Styles époques

Programming, management, size: all factors in winning one kind of Pew grant. Not everyone finds that level.

One September afternoon in 1995, a meeting took place in the Delaware Room at The Pew Charitable Trusts that marked a watershed in the Trusts' funding of arts and culture in the Philadelphia region.

Guests included about 100 arts professionals, most representing organizations that were or had been recipients of operating grants from the Trusts, the region's largest single supporter of arts and culture.
Some of these organizations had enjoyed close relationships with the Trusts dating back three or four decades.

Well aware that their impending message was revolutionary, Marian A. Godfrey, director of the Trusts' Culture program, and Doug Bauer, then a program officer in Culture, had prepared carefully for this meeting.
They were at pains to lay out the rationale for radical change.

They told their guests about a recent evaluation of the Trusts' whole culture effort. The evaluation had been unprecedented in both scope and approach. Some of its findings were highly unsettling to Trusts' staff.
The evaluators found serious weaknesses in the structure of the Trusts' grantmaking to the local arts and culture community. In particular, the grantmaking failed to either protect the organizations from financial vulnerabilities or help them address management issues. In an era of flat or decreasing government and corporate support for the arts, the
evaluators concluded that the Trusts' generosity might actually be discouraging local organizations from protecting their own futures by aggressively seeking funds from other sources.

In fact, the evaluators thought the Trusts might be unintentionally inhibiting the development of other resources for the arts, creating within the cultural community an undue dependence on Trusts support.
While recent Trusts efforts to improve grantee operations had helped significantly, the evaluators reported, the overall strategy had been directed more toward managing weakness than rewarding strength.

In response to the issues raised by the evaluators, Godfrey and Bauer continued, the Trusts had decided to take an essentially holistic approach to cultural funding: to strengthen the cultural community as a whole by supporting excellence within it and to focus the Trusts' resources for maximum leverage.

The centerpiece of this new strategy would be the Philadelphia Cultural Leadership Program (PCLP). Each year, Godfrey and Bauer told their listeners, PCLP would offer substantial, three-year, unrestricted grants for operating support to arts and culture organizations in the five-county Philadelphia area that demonstrated high levels of programmatic, administrative, and fiscal performance. In making grants to well-run organizations, the Trusts would be attempting to stimulate leadership and reinforce best practices in the entire arts community.

In addition to the grants, PCLP would offer ongoing learning
opportunities-workshops, training, retreats, and small, one-time grants of risk capital for new ventures-intended to strengthen individual organizations and serve the cultural community as a whole.

Although the Trusts had traditionally given operating support only to a small roster of generally large organizations, PCLP would be open competitively to arts and culture groups with annual budgets over US $ 150,000. The pool would be bigger, the requirements far more stringent, the assessments more objective, the whole process more professional.
Because the goal was to encourage leadership by rewarding excellence in management as well as programming, only organizations operating in the black would be eligible to apply.

In certain respects, the arts professionals listening to Godfrey and Bauer that day were hearing wonderful news. Because they may be used for any purpose, operating grants are prized among nonprofits in any field. Such funds for arts and culture have been diminishing nationally since 1983 and now constitute only about 17 percent of all support in this field.
The Trusts were going to continue that support regionally and make it available over periods that would enhance organizational capacity and peace of mind.
The Trusts had given multi-year arts support in the past only occasionally.

On two counts, however, the announcement given by Godfrey and Bauer that day rocked many of their listeners: the open competition, which had serious implications for everyone present, and the no-deficit stipulation.

With this latter point, Gerry Givnish took issue aloud. Givnish is artistic director of the Painted Bride Art Center, an organization he co-founded in 1969 to "create and present work that affirms the intrinsic value of all cultures, the healing power of the arts and their ability to effect social change." Givnish was respected by Godfrey and Bauer as one of the few people who might stand in a meeting in the offices of a longtime major funder of his organization and question that funder's intentions.

Though thinking PCLP a good idea that day, Givnish had, he says now, "problems with some of their criteria". At that time, the future of the National Endowment for the Arts was in doubt. Givnish admired the NEA's emphasis on the accessibility of the arts, the diversity and match of audience and program.
To him it seemed that PCLP stressed organizational
self-sufficiency. Givnish rose among his colleagues to express hisreservations. "This approach might reduce our penchant for risk-taking," he said. "If you can't have a deficit of any kind or other, you'd be loath to try something risky."

"You should do both," Godfrey replied, arguing that creativity can be better sustained when it is unencumbered by debts and poor cash flow.
Believing this himself, Givnish thought her answer a good one.
As discussion on this point continued, Sara Garonzik, producing artistic director of the Philadelphia Theatre Company, sat thinking it "a little scary" that PCLP applicants "couldn't have a penny of debt." But she felt far more scared at the thought of not being in the program.

For nearly two decades, the Philadelphia Theatre Company had been introducing the work of new American playwrights to regional audiences-one of the few companies in the nation with this mission. With the Trusts' help, the company successfully reorganized after hard times in 1989. In the 1994-95 season,
it staged the world premiere of the hugely successful Master Class, with Zoe Caldwell, which went on to Broadway. After years in rental space, the company was looking for a theater of its own.

"I was excited," Garonzik recalls. "PCLP was a leadership program. Getting in would be a distinction, a signal to the community of what we were all about. We're competitive and ambitious by nature. We want the brass ring. I felt challenged, definitely."
Which is exactly the kind of response the Philadelphia Cultural
Leadership Program is meant to engender.

PCLP was inaugurated in 1996. After two special rounds of transition grants, the program was fully implemented in June 1997.
The application process is rigorous. Organizations are assessed against an Index of Organizational Health tailored specifically for this enterprise and must submit mission statements, recent financial audits, strategic plans, proof of plan use, and complete and accurate operational data, among other documentation.

Groups funded receive grants reflecting either a percentage of their budgets or past levels of Trusts support. To date, 50 organizations have received PCLP grants ranging from US $ 24,000 (a transition grant to the Philadelphia Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts) to US $ 2.4 million (Philadelphia Museum of Art)-a total of US $ 20 million since 1996.

Notwithstanding this exceptional level of support, the program has not settled smoothly into the local cultural community. Organizations that had regularly received Trusts funding but failed to meet PCLP standards have been stung by both the rejection and the loss of income.

He is also dubious about one of its premises: "I think they're saying to the culture community, 'Take a very hard look at where you're going in 10 years.' That's a very hard thing for any organization to put into perspective. We're not a corporate entity. We don't have strategic plans that go on for 20 years. Given the funding sources out there and how they change, our reliance on volunteers and nature of our mission, we're lucky with a five-year plan.
We're not making cars. We're changing minds. That's often not quantifiable."

(PCLP applicants must have three-year plans. While the Trusts' Culture staff expect evidence of thoughtful planning concern for the future, they also understand that good planning in arts and culture must allow for flexibility.)

Last year, there was disappointment at the Franklin Institute. Founded in honor of Benjamin Franklin in 1834, this venerable organization is best known today for its Science Museum, which annually draws 900,000 visitors and offers 50,000 free admissions to disadvantaged kids. The institute had long received project and capital funds from Pew, but until PCLP, no operating support. Its first application was turned down.

At issue was a strategic plan featuring a US $ 67-million capital drive. Ina sense, the problem was one of timing: The institute had planned butnot get carried out a feasibility study to test the likely success ofthe campaign. Since so much of the organization's future programs depended upon the drive, the uncertainty bothered the Trusts' reviewers.

Institute administrators disagreed with the Trusts' concerns. "It was a 10-year plan, extremely well thought out," says the institute's development director Ken Kirby. "We felt the plan in itself had efficacy and viability. It could have been funded in a number of ways, thecapital campaign being one mechanism."

At a meeting called by the Trusts, Marian Godfrey and Trusts President Rebecca W. Rimel were encouraging, saying, Kirby recalls, "Great plan, great organization, just do the feasibility study, check out some other funding sources and apply again next year."
After due diligence, his organization reapplied with a modified campaign goal of US $ 50 million. Last June the Franklin Institute received a PCLP grant of US $ 900,000. "They were very generous," says Kirby. He adds that he appreciates the accessibility of and feedback from Trusts staff. He also applauds the principles of PCLP. "I think it's a good thing. Wehave a saying around here, 'No margin, no mission.' If organizations don't make the tough strategic decisions, they'll be out of business."

If the Philadelphia Cultural Leadership Program has caused some pain in the local arts community, it has also brought great joy and pride to many organizations, perhaps especially to the 15-including the Franklin Institute-that are now receiving operating support from Pew for the first time.

Among these are two community art centers, one serving an inner-city population, the other mainly suburbanites. Both offer programs to citizens of all ages. Both are just the kinds of organizations to which the Trusts culture staff hoped to extend support under the PCLP umbrella.
Donna Brown's "stay-at-home-mom," Dorothy Nolan, founded the Point Breeze Performing Arts Center in South Philadelphia in 1983. Nolan's idea-art for social change- "never got beyond the dining room table," says Brown. When her mother died in 1987, her daughter took it over, thinking she might disband it.

But it became her dream. On an old IBM Selectric, she began writing proposals for hundred-dollar grants. Today, the center has a budget of US $ 1 million and receives large grants from both public and private funders. Along with 37 weeks of classes in six kinds of dance at three levels, it offers gymnastics, karate, drama, voice and piano and houses three performing ensembles. Brown sees its mission as unchanged: to educate and motivate kids through the arts; to become a springboard for economic revitalization in Point Breeze.

The Trusts' help is a PCLP grant of $ 96,000, which opened doors.
"It legitimized me," Brown says. "I don't know if people really understand:
You have to work like a dog to get $1,000. When the major foundations recognize you, it's a whole world of difference. If you're recognized by one, then you're recognized by everybody."

The Main Line Art Center in Haverford, Pa., dates to 1937 but has come into its own in the last decade. Primarily under Director Judy Herman, the number of center classes and workshops tripled, to 450, and the number of participants reached 2,700, not counting the 700 children in summer enrichment courses.
In 1996, the center's annual budget passed $ 500,000. Earned income from class fees and tuition-75 percent of the budget-covers everyday expenses, and gifts go to scholarships and outreach. The center is now receiving a PCLP grant of
$ 75,000 with the possibility of another $ 30,000 in matching funds.

Herman found the application process grueling yet affirming: "We had a lot of the pieces in place-a strategic plan, a comprehensive accounting system and a recent audit. This allowed us to say we were on a strong footing and reinforced
our understanding that certain structures made our organization run better."
"Pew is allowing us to reach out to more people," she says. And the PCLP grant has helped the center's campaign to raise $ 1.4 million for building renovations: "It was perfect timing for the capital campaign-the credibility it gave us, the heightened visibility within the community and with funders. It helped us take advantage of the momentum we were feeling and gives us even more momentum."

Among the organizations that had previously received operating support from the Trusts, 10 are not receiving funding under PCLP. One that did meet the test is the Philadelphia Theatre Company. When Sara Garonzik told her board of the PCLP, she told her board of the PCLP opportunity, its members immediately obliterated a small debt caused by the badJanuary weather, mostly from their own pockets. "It turned out to be a great spur," she says.

Garonzik says further that the US $ 260,000 PCLP grant has had "enormous impact" in hours saved (no need to reapply annually), as a catalyst for fundraising, and in allowing staff to plan more securely. "It has changed the quality of our lives. It's sort of a Good Housekeeping seal. If we were not in this program, I'd be concerned that other supporters
would not feel terribly secure about us."
Like the Franklin Institute's Ken Kirby, Garonzik applauds PCLP principles. [The Trusts] set the bar high, and we jumped to it.

Challenges are healthy. They shake you out of your somnolence. A request to clean up your act and remain stable is not an unreasonable request from a funding organization."

Certain aspects of PCLP continue to rankle even the grant recipients. Judy Herman and Gerry Givnish share a concern about the PCLP cutoff for organizations with budgets under US $ 150,000. Even when their own organizations were operating with very small budgets, they point out, they fostered creativity.

Acknowledging this point, Godfrey cites the proliferation of
organizations below that level and says the Trusts prefer to support such groups through another program strategy called Artistic Initiatives.

Givnish still favors the NEA's advocacy of access: "That's where the arts should be as a public policy. Those values have fallen down in the Pew criteria.

"The Trusts are asking people to be good at what they do, and I think that's good. Pew cares. A lot of corporate America has turned their back on the arts."

"But I think 'good' to Pew means organizational survival. Whether you're serving an underserved community or advancing the intellectual capital of your discipline . . . . I think that's where you're going to make a difference as an organization. Yes, they're helping us survive; but they're not encouraging social responsibility."

Godfrey agrees to a point. "He's right; we're not. It's not up to us to tell arts organizations what they should be doing. They tell us their agenda, and if they're capable of doing it well, we may want to support them. We never felt that 'good' means survival. To us, it indicates performing at a high level programmatically as well as managerially, and bringing that excellent programming to whatever audience the organization defines as its constituency.

"On the other hand, it's really important for us [at the Trusts] to consider whether we're being specific enough about the publics we want to serve through these programs. PCLP is a supply-side program, in away."

PCLP remains a work-in-progress. In an external evaluation, conducted last summer, of the application guidelines and the Index of Organizational Health, the evaluator offered specific recommendations for how the Culture staff might reduce friction between Pew and both successful and unsuccessful applicants to PCLP. The staff is now studying these recommendations.

Such continual refinement of PCLP is important, in part because Pew has such a high profile as one of the largest funders of arts and culture in the nation and in part because PCLP is breaking new ground nationally.
(The only significant precedent was the National Arts Stabilization Program, created in 1983 by the Ford Foundation.) According to Richard Evans, an international expert in arts management who consulted on PCLP, other funders have begun to apply criteria of operational performance but not so thoroughly as PCLP.

Marian Godfrey has her eye mainly on its impact locally. She sees progress toward one PCLP goal-to move away from the entitlement model of grant-seeking and grantmaking. And she remains confident and excited about what she calls PCLP's "bold" stroke, its systemic approach. "Our assumption," she explains, "is that the overall system will be strengthened, Philadelphia's audiences will be better served and the
quality of cultural life in the city will be enhanced."

Richard Evans seconds this motion: "If PCLP really takes hold over five or 10 years, you'd expect that the Philadelphia community would start to shine. Not just a few organizations, but the whole vitality should start to move forward, and the way in which Philadelphia supports organizations should start to become more coherent and more resourceful."