Some of you may have noticed an email Americans for the Arts sent our a while ago about "The Members Project," a new intiative being launched by American Express.  Well, if you are like me, the e-mail may not have registered with you. Now that the project's Web site is active and the initiative is underway, I wanted to bring it to your attention because I think it is pretty cool and innovative.  Basically, American Express has combined an array of components - social networking sites, reality TV shows with public voting (like American Idol), growing public interest in philanthropy and voluntarism - into a single initiative. Here's how it works: American Express cardmembers register to participate and recommend or nominate project ideas - new programs or initiatives that will make the world (or their community) a better place. Cardmembers have a few weeks to nominate, as well as to review ideas posted by others.

 Then they vote for the ideas they think are most compelling. A panel of experts is used to winnow the large roster down to a manageable level, and then through successive rounds of cardmember voting the ideas are boiled down to one winner, which may be awarded as much as $5 million to implement the project.  Along the way, more and more detail is added on implementability, and ideas without nonprofits already associated with them will be matched with appropriate nonprofit partners. The ideas can be in any of several different categories - arts and entertainment, environment and wildlife, education, community development, business and finance, health and fitness, "fun," and "other."

So why does this matter?  First, it shows even a huge global corporation can do something fun and innovative and "out of the box," that actively engages their members. What are we - as a field and as individual organizations - doing? Second, arts organizations and arts appreciators need to participate. Arts ideas need to be generated, and people who care about the role the arts can play in improving our society, who are also American Express cardmembers, need to actively become engaged with this program.

As I write this, 849 projects have been entered into the site, only 22 of which fall into the "arts & entertainment" category. If during the course of this program, few or no arts ideas make into the round of 50, or 25, or 5, it sends a message that the arts are just not as important in society, and I would hope that all who are reading this blog know this is not the case.  So consider this a rallying cry to my colleagues in the arts - check out this program yourselves, help generate ideas, and help spread the word to your audeinces, donors, and members they can have a voice in this initiative, and help make the point that the arts matter. Time is of the essence. The call for idea submissions ends on June 17th, and people can now BOTH submit ideas and rate any ideas they want to. On July 3rd, after review of all the ratings and selection by an outside panel, all the ideas are narrowed down to 50 finalists, and the one "big idea" is chosen on August 7th.