The question of relevancy
I am currently in Los Angeles with our Director of Member Services, Adam Natale, attending the annual convening of the Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations (aka APASO). APASO is an informal network that comes together annually to share challenges and successes we’ve experienced and provide not only moral, but programmatic and operational support via a wonderful peer network that has developed over the years.
In the pre-conference meeting on Wednesday, we were fortunate enough to have a panel of heavy hitting grantmaking representatives from The Pew Charitable Trusts, The James Irvine Foundation and the L.A. Dept of Cultural Affairs. They were brought together to help us dig into challenges we face when trying to “make the case” of why arts service organizations exist, what we do to help our constituents and how we support the artistic sector overall. The question that came up that I wanted to address here is the issue of relevancy because it is a question that ALL organizations, great and small, multi or singularly disciplined, new or old, should ask themselves on a continual basis (in my hardly ever humble opinion). Big thanks go out to the LA Stage Alliance for organizing such a tremendous panel and hosting the conference this year.
I want to encourage anyone who is forming a new arts organization to get in the habit of asking this kind of hard question from the beginning; in other words, look at your goals and programs from the most objective point of view possible and honestly consider, does this add value or am I duplicating the efforts of another organization or even worse, just serving my own agenda? I believe that doing this from the earliest stages of organizational development can provide great benefits for short AND long term planning and implementation. In the short term, it can help you prioritize while in the long term, it can help you sustain yourself by shedding programs that may not be as effective or important as they once were.
The reality is that arts funding grows more competitive by the day as more similarly missioned arts organizations are “born”, and this question of relevancy seems to be the first question that the funders ask when a newbie shows up on their doorstep asking for support. I have already begun some organizational soul-searching on this topic (at 3am LA time no less) - any other insomniacs out there care to join me?
Login