This morning, The Atlantic published a story about The Plight of the Overworked Nonprofit Employee that addresses the conflict non-profits face between paying employees well and devoting fun…
Harvard Business Review had a short piece about a study that found that having a back-up plan often undermines one’s motivation to succeed. The interviewer specifically uses an exa…
I frequently write about why arguing the benefits of the arts based on their instrumental value (e.g. improves economy or test scores) is a bad approach because it depends on an absence of a…
Maria Popova made a BrainPickings post about Elliott Schwartz’s book, Music: Ways of Listening, about four years ago. The link to it just came to my attention recently. Popova notes, &…
A few months ago, I wrote about How Financial Statements Are Born, which explained how different financial statements were related to one another. A supplement to that is a How To Be A Finan…
Via Non-Profit Quarterly is a brief story about the Farm to Ballet Project which is taking agricultural themed ballet to about nine farms throughout Vermont this summer. (Their second season…
Our friends at the Non-Profit Happy Hour Facebook group shared the Furniture Bank’s Charity Overhead Manifesto. In the post, the Furniture Bank talks about how much damage resistance t…
When it comes to Shakespeare, I feel like it is worth taking the time to sit and allow yourself to adjust to the language and rhythms rather than dismissing it outright as too impenetrable. …
Can a creative person afford not to attend to the business details and promotion/branding of their practice these days? Cal Newport, perhaps unwittingly, wades into the longstanding debate a…
I am a little embarrassed that it hasn’t occurred to me to post about this sooner. Here on the old blogosphere, general Internet, at conferences, in coffee houses and on the street whe…
Last week I made a post about “rebranding” overhead costs in other terms in order to get away from the associated stigma. Included in the post, I mentioned that a non-profit was …
Last month, Americans for the Arts blog was printing excerpts from the writing of Robert E. Gard who primary focused on manifesting the Wisconsin Idea through theater and creative writing st…
The journal Nautilus had an interesting piece about the value of silence. The article starts out talking about how 100 Finnish marketing experts met to discuss how to promote the country for…
With an increasing number of people looking to make donations online, your organizational website has to perform many of the functions that an in-person or mailed appeal have performed in th…
Ever since I first heard them mentioned during our state arts council’s grant panel discussion, I have been keeping an eye on the PorchRokr Festival up near Akron. The hook of the fest…
FastCoExist recently continued its discussion about how a poor view of non-profit overhead cost is limiting the good such organizations can do by offering some “rebranding” sugge…
In a move that I like to see as reinforcing the importance of orchestra musicians in a time where their value is being diminished during contract negotiations, a long time supporter of the D…
Awhile back Barry Hessenius asked me to write a “What I Have Learned” essay for his blog. He noted that in the past he often featured similar pieces written by people who were ap…
We frequently read discussions about the need to communicate the differences between the business models of for-profit and non-profits. What there is less conversation about is the differenc…
Since I seem to have started on a philosophical kick this week, how about we consider Richard Feynman’s “Ode To A Flower” commentary in the video below? You can also see it…
High Expectations of Cultural Experiences Last week I wrote about Ken Davenport’s admonition that an arts experience not exceed a person’s expectations by too large a margin. As …
Well here is a novel idea for funding an arts organization–using the proceeds from leasing space in storage vaults. The inspiration for building the largest underground storage vault i…
A recent post on Ken Davenport’s The Producer’s Perspective caused me to engage in a bit of internal debate. Ken says a one of the worst things you can do is greatly exceed audie…
I was walking in to work on Saturday and met a woman who has offices in the arts center who told me that there was a Pokemon in the fountain in front of the building. Sure enough, as part of…
Some time back I read a piece on the Bridgespan Group’s website that made me realize that non-profits and funders/donors may adopt similarly flawed approaches to addressing social issu…