San Diego Arts & Culture Working Group

Relevance. Responsiveness. Relationships. Any community foundation working in arts and culture wants more of each. The San Diego Foundation grows these assets through its Arts & Culture Working Group.

It’s an approach adopted in 2003 to connect community members to community foundation initiatives. Through this collaboration with volunteers, The San Diego Foundation can better address community and donor needs, be a more effective grantmaker, connect to new donors, and establish a stronger voice for local arts and culture.

Plugged-in players

The Working Group consists of community leaders with demonstrated expertise in a number of areas including higher education, business, arts administration, arts management consulting, finance and philanthropy. Members are approved by the Board of Governors’ Executive Committee and serve for three consecutive three-year terms, making service on the Working Group a significant long-term commitment. The Working Group makes grant recommendations to the Board. In addition, its members recommend policy, conduct grantee site visits, attend programs and events of local arts and culture organizations and guide fundraising strategies—although they have no “give or get” fundraising quotas. Sub-committees with additional members from the community share the workload and insure that decision-making is transparent and open.

Felicia Shaw, Director of Arts & Culture at The Foundation, reports that the Working Group strategy is effective because of each member’s commitment to a singular purpose—improving quality of life in the San Diego region. “By stripping away all other agendas, Working Group members come to the table with a shared belief that arts and culture is as critical to our quality of life as clean air, safe streets and open green spaces. Their leadership helps everyone at the Foundation address critical community needs—with arts and culture at the top of our list of priorities.”

A unique arts landscape

The Working Group formed its identity through a strategic planning process that began with a situation assessment: San Diego is a large county, geographically spread out, and with the distinction of being the largest border crossing to Mexico. The arts and culture community is broad and diverse, made up of approximately 300 groups, from established institutions such as The Old Globe Theatre and San Diego Opera to small grassroots community groups like the Playwrights Project and Eveoke Dance Theatre.  And this region shows up on much larger maps drawn in the arts and culture world:

• Balboa Park is the largest collection of museums in the country outside of the Smithsonian in Washington, D.C.
• San Diego theatre sends more plays to Broadway than other city outside of London and Chicago.
• San Diego is the only city on the West Coast to support eight major professional stages for three resident theaters.

A 2000 study by Americans for the Arts charted arts and culture as a $326M industry in the region. Cultural tourism is a major ingredient in this mix—people come to San Diego for the sun, surf and the world famous San Diego Zoo, as well as for a number of arts offerings.

Both the city and county government provide financial support for the arts, although with no county-wide arts council serving San Diego, The Foundation comes closest to providing leadership in arts for the entire region.

A compelling vision

With findings derived from an extensive external assessment and evaluation of the Foundation’s assets and opportunities related to arts and culture, the Working Group developed a sweeping vision: To galvanize the San Diego community around enhanced arts and culture and to ensure that the San Diego region has all the resources to become a nationally-competitive arts and culture center.

This assessment process yielded a number of strategies resulting in the launch of a new initiative, Art Works for San Diego. Grounded in the belief that arts and culture are powerful tools for community revitalization and civic engagement, this multi-faceted initiative includes the following components:

• Grantmaking – Funding a 12-month planning process (Phase I) and multiple-year implementation process (Phase II) for a limited number of nonprofit organizations and their arts and culture-focused projects
• Art Works! Academy – Ongoing training program for grantees and other select participants in principles of project planning, focusing on arts-based community development and civic engagement
• Advocacy – Strategic effort to educate community members about the value of arts and culture to San Diego’s quality of life, resulting in increased funding to nonprofit arts and culture organizations and to the Foundation’s Fund for the Common Good. Current focus is on arts education
• Donor Engagement and Education – Connect donors more deeply with arts and culture community through “high touch” activities, such as donor caravans, behind-the-scenes events and intimate donor dinners with artists as hosts
• Endow the Arts –“Drive to 25″ – Major fundraising campaign that seeks to establish a permanent fund for arts and culture at The San Diego Foundation to be used to sustain the initiatives of the Arts and Culture Working Group, including: grantmaking, outreach and capacity building activities. Currently, in quiet stage of campaign to test the feasibility of a $25 million fundraising goal by 2011

The San Diego Arts & Culture Working Group is supported by Communities Advancing the Arts, a major funding initiative of The James Irvine Foundation.

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