What’s an Artist To Do in These Troubled Times?

By Corbett Barklie

Photo by Corbett Barklie

Feeling a little tense lately? Afraid the end of the world might be looming for real? Between threats to the environment, equality, healthcare, the free press, immigration, foreign affairs, science, and civility, you should feel nervous.

Compound the understandable fear of the future with the incomprehensible uncertainty of the present brought about by a single unstable personality representing himself as the most powerful man in the world and it’s perfectly understandable that national issues are impacting each of us on deeply personal levels.

We have collectively fallen down a societal, political and moral rabbit hole and most of us want like hell to find a way out of it.

And, making matters worse, we are presented with so many options for involvement and activism – petitions to sign, marches and rallies to attend, posters to make – it’s all too overwhelming!

Artist, Center Yourself

So you want to make a difference, be involved, work for change, do it all? You can’t. And you shouldn’t. If you are reading this and you are an artist, I want you to know that you have a single role to play in the midst of all this chaos and that role is to be an artist.

In many ancient cultures the natural role of the artist in society was that of leader, healer, mystic. I believe that now is the time for artists to once again, without hesitation, embrace this role. Here’s a quote from Gifts of the Muse, Reframing the Debate about the Benefits of the Arts, a report by the Rand Corporation, “We think that art can best be understood as a communicative cycle in which the artist draws upon two unusual gifts – a capacity for vivid personal experience of the world, and a capacity to express that experience through a particular artistic medium.” Let that sink in.

Artists Have Abilities That Most People Don’t Possess

Throughout history the unique artistic and interpretive capacities of creative people have been critically important in moments of crisis. Think back to 9/11 and note how the nation instinctively turned to its artists for a song or a poem. Only the artist can create a bridge that spans from individual suffering to communal understanding. This invaluable gift has the power to make inner reality public and by doing so alleviates isolation.

Think about the obvious role artists play at funerals and weddings. Personally, a single note played from a bag pipe will summon up strangely powerful emotions – I’m weeping now just thinking about the sound.

The Artists’ Call to Action

Now is the time to put down your placards, take a break from signing petitions and marching, turn off the news, and run fast to your rehearsal halls and studios. Bring together your artistic clan and create a shared understanding of the crucial leadership role you can play now by reaching deep into yourself to re-direct fear, frustration, and uncertainty into creativity and artistic product. Use your gifts.

ASK CORBETT AN ARTS-RELATED QUESTION, FOR YOURSELF AND POSSIBLY FOR A FUTURE COLUMN: corbett@stageraw.com

To Be, or Not To Be? (a Non-Profit Organization)

By Corbett Barklie

I recently met with an actor who pretty consistently works collaboratively with another group of actors. Lately he’s been thinking that if he became a nonprofit organization, he could apply for some grants and really get things going. He wondered if I had any advice.

WHY YES – YES, I DO

First off, it’s expensive and time consuming to incorporate because there are many forms to fill out, federal and state fees, possibly attorney fees, and you could wait for six months or a year to actually get tax exempt status. Second, most foundations and government granting programs won’t even let you apply for a grant until you’ve been doing business as a nonprofit for at least a couple of years. Third, the law requires that you maintain a board of directors that meets regularly and that you file annual reports with the Internal Revenue Service.

NOW IS THAT REALLY WHAT YOU WANT?  

Typically when an artist asks me whether or not they should become a non-profit, the question reflects an individual’s desire, not just for access to grant money, but for the sense of permanency that comes with organizational infrastructure. Loosely formed creative collectives, which I happen to believe are the most powerful of all creative groupings, are fluid in nature and may, at any moment, dissolve into thin air so it’s not surprising that an artist who has worked in this capacity for some time would begin looking for more structured alternatives.

So before jumping headlong into a situation that you’ll be stuck with forever, you may want to consider another option. Now that you’ve identified your desire for infrastructure, ask yourself this, “How important is it to me that I own the infrastructure?” What about borrowing one? Think about the possibility of becoming a program of an already existing nonprofit. Think inside and outside the box on this. Think about existing nonprofit theaters. Can your work augment their mission? Talk to them. Do you know any presenting theatres that struggle to find consistently high quality work for their space? Would they be interested in a partnership? Or what about the community center up the street? On the most basic level, community centers exist to convene people. Performing artists share this commitment and activate it through audience development and marketing efforts. Talk to the community center. I know a theatre group who took this advice and is now “in residence” at a local college and able to apply for grant funds using the college’s nonprofit status. Creating this kind of partnership can provide you with the infrastructure you desire without the administrative bother and expense. It will also provide you with the nonprofit status you’re looking for.

Allow me to specifically address the notion of grant money. Take a look at the current state of charitable giving. Here are the stats: In 2015 charitable giving the in U.S. totaled $373 billion. Individuals made the majority of charitable gifts totaling $299 billion (80%). Foundations gave only a total of $59 billion in grants or 15% of all charitable giving. (Corporations gave the remaining 5 %.) Given these shocking statistics, I would encourage everyone to re-focus fundraising efforts on the individual donor – more on that in another post – and move away from the idea that you will be able to totally support your organization – or project – through grants.

If you are still convinced that becoming a nonprofit is the right thing for you, I would encourage you to use this NOLO Press resource, How to Form a Nonprofit Corporation . It contains easy instructions and forms. Using this site can probably do it yourself.

Good luck and I look forward to hearing from you in 3 years when you ask “How the hell did I become an arts administrator?”

ASK CORBETT AN ARTS-RELATED QUESTION, FOR YOURSELF AND POSSIBLY FOR A FUTURE COLUMN: corbett@stageraw.com

Pennies from Heaven

How to Make Your Crowd Funding Campaign Stand Out

By Corbett Barklie

We’ve all heard stories about wildly successful Kickstarter campaigns. Like the one about the guy who raised over $50,000 to make potato salad. It all sounds so easy. Pick a project, slap up a couple of photos and a plea for money, and away you go! But the reality is that about 60% of Kickstarter campaigns fail and, of those that fail, less than 1% raise more than 80% of their goal.

Here are a couple of things to help increase your odds:

There are some obvious things like making sure your project has a reasonable budget, a clear start and end date, and compelling visuals – this is extremely important since most people respond to beautiful or interesting images. And remember the old saying “a picture’s 1,000 words” – that’s particularly true when it comes to crowd funding.

Carefully consider the “rewards” or “incentives” that you offer your donors.

Give people things that genuinely show your appreciation but don’t cost too much money or time to produce? There are lots of ways to say thank you without sacrificing an arm and a leg. Acknowledgement in programs, press releases and/or brochures is effective and you can tier the acknowledgement font size according to the size of the gift. If you’re a performing artist, complementary tickets could be considered and, in this instance also, you can adjust the number of tickets according to the size of the gift.

It’s not just the personal or financial cost associated with over-incentivizing your campaign; there is another, more egregious, side effect. Offering prospective donors too much in the way of incentives can signal desperation which is something that prospects instinctively run from. Appearing desperate to a donor prospect is equivalent to discussing your thumb sucking problem on a first date. Enough said.

Be Strategic

Here are a few more interesting Kickstarter stats:

“Of the projects that have reached 20% of their funding goal, 81% were successfully funded. Of the projects that have reached 60% of their funding goal, 98% were successful funded. Projects either make their goal or find little support. There’s little in-between.”

Lesson Learned

Make sure you have at least 20% of your goal secured before you launch your crowd-funding campaign.

Sample Strategy: Let’s say you have a crowd funding goal of $10,000.

You know from the Kickstarter stats I’ve shown above that it is critical that you reach 20% of your goal, and the sooner the better. Don’t leave it to fate. Before you launch your crowdfunding campaign, identify people who can get you to your 20% goal of $2,000. These will probably be people who are close to you and are familiar with your work. Meet with them in person if possible. Explain your project and the importance of their early commitment. If they agree to be foundational donors, let them know what day you plan to launch your campaign and when you’d like them to make their gift. Ask them to stagger their contributions over a few of days. In other words: Ask donor 1 to make their $500 gift on the first day of the crowd-funding campaign; donor 2 donates on the second day, and so on. By doing this you are also building momentum which helps favorably position your project.

If you are not able to raise 20% of your goal, you need to reconsider the size of your campaign. Generally speaking, your ability or inability to raise 20% of your goal is an excellent indicator of your overall fundraising capacity.   For example, if you can only raise $1,600 in foundational gifts then consider lowering your campaign from $10,000 to $8,000 to keep the 20% ratio.

Investing a little time developing strategies before you launch your crowd-funding project will be time very well spent.

ASK CORBETT AN ARTS-RELATED QUESTION, FOR YOURSELF AND POSSIBLY FOR A FUTURE COLUMN: corbett@stageraw.com

When Strategic Planning Is Not the Strategic Thing to Do

By Corbett Barklie

Strategic planning is a big idea that means different things to different people. It’s a highly organized process that sets objectives and priorities, identifies actions and strategies. Plans move from big picture to small details and action items. Planning should be a carefully considered, organization-wide activity that will cost the organization time, energy, and probably money. Plans are hard work and can be detrimental to an organization when done incorrectly or at the wrong time.

I’ve noticed that most arts organizations think they should have a strategic plan and many arts managers and board members spend significant time fretting about not having one. It is also my experience that many groups, having gone to the time, trouble and expense of creating a plan, spend very little time actually using it.

To complicate the strategic planning issue even more, many charitable foundations and government granting programs require that nonprofit organizations have a strategic plan in place before funding is even considered. I can’t tell you how many executive and artistic directors have asked me for a “sample” strategic plan the night before a grant deadline. Coincidence?

Throwing a strategic plan together at the last minute to satisfy a well-intentioned funder is a colossal waste of time. It is also a waste of time to worry about not having a strategic plan, unless you are quite sure you need one.

Do Plan to Change

In my opinion, there is only one time to engage in planning and that’s when you want something to change. Let’s say you want to increase your number of performances, or diversify your audience, or re-focus your Board, or move to another venue — that’s when you must have a plan.

A strategic plan sits in the void between what you have and what you want and, if it’s done well, it will help get you where you want to go.

Don’t Plan When You’re Content

If everything is fine, meaning you’re happy with the work, the audience, the staff, the venue, and the money, then there is absolutely no reason to create a strategic plan. If everything feels okay, then you are stable and that’s amazing! Stabilization is a very well discussed topic in the arts community and, while there a numerous recommendations for achieving stability – all, by the way, include planning – there is very little information about how stable organizations maintain their equilibrium. It’s almost as though we believe that stability really doesn’t exist at all, certainly not outside of major institutions with endowments and real estate. But I think we have excellent examples of small and mid-sized organizations that are very stable right here in Southern California.

Don’t Plan in a Crisis

No matter what the crisis is — whether financial, emotional, spiritual, creative, physical or other — it is not the time to be setting future objectives or making decisions about how you’ll behave in a year, or two, or three. You don’t have objectivity in a crisis. Your ability to be strategic is greatly diminished. This is a time when planning can do more harm than good, it can also cost you time and money when those assets are probably pretty scarce.

I’d like to point out that while I don’t recommend strategic planning in a time of crisis, I do recommend making To Do Lists. The lists should be comprised of tasks that are easily completed in a short timeframe. Perhaps your To Do List for today will include writing a thank you letter (gratitude is extremely powerful in times of crisis) or doing some research on a project you’d like to undertake. Give yourself easily accomplished tasks and check them off as you go along. Take one day at a time in a crisis. Forget about next year and the year after, you only need to figure out today.

ASK CORBETT AN ARTS-RELATED QUESTION, FOR YOURSELF AND POSSIBLY FOR A FUTURE COLUMN: corbett@stageraw.com

“So I Have This Board of Directors…….”

By Corbett Barklie

If you’re a nonprofit 501(c)-3 arts  organization, you have a Board of Directors. It’s the law. The intention of a Board is to provide your organization with governance, community representation and, critically important to most of you, access to money and power.

Sounds great.

But the reality is that most Boards feel more like unwieldy organizational appendages than support groups. It hasn’t always been that way and, if you’ll indulge me for a moment, I’ll explain how we got here.

There was a time when sitting on an arts Board was the thing to do if you hoped to climb the society ladder. And making cash donations to the organization was just, frankly, what was done.

Then, in 1960s, things began to change with the creation of the NEA and the introduction of the Ford Foundation arts grant. Both the NEA and Ford attached a matching requirement to their grants which encouraged more private foundations to make arts grants too, and suddenly there was arts money everywhere. In response the number of non-profit arts groups ballooned. According to a report entitled Leverage Lost by John Kreidler, “In the San Francisco Bay area, only 20-30 nonprofit arts organizations were in existence in the late 1950s, while a far greater number of theatres, musical ensembles, performing arts presenters and galleries were operating on a for-profit basis. By the late 1980’s, the Bay Area contained approximately 1,000 nonprofit arts organizations.”

Most of these newly created nonprofit arts groups were small, founder driven enterprises many operating from garages and kitchen tables – nothing at all like the music centers and museums that had historically attracted society mavens.

To complicate matters even more, not long after all these new nonprofits entered the picture, the arts became famously politicized as a result of the NEA individual artists grant vetoes in the 1990s. The ensuing marginalization of the arts, along with the increased number of organizations vying for attention has now made traditional board development virtually impossible.

Today it’s virtually impossible to replicate the kind of high profile, fundraising board of the early ‘60s. Well-meaning arts board members are willing to help the organization in almost every way, except when it comes to raising money. And, frankly, I don’t blame them. Fund raising is hard, even when you get paid to do it. Doing it for free is plain crazy.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” 

If you can’t get your board members to raise money, stop asking. It’s easier to change your expectations.

What would happen if you re-imagined your Board, removed the mandate to contribute or raise money and asked them to do something they might actually be good at, like say, audience development? I bet this is generally a more comfortable topic for most board members because it relates to earned income, marketing, and customer service. Now you’re talking business-y language and put them in their comfort zone.

And you’d be surprised at the impact even a small increase in audience members would make on your organization.

Allow Me to Do the Math for You

Let’s say you’re a 99-seat theatre and you generally perform at 40% capacity. Your tickets are $20 each and you do four shows a year, sixteen performances of each show. At this rate you’re making just over $50,000 a year in ticket sales.

Now here’s what would happen if your Board of Directors helped you increase your audience size by just 15% next year. With the same ticket price and number of performances you would now bring in $70,400 per year. That’s a cool 20-grand more.

Ask yourself this: Is your Board contributing more than $20,000 annually? If not, consider moving them away from fundraising and steering them toward sales.

There is potential for real growth here. For example, at a consistent 85% capacity you’d bring in over $108,000 in ticket sales per year. And, the added benefit to strategically increasing your audience size is that you will also increase donations because audience members are your best individual donor prospects.

ASK CORBETT AN ARTS-RELATED QUESTION, FOR YOURSELF AND POSSIBLY FOR A FUTURE COLUMN: corbett@stageraw.com

A Perfectly Good Reason to Apply for a Grant You Don’t Think You’ll Get

Some hidden advantages . . .

By Corbett Barklie

Grant writing is a time consuming, sometimes annoying fact of nonprofit life. Government grant deadlines cluster together on our calendars and back up into private foundation deadlines making us all crazy. It’s easy to think “I’m not going to get his grant anyway, so I won’t bother applying.” Even if you’re right (although you might not be), there still is a compelling reason to write the proposal anyway.

It’s All About Communication

There is a universe of difference between arts groups and the foundations and government grant makers whose business it is to support them. And the differences go way beyond the obvious have/have not dynamic. There are also cultural differences: the language used by grant makers is often full of insider jargon that is impossible for artists to get their heads around. And our perspectives are frequently polar opposite with grant-makers looking down from lofty perches to identify broad trends and movements, and creatives barely able to see beyond their own noses and the opening of their next show. ­

Then there’s the understandable aversion that grant-makers have to being cornered by hungry grant seekers eager to spend hours discussing the merits of their most remarkable organization, so it’s at all not uncommon for grant makers to make themselves invisible at public gatherings. Further complicating communication between grant makers and grant seekers is the difficulty nonprofits have in disagreeing with anything foundation staff members have to say, no matter what.

All these elements combine to create a ridiculously unhealthy communication void between two sectors that must work together in order to make good on our mutual covenant to positively impact the arts field and its audiences.

Which brings me back to the importance of grant writing.   This is our one chance to openly communicate with grant makers. This is our moment! We have their attention when we submit a proposal. So even if you think your chance of getting the grant is zero, don’t throw away the opportunity for honest communication that writing a proposal gives you.

Basics first: make sure that your organization and your project fits within the guidelines of the funder. The last thing you want to do is make the rookie mistake of asking a foundation for arts money when they only fund homelessness. You’ll look careless and that will negatively impact on the reputation of your organization. So do your research.

Before you begin writing your proposal set aside your assumptions about what you think the grant maker wants to hear – you’re probably wrong anyway. This is your opportunity to communicate honestly and their opportunity to listen. It is also important to remember that there’s a human being on the other end of the proposal. If you fill a grant narrative with what is commonly referred to as “grants speak” you are not only adding to the existing communication problem between grant makers and seekers, but you are also boring the reader to tears.

Now you are ready to write honestly and respectfully about the realities of your programming, your vision, and upcoming opportunities. If you are asked to respond to a question that you can’t answer in a positive way don’t balk, write clearly about the challenges surrounding the situation. One word of caution: Don’t whine or complain excessively or you may, unwittingly, signal that your organization is in crisis which will immediately put you in a weak position. Grant makers want to know that their money will be well managed and spent appropriately.

I recommend writing the first draft of a proposal as a personal letter. Start with Dear Jane or Dear Mr. Doe. This will change the way you write. Don’t worry about being too personal, you can easily correct that later. This is a good thing to do especially if there is a particular program officer that you’d like to get to know. Picture that person as you write and write directly to them.

Remember that grant makers want the same thing you do, so when you write honestly about your experiences, you are also helping them better understand the field. Having sat on numerous grant panels, I am most impressed when I read a proposal that tells me something I didn’t know or never thought about in a specific way. Even if you have observed something that impacts, not just your organization, but the entire field in either a positive or negative manner, and have some thoughts about it, see if you can add a line or two into your narrative. Grant reviewers will appreciate the insights and remember that you took the time to provide them with information they otherwise may not have known.

Corbett Barklie is committed to deep engagement with artists and artist collectives whom she believes are the backbone of the creative community. It is the brave new work undertaken at the grassroots level that informs the field, and expands the palate of the arts consumer. Corbett was the founding Director of Loretta Theatre, the Executive Director of ARTS Inc., and served as the Deputy Director of Development for Center Theater Group. She worked with the NEA as an assessor and consultant in their Challenge & Advancement Program. She has operated her own arts consulting business since 2000 and is an Adjunct Professor in the University of Southern California, School of Theatre, and a trainer for the Center for Cultural Innovation.

ASK CORBETT AN ARTS-RELATED QUESTION, FOR YOURSELF AND POSSIBLY FOR A FUTURE COLUMN: corbett@stageraw.com