A guide to fiscal solvency for nonprofit arts organizations.
Stretched between the eternal verities of art and money, arts groups – especially small and medium-sized ones, and those run close to the heartbeat of the artists themselves – often resemble the runner-in-place, trying desperately to learn savvy management techniques only to find them outmoded, no longer a draw for substantial funding, or simply the straw that breaks the manager’s spirit as well as his or her back. This book, written for those managers and artists, and their companies, groups, collectives, cooperatives, and institutions, is about money.
First, it is about what to do before money: how to consider and choose an organizational format that best suits the mission and purporses of the artists involved, and that allows money to be made and distributed in different ways. Thereafter, it is about obtaining money – raising it throught traditional forms of grantsmanship in the private, public, and corporate sectors, making it through earned income activities including back interest and real estate, saving it by sharing costs and activities with other organizations, and understanding its potential in terms of the new technology. It is also a testimony to invention, to perseverenace, and to the incredible amount of sweat equity of all those who labor in a field which, fortunately, exists because of the very personal contributions of its servants.