Janet Brown

People who work in the arts live in a perpetual state of aspiration and hope. We balance our budgets by projecting income that we “need” instead of income that we “expect.” Grantmakers in the Arts has spent four years focusing on the capitalization of arts organizations at GIA and other national conferences; through our web conferences, blogs, articles in the GIA Reader; and at our workshops for funders entitled Conversations on Capitalization and Community. Capitalization is defined simply as the resources an organization needs to accomplish its mission. The entire nonprofit sector operates in a business environment that is chaotic. It is the unpredictable nature of contributed income that makes the job of resource identification so difficult, requiring extreme cynicism and practical thinking by those trying to project budgets for the future.

This idea of projecting income in a chaotic marketplace is as important to the smallest of organizations as it is to the largest museum or opera company. Understanding how much money you need to exist and then understanding where that money will come from - this is the foundation of a good business model.

There is a false hope within the nonprofit world that all organizations, and even artists for that matter, can be saved by a good grant writer, that all we need to do is find a foundation and write a grant. The reality is that most organizations (and artists) are funded by only a small percentage of America’s foundations. About 10% of all foundation giving goes to the arts and one can probably predict without doing much research that the bulk of funding goes to institutions in urban centers.

Nicole Faller

The following is an excerpt of an article originally posted on Business News Daily, written by staff writer Nicole Fallon, in which she cites a list how creativity is a truly essential business skill, particularly for entrepreneurs. Visit BusinessNewsDaily.com to read the full article.

What is the most important quality of an entrepreneur? Many would argue it is passion—an overwhelming love of what one is doing, and the drive and determination to see one's dreams realized. Others might say leadership—the ability to bring a team of people together and guide them toward a common goal. But some believe that creativity—a boundless imagination that is constantly innovating and seeing the world through a different lens—is the ultimate key to business success.

Phoebe Cade Miles, daughter of Gatorade inventor Dr. James Robert Cade, is one such believer in the power of creativity. She watched her father work tirelessly to invent a product that, five decades after its introduction, is still used by athletes around the world. Today, Cade Miles is working on her own entrepreneurial project, The Cade Museum for Creativity and Invention. The museum, scheduled to open in 2015 to commemorate Gatorade's 50th anniversary, explores the history of the famous athletic drink, and highlights the crucial role creativity played in its invention.

Savannah Barrett

From the coalfields of Appalachia to the lumber mills of the Cascades, rural people across the nation share a common desire to see the places where they live grow and prosper as livable, energetic communities. Many small communities in rural America have witnessed dwindling philanthropic investment in the twenty-first century. Although rural communities, labor, and expertise remain vital to health of our nation, reports of philanthropic investment in small communities average between 1-5%. As Rick Cohen referenced in the Non Profit Quarterly earlier this year, “Many rural nonprofits have probably given up on seeing philanthropy double its rural grant making in five years, as per the challenge issued by Senator Max Baucus (D-MT) to the Council on Foundations seven years ago, because of the historic underfunding of rural communities by foundations.”

Thankfully, this narrative is beginning to shift. While inequity in resource allocation to rural communities persists across the arts and culture sector; agencies, foundations, and support organizations are beginning to take note of the value of rural arts and humanities organizations, and are increasing their investment in rural communities. This blog post is aimed to inform rural arts and culture practitioners of the opportunities available for capital, human, and social investment in rural organizations.

The Year of the Rural Arts and the Rural Arts Resource Directory
2014 marks the inaugural Year of the Rural Arts: a biennial program of events, conversations, and online features celebrating the diverse, vital ways in which rural arts and humanities contribute to American life. This inaugural effort connects citizens, artists, scholars, designers, and entrepreneurs and meets with audiences on the grounds of universities, museums and galleries, cultural organizations, and across rural and urban communities. Coordinated by Art of the Rural and organized by a collective of individuals, organizations, and communities; we utilize a digital platform to elevate the rural arts field by facilitating rural-urban dialogue and cross-sector exchange.

Each time we partner with regional organizations to build digital networks on the Atlas of Rural Arts and Culture, we attempt to strengthen those networks on the ground by connecting rural organizations and individuals to one another, and to regional and national associations and opportunities. Through this process and the contributions of many advisors and stakeholders, we’ve created an online rural arts resource directory, complete with a variety of helpful toolkits, funding opportunities, networks and associations, conferences, webinars, professional development opportunities, websites, books, and articles related to rural arts and culture.

The range and diversity of resources included in this directory are exciting. We identified more than 50 funding and support opportunities for rural and cultural organizations from federal assistance programs, foundations, and corporate grant makers.

Donna Neuwirth and Jay Salinas.

Some are born rural, some achieve rural, and some have rural thrust upon them. I am somewhere between the second two and have been immersed in rural life in Wisconsin for 20 years now. Though I was formed by urban and suburban places, none would claim me.

I used to call it portable roots and came by them honestly. Ours was a military family who moved every 3-4 years. There was once a time when my peripatetic life was unusual, but now even people like myself, who are most passionate about the places we live, once lived somewhere else and may likely relocate again. I live as I believe we all do—with varying degrees of awareness, along a rural/urban continuum.

This continuum is especially vivid to me today as I write from Mexico City, which has a population of 25 million.  Here among ancient and contemporary ruins, throngs of people, and centuries of visible history on nearly every corner, is live music or bizarre performances; every wall is either a reminder of Spanish conquest or crowded with murals and graffiti. The stream of romantic couples, the well behaved children, the ornate churches, the incense, the roaming vendors, and the incredible street food all goes through my senses into my brain and winds up comingled with Fermentation Fest or Roadside Culture Stands. Experiences here in Mexico for a couple weeks (during a polar vortex back home) can’t help but shape ideas to enliven and transform our very small, very different agricultural community.