It can be hard to not feel frazzled.

As I was saying, there are plenty of people who want to give your organization money.  Seriously.  Lots of it.  There is, of course, a catch: you have to give it back.

With interest.

Understandably, this stops most nonprofit executive directors in their tracks.  It’s no mean feat to raise the prodigious amounts of grant funding needed to run one of these juggernauts as it is.  It requires stamina, persistence, a LOT of friends, and just a touch of maniacal charm.  Now, the frazzled ED asks, you want me to spend a huge amount of time raising money I have to pay back?

Well, yes. And here’s why:

1. You can raise even greater sums of money this way.  Social impact capital tends to be allocated in chunks of $250 thousand to $1 million in my experience.  It’s not unusual to hear of much larger commitments, like the recent $7.2 million Bloomberg ponied up in the Goldman Sachs/MDRC social impact bond transaction.  Indeed, the use of social impact capital for credit enhancements in a larger, structured fund is growing more and more common.  In part, this is because social impact capital intends to achieve benefits at scale, a reality which has its pluses and minuses.  
2. Social impact capital can play an unusual role in project, program or organizational development in that it sits between grant capital and purely commercial finance: typically offering lower borrowing costs, a greater appetite for risk, and more flexible terms.  You can do some interesting stuff with it if you think about it.  But you have to think about it.
3. Social Impact Capital represents a trend in giving, not a fad.  I’ve written in previous posts about it’s provenance in microfinance and it’s evolution to today, and in general it appears to me that more folks are getting in on the action.  As I noted in my prior blog, those folks with social impact capital are eager for deals and a chance to prove new structures and strategies.

Monty Hall – the king of deal making.

I hope this is all reason enough, but let me add one more very important one: you’re supposed to do it.  For all their talk about the importance of leadership and investing in innovation, all resource providers (foundations, social impact investors, even commercial lenders) are followers.  They react to market trends that appear on the ground, the cumulative energy and activity made manifest by the things you tinker with and learn to do better in your daily work of achieving your mission.  People with money need you to tell them where, when and how to, you know, stick it.

Let’s Make a Deal

Types of Capital

Aren’t you excited?  Brave new world and all that?  Well, let’s talk turkey.  In my previous post I wrote about finding new ways to draw linkages between your existing and potential capital plans.  Let’s go back to that little chart I stole from the lovely folks at the Nonprofit Finance Fund.  Most of the capital concepts in this chart are in fairly common use.  Terms like working capital, endowment, facilities & equipment capital – these are all things we talk about, and use, right up there with lines of credit and bridge financing.  The capital types in the chart can come in several different flavors, including grants, commercial investments, or social impact capital.

What I like about this chart is it lays out uses of capital directly related to the activity being supported, and illustrates that capital is carved into buckets for a reason.  If you want to start up a new program or project, you know that you will need some change capital to invest in the fleshing out of the enterprise.  After that, you’ll want to access risk capital or facilities capital to lay the foundation and build things out, then working capital to keep the lights on, and so forth.

So here’s my question to you: when was the last time you sat down with your financial manager and thought through the developmental phases of key new developments, and actually considered the various tranches of capital you would need?  Leaving aside physical infrastructure (affordable housing, a school, a community center, new offices), I suspect many nonprofits aren’t in the habit of staging their capital needs.

And this is the point:  if you’re smart enough to think up a major cost savings initiative or revenue generating activity, then you’re definitely smart enough to think much more aggressively about how you can use grants, social impact capital and commercial capital in combination to see you through.  What’s more, many complex nonprofits have some ability to tier capital already at their disposal or through their stakeholders into credit enhancements that will provide incentives for other investors.  This is the stuff that dreams are made of, and for many its well within their grasp. Think about it.

Ch-ch-ch-ch Change Capital

OK, I’ve gone on too long.  I hope to write more about the most recent entrant into this rubric, the concept of “change capital.”  (Credit goes to folks like Rodney Christopher over at the Heron Foundation who have been doing some terrific thinking and organizing around this idea.)  I’ve been asked to pull together a panel for an upcoming social impact conference in Austin, Texas (early 2014 – stay tuned) and I hope this will be the focus.  And if you happen to be going to the Social Impact Exchange Conference today, then look for me there.  I’ll be the one with the nice shirt and tie combination.  

In the mean time, stay strong, stay dapper. – MAT

Money, baby!

So here’s the deal: there are wealthy people and institutions out there in the world right now who are willing to give your nonprofit a lot of money.  As a matter of fact, that number appears to be growing.  It’s getting to be such a hot topic that even stodgy Forbes is talking about it, KMPG is staking its claim in the Social Impact Bond market, and David Cameron is all up in the G8′s business.  You know that when the Harvard Business Review says that Social Impact Investing Will Be the New Venture Capital, well, it’s all over but the crying.

There’s just one problem:  the sector needs deals.  Badly.  And they really want nonprofits to take the lead on proposing and structuring those deals.  That’s right, you.

So, what if someone gave you $5 million, and then asked for it back?  What would you use it for?  How would you advance your organization’s mission?  How would you insure repayment?  Perhaps most importantly, how could you use this opportunity to grow?

Well, I have some ideas for you.  

Types of Capital

Let’s start with the basics.  Special thanks goes out to the good people at the Nonprofit Finance Fund (Antony, Kristin, Rodney!) whose report “Change Capital in Action” I’m about to shamelessly cadge.  There’s this lovely little chart on page 6 that lays out various types of capital nonprofits tend to access.  Now, bear in mind that we’re not talking about the holy trinity of income streams for most nonprofits (grants, contracts, and earned revenues) – what we’re talking about here are the range of investment capital foodstuffs the sector typically uses to do things like cover cash flow, clean up a mess, and develop new infrastructure.  These aren’t exactly stages of capital, but they do relate to each other and have sequential applications.  We’ll come back to this in my next post.

What I’m trying to impress upon you is that only you know what kind of capital you need.  It’s highly unlikely that some jolly banker or earnest foundation program officer or munificent moneybags is going to show up on your doorstep and say: not only do I have a giant wad of cash that I want you to borrow at low cost with incredibly friendly terms, but I’m going to help you figure our where to, well, stick it.  No my friend, you have to look at your operations, at the problems you are trying to solve, and ask yourself three questions:

1. Is there an earned revenue stream from fees, sales or contracts that I can use to pay this back at some point in the future?
2. Is there a take out source such as another piece of financing that will repay the first lender in due course?
3. Are there operating efficiencies I can achieve through this investment that will yield costs savings substantial enough to return principal?

Babies with money. Who doesn’t like babies with money?

So, are you developing an alternative health care treatment plan that managed care will contract you to provide?  Or a fee-based property management business that also provides social services supports in buildings with high concentrations of the elderly?  Or purchasing a hunk of land that you will eventually build a community center on?  Or investing in a new, integrated data management and accounting system that streamlines your operations?  Any of these might be a candidate for social impact capital.  You just need to know how to structure it – another thing I will talk about in my next post.

For those of you who missed the Services for the UnderServed Social Impact Investment Conference, well, I’m sorry.  You missed it, and it was really good.  I should know, I organized it.  But one of the key takeaways from the day was keynote speaker Clara Miller’s observation that all investments are social impact investments. This has two important implications:

1. Any time we invest we affect the world around us, and the real question is how much good is generated by our investment, and for whom?
2. We need to look beyond the artificial distinction between traditional commercial capital and social impact capital to see how all forms of investment must work side-by-side, particularly if we are to succeed in addressing the world’s most challenging problems.

It’s party time in the world of social impact investing: but it’s a potluck.

In your own organization, you need to look at your strategies and plans, including how you intend to use the various forms of capital to achieve your objectives, and find ways to draw new linkages between your existing capital plans.

What does that mean?  Oh, great question!  You are smart!  But I’m going to talk about that in my next post.  That next post is sounding better and better all the time, right?

So, yes, it’s party time in the world of social impact investing.  But it’s a potluck my friends, and you’d better know what dish your bringing.  Stay tuned.  

The Great Struggle for Cheap Meat (Downtown Art) – Photo R Gilliam

Just about 110 years ago, the price of kosher meat pretty much doubled overnight.  If you were a Jewish homemaker who had to make every penny count in order to keep your family fed, this wasn’t just an inconvenience:  it was a serious threat to your economic stability.  What’s more, it smacked of racketeering by wholesalers who had a captive market of consumers for kosher foods, and recalled anti-Jewish oppression levied through taxes on Kosher foods in other countries.

Jewish women fought back.  They organized a massive boycott of butchers and meat wholesalers that not only succeeded in bringing the prices back down, but became a seminal act of defiance in community organizing and paved the way for major rent and labor strikes to come (including the 1907 Rent Strike and the Uprising of the 20,000).

We’ve made it into a rock musical.  And it opens tomorrow, so buy your tickets here.   

The Great Struggle for Cheap Meat is actually a slogan taken from the protests of the time, and captures both the epic nature of the battle as well as its very earthy reality.  To tens of thousands of Jewish immigrants meat wasn’t just a commodity, it was the trade they made in relocating from their country of origin to the crowded, dirty, noisy tenements of New York City.  These people left their homeland to escape persecution and poverty, to land in America where they were handed almost immediately into grueling, dangerous labor conditions and de facto ghettoes.

But these were hardy folks, used to hard toil and willing to sacrifice in order to achieve something better for themselves and their families.  The one thing that was immediately available, plentiful and affordable in ways that would never have been possible in their homeland was meat.  Pure and simple.  The overnight cost hike wasn’t just a blow to their pocketbooks, it threatened to remove perhaps the single greatest benefit to their health and well-being.

Rocking it Downtown Art style while fighting injustice.

They were also a deeply connected community, however, and the care of the home was the province of the woman.  At first, the women organized and asked men – the retail butchers who sold to them through storefronts all over the Low East Side – to boycott the wholesalers.  The butchers did, but their boycott lasted only two days and proved completely ineffective.  Rather than giving up, the women organized themselves and began picketing the butchers and boycotting them.

And it became a massive movement.  Thousands of women boycotted in NYC, and the boycott spread throughout the region to New Jersey, Philadelphia and Boston.  During this time, scabs who crossed boycott lines had their chickens tossed into the gutter, and butcher’s who insisted on trying to stay open got smacked in the face with raw liver.  And fish.

Yes, it’s funny.  But it’s also very earnest and powerful.  Such are the struggles that shape the world we live in.

And it’s an irresistible tale.  For those of you who’ve read my blog post on Coming Out As An Artist, I’m pleased to invite you to come and see our newest work.  The Great Struggle for Cheap Meat is almost entirely set to music which draws inspiration from Jewish folk music, 70′s rock, and 1920′s jazz, and is performed by a company of teen girls – most of them daughters of immigrants, many of them living in the neighborhood today.

What’s more, we present this work in a format we’ve pioneered over the past few years: the show takes place entirely on the streets of the Lower East Side, with the audience and cast following the entire score on personal MP3 players with individual headsets.  It’s an amazing way to experience both the story and the community of the Lower East Side.

Plus it includes my first every guitar solo in the middle of a fully scored rock opera.

Here’s what you need to know:

You know, about a year ago I was having breakfast with a good friend over at Services for the Underserved - a well established nonprofit social services provider and affordable housing developer (Hi David!) – and we got to talking about corporate social responsibility.  I mean, there are an awful lot of good intentions out there, and a lot of self-serving hoo ha to go right along with it.  Where, we asked, could we have a substantive dialogue that advanced our little sector while addressing the needs of the most vulnerable?

Thus was #SUSConf2013 born: the SUS Social Impact Investment Conference.  And it’s happening next Wednesday, April 3rd, generously hosted by Bank of America.  There are a few (and I mean a few) tickets left.  Don’t wait.

Thanks to our amazing Advisory Committee and the wonderful board of SUS, we’ve pulled together a really compelling group of presenters.  Speakers and panelists include (in order of appearance):

• Donna Colonna, CEO, Services for the UnderServed
• Kerry Sullivan, President, The Bank of America Charitable Foundation
  
• Clara Miller, President, The F.B. Heron Foundation
• Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO, Nonprofit Finance Fund
  
• Arthur Webb, Owner and Principal, Arthur Webb Group
  
• Tracy Palandjian, CEO and Co-Founder, Social Finance, Inc.
  
• Dan Letendre, CDFI Lending & Investing Executive, Bank of America
  
• Margaret Anadu, Vice President, Urban Investment Group, Goldman Sachs
• Scott Budde, Project Director, Sustainable Agriculture Credit Union Research Project
• Jill Schlesinger, Editor-at-Large, CBS MoneyWatch
  
• Elizabeth Luckett, Director, Impact Investing, Pershing Square Capital Management
• Lisa Hall, President and CEO, Calvert Foundation
  

We’ve been reaching out to lots of very smart folks to create content that’s meaningful, and we’ve heard a bunch of really great ideas.  I wanted to share with you just a tiny bit of the thinking that’s gone into this conference.

Why is SUS hosting this conference? Innovation and change are all around us. SUS strives to play an active role in the trends that shape our collective efforts, and the emerging social impact investment sector holds both promise and challenge.

Nonprofits like SUS are becoming more complex. SUS manages both for-profit and nonprofit entities; makes regular use of structured finance in its work; draws upon management best practices from both the nonprofit and corporate sectors; has earned revenues as an important part of its plan for growth and stability; and can deploy larger capital allocations.  These are all the hallmarks of an emerging class of complex nonprofits that blend a mission orientation with a sharp nose for business and the ability to operate at much greater scale.

For-profit social benefit corporations are both partners and competitors. There are a number of areas (affordable housing, education, healthcare, economic development) where for-profit corporations are taking on work previously provided by nonprofits.  So you’ve got complex nonprofits intersecting more and more with social benefit corporations, or even traditional corporations seeking to meet needs closer to the bottom of the pyramid.

Convergence: It’s Cool

Convergence is good for social impact investment. Where complex nonprofits and social benefit corporations converge investors can frequently find revenue models capable of repaying principal, and even generating returns.

Social impact capital is no panacea. In spite of the opportunities of social impact investment, we must also carefully balance these against the need for grants, contracts, technical assistance and other resources.

Nonprofits need to drive more of the conversation. Nobody understands the needs and challenges of nonprofits better than the nonprofits themselves. By placing the voices of nonprofit leaders front and center on this issue, we’re advancing the entire sector.

We view this conference as a beginning. We hope to carry the ideas, alliances, and aspirations of this conference into an ongoing conversation with you and our collective stakeholders.  We hope to see you there, and thereafter.

Man About Town Bares All

There’s something I have to tell you, Dear Reader.  I have a secret life.

I’ve known this about myself since I was 14 years old.  I experimented with this part of who I was a lot while I was in college, but eventually I moved on and settled into a more traditional lifestyle and quietly tucked this side of myself away.  I lived like this for years.

But that’s been changing.  It all started shortly after my first marriage ended, when I was looking for something to take me back out into the world.  Suddenly, this other side of me seemed unavoidable – I felt so compelled to show who I really was, to do it again and again.  I worked on Wall Street at the time, and suddenly it seemed people like me were everywhere and I had never noticed before: hanging out in seedy bars with late night open mics, or sneaking out during our lunch breaks to a quick session in a rented room nearby.  We led a second life complete with different friends, different clothes, different mannerisms, but more fully ourselves.

And then I met my current partner, Ryan.  Unlike me, Ryan had never hid behind another identity.  Ryan is proud, fearless, open, visible.  When, during one of our first dates, Ryan suggested we write a musical together, I knew I could no longer hide who I was.

I am, Dear Reader, a musician.

Man About Town Circa 1988 playing at the Turkey Ridge in Cleveland, OH with the Rhythm Method.

I’ve been playing guitar, singing songs, and writing my own music for over 30 years.  I was even in a college rock band called the Rhythm Method, and we were stars of a sort in Athens, Ohio in the 1980′s.

These days I have a much bigger and more exciting gig:  I’m Composer in Residence for Downtown Art.  My wife Ryan is the Artistic/Executive Director, and she’s been leading this amazing theater company for over 20 years.  Even more remarkably, for the majority of that time the company has been dedicated to working with teen artists to create original theater, music, and performance events, and to champion the capacities of young people in a world which often dismisses their artistic contributions.

We are about to open our new season (with an adaptation of Hans Christian Andersen’s The Snow Queen, and you can purchase tickets here).  It is going to be an amazing show, complete with an original score composed by one of our very talented young company members.

Downtown Art also plays a major role (so to speak) in Fourth Arts Block and the E 4th Street Cultural District.  And Ryan and I are both members of the Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts Working Group - which brings together a unique alliance of artists, activists, creative manufacturers and policymakers that are committed to revitalizing New York City from the neighborhood up.

Creativity and Lunacy

But I also want to say that I’m only half-joking about my conceit of “coming out” as an artist.  There’s a reason why so many bankers, nonprofit executives, public sector leaders, attorneys, and real estate gurus don’t show you their poetry, their paintings, or their latest compositions.  New York City is unusual in its deep commitment to fostering art and artists, and to patronizing a wide diversity of creative forms and traditions.

Even here, however, artists can suffer from the same stereotypes that trouble them elsewhere across this great land of ours: we are supposedly moody, self-absorbed, bad with numbers, impractical, idealistic, foolish.  We don’t contribute meaningfully to society, and instead indulge a hobby beyond reasonable proportion.  We aren’t reliable.  In fact, we’re just a little bit nuts.

But I speak from deep experience when I say that the overwhelming majority of artists I know are the exact opposite:  detail-oriented, highly capable, resourceful, and able to deliver complex projects within budget and on time.  They generate new ideas and combine old ones in compelling and powerful ways.  They help us see again the world around us, and to find its wonder, its tragedy, its humor and its grace.

Mike and Ryan Sing (Love)

I’m an artist.  I’m also a community development banker, a philanthropy professional, a nonprofit executive and a management consultant.  My mind is big enough.  So is yours.  I would like it so much better if you would show all of yourself, and I will try and do the same.  It’s so much more interesting.

What’s more, at the heart of all our work is the creative process, the ability to think freshly about each situation, to imagine and re-imagine:  whether you are a nurse, statistician, bricklayer or an app designer.

So, come hear my music, support my art, and be part of reclaiming the creativity that is essential to our humanity.

Related Post:

• Welcome address to freshman parents at Boston Conservatory, given by Karl Paulnack, pianist and director of music division at Boston Conservatory.

When scale goes wrong. Catsonholiday / Instagram

ArtsBlog (the blog of Americans for the Arts) recently hosted a forum called:  “So, Does Size Matter?”  The short answer is hell yes it does, but I disagree with most of the writers about why.  I found the best piece in the series was penned by the whip-smart Ian David Moss (Economies and Diseconomies of Scale in the Arts – Take Two), and it was his post that inspired both me to both write an initial comment, and then to take on the subject more fully below.

You see, Dear Reader, like many of my fellow funders and financiers I’ve often touted the benefits of moving toward greater scale:  improved operational efficiencies, greater programmatic reach, increased access to resources, heavier political punch.  But I’ve also struggled with the oft recognized but seldom addressed reality that scale is not an answer in and of itself, and that sometimes scaled solutions leave even larger problems in their wake.  Thanks to Ian, I think I got the mental kick in the epiphany I needed.

And here’s why I think scale sometimes, well, stinks up the joint. 

The Mechanics of Moving Capital

I don’t care how you’re doing it, when it comes to getting money out the door it’s always easier to do it in big chunks.  Whether you’re making a grant, extending a loan, or placing private equity, cost per transaction is lower if you make fewer, larger transactions.  This is axiomatic.  There is an inherent bias, therefore, toward systems, institutions, organizations, or entities that can absorb cash and generate returns (whether social or financial) in said big chunks.  In other words, “efficiency of delivery” is an important driver of seeking large-scale solutions in and of itself.

Moving things in big chunks increases efficiency of delivery. But it’s not a one size fits all solution.

There’s also a bias within philanthropy, particularly within big-ticket philanthropy, to be associated with well-recognized, highly visible organizations.  These tend to be larger organizations with board members and executive leaders who themselves are power brokers.  Fewer larger gifts provide a direct, reputational benefit to those who bestow, and therefore figure directly into the calculus of supporting “scaled” solutions.

Finally, there are things that simply cannot be accomplished without being bigger.  One must be able to aggregate capital and expertise in order to do things like build bridges and power plants, or maintain the military, or move the Temple of Dendur several thousand miles brick by ancient brick.

The problem is, we tend to conflate the concept of “scale” with the concept of “size.”  Greater scale and greater size appear interchangeable, because they appear to accomplish the same things.  Size, after all, implies the ability to aggregate more resources, take on larger projects, and confer reputational benefits.

But scale implies something more (or at least it should): that all the while we have been increasing size we have also been creating more complex systems of communication to manage within this infrastructure; that we have been seeking redundancies and weeding them out; that we have been discovering parallel processes and routinizing them; that we have built specialization and systemization.  That we have become more efficient.

Therefore: Scale = Size + Efficiency. 

The problem with this little equation is that there are trade-offs when building larger and more efficient systems.  For instance, most scaled solutions achieve efficiencies by reducing personnel (a real headache BTW for public and nonprofit folks with a mission-orientation towards employment and living wages, not to mention any entity employing unionized labor).  Scaled systems also require more layers of management, firm hierarchies, task specialization, and centralization of resources and decision-making.

But the biggest problem with scaled systems is that they both rely upon and produce standardized outputs.  Ian refers to them as “TV dinners” – consistent, bland, normal.

We both fetishize standardized products, and despise them.

The Means of Production

We both fetishize and despise standardized products.

When you “produce” something, that’s a very different process from “creating” something.  Production is about assembly, and scaled production means you can bring all the pieces together in an orderly, timely fashion.  Again, this works best when both inputs and outputs are standardized.  Automobiles, microfinance, and high school educations all share this in common.  In my comments to Ian’s blog post, I noted that the Metropolitan Museum of Art, with it’s $300 million annual budget, “produces” quite a bit of art: that is, it has assembled a stunning diversity of work created by others.  But the process it uses to produce this art is highly standardized, as is the way that we consume it.  When it comes right down to it, the Metropolitan Museum of Art actually creates very little art itself.  The same is true for the other captains of the NYC cultural sector (Lincoln Center, MoMA, the Guggenheim, Carnegie Hall), and the rule holds true in other sectors as well.

Therefore: Greater scale = Greater standardization.

Now here’s the rub:  from the perspective of creating new works, the vast, vast majority of art is being developed by a veritable horde of small cultural organizations, unincorporated artist confederations, solo artists and professional amateurs.  They are just churning it out. These are the folks whose work may someday (through a combination of skill, capable self-promotion and sheer luck) wind up being “produced” through a major cultural institution.  And these are the exact same folks whose creative efforts are likely to be completely untouched by “scaled” investment in larger cultural partners, and by the funding efforts of grantmakers seeking to place fewer, larger grants.

In other words, there is an inverse relationship between scaled arts production and large-scale arts creation.  And this is exactly where “scale” fails us:  standardized production cannot handle diversity, granularity, exception, or fragmentation.  As a matter of fact, scaled production is threatened by these phenomena.  This is because in order to support the niche, the artisanal, and the quirky, we actually have to move away from “efficiency of delivery.”

Size Matters: The Matter of Size

Size Matters. Just ask Godzilla.

Oh dear.  Doesn’t this mean that art-making is inherently inefficient?  Well, it cannot be standardized and therefore it cannot be scaled – at least when it comes to delivering capital to the system.  And as capital providers, as the folks with the money, it’s very easy for us to think about the question of efficiency only from our perspective.  Again, it’s easier to give money in big chunks.  The problem is that as we do this, we can actually reduce the amount of new art that gets made.

The good news is that if you think about efficiency in terms of creation, then investing through small grants in a diversity of creative producers is far more efficient than making fewer, larger grants to scaled institutions.  Why?  Because for a few thousand dollars per grant (plus the sweat equity you invest in your award making process), you will generate far more art per dollar.  As a matter of fact, not only will you generate more art, but more of every dollar will go directly towards art creation (as opposed to administration and overhead).

And there are some handy ways that you can make this process less painful for yourself as a funder:

• Invest in your staff so that they have the relevant expertise in their area of grant-making to pick strong arts creators;
• Work with an intermediary to provide scaled services to the field, or to have them make smaller awards out of a larger commitment you’ve provided to them;
• Use a panel of artists and creative sector stakeholders to help recommend and evaluate funding decisions to insure quality and diversity.

If we want to invest substantially in developing the creative output of New York City (or any city, town or ‘burb), we actually have to move away from scaled investment towards de-centralized, knowledge and process intensive investment.  From the perspective of capital placement, a highly inefficient process.

But if our goal is to support the generation of new work, it’s actually more efficient to support many smaller artists.  I believe we will get more art made per dollar deployed if we start giving more grants for $1,000 – $10,000.  In fact, we actually may get more art consumed.  Some answers to these questions lie within the Cultural Data Project, which actually does track audience data; but as far as I know, no one has actually looked to see what the audience / dollar ratio is.

Not yet at least.  Hint hint.

Related Posts:

• Read The Art$ – Part I
• Read The Art$ – Part II
• Read The Art$ – Part III (Some Easy Fixes)
• Read Report Back: NY Grantmakers in the Arts “Creative Placemaking” Panel

Bushmaster .223 M4 carbine – model used in the Connecticut shooting. Why in the hell is this gun legal?

Mass shootings are horrifying, terrible, heartbreaking, enraging.  For me, as for many, the most recent mass shooting at a public elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut has been particularly painful.  Its pall clings to me, and I suspect I’m writing this blog in part to attempt some diminishment of its effect, some exorcism.

The powerlessness of bearing witness, even through the distorted lens of modern media, leaves me enervated.  I have only the meager power of writing to fight back, but it’s better than remaining voiceless.  And I’ve got something to say.

We don’t just have a gun problem in the good ol’ USofA, we’ve got a problem with mad men – and we’re not talking about it.

Frankly, I don’t know if I should even publish this blog.  The pain of the event is still so powerful, so fresh.  Expressing a somewhat analytic commentary will, I’m afraid, come across as detached; or worse, as a cynical move to advance a personal agenda.  But I sincerely believe that mental illness, coupled with really terrible things we do to boys and men in our society, are setting us up for more and worse.

As a callow youth, Dear Reader, I spent a lot of time working with an organization in Madison, Wisconsin called Men Stopping Rape.  While our primary work was about preventing violence against women, we knew that to accomplish this men would have to better understand themselves, and the impacts of male socialization.  During the 1990’s, at the time that I was involved with MSR, there were a number of national men’s movements including the drum-beating retreats led by Robert Bly; the stadium-packing conservative Christian-based Promise Keepers; and a bevy of male cultural interpreters ranging from Sam Keen to Susan Faludi.   Their messages were myriad, but what they all agreed on was that we had built a culture where men were trained for violence and oppression.  A friend summed it up this way: “You’ve got to beat a dog to make him mean.”

Mourn, then organize.

Those men’s movements, for better or worse, have pretty much fallen by the wayside.  It heartens me, however, that there have been real and lasting impacts in our understanding that things like bullying, corporal punishment, and repressing emotion are not just developmentally harmful, they are in fact inhuman.  They damage our very natures, whether we are the ones experiencing the oppression, or the ones doling it out.  They should not be allowed to continue.  Their legacy is pain, isolation, humiliation and hidden rage that leaves us stunted.

What’s more, I believe they create a virulent psychological environment in which rage and self-hatred can flourish.  In short, we sow the seeds for mental illness, for both the blind, violent lashing out and the desire to die, to be done with the pain and the hopelessness of ever feeling human and connected.

The New York Times conducted an analysis of 100 mass shooting incidents and among other important observations found:

•  “The rampage killers were overwhelmingly male — but not entirely. Six were female, and they exhibited many of the same disturbed, aggressive characteristics of the males.”
• “…These cases may have more to do with society’s lack of knowledge of mental health issues, rather than a lack of security. In case after case, family members, teachers and mental health professionals missed or dismissed signs of deterioration.”
• “…There was often a precipitating event in addition to histories of failure and mental illness – a spark that set off the tinder, and gave the crime the appearance of being at the same time deliberate and impulsive.  By far the most common precipitator was the loss of a job, which was mentioned as a potential precipitator in 47 cases. A romantic issue – a divorce or breakup – was present in 22 cases.”
• Regular criminals try to get away with their crimes… but among the 102 killers in the Times database, not one got away. Eighty-nine never even left the scene of the crime… [and] 33 of the offenders killed themselves after their crimes. Nine tried or wanted to commit suicide, and four killed themselves later. Nine were killed by the police or others, perhaps committing what some refer to as ”suicide by cop.”

It’s an analysis well worth reading, and includes other compelling information about race (mostly white), age (mostly older), education (many with college degrees), and history of violence (little obsession with violent games or media, little evidence of prior violent activity, but lots of ex-military).

To summarize:  Most mass shooters are men, and all show the same patterns of rage; many have a history of mental illness; many express their intentions in advance; homicidal rage and suicidal hopelessness are linked.  We all struggle to understand why anyone would commit an act so profoundly inhuman, and the point I’m trying to make is this:  we’ve laid the conditions.

Homicide comparison, US to other countries – gunpolicy.org

The availability of guns makes this terrible situation even worse.  Gun violence of all kinds is far too common in our country, and if you want to get a sense of how we compare to the rest of the world I recommend spending a few very informative minutes at www.gunpolicy.org.  The US is comparable to Russia, Pakistan and the Sudan.  I agree with the renewed calls to better regulate weapons manufactures, sellers and buyers.

But the solution must also address the deeper faults within our society by creating greater recognition of mental illness, particularly when coupled with what I can only call our ongoing oppression and repression of boys and men.

Funders, Speakers and your Man About Town walking to the Queens Museum from the Mets-Willets Point 7 Train – Man About Town / Tumblr

Your Man About Town’s middle name is Moderation, Dear Reader; and although it is a somewhat awkward locution when making a full introduction, it nonetheless conveys the important fact that your Man About Town’s middle name is not Tom, Dick or Harry.  I moderate.  I facilitate.  I have even been known, at times, to adjudicate.

So when the New York Chapter of the Grantmakers in the Arts asked if I wouldn’t mind moderating a panel on creative placemaking at the Queens Museum of Art earlier this month, I could no more deny them than I could my very nature.  Or at least, the very nature of my personal brand.

And besides, who can resist yet again attempting to define exactly what “creative placemaking” is – at least in our evolving understanding of the term.  I’ve been working on this issue for more than ten years, and I can tell you from firsthand experience that when I speak with nonprofit cultural partners and funders alike I’m more often than not still greeted with perplexity.

It’s not that creative placemaking is some numinous phenomenon, but it is highly subject to what Ann Markusen calls fuzzy concepts – where the very terms that define it “lack clarity and are difficult to test or operationalize.”  Other great fuzzy concepts include “flexible specialization, windows of opportunity, resurgent regions, world cities, cooperative competition.”  In short, the concept may seem intuitively logical, but it’s awfully difficult to demonstrate (be sure to check out the really terrific running commentary on CreatEquity where the NEA itself has been posting responses to critiques of its framework of arts and livability indicators.

Walking through Flushing Meadows Park to the Queens Museum – Man About Town / Tumblr

That’s why I was so immoderately pleased with the panel discussion and audience interaction.  I think it really helped me clarify some of my own thinking about the creative placemaking concept.  My takeaways may or may not be more measurable, but afterward I felt I better understood how the concepts could be acted upon.

I would be remiss if I did not include a brief word of thanks to Kerry McCarthy (New York Community Trust), Cheryl Green Rosario (American Express), and Karen Rosa (Altman Foundation) who all labored to make this convening happen.  And of course a special thanks to the Queens Museum for generously lending their facilities.

Our panel consisted of three distinguished guests who have all contributed substantially and participated broadly in the development of creative placemaking.  Gonzalo Casals is the Director of Education and Public Programs at El Museo del Barrio (and along with your Man About Town a fellow member of the Naturally Occurring Cultural Districts Working Group);  Susan Feder is Program Officer for the Performing Arts at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (and also sits on the ArtPlace Operating Committee); and of course our host Tom Finkelpearl is the Executive Director of the Queens Museum.

Time was tight, so we had a very prescriptive format:  each presenter was allowed only three slides and five minutes to share a bit about their personal and institutional relationship to creative placemaking.  The goal was to simply give the audience of grantmakers a sense of their expertise and capacity, so that the audience could then develop and direct questions or offer insights that would allow the conversation to build.  We endeavored to avoid the usual talking head syndrome and instead committed the overwhelming majority of the time for give-and-take with the audience itself.

It worked, if I do say so myself.

We had a very spirited conversation that touched on a wide variety of issues and concerns.  Why should you care what a room full of funders discussed?  Well because they are, ahem, a room full of funders, and their passions, interests and capacities drive the resources that make creative placemaking possible.

Rather than reporting the conversation verbatim, I think it’s more valuable to share the key concepts that emerged from it.  You know, the ones where when someone said it bunches of heads in the room started nodding up and down.  Here are my takeaways about what creative placemaking meant to our discussants:

It’s a lifestyle, not a program

Creative placemaking does not function well as a single, standalone program within a cultural entity.   While a program may have some valuable impacts, placemaking evolves and transcends when it becomes attached to the core mission of the cultural nonprofit, when the staff adopt placemaking as a uniting principal behind their work, and when relationships to both audiences and external stakeholders are actively engaged through placemaking creativity.  As one panelist put it, you have to have people on your staff who believe creative placemaking is fun.

Our charming host Tom Finkelpearl gives a tour of the new wing of the Queens Museum under construction – Man About Town / Tumblr

Placemaking puts the priority on relationships rather than programs.  Several of our panelists spoke about the importance of meeting with their stakeholders regularly, just to get together, share ideas and keep up to date.  It was not unusual to have meetings that didn’t generate any direct programmatic outcomes, but instead served to keep communication channels open and evolve possibilities.  In creative placemaking, programmatic collaborations are fluid, episodic, built around a working knowledge of the players, and emerge when leadership and resources coalesce.  Placemaking has an improvisational vibe, and won’t conform well to the boundaries of a single staff person or program area.

We also discussed the idea that creative placemaking happens within the context of a community ecosystem:  cultural organizations, small businesses, local elected leaders, corporations and foundations, creative sector trade associations, other nonprofits – all had a role to play, and many had multiple roles.  There were many layers of relationships between the various players, and a porosity, a movement between them.  There was a recognition that in order to accomplish a given programmatic goal several partners representing different capacities or specialties would need to be involved.  In this case, the cultural nonprofit seeking to activate creative placemaking might convene, facilitate or catalyze.  Sometimes it took the lead, but sometimes not.  Its role was dictated as much by the partners in the room as by the resources it could bring to bear.

There was an interesting point made about the role of philanthropic dollars striking a balance between supporting program needs and capital needs.  There seemed to be general agreement that while investing in the physical infrastructure could leave a clear and lasting resource, without strong programming that infrastructure could run a substantial risk of being under-utilized.

Gradual growth, not rapid expansion

In every conversation I’ve had about creative placemaking, the devilish question of exactly who benefits from the success of that placemaking has raised hackles.  In our conversation, there was general agreement that growth is good.  The ideal would be slow and steady growth, driven by grassroots expansion of the local economy and its creative sector agents.  It was felt that this type of growth favored the retention and stability of the in-place community.

Construction worker in the vast new wing of the Queens Museum – Man About Town / Tumblr

Folks agreed that rapid growth, conversely, could certainly make for some eye-popping success stories, but was also more likely to result it substantial displacement and an overall change in neighborhood character.  This change was likewise more liable to be detrimental to the very creative sector elements that brought it about in the first place.  Creative placemaking partnerships, therefore, should rely less on the direct engagement of real estate developers, and more firmly on long-term community stakeholders.

Similarly, many placemaking strategies revolve around the idea of attracting outsiders, tourists or visitors.  While there was agreement that widening audiences and bringing in creative product consumers from outside the community could widen the local economic base, participants cautioned against putting too much focus on consumption in and of itself.  By working instead to strengthen local creative sector production – encouraging not just new creative works, but new classes, workshops, residencies and festivals – investment was more likely to support that gradual and stable grassroots growth creative placemakers value.

Finally, it’s impossible to have a conversation about growth and development and not discuss the conflict between sustained vibrancy in the arts and the practice of making one-year grants.  While this was discussed at the panel, I’m willing to take the heat and offer this as my personal opinion:  one-year grants are, shall we say, problematic.  The overwhelming majority of funding is comprised of one-year grants, and as a former program officer I understand the need to maintain both grant portfolio flexibility and grantee accountability.  By default, one-year grants enforce this structurally.  One-year grants are also justifiably used for both seeding and completing important programs, or establishing new relationships.

Still, if the stated expectation of your program is to induce long-term growth and development (whether in an organization or a program), then stable, multi-year support should be part of the deal.  There was universal agreement during the event discussion that funders should bear this in mind.

Advocacy, not promotion

The Grand Central Parkway seen from the 7 subway train – Man About Town / Tumblr

Creative placemaking by its very nature requires outreach, visibility and stakeholder engagement.  It is most certainly about building awareness, and there are aspects of the work that involve fairly straightforward marketing.  Still, panelists made a distinction between the idea of promotion (which tends to focus on a single venue, performance, or installation), and advocacy (which links more closely with the concepts of stakeholder engagement, relationship development, and managing within an ecosystem of symbiotic partnerships).

Creative placemakers engage directly in discussions of policy and advocacy because they see these as directly aligned with both their institutional mission and goals for operational sustainability.  Frequently, their ability to work from within a network of local relationships positioned them to act as an honest broker, facilitator, or director of actions only tangentially related to their creative work, but of direct relevance to their environment or ecosystem.  In short, promotion is siloed, while advocacy cuts across boundaries.

A few words on disaster recovery

Participants made time at the end of our conversation to talk briefly about their commitments to disaster recovery.  A number of the attendees had been directly affected, or had close relationships to those communities hard hit.  I particularly liked the idea of building a “program in a box” that could be delivered whole cloth and easily produced in storm affected areas – kind of like a pop up arts happening.  We also talked about the role the arts have always played in providing a therapeutic outlet for the disaster stricken (be sure to check out one of my personal favorites, Sandy Storyline), and the powerful work being done by libraries to provide information, programs and additional supports in storm-affected areas.  There were many other ideas discussed, and I can only reflect that we’re fortunate to have engaged and thoughtful allies in every corner of our city.

Photograph by Master Sgt. Mark Olsen, U.S. Air Force

On a special note, The Queens Museum has been actively working to raise funds on behalf of the Rockaway Waterfront Alliance, including a recent event that offered 100% of its proceeds to the RWA (some $50,000).  Tom Finkelpearl was eloquent in his commitment to invest in an on-the-ground organization that was not only providing real and immediate service, but that would remain long after the emergency workers had gone to continue the hard work of rebuilding.  Donations to RWA can be made here.

I’ll conclude my report back by saying that being your Man About Town is a position of privilege.  It allows me to see into many interactions, touch multiple relationships, hear manifold insights.  Privilege comes with duty, and I hope these reports from the front lines can in some way pay back a portion of the debt I owe.

Related posts:

• The Art$ – Parts I, II & III
• Building a Health Nonprofit Ecosystem
• Disaster and Recovery – Parts I & II

The Great Wave off Kanagawa: Katsushika Hokusai

Shortly after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast, I was dispatched to New Orleans by the corporate foundation that I worked for to figure out how to deploy our philanthropic disaster recovery commitment.  It was a heartbreaking experience, compounded and complicated by the entrenched challenges New Orleans had struggled with for many years.

As with all natural disasters, the poorest suffered most in the immediate aftermath.  What I, in my ignorance, learned for the first time was how the vulnerable continue to suffer long after the initial damage: tucked away for too long FEMA trailers, or separated from family, friends and vital supports, unable to access medical care, or shuttled from one temporary shelter situation to the next.  Over the weeks, months and years following the storm there were dramatic and terrible increases in elder mortality, child poverty, murder, and mental illness.

Compared to the process of recovery in the Gulf Coast, and in spite of the many frustrations we feel with its pace in our region, New York City, New Jersey and Long Island have done remarkably well.  For most of us, life is essentially back to normal:  the kids are in school, we’re back at work, our homes have power, heat and hot water, and holiday shopping is underway.

But there remains a grave and nearly inevitable danger, as in all natural disasters, that we will “move on” without fully resolving the impacts on those most vulnerable, and inflict the mistakes of the past on our neighbors and fellow citizens tomorrow. 

Staten Island Hurricane Sandy Restoration Center – mhickey001 / Tubmlr

Over the past few weeks in my conversations with friends who are harried public servants, frenetic nonprofit executives, overwhelmed community organizers, and concerned philanthropists, I heard the same two key issues consistently:

• As a friend from Biloxi who was involved with disaster recovery said to me: “Government is good at roads, taxes and the military.  It’s just not good with people.”  While institutional partners like FEMA and even the Red Cross received criticism for their initial performance in reaching victims, hundreds of local community groups, churches, organized citizens and entities like Occupy Sandy did a fantastic job as first responders.  A major problem was no clear way for folks with on-the-ground knowledge to work effectively with these institutional partners.  As a result, there was tremendous inefficiency as small groups struggled to mobilize resources with limited infrastructure, and institutional partners mis-deployed theirs.  As another friend lamented to me: “I’m trying to get a truck full of coats donated from a local church to a community distribution center in the Rockaways, but I can’t access a truck from FEMA even though it’s going to the same location.”  Not only should institutional disaster relief providers have a working knowledge of local partners, but there should also exist agreements that structure these partnerships and insure stronger collaboration.

• I was frankly surprised by the number of high capacity nonprofits, particularly in Brooklyn, that had not been called upon to play a direct role in the initial disaster response, or in the recovery efforts now.  It’s wonderful that many community-based partners leapt into action, but we have really substantial social service organizations with highly trained staff members that could have offered intake and triage assistance, performed on-the-ground interventions, and made complex support referrals.  Not only should there be formal programmatic agreements and training provided for groups who already work in these most vulnerable communities, but there should be emergency contracting procedures to insure financial and operational supports can be put in place quickly.  Instead, we have trucked in federal employees, VISTA volunteers, and a whole host of others from halfway across the country to do work that could be done both more effectively and appropriately by existing local nonprofit leaders.

[For those who are curious, in my previous blog post on disaster recovery I talked about some of the ways we can think more expansively about accessing the capacity of our corporate citizens to fill critical gaps in disaster recovery efforts, such as:

• Tapping logistics specialists to coordinate equipment and personnel donations from other state and federal agencies, corporations, foundations and private citizens, speeding their arrival and deployment; and
• Accessing emergency managers, planners, and mental health professionals to embed within disaster recovery operations centers.]

Staten Island Hurricane Sandy Restoration – mhickey001 / Tubmlr

As we slowly turn our attention toward those ongoing pockets of misery and how to address them we should keep an eye on those best practices that have emerged, and work to build them into our emergency support infrastructure.  Given the predictions for future weather related disasters, I’d say we’re going to need to stay flexible, creative and committed.

I want to conclude this entry with a true success story:  the Park Slope Armory. Located in Council Member Brad Lander’s district, the Armory initially took in over 300 elderly evacuees.  Brad put out the call to the more fortunate in his own district (which was largely unaffected), and community members quickly stepped in to organize a huge array of supports.  Special mention must surely be made of the efforts of Caron Atlas, who has blogged a bit about her experiences here.  Caron stepped in to provide an enormous amount of leadership, and clearly catalyzed resources through her many connections to create a temporary shelter situation that prioritized not just safety, but human dignity.

What began as a call to organize some entertainment for evacuees became a pop up Wellness Center complete with a full schedule of live musical performances, exercise, massage and body work, knitting, religious services, kosher food, a Veterans Day commemoration, therapy dogs, and stress relief activities.  It also became a hub for supports proffered by other community groups and concerned citizens.  According to Caron:

Park Slope Parents and Park Slope Jewish Center provided key supplies for the shelter including garbage bags, disinfectant, tables and chairs. Beth Elohim and Saint Savior helped us set up religious services. Rooftop Films and the Brooklyn Filmmakers Collective made it possible to view nightly movies and the election returns. The Good Dog Foundation organized community members to bring in their therapy dogs, who became quickly beloved.

Brad also blogged about how impressed and grateful he was for the organizing at the Park Slope Armory, particularly the work of a volunteer who made a heroic effort to insure evacuees had an opportunity to vote:

Election Day efforts of Livia Beasley, the Armory volunteer who went cot to cot through the Armory on Monday, signing evacuees up for absentee ballots. She delivered their applications, brought them their ballots, and ensured their vote made it to the ballot box.

The success of the Park Slope Armory earned it a visit from Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius.  By the way, Brad also deserves a lot of credit for the organizing he and his staff did outside their work with the Armory, which delivered a huge amount of support to storm-affected areas throughout Brooklyn.

A critical takeaway from the success of the Wellness Center is the need to think beyond shelter and food to the inclusion of arts as a tool or stabilizing the evacuee population.  I’ve been following the work of the Wellness Center closely, and I’ve heard dozens of stories from volunteer artists regarding the impact their work on maintaining calm, health and hope.  Such supports in a place like New York City are easily accessible and readily organized.

There are lessons to be learned from every hard time, and lots of smart people have already articulated those lessons.  It’s our job now to make sure we’re even better prepared for the next big blow.

I’d like to end with a special recognition of a very compelling guest blog piece by Elizabeth Malone on the Enterprise Community Partners blog (@theHorizon).  It’s always great to have another fresh voice out there, particularly one so grounded in the realities of the work.  Keep writing, Elizabeth!

Lower Manhattan Post Sandy Blackout – Catsonholiday / Instagram

Dear Reader, I’m writing to you from Man About Town’s Brooklyn redoubt – where we have been spared from the very worst of hurricane Sandy.  We never flooded, and we never lost power.  Like so many of you, Mrs. Man About Town and I have been glued to Twitter, NY1, WNYC, the NY Times, and a host of other news sources trying to grapple with the scale of the devastation caused by surging storm waters and wind.  And, like many of you, we’ve wept over the terrible loss of life, and been inspired by the ingenuity and dedication of emergency personnel, public leaders, and generous neighbors.

We will never be the same.

Disaster recovery is a damned difficult business, because it’s always happening under the worst of conditions.  For those without power, heat, hot water and access to transportation, a day or two of deprivation might be manageable.  But stretching that out further, when emergency food and water are dwindling fast, when the nearest outlet to charge your phone is 40 blocks away, and when the toilet hasn’t been flushed in four days, well it’s no wonder that tempers fray.  Anger and resentment are sure to show quickly, in spite of the best efforts of committed utility workers, social service providers, relief organizations, and elected officials.  People are scared, and for good reason.

Brooklyn Battery Underpass completely flooded – Man About Town

Coordinating disaster recovery efforts in the midst of all this requires nerves of steel.  Existing infrastructure and personnel are already spread far too thin, and despite their scale can only accomplish so much.  According to NYC Council Member Brad Lander, there are only three teams available to remove fallen trees in Brooklyn.  Even pulling 16-hour shifts they are totally overwhelmed.

Equally frustrating, support tends to pour in from multiple sources in uncoordinated ways.  NYC Service saw its website crash when too many volunteers piled on in the immediate aftermath of the storm, although it’s back up and doing a great job of trying to create some order out of chaos.  All those folks who can’t get to work really want to do something to help, want to make a difference, and want to feel active rather than passive in the face of disaster.

And we’re fortunate that we have lots of highly trained professionals around us.  But while it’s great that they can help out at the local shelter, or remove debris from stricken communities, what we need right now is the ability to tap their expertise and take on the really hairy work of putting things to rights.

Lower Manhattan in a nutshell – Man About Town

In speaking to my colleagues at Civic Consulting (who coordinate high level corporate pro bono capacity and provide it to the public sector), and in reflecting on my experiences developing disaster recovery commitments at major corporations, there are urgent needs that could be met by these highly skilled volunteers, if we could only find a way to manage the opportunity:

• The Emergency Management Assistance Compact (EMAC) “allows states to send personnel, equipment, and commodities to help disaster relief efforts in other states.”  Skilled volunteers could help identify both needs and resources, and coordinate with other state and federal agencies to speed their arrival and deployment.
• Disaster areas need lots of stuff.  The US Conference of Mayors has done a great job of reaching out to its members for everything from generators and light towers to portable toilets and drinking water.  But when stuff starts showing up, logistics support is desperately needed to make sure it is delivered quickly and to areas of the highest need.  Skilled volunteers could help inventory and distribute these resources.
• Many corporations and businesses will be seeking to contribute goods and services.  Staffing a temporary emergency operations center that works with these contributors to receive, coordinate and deliver donations will maximize their impact and benefit.
• Many major corporations also have trained emergency response teams that could lend direct logistical support alongside their corporate commitment to disaster recovery.
• Finally, personnel are always needed, including logisticians, emergency managers, planners, and mental health professionals.  Embedding these skilled professionals inside shelters and social services agencies, disaster recovery operation centers, and so on would provide deeply needed resource at a critical time.

Empty Wall St (Weds, 10/31 @ 3pm) – Man About Town

Like all natural disasters, the long-term recovery effort consists of both mourning our losses and re-building the homes and infrastructure damaged or destroyed.  Both are critical to reclaiming our lives.  We are going to need all the help we can get to recover from Sandy, so let’s start thinking now about how to maximize the skills and passions of our neighbors and friends as we pull ourselves back together.