For all nonprofit organizations with fiscal years ending at midnight tonight,
congratulations on making it through a tough year.
Now that you’ve managed to stanch the hemorrhaging, drain the festering wounds, and stabilize your vital signs, we can go ahead and take a look at that broken bone. This won’t hurt a bit.
We all know that there’s really nothing magical about the start of a new fiscal year. Our accountants just need to place a marker to signal that one period is done and another is beginning. Art organizations will not wake up tomorrow morning to find that their bank accounts have been replenished by the Funding Fairy*. We just start up all over again in the unending struggle to meet budget goals.
*Note: The Funding Fairy unwisely invested funds with Bernie Madoff, ending up in the condition seen below.
In a recent article, The Chronicle of Philanthropy reports that nonprofits are feeling the “stress” of the recession. According to recent studies, the hurt has been felt most in small organizations; 70% of those with revenue under $1-million reported that finances had worsened in the past six months (compared with fewer than half of larger organizations).
More troubling is the finding that nonprofit leaders working at theaters and orchestras are sweating the economy the most. Whereas only 13% of all respondents said they were worried about organizational survival, the percentage of pessimists among orchestra leaders was 24%, and among theater managers a whopping 33%. Let me repeat that last figure: One-third of leaders of nonprofit theaters surveyed said they were worried about survival.
(More troubling is that 97% of artistic directors reported being "Very Concerned" when asked "Are you concerned that there won't be enough affordable one-person shows available to fill your season?").**
The co-author of one of the reports, William Foster, looked for the silver lining in all this: “The economic tightness is forcing nonprofits to do things that would be healthy habits in any economic time. If we’re going to come out of recession smarter than we came in, it will only be if tough decisions and thoughtful economizing has taken place.”
Tomorrow morning, tune in to OPB (91.5 fm) at 9:00 when the “Think Out Loud” topic will be “World Class Arts?” The question mark at the end of the title implies that there is debate about Portland's ability to sustain the number of top-notch arts institutions we now enjoy. Barry Johnson wrote about this at Portland Arts Watch a week ago, reporting that Doug Stamm, Executive Director of the Meyer Memorial Trust, had posed the question as to whether Portland can support all five of our top arts groups ... or even try. (The top five are the Portland Art Museum, Oregon Ballet Theatre, Portland Opera, Oregon Symphony and Portland Center Stage).
It’s a legitimate question, though I find it troubling that the head of one of the region’s major foundations would ask it in a way that implies the answer might be “No.” How about if we rephrase the question to give it a more positive spin: “What do we have to do to sustain the arts at a level that Portland deserves?”
Barry followed his original post with an interesting thesis about the role of true democracy in how we run arts organizations. It’s a thoughtful post packed with arguments and contentions worthy of lively debate. It’s long, but not “Infinite Jest” long if you're one of those people who are participating in "Infinite Summer" and have committed to read the David Foster Wallace opus in its entirety between June 21st and September 22nd.
** This part isn't true.
Posts
