2,261 stories by "Joe Patti"
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…
The United Nations Education, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) website has a guide for running museums written by the International Council of Museums (ICOM). The guide, Running…
For the last month or so I have been trying to figure out why, depending on the discipline, different elements of an artist’s background signal quality. I realized that when people on …
Okay, I know this week I posted a piece that continued my long standing assertion that talking about the economic impact of the arts is not an effective way to garner long term support and i…
Long time readers will know that for the last year or so I have been a bit of an evangelist for the burgeoning effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture. What impresses me about the e…
It is pretty much an accepted truth that if you want to secure funding for the arts from a government entity or foundation, you need to marshal a lot of data to prove you are having an impac…
