going to happen.
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But as we look in our post-NEA world, ah the thing that's going to make sense to everyone
and why you would deserve funding is if you're achieving measurable results of charitable,
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underlined, in bold, in italics, charitable goals.
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ah Are you helping with social services?
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What kind of social services?
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What was the result of that help?
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A lot of times arts organizations, for example, will do educational programs and then tell
the world that they're an educational organization.
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It's not true, but they'll say it.
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And the reason why they'll say it is because they haven't discovered the distinction.
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And it's a really important distinction between teaching and educating.
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uh
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So putting on an education program is lovely, but if you're not measuring the results of
that program, and I don't mean how many people came or took part, I mean what did they
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learn from it, then you're not an educational organization.
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An educational organization, say, I don't know, the Ohio State University and you're part
of the world.
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So the Ohio State University uh measures its educational achievement.
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They have tests and grades and
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uh status and a steady set of guidelines that get you to a certain thing called a degree.
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then there even afterwards there's alumni and there's networking and there are
possibilities that exist to better yourself even after you've gotten the initial
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education.
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you, the school has proved its worth by issuing these grades and evaluations and whatnot.
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They're not done to torture the students.
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They're done to measure the effectiveness of the education that's going on, not the
teaching that's going on, the education that's going on.
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So when ah arts organizations put on education programs and say, you know, hundred kids
came and that's it.
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So what?
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What did they get out of it?
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If you can prove through real data what the kids got out of that.
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and say, look, here are the things that happened because of that.
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And not just quote some national study on the test scores going up because they've.
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Partly because generally speaking, people who go to after school music programs get better
test scores.
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That's national data.
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Show me your organization's data and that's where it'll happen for you in a post-NEA
society.
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Because you stop being an arts organization and you start being a movement and a cause.
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here?
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We got here through, some of it is laziness, some of it is inertia.
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uh You know, there's a great big difference between art, artists and arts organizations.
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And that's the seminal reason why we've gotten here is that it got blurred.
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The truth is this, art, art.
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is essential in the literal sense of the word.
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Essential meaning uh you can't not have it.
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It exists whether you created or not.
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uh I remember there was an old comedian who used to talk about, we were so poor that on
the 4th of July, we couldn't afford to go to the fireworks, so we just closed our eyes and
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did this.
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uh
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Even that's art, you know, not the joke.
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That's art too, but the this, the what you see is art.
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Everything you see it.
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Look at like the least uh artistic thing around you.
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Think of it as a, oh, a styrofoam cup.
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There's a good one.
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Nothing artistic about it.
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However, it was designed by somebody and design is art.
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Therefore it is essential.
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Artists, while not essential, are magical.
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because what they can do, and I really mean that, artists can take disparate pieces of
life, of media, of other art, and put them together and combine them and present something
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that is...
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a new art that has new value to it, it has an artistic value that is greater than the sum
of its parts, or lesser than the sum of its parts, but it's certainly different from the
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parts themselves.
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That's what artists do.
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They're amazing and they need to be supported to do that because that's how we create em a
better life for ourselves.
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Richard Florida did all that studying way back when about the creative class.
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uh It was a good book and I think people should read it.
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basically what it said is that the most progressive cities in America, not progressive
politically, progressive meaning they were getting things done, were the ones that had the
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most artists in them.
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And that was not, that it happened.
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He looked at it as a coincidence at first, but then he started digging into it and seeing
that the creative class includes people who are not traditional artists, people who have
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to be creative in their thinking on a daily basis.
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So that's the tech uh industry, that's lawyers, that's a lot of people who have to find
ways to make things work.
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And then there's arts organizations.
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the traditional 501c3 arts organization.
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Totally inessential.
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Not essential for art to exist, not essential for artists to do their work.
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Artists were doing work before there were organizations and they would do it if every
organization closed.
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Artists would still do their work.
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New art, new valued art would still be created.
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So for the nonprofit arts organization to be essential in its own community, right?
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It's owned by the people of the state in which the nonprofit was established.
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That's who owns your nonprofit arts organization.
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Not your board, not your executive director, and certainly not your artistic director.
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They don't own your company.
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Your company is owned by the people who pay your taxes for you.
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and that's the people of the state in which you do business.
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And what they're asking you to do is to provide value that they cannot create through
government support for just government uh things.
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They're looking for some sort of value in the charitable aspect of what you do, things
that don't make money.
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So,
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The idea that arts organizations over the last 50 years, and this is where it's fallen
apart, have relied on a three-legged stool of financial support that is distinctly
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non-charitable.
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The three-legged stool being one, butts in seats, totally nonsensical as a metric for
charitable uh impact.
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uh If that were a metric, then...
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we'll go back to Ohio, the Columbus Blue Jackets, we'll put it that way, would be a
nonprofit organization because they draw 20,000 fans a game and they even draw millions of
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people on television and they can prove that.
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In fact, I don't know what they are, but I'll betcha.
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that because I know the National Hockey League does it, but I'll bet you Columbus Blue
Jackets have a charitable arm of what they do.
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So you might even say that they're more charitable than the arts organizations that
they're helping.
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That's what charities do.
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So butts in seats, not a metric.
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The second metric, positive economic impact.
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You see Americans for the Arts pushing this one.
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uh
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And then every city seems to do it through their own arts councils because the cities
themselves are interested in economic advancement, which is great for the cities, but it
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has nothing to do with charity.
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If that were the case, every restaurant could claim to be a nonprofit because when you go
to a restaurant, you also pay a babysitter and you also buy parking sometimes.
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And sometimes you buy tickets to a ballet.
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So you're supporting the community through that economic impact, that positive economic
impact.
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So it makes that whole argument of, well, know, people spend $20 on top of their ticket.
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Again, basing something on a paid admission on top of that, you know, that's even beyond.
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bad data gathering.
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And then the third piece of bad data gathering I mentioned earlier, and that's the
national data, using national data to support a local organization.
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You know, students get better, but test scores when they go to, when they experience
music.
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Okay, that's nice.
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Prove that your organization does and we'll have a better discussion.
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Not that, you generally speaking nationally, because, you know, just because some national
survey said that doesn't mean that your organization is doing diddly squat.
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So that's where we fell apart.
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uh The arts themselves, the arts organizations themselves, you know, is it laziness or is
it just the concentration on doing what they really wanted to do was, which was art?
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uh It's a game of I wanna.
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and the artists want to do art, which is great, that's what they do, but then you put an
artistic leader involved and he just wants to do art too, or she.
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And it's been he too often, but, and she.
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uh And so there's this weird...
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following of an artistic vision, which has nothing to do with a charitable impact.
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Artistic vision has nothing to do with that.
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Artistic vision, if your organization changes because your artistic leader leaves, that
means you weren't an organization to begin with.
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At a food bank, if somebody leaves and some new executive director comes in and says, you
know, I want to make this a homeless shelter, that doesn't happen.
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It stays a food bank no matter what.
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ah And even so, their goal is to feed people or to solve hunger, not to pretty up the
shelves.
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Anyway, that's where we are.
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And that's the problem.
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And it's invited a system in which the only ones who are donating, basically, and again,
this is mostly about the larger organizations, but there are some middle and small ones
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that do this too.
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The only ones who are supporting arts organizations are those who participate in it.
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So the donor is donating so that the donor may attend.
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ah That's a problem.
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That's kind of a textbook elitism example.
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And if the donors are in fact the beneficiaries of their own donation, then something is
really, really wrong.
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You're not doing all that well.
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And so donors who do that have been holding, many of them have been bad people, or not bad
people necessarily, but have been holding the company's hostage and saying, well, I'll
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give you the $20,000, but you have to give me a private room.
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There's one organization that I worked with, a couple did exactly that, did a multi-year,
20,000 a year.
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uh gift and in return they got a room in a public building got a room named after them and
which is fine but then anytime they were there they could close off the room and put an
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armed guard at the door to keep the riffraff out come on
200
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That's toxicity.
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That's a toxic donor in your midst.
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That's the person that when they walk in the room, everybody in the development office
suddenly finds something else to do.
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That's the person that when they get assigned to the development director or to the
executive director or to a board member to go, I had a, I worked with a woman who used to
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talk about the care and feeding of donors.
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If that's how you're looking at it and this person is just trouble and you know they're
trouble, then they in fact are toxic to your organization.
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And even though they're giving a lot of money, they're also taking away from your
charitable impact.
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So you can't just do that dance.
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You have to lay down some ground rules when it comes to that.
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But you can't do that if you're not doing any charitable activity.
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So it just goes on and on and on.
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How do we unravel this?
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How do we stop this from happening?
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Because it's a stop, it's not an unravel.
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ah I think, uh so there's a theory out there that the reason it took 40 years for the Jews
to leave the desert is that a whole generation of people who thought they were slaves had
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to die off ah before they could go into the promised land.
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It's an interesting theory.
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ah
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If any of that happened, it's certainly an interesting story and one of many morals you
can pull out of that story.
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Maybe true, maybe not, who knows.
220
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I'll buy that as a pretty good reason.
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uh
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I think that the only way this is going to really work is if organizations backs to the
wall broke about to close, decide to do this.
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To decide to, well, we'll stop being that big, expensive, uh hoity-toity, toxic nonprofit.
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arts organization that hoovers out all of the money from foundations and such, money that
would be worth a hell of a lot more in the hands of several of the smaller nonprofits that
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have very specific charitable goals attached to them.
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Unfortunately, it's going to take that back against the wall thing.
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The amazing thing is there are organizations that have already done this.
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that have already and they sometimes it's with their backs against the wall, sometimes
not.
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ah I think of the Louisville Orchestra as a prime example of an organization that wins, ah
got $8 million, I think so far in state funding in a very red state of Kentucky to tour
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the orchestra all over the state.
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They play in every single city.
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They do work in the schools.
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They do work in libraries.
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do work to, they do free performance.
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They're all free performances outside of Louisville.
236
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And they've cut the Louisville side of their performance schedule down all the way down to
like 17 performances.
237
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And many of them are bunched around Christmas.
238
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And while they're important to the orchestra to have a quote unquote home in Louisville,
it's in a big scary art center.
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as opposed to in your high school, your local rural high school's gym, where kids are
discovering music can be a down regulator for all the anxiety that they're working with.
240
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And then they have the data to prove that that's exactly what's happening.
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So I would argue that these large organizations would say that they are doing what you're
saying they should be doing.
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I think a lot of them have.
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fooled themselves, to convince themselves that they are doing the good work.
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They're wrong.
245
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They're just flat wrong.
246
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They're not.
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I look at the largest organizations.
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I mean, I'll take New York out of the picture because New York is a different animal.
249
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But if you, because of the huge commercial uh arts environment that it's a very different
thing, New York City than the rest of the country.
250
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So if you look at the rest of the country and you're looking at the largest arts
organizations in those places,
251
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There's a reason why they're losing their funding.
252
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There's a reason why they're talking about how their audience is growing because they're
comparing it to pandemic numbers.
253
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Yeah, know, when you had zero and you go up to a hundred in your theater of a thousand,
yeah, you got,
254
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oodles of more people coming to your organization.
255
00:22:43,358 --> 00:22:47,840
So come on, don't give me lousy data.
256
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Why don't you tell me that you've created a literacy program and 35 kids in this class
alone learn to read because of your participation in that program?
257
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So you talk about having your back against the wall.
258
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I thought the pandemic was the back against the wall.
259
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And I was...
260
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funding.
261
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There was some government funding that kept them open.
262
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Shuttered venues, things like that.
263
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yes, that and personally, I led a coalition in Ohio where we fought it took two years to
get $50 million in ARPA for specifically nonprofit arts.
264
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I was told by many, you'll never do it.
265
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You'll you not in the most conservative Republican caucus in state history.
266
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And seeing that it so actually, I'm now chuckling because
267
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They got the check.
268
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I had a mentor of mine who ran an arts council for 30 years and he often said to me,
Angela, at the end of the day, they just want the check.
269
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They don't care.
270
00:23:55,664 --> 00:23:58,745
They just want the check and that's all that matters.
271
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So as I'm asking you this question and I'm explaining my experience, they got the check.
272
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Therefore, there was no need to change.
273
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We just go back to the way we were before the pandemic.
274
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100%.
275
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That's exactly what happened.
276
00:24:14,822 --> 00:24:17,063
So here we are today.
277
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And I said, you know, we're going to hit smack head first into a brick wall at some point.
278
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And I agree with why are we surprised that we are here where we are today?
279
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And I often say if the story you're telling isn't getting you results, it's time to tell a
new story.
280
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The story was economic impact.
281
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The story was measuring outputs.
282
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The story was everything that you just spelled out.
283
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So why do you think over the last 30, 40 years, we haven't had, I'm asking you the same
question that we just answered, a movement to measure outcomes, assess how we're
284
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transforming lives like other industries have?
285
00:25:04,264 --> 00:25:08,366
Yeah, I wrote an article recently about how arts advocacy has failed us.
286
00:25:08,566 --> 00:25:10,027
And I think that's part of it.
287
00:25:10,027 --> 00:25:21,213
You have groups, well-meaning, but really poorly run groups like Americans for the Arts,
like Theater Communications Group.
288
00:25:21,433 --> 00:25:24,035
And I don't blame the leaders of those groups.
289
00:25:24,035 --> 00:25:30,198
Well, maybe a little bit on Americans for the Arts, but they have a new leader, so I'd
like to give her a chance.
290
00:25:30,198 --> 00:25:34,418
ah TCG, uh
291
00:25:34,418 --> 00:25:39,231
by itself is just there to support theaters and they don't care if they're commercial or
non-commercial.
292
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So it's a little different there.
293
00:25:40,972 --> 00:25:53,118
But the arts councils in every state, the arts uh in Seattle, we have another group called
Arts Fund, which used to be a corporate council for the arts.
294
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All of these groups have been measuring their giving, this includes some foundations too,
by...
295
00:26:03,764 --> 00:26:10,068
uh metrics that have nothing to do with what a nonprofit arts organizations are doing.
296
00:26:10,068 --> 00:26:25,496
I remember having a discussion many years ago with the people, with the guy who was the
CEO of Arts Fund, which is again that corporate council for the arts in Seattle.
297
00:26:25,677 --> 00:26:31,100
And we were talking about mission statements, which I find to be
298
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fascinatingly underused, undervalued pieces of information.
299
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And I asked him about mission statements.
300
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He says, my god, we get all these mission statements from all of our.
301
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all of the applicants who have to fill out, by the way, 32 pages worth of stuff.
302
00:26:50,244 --> 00:27:03,604
And we really only give to six organizations, the six biggest, and then that's 85 % of our
giving and 15 % gets scattered among the 200 or so that on top of that, which is wholly
303
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awful.
304
00:27:05,844 --> 00:27:13,844
But he said that the missions are all versions of we do great art, you should support us.
305
00:27:15,148 --> 00:27:18,250
And I said, that's not a mission.
306
00:27:18,291 --> 00:27:22,584
At best, it's a description.
307
00:27:22,584 --> 00:27:25,597
But even that, what is great art?
308
00:27:25,597 --> 00:27:27,359
We produce excellence.
309
00:27:27,359 --> 00:27:32,883
The idea of artistic excellence is completely subjective and therefore goat crap.
310
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uh It's not a measure.
311
00:27:36,736 --> 00:27:37,797
It's not a metric.
312
00:27:37,797 --> 00:27:38,816
It's not.
313
00:27:38,816 --> 00:27:39,896
You should be doing that.
314
00:27:39,896 --> 00:27:42,387
Why wouldn't you want to do artistic excellence?
315
00:27:42,387 --> 00:27:45,078
That has nothing to do with your charitable status.
316
00:27:45,858 --> 00:27:49,470
Nobody's out there saying, well, at least we don't have to be excellent.
317
00:27:49,470 --> 00:27:53,621
So nobody is saying that.
318
00:27:53,961 --> 00:28:02,304
Anyway, ah so to your question, which is, again, dealing with
319
00:28:03,826 --> 00:28:13,803
why this continues to happen, why this happened, why this continues to happen is we have
the wrong, to use a Jim Collins phrase, we have the wrong people on the bus, we have
320
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really the wrong people driving the bus, and we need to change our value system.
321
00:28:22,209 --> 00:28:24,330
And I don't know how fast that happens.
322
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ah I really don't.
323
00:28:26,732 --> 00:28:32,556
I don't have faith that the people who are currently in charge of these larger
organizations will actually
324
00:28:32,944 --> 00:28:34,788
make those organizations worthwhile.
325
00:28:34,788 --> 00:28:41,723
They'll just make them sellers of tickets just like they are now and they'll just do it as
you say for the money and that's all.
326
00:28:42,776 --> 00:28:48,381
Did I tell you about the logic model, the measurement tool that we've been working on this
last year?
327
00:28:48,381 --> 00:28:49,779
I can't remember.
328
00:28:49,986 --> 00:28:50,786
So.
329
00:28:50,786 --> 00:28:55,096
Yeah, you did talk about it to me, but what is everybody else talking about?
330
00:28:55,254 --> 00:29:03,676
Well, I talk about it anytime that I can because I feel that data is the future of funding
and being on the front line of sitting across.
331
00:29:04,176 --> 00:29:05,117
Well.
332
00:29:05,857 --> 00:29:10,558
We're not using it, we're not collecting the data that we should be collecting in order to
get the funding.
333
00:29:10,558 --> 00:29:16,480
So what I'm saying is the data that you think you have the butts in seats, the size of
your budget.
334
00:29:16,480 --> 00:29:18,440
That's not data.
335
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:19,321
Those are outputs.
336
00:29:19,321 --> 00:29:20,941
That's not outcomes.
337
00:29:20,941 --> 00:29:24,762
And so to to assess outcomes.
338
00:29:25,016 --> 00:29:30,788
from these organizations in a way that other industries do is the tool that we've built.
339
00:29:30,788 --> 00:29:46,125
So measuring empathy, reducing loneliness, connecting to communities, the 21st century uh
four C's skills, communication, collaboration, creativity, critical thinking, all of these
340
00:29:46,125 --> 00:29:50,837
things that we know that the arts contribute to and grow.
341
00:29:50,906 --> 00:29:53,635
We are now beginning to measure
342
00:29:53,635 --> 00:30:07,598
verifiably through scientific data experts putting constructs together specifically for
the arts so we can now measure not how many, but what happened, what happens to the many.
343
00:30:07,598 --> 00:30:14,794
And I envision a future where we deploy artists.
344
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and pay them through public funding to, let's think of a creative corp where we're going
to the critical parts in the city or community or state where we are trying to solve
345
00:30:31,840 --> 00:30:43,650
critical challenges, human service struggles that we know that the arts can help
contribute and solve and make stronger, healthier.
346
00:30:44,942 --> 00:30:47,982
communities for us all to prosper in.
347
00:30:48,262 --> 00:30:55,942
And so it is, I think it's that shift that you have so wonderfully spelled out the
challenge.
348
00:30:55,942 --> 00:31:03,422
Again, I think a lot of what you're saying, I know people in my head, I'm thinking they're
not gonna wanna hear that, they're not gonna like hearing that.
349
00:31:03,422 --> 00:31:12,294
But at what point do we get to that where it says, you have no choice or you're going to
go away and.
350
00:31:13,366 --> 00:31:24,695
That's even a greater disservice because the likelihood of a theater coming back or a
symphony coming back or, you know, after you've gone under is not, it will take decades to
351
00:31:24,695 --> 00:31:25,726
build that.
352
00:31:25,768 --> 00:31:28,761
So here's the pushback, a little bit of pushback on that.
353
00:31:28,761 --> 00:31:37,619
At your very last point, nature abhors a vacuum if an organization goes out of business,
generally speaking, after a while.
354
00:31:37,619 --> 00:31:47,020
And if an organization goes out of business and there's demand that exists, so the and
part is important there.
355
00:31:47,020 --> 00:31:49,651
then another organization will take its place.
356
00:31:49,651 --> 00:31:51,061
It won't be the same organization.
357
00:31:51,061 --> 00:31:52,312
It will be a different organization.
358
00:31:52,312 --> 00:31:56,964
And perhaps that organization will be more community-minded, and that's why they're going
to succeed.
359
00:31:56,964 --> 00:32:02,106
uh Or not just more community-minded, community-minded in the first place.
360
00:32:03,547 --> 00:32:06,488
The first part of the pushback I would have is this.
361
00:32:06,969 --> 00:32:15,692
If you can measure those attributes, ah I know those are soft.
362
00:32:15,912 --> 00:32:17,633
They're called soft skills.
363
00:32:17,633 --> 00:32:18,733
I'm not calling them that.
364
00:32:18,733 --> 00:32:20,154
That's what they're called.
365
00:32:20,814 --> 00:32:25,256
And I hold those to be very dear skills.
366
00:32:26,097 --> 00:32:42,804
But if you can figure out a way to modify your data to match the IRS description of what
an exempt organization has been mandated to do,
367
00:32:43,868 --> 00:32:54,474
and to take the arts exception, the arts organization exception out of the data and say,
no, this is a real charity doing these things.
368
00:32:54,474 --> 00:32:56,595
Here's the social justice aspect.
369
00:32:56,595 --> 00:32:59,326
Here's the social service aspect.
370
00:32:59,326 --> 00:33:02,978
Here's the part where taking the place of government.
371
00:33:02,978 --> 00:33:10,352
Here's the part where education is actually happening and prove that it's all happening.
372
00:33:10,352 --> 00:33:13,918
Then you have what I call in my first book, uh scene change.
373
00:33:13,918 --> 00:33:18,909
what I call impact squared, which is, or maybe that's in the second book.
374
00:33:18,909 --> 00:33:19,910
It's in one of the books.
375
00:33:19,910 --> 00:33:25,131
uh Impact squared is the impact of your impact.
376
00:33:25,231 --> 00:33:35,314
And while generally speaking, most nonprofit organizations don't aim for the impact of
their impact, that's where the gold is.
377
00:33:35,314 --> 00:33:43,668
That's what makes your organization important, not essential, but important to your
community.
378
00:33:43,668 --> 00:33:50,848
and makes it so that you can prove to the world that you are making a difference.
379
00:33:52,028 --> 00:33:54,328
So Impact Squared works kind of like this.
380
00:33:54,328 --> 00:34:02,388
I had a friend who ran, this is again a few years back, Food Lifeline, which is the
biggest food bank in Seattle.
381
00:34:02,388 --> 00:34:03,828
And it's in North Seattle.
382
00:34:03,828 --> 00:34:07,888
And I asked, what is your $1,000 ask?
383
00:34:08,488 --> 00:34:10,196
And she said, oh.
384
00:34:10,196 --> 00:34:22,796
Well, when I tell people that we fed 100,000 people last year, 100,000 separate people and
we collected data on all of them so that we know it was over 100,000, that's usually good
385
00:34:22,796 --> 00:34:24,476
for a $1,000 gift.
386
00:34:24,776 --> 00:34:28,596
I said, yeah, it might be worth more than that, but OK.
387
00:34:28,596 --> 00:34:29,716
So there's 1,000.
388
00:34:29,716 --> 00:34:32,416
If that's your 1,000, what's your $10,000 gift?
389
00:34:32,416 --> 00:34:39,156
Oh, when I tell them that 40,000 of those people are no longer on unemployment because
they used us as a scaffold.
390
00:34:39,326 --> 00:34:47,763
to keep their families fed while they looked for work, while they looked for a place to
live, while all of that happened, they now do have work, they now do have a place to live
391
00:34:47,763 --> 00:34:49,705
and are contributing back to society.
392
00:34:49,705 --> 00:34:52,046
That's the $10,000 gift.
393
00:34:52,047 --> 00:34:55,930
That's Impact Squared, the impact of the impact.
394
00:34:55,930 --> 00:35:06,459
And if you can show your organization has impact of impact, there's a great organization
down in San Diego, Voices of Our City, has the impact of the impact.
395
00:35:06,459 --> 00:35:08,070
So they have it in
396
00:35:08,112 --> 00:35:13,034
entire choir made up of people who are unhoused.
397
00:35:13,034 --> 00:35:19,235
And not only are they helping them within, they're not just featuring them like, look at
the monkeys.
398
00:35:19,236 --> 00:35:28,018
They're actually working with these people to find them housing because no one wants to be
unhoused regardless of what anyone says.
399
00:35:28,018 --> 00:35:31,479
No one wants to be homeless, okay?
400
00:35:31,479 --> 00:35:33,850
Let's get that out of the way now.
401
00:35:34,440 --> 00:35:42,224
but they work with these people to find housing, to find avenues, to find support, to find
community in themselves.
402
00:35:42,224 --> 00:35:47,947
And they sing as a choir and they've made the finals of Star Search, or not Star Search,
the other one.
403
00:35:47,947 --> 00:35:50,668
uh America's Got Talent.
404
00:35:51,549 --> 00:35:54,510
So, because they're really good at what they do.
405
00:35:54,510 --> 00:36:02,855
So the musician who is running the organization is a musician, absolutely a terrific
singer and has her own...
406
00:36:02,855 --> 00:36:03,700
uh
407
00:36:03,700 --> 00:36:12,706
career going on as that, but also really just cares about this very large unhoused
community in San Diego.
408
00:36:12,987 --> 00:36:18,391
She's not trying to solve the unhoused community in Los Angeles or San Francisco or
anywhere else.
409
00:36:18,391 --> 00:36:20,672
She is working with her own community.
410
00:36:20,672 --> 00:36:26,156
And so they receive funding, not just from arts sources.
411
00:36:26,156 --> 00:36:32,200
In fact, they receive very little funding from art sources because they look at it and
say, well, you know, it's
412
00:36:32,336 --> 00:36:35,678
It's not the old Globe Theater, right?
413
00:36:35,678 --> 00:36:44,404
uh But they do receive a ton of funding from all of these other foundations that support
just people being better off.
414
00:36:44,464 --> 00:36:46,606
Out-of-hand theater is the same way in Atlanta.
415
00:36:46,606 --> 00:36:49,868
And they just got murdered on two fronts.
416
00:36:49,888 --> 00:36:52,050
They were receiving NEA funding.
417
00:36:52,050 --> 00:37:01,566
That was rescinded the day before yesterday uh for their Shows in Homes program, which uh
where they
418
00:37:01,566 --> 00:37:14,269
perform in people's living rooms stories of social justice because honestly they're really
a social justice organization that uses theater as a tool to make things happen and not
419
00:37:14,269 --> 00:37:16,670
just to kind of show it and talk about it after.
420
00:37:16,670 --> 00:37:25,529
They do that but then they ask for commitments from the people who have seen it to see how
things get better and then they measure the commitments, they measure the data.
421
00:37:25,529 --> 00:37:31,834
They're very good at gathering the data that moves things forward not just leaving it at
well we did a show.
422
00:37:32,358 --> 00:37:35,910
in somebody's home, but that their NEA funding got cut for that.
423
00:37:35,910 --> 00:37:38,292
That was about, I don't know, probably 25,000.
424
00:37:38,292 --> 00:37:51,711
And then because they were doing a program on vaccinations, because the black community in
Atlanta is under vaccinated, is underrepresented among vaccinations because there's a
425
00:37:51,711 --> 00:37:58,306
great deal of mistrust with the black community traditionally in Atlanta and the medical
community.
426
00:37:58,306 --> 00:38:02,148
And why wouldn't there be the medical community used to use the black community?
427
00:38:02,148 --> 00:38:14,713
ago as know guinea pigs and pin cushions so now there's no there's very there's a lot of
lack of trust involved with that so they were executing a vaccination equitable vaccines
428
00:38:14,713 --> 00:38:24,638
program that was funded in part by the CDC well the CDC got its funding cut therefore they
got their funding cut and had to discontinue the program so which means that people are
429
00:38:24,638 --> 00:38:29,822
not getting vaccinations now that would have been otherwise so there's a real harm
430
00:38:29,822 --> 00:38:31,653
done by the cutting of that.
431
00:38:31,653 --> 00:38:33,693
So they've gotten hit twice.
432
00:38:33,693 --> 00:38:39,445
So they're going to have to make up for it in uh the private community.
433
00:38:39,445 --> 00:38:47,197
And with any luck, the foundations that have provided them support and the individuals
will continue to do so and will make up their funding.
434
00:38:47,197 --> 00:38:49,838
But they deserve it more than anybody else in Atlanta.
435
00:38:49,838 --> 00:38:57,599
And in fact, as an arts organization, they're now the second largest arts organization in
Atlanta behind the Alliance.
436
00:38:58,380 --> 00:38:59,290
theater.
437
00:38:59,326 --> 00:39:01,478
program in Atlanta, nonprofit theater.
438
00:39:01,478 --> 00:39:04,641
uh The ballet is bigger and the orchestra is bigger.
439
00:39:04,641 --> 00:39:18,242
uh that's because their work in the community has been so phenomenally, phenomenally
successful that people need to give to places like out of hand theater.
440
00:39:20,583 --> 00:39:34,754
What if any responsibility or action do arts councils, arts agencies have in this
ecosystem solving the problem?
441
00:39:36,812 --> 00:39:42,284
What comes to mind is I feel as if everyone is waiting for someone to come rescue them.
442
00:39:42,846 --> 00:39:52,396
Yeah, well don't look at the people who are there now because they're being told, okay, so
I'm not just ratting on people.
443
00:39:52,396 --> 00:39:56,970
I'm just telling you that on the larger organizations, who's on the board?
444
00:39:57,151 --> 00:39:59,332
Who's on the board of these organizations?
445
00:39:59,873 --> 00:40:06,568
Generally speaking, you've got the toxic folks, the same toxic donors who are buying rooms
for themselves.
446
00:40:06,568 --> 00:40:08,479
And then the other side are the corporate folks.
447
00:40:08,479 --> 00:40:15,412
The corporate folks who are looking at corporate America as a model for how nonprofits
should run more like a business.
448
00:40:15,412 --> 00:40:23,255
uh I always think of Jim Collins' retort.
449
00:40:23,396 --> 00:40:29,498
He was sitting in a nonprofit boardroom and there was somebody who said that at the board
table.
450
00:40:29,498 --> 00:40:32,039
said, we need to run this more like a business.
451
00:40:32,894 --> 00:40:40,248
He said, you mean, well, you 95 % of the businesses in America are mediocre and most of
them lose money.
452
00:40:40,848 --> 00:40:42,449
You want us to do that?
453
00:40:42,489 --> 00:40:54,636
Because I thought nonprofits, because we have a goal of helping people become more whole
or helping communities become better off because there's a big problem.
454
00:40:54,636 --> 00:41:01,680
I thought our goal was to be great so that we could make a community better off rather
than just.
455
00:41:01,680 --> 00:41:06,894
existing for the sake of existing and the other guy got all huffy about it.
456
00:41:06,894 --> 00:41:12,218
But I always think of that response when people say you got to run this more like a
business.
457
00:41:12,218 --> 00:41:14,069
Well, like a mediocre one?
458
00:41:14,069 --> 00:41:14,469
No.
459
00:41:14,469 --> 00:41:18,292
uh Nonprofits are businesses.
460
00:41:18,652 --> 00:41:20,994
Let's stop that discussion that they're not.
461
00:41:20,994 --> 00:41:26,358
They do run differently than what a corporate business would do.
462
00:41:26,358 --> 00:41:28,199
And that's been the problem.
463
00:41:28,279 --> 00:41:29,990
In a corporate world,
464
00:41:30,502 --> 00:41:33,993
In a for-profit world, what's the most important thing?
465
00:41:33,993 --> 00:41:38,354
It's right there in the words, for-profit, make money.
466
00:41:39,174 --> 00:41:44,936
In a non-profit world, the most important thing is impact.
467
00:41:45,556 --> 00:41:49,177
Make things better.
468
00:41:50,138 --> 00:41:59,520
And until non-profit arts organizations choose to make things better before anything else.
469
00:42:00,328 --> 00:42:03,629
they're going to continue to fall down this hole.
470
00:42:03,629 --> 00:42:17,733
And in fact, when they decide to close, they'll have that line on their lips that was in
The Simpsons one episode when they were talking about Ned's background as a kid when he
471
00:42:17,733 --> 00:42:19,713
was horrible.
472
00:42:19,713 --> 00:42:20,804
He was a horrible child.
473
00:42:20,804 --> 00:42:22,454
He was worse than Bart.
474
00:42:23,114 --> 00:42:29,416
And the parents who are hippies throw up their hands and say, well, we tried nothing and
we ran out of ideas.
475
00:42:30,292 --> 00:42:34,781
And I think that's what's gonna happen in the boardrooms across arts organizations in
America.
476
00:42:34,781 --> 00:42:36,343
We tried nothing.
477
00:42:36,966 --> 00:42:38,578
We ran out of ideas.
478
00:42:41,835 --> 00:42:49,382
What advice would you give right now today to nonprofit arts organizations?
479
00:42:53,150 --> 00:42:53,997
Dare.
480
00:42:58,054 --> 00:42:59,907
Be a non-profit.
481
00:42:59,907 --> 00:43:02,931
Lean on the non-profit before you lean on the art.
482
00:43:02,931 --> 00:43:04,533
The art's gonna happen no matter what.
483
00:43:04,533 --> 00:43:05,854
It's essential.
484
00:43:06,235 --> 00:43:13,154
Artists are gonna put together things because they're magical, but your organization is
not even important.
485
00:43:14,874 --> 00:43:25,033
until you're following what a charity would do with that information, using art as a tool
and not as a product.
486
00:43:25,033 --> 00:43:31,384
ah I talk about that a lot in both of these books, Scene Change and Scene Change 2.
487
00:43:32,399 --> 00:43:35,252
I tell you that not because I want the world to buy the books.
488
00:43:35,252 --> 00:43:37,243
I don't make any money off the books.
489
00:43:37,243 --> 00:43:42,948
I hope they will do it because the message that is in it is
490
00:43:44,180 --> 00:43:53,560
such that if they followed that, if they looked at the ideas there, even if they don't
necessarily agree with them right now, they need to bounce these things off each other.
491
00:43:53,560 --> 00:44:06,040
There are a series of discussion prompts in the second book, for example, which is meant
for board members, the five real responsibilities of nonprofit arts boards, to have these
492
00:44:06,040 --> 00:44:09,480
discussions, to say, what are we actually doing for the community?
493
00:44:09,480 --> 00:44:14,140
And putting on shows isn't Putting on shows is not it.
494
00:44:14,224 --> 00:44:22,026
It might qualify you as a technically as a nonprofit, but doesn't qualify you as a worthy
one that deserves a dime.
495
00:44:22,966 --> 00:44:32,729
What qualifies you as a nonprofit that deserves money is when you say these people are
better off by X, Y, and Z data.
496
00:44:33,849 --> 00:44:43,572
And here are some stories that back that up because we can't tell the stories of the
people then it then it just becomes a data blur.
497
00:44:44,564 --> 00:45:03,072
ah And you tell the stories of the arts organization in San Francisco that used to octets
under a bridge, under an overpass ah for unhoused people and unhoused communities, tent
498
00:45:03,072 --> 00:45:04,472
cities and the like.
499
00:45:04,472 --> 00:45:07,894
And they would work with the social service organizations in their area.
500
00:45:07,894 --> 00:45:14,156
So they would bring the chairs, they would bring a bottle of water for everybody, and they
would bring uh
501
00:45:14,472 --> 00:45:26,471
their own bodies and instruments and such so that when they played, and amplifiers because
it's allowed under an overpass, and so when they played, the other social service people
502
00:45:26,471 --> 00:45:36,188
would encourage folks to get out of their tents, to come sit down, have a bottle of water,
listen to a show, and then at intermission, if that's what you'd want to call it, they
503
00:45:36,188 --> 00:45:39,891
would, these same social service people would say, okay, so what do you need?
504
00:45:39,891 --> 00:45:41,992
Do you need a shower?
505
00:45:42,388 --> 00:45:43,448
Do need some clothes?
506
00:45:43,448 --> 00:45:46,852
Do you need an address so that you can do a job application?
507
00:45:46,852 --> 00:45:48,593
Do you need a phone number?
508
00:45:48,934 --> 00:45:59,763
There are places in your social network that can, in the social net, that can take care of
this, that can help you with this.
509
00:45:59,763 --> 00:46:10,228
And then when the arts organization can turn to the social service people and help gather
data about these folks and find out that instead of...
510
00:46:10,228 --> 00:46:14,839
5 % achieving housing in a year, 20 % achieved housing in a year.
511
00:46:16,658 --> 00:46:17,830
I'd give them money.
512
00:46:17,830 --> 00:46:31,401
I mean, that's what's important, not what you might think is artistic excellence or the
latest idea or the show that, the worst one among the theaters is the show that's gonna go
513
00:46:31,401 --> 00:46:32,332
to Broadway.
514
00:46:34,378 --> 00:46:43,283
So again, this goes back, I'm thinking of Arts Council's funders or what I call funnelers,
because they're funneling the funding that we're getting from the public sector.
515
00:46:44,624 --> 00:46:46,275
Do they have a responsibility?
516
00:46:46,275 --> 00:46:47,705
Can they help in this?
517
00:46:47,705 --> 00:46:48,876
You know, they're the ones.
518
00:46:48,876 --> 00:46:50,057
criteria.
519
00:46:50,657 --> 00:46:51,988
They can absolutely help.
520
00:46:51,988 --> 00:47:04,083
They can change the criteria tomorrow and ask for data that proves that they are acting as
charities in their communities.
521
00:47:04,243 --> 00:47:06,184
forget about the tourism side.
522
00:47:06,184 --> 00:47:09,035
Forget, because tourism is not a nonprofit activity.
523
00:47:09,035 --> 00:47:12,046
That's just something that some folks like.
524
00:47:12,167 --> 00:47:13,067
States like it.
525
00:47:13,067 --> 00:47:13,807
Cities like it.
526
00:47:13,807 --> 00:47:15,888
But it has nothing to do with
527
00:47:17,116 --> 00:47:19,177
you know, helping your local people.
528
00:47:19,177 --> 00:47:30,007
ah They don't care where your actors come from, although they assume the assumption has
always been our actors or musicians or whomever.
529
00:47:30,007 --> 00:47:32,289
They are assuming that they're all coming from your city.
530
00:47:32,289 --> 00:47:38,645
There was a company in Oregon that was touting the fact that, 80 % of our of our
performers come from Oregon.
531
00:47:38,645 --> 00:47:41,756
And the response was, you mean, it's not 100%.
532
00:47:41,756 --> 00:47:45,198
So
533
00:47:45,728 --> 00:47:47,950
You know your expectations out there.
534
00:47:47,950 --> 00:47:50,813
then stop worrying.
535
00:47:50,813 --> 00:47:55,717
If you want a diversifier on it, you're sitting there saying, how do I get black people to
come to my shows?
536
00:47:55,717 --> 00:48:00,760
Maybe if I do, again, my background's in theater, so a lot of my examples are theater.
537
00:48:00,781 --> 00:48:11,349
So if I do 1 August Wilson a year, that'll get the black people in, and then they'll stay
to see the Moliere piece that's right after that, right, with an entire white cast.
538
00:48:12,110 --> 00:48:14,790
No, they won't.
539
00:48:14,790 --> 00:48:19,263
And if you thought they would, you're an idiot is kind of my response to that.
540
00:48:19,503 --> 00:48:23,856
Or the folks who do a Christmas Carol and say, well, see, we're doing it because they're
in the building.
541
00:48:23,856 --> 00:48:26,348
And anytime they're in the building, that's a good thing.
542
00:48:26,348 --> 00:48:32,232
And if they come into the building, we'll send them all subscription and season ticket
options.
543
00:48:32,232 --> 00:48:37,325
And none of them buy them because that's not why they go, went to your building.
544
00:48:37,325 --> 00:48:38,426
They went to see a Christmas Carol.
545
00:48:38,426 --> 00:48:40,357
They didn't go to see your building.
546
00:48:40,698 --> 00:48:44,920
Buildings are not all that important as we have come to find.
547
00:48:45,460 --> 00:48:49,800
uh So if you want to diversify your audience, go diversify it.
548
00:48:49,800 --> 00:48:54,082
Go do performances in areas of your community that are underserved.
549
00:48:54,182 --> 00:48:56,143
You'll diversify your audience.
550
00:48:56,603 --> 00:49:02,705
You won't get any ticket money out of it, but that's okay because that's not the point.
551
00:49:02,705 --> 00:49:04,925
The point is to help your community.
552
00:49:04,925 --> 00:49:12,007
And generally speaking, if you start doing that, uh funding will come for that.
553
00:49:12,427 --> 00:49:14,728
That's what people want to fill.
554
00:49:15,688 --> 00:49:20,751
fund is they want to have a hand in that.
555
00:49:20,751 --> 00:49:22,833
my God, all these people got bad.
556
00:49:22,833 --> 00:49:28,416
Talk to this young girl and I'm going to tell this story because it made me cry at first.
557
00:49:28,757 --> 00:49:31,579
So now I can say I'm not crying, you're crying.
558
00:49:31,579 --> 00:49:45,542
uh High school student in a rural town in Kentucky and it was a night of a performance of
the Louisville Orchestra, free performance.
559
00:49:45,542 --> 00:49:48,654
And I asked her, you know, why are you here?
560
00:49:48,654 --> 00:49:57,760
And she said, well, last year they came to a friend of mine's high school and she invited
me to come and I didn't want to, but I went anyway.
561
00:49:58,661 --> 00:50:06,797
And I saw this and I saw them using not just classical music, which is really nice.
562
00:50:06,797 --> 00:50:13,131
And we don't get that a lot here, but they also brought out a bluegrass band to play with
the orchestra.
563
00:50:13,131 --> 00:50:14,708
So I got sort of.
564
00:50:14,708 --> 00:50:23,811
personal touch, Kentucky music played right back at me in a way that I'd never experienced
before.
565
00:50:24,371 --> 00:50:35,394
And all of sudden, my depression kind of subsided and my anxieties subsided for the time
that I was in the building like they had never before.
566
00:50:36,374 --> 00:50:40,346
She told me she was an A student, all AP classes.
567
00:50:40,346 --> 00:50:42,056
She's a senior at her.
568
00:50:42,056 --> 00:50:48,218
local high school, but that she's probably gonna end up working on a farm, ah on the
family farm.
569
00:50:48,518 --> 00:50:52,039
And she didn't really want to, but she didn't see any way out of that.
570
00:50:52,039 --> 00:50:56,120
uh She didn't like it and she was felt trapped by it.
571
00:50:56,281 --> 00:51:01,582
Well, once she saw the orchestra, the first thing she did when she went back to her high
school was join band.
572
00:51:02,062 --> 00:51:06,023
And when she joined band, she found that she could have that music every day.
573
00:51:06,464 --> 00:51:07,282
She...
574
00:51:07,282 --> 00:51:17,715
went every day to the band room, even when there wasn't a class, just to work on her
instrument and to listen to music and to kind of relax in those moments that she had never
575
00:51:17,715 --> 00:51:19,175
had before.
576
00:51:19,275 --> 00:51:21,606
She was all about depression and anxiety.
577
00:51:21,606 --> 00:51:23,856
She was clinically depressed.
578
00:51:23,856 --> 00:51:29,418
uh And she'd had, she told me suicidal ideations.
579
00:51:29,658 --> 00:51:35,780
Cause I said, where would you be if you hadn't gone to the show last year and therefore
didn't come tonight?
580
00:51:35,780 --> 00:51:36,680
She said, I...
581
00:51:36,680 --> 00:51:39,081
don't want to get dark, but I'd probably be dead.
582
00:51:39,522 --> 00:51:41,503
I'd already thought about how I was going to do it.
583
00:51:41,503 --> 00:51:44,524
I knew that, you leaving school, I was going to go into the farm.
584
00:51:44,524 --> 00:51:52,928
And while I love my family and I understand why they need me at the farm, it was just not
a life I want or wanted.
585
00:51:53,769 --> 00:52:05,426
But now that I have music, I'm alive and happier and figuring out life and trying to
discover a way that maybe I can go to college and get an ag degree and be a better farmer
586
00:52:05,426 --> 00:52:06,766
for my family.
587
00:52:06,846 --> 00:52:10,296
than if I had just gone out and worked the fields at the age of 18.
588
00:52:11,018 --> 00:52:17,342
So I took that story back to the staff of the Louisville Orchestra at a staff meeting.
589
00:52:17,342 --> 00:52:19,163
And I said, you saved a life.
590
00:52:19,523 --> 00:52:20,984
You saved a life.
591
00:52:20,984 --> 00:52:24,026
This young woman would be gone.
592
00:52:24,026 --> 00:52:27,468
And it doesn't even matter on some level that it's a pretty good life.
593
00:52:27,468 --> 00:52:35,812
Smart girl wants to work with her family, but also wants to get an education, wants to be
a part of society.
594
00:52:36,584 --> 00:52:39,852
You saved a life with music.
595
00:52:40,536 --> 00:52:42,640
Do that, you win.
596
00:52:44,348 --> 00:52:53,050
I think some of the discussion, Ben Cameron used to talk about how the arts are a powerful
progressive force and cause no harm.
597
00:52:53,050 --> 00:53:10,015
And I say, maybe the idea that harm, causing no harm isn't enough, but defeating harm is
something more and something uh better for the community, better for the society at large.
598
00:53:10,455 --> 00:53:12,036
Go save lives, people.
599
00:53:12,036 --> 00:53:13,116
It's much.
600
00:53:13,352 --> 00:53:27,385
You'll feel better about what you do instead of doing the greatest next play, the greatest
next opera, or not even the next opera, it's some 200 year old Italian thing.
601
00:53:28,106 --> 00:53:35,282
But you know, there's that baritone from Italy that we were able to get, not important.
602
00:53:38,240 --> 00:53:40,550
Alan, thank you so much for your time.
603
00:53:40,550 --> 00:53:41,841
My pleasure.
604
00:53:42,081 --> 00:53:43,162
I'm here anytime.
605
00:53:43,162 --> 00:53:45,654
hope people get in touch with me.
606
00:53:45,654 --> 00:53:47,385
I'm in Arts Journal.
607
00:53:47,846 --> 00:53:50,388
I write a weekly blog for Arts Journal.
608
00:53:50,588 --> 00:53:55,020
And of course, there these two books, Scene Change and Scene Change 2.
609
00:53:57,222 --> 00:54:00,293
And you can, you know, I'm really very approachable.
610
00:54:00,293 --> 00:54:02,014
You can call me anytime.
611
00:54:02,014 --> 00:54:16,359
And Angela calls me and I take her call every time because among the people in the world,
there are very few that understand that, oh, all we have to do is change and it'll work.
612
00:54:16,359 --> 00:54:18,780
And Angela gets that better than most.
613
00:54:20,012 --> 00:54:21,173
I appreciate you, Alan.
614
00:54:21,173 --> 00:54:30,673
I will have all of the contact information, book information, everything in the show notes
for anyone who would like to reach out and learn more about you and read your fantastic
615
00:54:30,673 --> 00:54:31,193
books.
616
00:54:31,193 --> 00:54:31,791
Thank you.
617
00:54:31,791 --> 00:54:32,104
you.
618
00:54:32,104 --> 00:54:33,568
Thank you so much.
