Good morning
"And the beat goes on............................"
What If:
Once again, efforts to cut funding to the NEA, and attempts to eliminate a number of state arts agencies across the country have been beaten back by the concerted effort of many in the arts community - (or sort of, anyway - at least we reduced the size of the cuts). Still, this is good news. It demonstrates that we do have some power when we choose to use it, that we do have a good product and arguments as to why we are a good investment, and that we do have some support with decision makers.
Of course, one could also argue that these partial "victories" are really just smaller defeats than initially threatened. What the recent efforts for the NEA, and those in Kansas and South Carolina, and doubtless other venues did was simply to lessen the amount of the cuts being imposed and / or defeat the effort to eliminate an agency entirely. It's like someone threatened to tear off both your arms, and you convinced them to just tear off one of them. A victory? -- yes, actually that is a victory - but you won't likely continue to survive with that kind of victory as the norm.
This is a cycle - it happens whenever the economy burps. We're preoccupied with our work, when all of a sudden they threaten huge cuts to our funding, and we go ballistic and rally the troops, and usually end up not preventing the cuts from happening, but reducing the size of the original proposed cuts. And then we go back to what we were doing. Death by a thousand cuts (no pun intended). While we breathe a little easier and congratulate ourselves, we need to stop and think about the future of all of this.
What if someday all government funding is cut off? Or at least all federal and say 60% of all state funding is cut off?
The question arises: If we had built a more solid political base - including substantial (and well financed) lobbying efforts and campaign relationships with elected officials across the board, would that have made any difference. In normal times, I would argue it would have. But these are hardly "normal" times (if any such times actually exist at all), and so I think it entirely possible that even if we had substantial political clout, it may not have made a huge difference. The deteriorating plight of the American economy has changed everything.
While the current economic downturn has generated not unpredictable responses in the public - including wide spread support for more belt tightening - there are signs that this time things are a little different. What happened in the last two years is arguably not a normal cycle for the economy. This recession was at the precipice of a global meltdown depression; the housing / banking crisis that precipitated the mess is hardly fixed; the shift from American dominance of the world economy is unquestionably now irreversible; and we continue to spend and borrow far, far beyond our means - and right now in order to get the economy back on track (though not necessarily back to our dominance) we have to spend and borrow. We may have reduced the cuts this time, but thinking we can always succeed would be a fool's conclusion.
The economic expert community is somewhat at odds over whether or not the national deficit is the principal problem we face [with most arguing that jobs and stimulus of the economy are the most important priorities (both in fact and with the public) and that the dealing with the debt is more of a longer term issue]. But as the case with many other issues, the public "perception" is what counts, and there is movement towards the belief that the debt has to be tamed beginning right now, and, of course, the preferred way to deal with that is to cut spending rather than raise taxes. Almost every rational thinker has concluded that to deal with the debt, we will have to do both - cut spending and increase income (raise taxes). Of course, cutting spending turns out to be much harder than it sounds, and raising taxes sits well with almost no one. And there's the stalemate.
I suppose what protects us (and everyone else who gets funding) is the failure of the system - the gridlock, stalemate and dogmatic partisanship of politics today, that makes any kind of action, other than symbolic little gestures, impossible, and so funding cuts remain painful, but not deadly. But what if we actually get to the point where a majority feels that we have no choice (because, at some point, we in fact don't have a choice). What if we finally come to the point where real action is unavoidable, and, though I admit this seems far fetched today, our elected leaders actually act responsibly. The longer they wait, the harder the decisions will be (and I suppose in politics that's precisely why the can gets kicked down the road all the time).
The problem with making cuts is that certain entitlements are sacred cows - Medicare and Social Security chief among them, and so cuts to those programs can only be made, at best, over a period of time (at least a decade, maybe longer). And several other programs rank high on everyone's list - education, Medicaid, and even defense spending (another part of our mindset problems). That doesn't leave a lot of other places to cut. So if we get to the point where there is consensus that we really have no choice anymore, it is entirely possible - at that point - that we will be talking about extreme cuts and / or (at least temporary - but who knows how long temporary will be) elimination of funding for the arts all together - even if we raise taxes too. That may be true on the federal level, all the way down to local cities and counties. Not across the board of course, but maybe something close to a majority of all such government agency spending. And is that possible, and how far away is such a situation? Who knows? I can't envision a credible argument that such a scenario cannot happen.
So what would the arts look like if there were no government spending? No NEA, no state support in a score of states or more, no city or county support in hundreds of jurisdictions across the country. A likely event? I doubt it. Not for awhile for sure. But is it possible? Absolutely (there is a growing segment on the right who would like to see those cuts and eliminations on philosophical grounds, irrespective of economic necessity). I have long thought, and argued, that government support - at some level - is critically essential to the survival of the nonprofit arts infrastructure in America. And with other of the five income streams (earned income, individual donations, corporate and foundation philanthropy) all somewhat compromised, elimination of even some of the vast network of government support would have, I think, devastating consequences. A case in point is the NEA 40% share that goes to the states, and which, in a number of more rural states, constitutes the lion's share of their entire budget. The ends of the arts? Of course not. But the end of nonprofit arts - as we know it - well, that's more difficult to answer.
I think the field needs to consider the possibility that in the not too far distant future, circumstances may dictate that government support for the arts will no longer be available. Period. And once gone, it will be axiomatically harder to re-establish.
What do we do? I'm not sure. Think about advocacy on different levels, question the revenue model that is dependent in part on government funding, consider how we better position the arts with the public. Think about alternatives and how that would or wouldn't work. All of it? Considering the possibility and implications is a start.
So amid the sigh of relief that we won some "victories" of late, we need to recognize that this problem not only isn't going away, there is the very real chance that it will get a whole lot worse for us, and soon, and so we need to ask ourselves what do (can) we do now to stave off the worst case scenario. We could wait and do what we've been doing - but that hasn't been working so well, and kind of fits the definition of insanity (doing the same failed thing over and over again, expecting different results). I would hope as we discuss and debate policy issues, and talk about capacity and sustainability, and questions of supply and demand, and ideas to support the arts as essential to creativity, and creativity as linked to innovation and to community - and all the other big ticket issues, that we would bear in mind that elimination of government funding for a large percentage of the entire arts infrastructure in the not too distant future isn't that far fetched a possibility - especially if we continue to struggle with the health of the American economy (and that seems almost a given). Maybe not likely, but certainly not impossible. All I am suggesting is that it is better to think about it now, than after it's a fait accompli.
Have a good week.
Don't Quit
Barry
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Websurfing
Good morning.
"And the beat goes on...................................."
Random Stuff of Interest:
People send me links to interesting sites, and I spend a fair amount of time surfing and looking for sites, research, articles etc. germane to the nonprofit arts field. Often times, this stuff piles up in my favorites box and though I mean to pass it on quickly - but somehow............. - well you know how that goes.
So here are some things I've found in the past few months that may be of interest to you:
Don't Quit.
Barry
"And the beat goes on...................................."
Random Stuff of Interest:
People send me links to interesting sites, and I spend a fair amount of time surfing and looking for sites, research, articles etc. germane to the nonprofit arts field. Often times, this stuff piles up in my favorites box and though I mean to pass it on quickly - but somehow............. - well you know how that goes.
So here are some things I've found in the past few months that may be of interest to you:
- From the LA Times (back in November) a story that while philanthropy declined in 2009, it remained constant for the arts - at least for the really wealthy donors. Very likely, the contributions of the well heeled went to the large cultural institutions - the operas, and symphonies and big museums. It would be interesting to verify that fact and also know if at the other end of the spectrum, less wealthy people gave to mid sized, smaller or ethnic specific organizations.
- Another article on philanthropy which caught my eye, this piece, cross posted on the Stanford Social Innovation Review blog, offers 14 insights on what will shape philanthropy in the coming decade. Some very interesting thoughts here.
- Yet more on philanthropy, here's some research from the James Irvine Foundation site - Advance the Arts.org on donor motivation.
- With increasing talk in the last few months on the Slow Food Movement and its parallels to the arts, here's a piece from Drew McManus (from his Adaptistration blog on the orchestra business) commenting on Diane Ragsdale's blog on the Slow Food Movement as a model for the arts (maybe?)
- Here's Amelia Northrup commenting from the National Arts Marketing Project site on the Top Technology trends that will impact arts marketing in 2011.
- More on marketing, this piece from David Dombrosky on the Technology in the Arts website about SF Playhouse's use of Twitter.
- And here's some data from the Pew Research Center on the social side of the net.
- Here's an article from the Harvard Business Review advising the business community that if they want to hire innovative thinkers, they should hire from the Humanities (hey what about the arts you guys?)
- Finally, there's a little humor and a little truth in this piece on 10 Signs It's Time to Quit Your Job.
Don't Quit.
Barry
Sunday, April 3, 2011
Exodus of longtime leaders. What is the real cause?
Good morning.
“And the beat goes on………………………”
Burned Out or Pushed Out?
In the last eighteen months a number of personal friends have left leadership posts in our field that they have held for a long time. There is nothing necessarily unusual about this kind of attrition in leadership succession – it is a natural part of the rhythms of change.
Isn’t it?
It is, I think, provided that the underlying reason these people are leaving is retirement or moving on to other ventures long postponed but never completely forgotten. But a surprising portion of those friends who have left longtime positions lately, after exploring with them the “why” of the change and the timing, turn out to be leaving for negative reasons, contentious reasons – specifically having reached an untenable and negative relationship with their board. Most of the examples I have seen (and I wish there were some research on this specific issue, but there appears to be none) share a common thread in that the bad relationship between the hired Executive Director and the Board is not a long standing problem but a more recent development with a newer Board.
The problems from the Executive Director’s perspective seem to fall into three broad categories: 1) The current board is uninformed and unrealistic and seems not bothered by that fact. This leads to arguments and confrontations on everything from basic mission and organizational policy formulation to minute aspects of governance, fundraising, program development and implementation and more; 2) The current board has no sense of the history of the organization, no appreciation of the nuances of the growth or the cycle of growth and decline of the organization, resulting again in a failure to be supportive of the ED’s experiential based strategies; and 3) The current board has the mindset that it’s job goes beyond monitoring and protecting the fiduciary integrity of the organization, and that many of the day to day decisions are part of its prerogative resulting in varying degrees of micro-management.
From the Board’s point of view: 1) The ED increasingly thinks of the organization as his / her fiefdom and is increasingly disinclined to want to share any decision making authority; and 2) The ED makes little attempt to even mask his/her contempt for the Board and the well intended and conscientious work it is trying to do on behalf of the organization. Both feel unappreciated, misunderstood and the need to assert their authority.
The ED is impatient with what s/he considers a clueless, meddling and not very helpful Board, and the Board is impatient with the ED as arrogant and uncooperative. The relationship is increasingly dysfunctional. The increased pressures of financial problems and everything now being so much of a challenge for both ED and Board increases the tension, often to the breaking point. I have come to believe this is one of the unspoken secrets in our sector at the moment, and the breakdown in many of these relationships is good for neither side, and simply devastating to the organization itself – whether the dysfunctional relationship comes to a head or bubbles under the surface.
There are certainly many organizations where the relationship between the Executive Director and the staff and the Board is excellent. Many boards follow the Carver model of essentially leaving the Executive Director to make his or her decisions and regard their role to intervene only if the Executive Director needs to be replaced. Alas, from the past 15 years talking and listening to Executive Directors / Presidents of all kinds and sizes of arts organizations, I believe the underlying contentiousness between boards and senior leadership is much more the norm than the exception. This is nothing really new. I have heard these stories of frustration for some time. For the most part I think the conflict is minor and not much of a real problem - though wherever it exists there is the potential for it to grow and fester. The problem at hand is there seems to be a lowering of the threshold of the breaking point, and that development may indeed be something new for us.
From what I have observed and been told by a number of those Executive Directors who have recently left long term leadership positions (and who were not doing so to retire), the reason they moved on was that the relationship with their Board was no longer, in their minds, tenable; no longer workable; no longer salvageable. They just didn’t want to make the effort anymore. Part burnout, yes. But something more too I think.
There are, of course, two sides to these stories. I don’t know if the reason Executive Directors and Boards come to such an impasse is because the Board is unreasonable, untutored, and simply clueless as to their function and role, or because the Executive Director has grown into an unyielding and uncompromising kind of tyrant. As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. Clearly though, there is a disconnect – most obvious when it reaches the point of confrontation, but also undeniably present beneath the surface in a lot of organizations where the “tipping point” has not yet been reached.
Not surprisingly, most organizations that recognize an impasse try diligently to either pretend it isn’t as big a problem as it portends to be, or cover it up in the mistaken belief that nothing is to be gained by airing “dirty laundry”. That latter course perpetrates somewhat of a fraud on candidates to replace the outgoing Executive Director, if the impasse results in such a change -- as little to no mention of the real reason for the outgoing ED is ever provided to the new candidates (or likely any of the search firms that may be engaged to find a new leader). Often times the staff is unaware of the degree of friction and not every Board member is always aware of the conflict either (and cliques among a Board is a whole other topic).
The degree to which this unspoken reality of tension between boards and leaders is widespread and prevalent, I do not know. As I said, I wish we had a better sense of the extent that this is a problem (if it is). I think we need to do a systemic assessment to try to ascertain both the nature, and the scope and depth of this as a problem and try to get a handle on its practical ramifications. There is certainly ample anecdotal evidence that something is amiss here, and I have certainly personally detected varying degrees of Board / ED tension during a score or more Board Retreats over the past three years.
As to what can be done about addressing it as an issue – the obvious response is to provide: 1) more training to boards and prospective board members about their role, duties, obligations etc, and 2) more support to Executive Directors who feel (rightly or wrongly) to be beleaguered and perceive themselves victims – including making interventions and brokered negotiations and arbitration options more available and seen as more acceptable and smart alternatives. First we have to identify the problem, then get people to acknowledge and accept the reality as it actually exists; second, we have to develop ways that address the issues of each of the factions to their mutual satisfaction.
It seems to me that this is a much bigger problem than anyone is acknowledging, and that we have ignored it for some time, preferring to believe everything was all working just fine; that it has enormous consequences for both the individuals involved (Executive Director and Board members alike), to the organizations impacted by it being real for them, and to the sector as a whole; and finally that while there may be any number of ways we can address the issue, there will likely be no easy or quick fix – but talking about it will be a start. We can pretend it isn't real, but I suspect it is.
Have a great week.
Don’t Quit
Barry
“And the beat goes on………………………”
Burned Out or Pushed Out?
In the last eighteen months a number of personal friends have left leadership posts in our field that they have held for a long time. There is nothing necessarily unusual about this kind of attrition in leadership succession – it is a natural part of the rhythms of change.
Isn’t it?
It is, I think, provided that the underlying reason these people are leaving is retirement or moving on to other ventures long postponed but never completely forgotten. But a surprising portion of those friends who have left longtime positions lately, after exploring with them the “why” of the change and the timing, turn out to be leaving for negative reasons, contentious reasons – specifically having reached an untenable and negative relationship with their board. Most of the examples I have seen (and I wish there were some research on this specific issue, but there appears to be none) share a common thread in that the bad relationship between the hired Executive Director and the Board is not a long standing problem but a more recent development with a newer Board.
The problems from the Executive Director’s perspective seem to fall into three broad categories: 1) The current board is uninformed and unrealistic and seems not bothered by that fact. This leads to arguments and confrontations on everything from basic mission and organizational policy formulation to minute aspects of governance, fundraising, program development and implementation and more; 2) The current board has no sense of the history of the organization, no appreciation of the nuances of the growth or the cycle of growth and decline of the organization, resulting again in a failure to be supportive of the ED’s experiential based strategies; and 3) The current board has the mindset that it’s job goes beyond monitoring and protecting the fiduciary integrity of the organization, and that many of the day to day decisions are part of its prerogative resulting in varying degrees of micro-management.
From the Board’s point of view: 1) The ED increasingly thinks of the organization as his / her fiefdom and is increasingly disinclined to want to share any decision making authority; and 2) The ED makes little attempt to even mask his/her contempt for the Board and the well intended and conscientious work it is trying to do on behalf of the organization. Both feel unappreciated, misunderstood and the need to assert their authority.
The ED is impatient with what s/he considers a clueless, meddling and not very helpful Board, and the Board is impatient with the ED as arrogant and uncooperative. The relationship is increasingly dysfunctional. The increased pressures of financial problems and everything now being so much of a challenge for both ED and Board increases the tension, often to the breaking point. I have come to believe this is one of the unspoken secrets in our sector at the moment, and the breakdown in many of these relationships is good for neither side, and simply devastating to the organization itself – whether the dysfunctional relationship comes to a head or bubbles under the surface.
There are certainly many organizations where the relationship between the Executive Director and the staff and the Board is excellent. Many boards follow the Carver model of essentially leaving the Executive Director to make his or her decisions and regard their role to intervene only if the Executive Director needs to be replaced. Alas, from the past 15 years talking and listening to Executive Directors / Presidents of all kinds and sizes of arts organizations, I believe the underlying contentiousness between boards and senior leadership is much more the norm than the exception. This is nothing really new. I have heard these stories of frustration for some time. For the most part I think the conflict is minor and not much of a real problem - though wherever it exists there is the potential for it to grow and fester. The problem at hand is there seems to be a lowering of the threshold of the breaking point, and that development may indeed be something new for us.
From what I have observed and been told by a number of those Executive Directors who have recently left long term leadership positions (and who were not doing so to retire), the reason they moved on was that the relationship with their Board was no longer, in their minds, tenable; no longer workable; no longer salvageable. They just didn’t want to make the effort anymore. Part burnout, yes. But something more too I think.
There are, of course, two sides to these stories. I don’t know if the reason Executive Directors and Boards come to such an impasse is because the Board is unreasonable, untutored, and simply clueless as to their function and role, or because the Executive Director has grown into an unyielding and uncompromising kind of tyrant. As usual, the truth probably lies somewhere in between. Clearly though, there is a disconnect – most obvious when it reaches the point of confrontation, but also undeniably present beneath the surface in a lot of organizations where the “tipping point” has not yet been reached.
Not surprisingly, most organizations that recognize an impasse try diligently to either pretend it isn’t as big a problem as it portends to be, or cover it up in the mistaken belief that nothing is to be gained by airing “dirty laundry”. That latter course perpetrates somewhat of a fraud on candidates to replace the outgoing Executive Director, if the impasse results in such a change -- as little to no mention of the real reason for the outgoing ED is ever provided to the new candidates (or likely any of the search firms that may be engaged to find a new leader). Often times the staff is unaware of the degree of friction and not every Board member is always aware of the conflict either (and cliques among a Board is a whole other topic).
The degree to which this unspoken reality of tension between boards and leaders is widespread and prevalent, I do not know. As I said, I wish we had a better sense of the extent that this is a problem (if it is). I think we need to do a systemic assessment to try to ascertain both the nature, and the scope and depth of this as a problem and try to get a handle on its practical ramifications. There is certainly ample anecdotal evidence that something is amiss here, and I have certainly personally detected varying degrees of Board / ED tension during a score or more Board Retreats over the past three years.
As to what can be done about addressing it as an issue – the obvious response is to provide: 1) more training to boards and prospective board members about their role, duties, obligations etc, and 2) more support to Executive Directors who feel (rightly or wrongly) to be beleaguered and perceive themselves victims – including making interventions and brokered negotiations and arbitration options more available and seen as more acceptable and smart alternatives. First we have to identify the problem, then get people to acknowledge and accept the reality as it actually exists; second, we have to develop ways that address the issues of each of the factions to their mutual satisfaction.
It seems to me that this is a much bigger problem than anyone is acknowledging, and that we have ignored it for some time, preferring to believe everything was all working just fine; that it has enormous consequences for both the individuals involved (Executive Director and Board members alike), to the organizations impacted by it being real for them, and to the sector as a whole; and finally that while there may be any number of ways we can address the issue, there will likely be no easy or quick fix – but talking about it will be a start. We can pretend it isn't real, but I suspect it is.
Have a great week.
Don’t Quit
Barry
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