Jasmine Ako

Engaging Young Professionals in Arts Leadership

Posted by Jasmine Ako, May 08, 2019 0 comments


Jasmine Ako

The impact of the arts

Growing up, the arts were an integral part of my childhood. My mom signed me up for everything from ballet to musical theatre to piano, as she wanted me to benefit from opportunities that she didn’t have access to in her youth. Piano and violin ended up sticking and were a constant part of my life for nearly two decades. Learning both instruments taught me the importance of discipline and hard work, as well as the joys of self-expression, interpretation, and creativity.

While working at Green Dot Public Schools, a charter school network based in Los Angeles, I learned that over 90% of our students qualify for free or reduced lunch. The majority of families we serve certainly can’t afford private music lessons, and it’s no secret that school-based arts programs are often the first to be cut when budgets are tight.

I was overjoyed to learn about the Los Angeles Music and Art School (LAMusArt), the only multidisciplinary arts school in east Los Angeles. LAMusArt has offered discounted and tuition-free arts programs to youth for over 70 years, thereby breaking down traditional cost barriers to arts education. I found out about LAMusArt through my participation in the Riordan Leadership Institute, a leadership development program that empowers early to mid-career professionals for lifelong community engagement through service on nonprofit boards.

Planting the seed for a Young Professionals Board

I vividly recall my first meeting with Isela Sotelo and Manuel (“Manny”) Prieto, the outgoing and current Executive Directors of LAMusArt. They introduced me to the issues that LAMusArt and other arts organizations face, such as the need for better engagement of Millennials and younger generations, as well as the need to build a more diverse pipeline of board leadership. Traditional board member duties have often been limited to raising large donations; however, the dynamic and evolving nonprofit arts and cultural landscape demands that arts leadership look to their boards for deeper engagement, creative thinking and problem-solving, and fresh ideas in order to grow and thrive into the future. I shared with them the desire and passion that I and other young professionals have to make a more sustained impact on nonprofit organizations, contributing new and innovative ideas and building new leadership skills—goals that many existing one-off volunteering opportunities fail to meet.

Young Professionals Advisory Board members at a Summer Soiree fundraising event.

From that conversation, the idea for our Young Professionals Advisory Board (YPAB) was born. Given LAMusArt’s specific objectives, we crafted a two-fold mission for the YPAB: to intentionally cultivate a pipeline of future board members, and to increase outreach for and awareness of LAMusArt’s work in the broader Los Angeles community.

Setting a foundation for success

Building a young professionals board from the ground up was both a daunting and exciting process. I set two primary goals, and designed all of the YPAB’s conditions, structures, and processes with them in mind: (1) get and retain the best people, and (2) create a meaningful and valuable volunteering experience to empower those people. Using these goals, we created and codified a recruitment process to screen for mission-aligned young professionals who were also capable of a deeper level of commitment. We also set clear board member responsibilities—such as a requiring two-year length of service and a instituting a give/get policy—designed and recruited members into board leadership roles (operations, finance, recruitment, fundraising, etc.), and heavily involved all members in every major decision. This inclusive leadership approach really helped to gain buy-in and engagement from our inaugural members, as well as set the tone for future collaborative decision-making.

“Students for a Day” event, where YPAB members took an art class.

Additionally, one of the board traditions I’m most fond of is called “Student for a Day,” where YPAB members take part in a variety of actual LAMusArt classes alongside students. Painting artwork and dancing alongside students was not only super fun, but also helped to connect our members to the lived student experience and brought to life what their board service was ultimately contributing to.

Overcoming challenges

As we started planning and executing our very first fundraising events and initiatives, it quickly became apparent that our junior board members had varied levels of comfort with fundraising. Some had years of nonprofit development experience under their belt, and others had no formal fundraising experience whatsoever. What everyone did share, though, was a deep connection to LAMusArt’s mission.

This dilemma led us to ask ourselves:

  • What do our board members need in terms of professional development? How could we best leverage our existing board talent to train our junior board?
  • How could we gain buy-in and support from organizational leadership and staff to collaborate in our efforts? What shared goals could we work towards that were highest impact for the organization?

These are important questions for any young professionals board to consider in its early stages, and asking them was key to helping us chart a path forward through our early roadblocks. One of the best actions we took was leveraging two of our most experienced board members to lead a training on fundraising best practices, which gave everyone a toolkit of tangible, easily executable fundraising strategies to use. We also worked closely with Manny, the Executive Director, and his staff to identify and understand LAMusArt’s core programmatic needs and how we could tie the YPAB’s efforts to address them. After considering a few options, we aligned on a shared goal of reinstating the organization’s choir program, which was disbanded several years earlier due to lack of funding. Through this process, we built critical organizational buy-in and support, increased legitimacy of our junior board’s efforts, and set the tone for a healthy and transparent ongoing relationship with LAMusArt’s leadership and staff.

Early successes and ongoing impact

In our first two years of operation, the YPAB ultimately raised enough money to reinstate LAMusArt’s tuition-free student choir in its entirety for a year. Seeing Laura, whose growing confidence served as an anchor for the younger singers, and Citlaly, who was initially shy when she joined the choir, sing confidently before a packed audience at the Los Angeles Grammy Museum for LAMusArt’s fall 2016 benefit was a powerful illustration of how our efforts could bolster young people’s confidence and help them achieve their full potential through the arts. Three years later, healthy demand for and growth of the original choir program spurred the addition of an Advanced Choir, where students tackle a more challenging repertoire.

YPAB members with members of the newly launched LAMusArt tuition-free choir.

Additionally, we successfully cemented a pathway from the YPAB to the board of directors. Cynthia Pearson, an original YPAB member, is now Board Chair of the LAMusArt Board of Directors. We hope to bring even more YPAB members onto the Board of Directors in the future. On a personal note, it’s incredibly rewarding to see the YPAB thriving four years after its launch, with a diverse slate of new faces (led by the wonderful Pooja Nair) implementing new events in service of growing and expanding LAMusArt’s programs.

Beyond LAMusArt and the East Los Angeles community it serves, I’m excited about the possibilities for the greater arts community to further engage and involve young professionals in innovative ways. If the number of other nonprofits who’ve reached out to us to start their own young professionals boards is any indicator, the future is bright. As this trend grows, I have no doubt we’ll see greater diversity and sustainability within arts and culture boards in the future, and a new tide of talent working hard to increase access to the arts for all youth.


This post is part of the Own Your Past, Shape Your Future blog salon.

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