October Is Funding for Arts Month at the Foundation Center

(This entry was originally posted on the Foundation Center's Philanthropy Front and Center-San Francisco blog.)

In just a few days, the Foundation Center will launch its celebration of Funding for Arts Month with a full slate of events, classes, and resources designed to help artists and nonprofit arts organizations become better grantseekers and secure more funding. In anticipation of the month-long event, we wanted to share this ninety-minute video (opens in Windows Media Player) of a lively discussion presented by the Sacramento Region Community Foundation and Center for Cultural Innovation, with support from the James Irvine Foundation.

Earlier this year, over two hundred arts leaders gathered at the Jean Runyon Little Theater in Sacramento to hear Michael Kaiser, president of the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and author of The Art of the Turnaround: Creating and Maintaining Healthy Arts Organizations, speak about what arts groups can do to weather the financial storm. (You can read PND's review of Kaiser's book here).

Drawing from his experience as the leader of several high-profiile arts organizations, Kaiser shared ten tips for reviving and sustaining financially distressed arts groups:

1. Someone must lead.
2. The leader must have a plan.
3. You cannot "save" your way to health.
4. Focus on today and tomorrow, not yesterday.
5. Extend your programming planning calendar.
6. Marketing is more than brochures and advertisements.
7. There must be only one spokesman and the message must be positive.
8. Fundraising must focus on the larger donor, but don't aim too high.
9. The board must allow itself to be restructured.
10. The organization must have the discipline to follow each of these rules.

To watch the full video, click here.

And for more information about all the free programs being held in the Center's Atlanta, Cleveland, New York, and San Francisco locations in October, visit the Focus on Funding for the Arts  page. 

-- Sara Jo Neubauer