Community Arts Veterans Share Experience

What should community foundations consider before entering the arts arena? Plenty. That’s the word from more than 30 program, donor services, and communications pros representing ten community foundations—each with multi-year involvement in Irvine’s Communities Advancing the Arts initiative. They represent a wealth of successes, lessons learned, and continued passion for the work. And they shared their responses to this question at a 2007 initiative convening.

So if your community foundation is new to the world of arts, you can take note of these tips from your been-there-doing-that colleagues.

• Build an internal partnership across community foundation program, donor services, and communications people—start here and keep it together every step of the way
• Bring a learning mindset to the process, and plan to adapt as you go
• Gain up-front buy-in from your arts council as well as arts nonprofits, not to mention your community foundation board and staff; help all understand that this is a long-haul commitment, including a commitment of resources
• Inform your planning with state and national research (some great sources are located in the “Links” to the left on this page)
• Assess the arts environment, including its strengths, needs and capacities; uncover the “connective tissue” in your arts sector by knowing, studying and understanding the actors
• Conduct research and assess data; be sure to examine the intersecting needs of community, arts nonprofits, and artists
• Recognize critical local issues, which may include arts access and cultural participation, policy and public funding, arts education, nonprofit sustainability, and nurturing the next generation of artists
• Communicate a vision for the arts community; create this vision with key stakeholders
• Establish and convey clear goals and expectations
• Employ all available assets: your staff and board, your role as convener, your credibility, your relationships, etc.
• Leverage existing resources (e.g., a local nonprofit advancement center) as well as channels and events that provide access to new relationships
• Support self discovery of the need for capacity building by nonprofits; invest in this capacity through technical assistance
• Pick your consultants carefully: the right researchers, facilitators, and planners make a huge difference
• Connect your case to a prosperity model; this is about communities advancing through arts
• Combine the interests of donors, “pillar” arts organizations, grassroots arts organizations and the community foundation
• Engage donors: many types, in many ways, at many points; time the optimal moment for initial involvement, which may be in the planning and research phase
• Lead through advocacy; including getting in the “ask” business (e.g., get your CEO out front asking the community to support arts)
• Demonstrate tangible progress—create and conduct programs that illustrate you are for real, and don’t run away from community conversations about the value and/or definition of art

Start by taking stock

Of course the first step is to assess your organization’s own capacity and readiness to contribute to a vital arts sector as part of a vibrant community.

To sum it up, the voice of experience says go forward with your eyes open, and enjoy the journey. It’s a rewarding one for artists, art agencies, arts donors, and all community members—including the community foundation!

This above content was generated through participants in Communities Advancing the Arts, a major funding initiative of The James Irvine Foundation.

Filed under: Getting organized