Your Mouth Says Innovative, Your Pictures Say Status Quo

Yesterday I alluded to one of my pet marketing peeves, the claim that a work of art reveals “what it means to be human.” The phrase has mercifully fallen out of frequent usage these days (or at least I am not being sent those press releases and brochures any more).

However, Lucy Bernholz at Philanthropy 2173 reminds us about the importance of such buzz phrases to the non-profit arts community. She cites the (tongue in cheek) grant proposal by Michael Alexander of Grand Performances. Here is a taste:

“The Innovative Art Jargon Creation Project – An Activity for the New Millennium”

Project Synopsis
Grand Performances respectfully requests a grant of $37,500 to manage a program to develop new Art Jargon which will be necessary for effective grant writing in the next century.
[…]

HISTORY OF NEED
Each passing decade since the establishment of the National Endowment for the Arts has seen a geometric growth in the number of “buzz words” used by arts grant writers in their applications. To date, there has been no formal development program to insure consistency of quality of these new phrases, nor a system for dissemination to insure that grant writers throughout the country had access to the new phrases at the same time, often giving grants writers in one geographic region or one discipline an unfair advantage over those writers not familiar with the new phrases. Certain regions and certain disciplines have been consistently underserved due to their grant writers’ inability to gain access to the new phrases in a timely manner.

…During the national economic recession of the early 1990’s grant writers hit “a brick wall” as funding decreased for the arts and the available supply of new “buzz words” diminished…A privately funded study involving independent arts grant writers, arts consultants and representatives from government funding agencies from throughout the country provided evidence that one of the major causes of the diminished funding was a scarcity of exciting and useful “buzz words” that could be used in arts grant applications.

I got some pretty good chuckles off this.

However, over on ARTSblog, Megan Pagado reflects on her experiences attending the National Arts Marketing Project Conference noting that the choices arts marketers make often perpetuate the status quo even as they express a desire to change it.

“Slowly, though, the conversation shifted from marketer-created messages to marketer-perpetuated messages. A picture of an all-white, male orchestra elicited the most memorable response: “They’re all dudes!”

Therein laid the dilemma for many of us in the room: What is our process of reviewing materials from artists? What if an artist doesn’t have a better, less stereotypical photo for a marketing team to use? And, as Amy Fox (@museumtweets) tweeted: Do artists always understand the stereotypes they perpetuate when they create?

Some marketers walked away with an action item: creating a diverse committee to review artist materials, for example.

But I think many, including myself, walked away with more questions than answers: How can I be inclusive while avoiding tokenism? When does utilizing inclusive language achieve its desired goal of making all feel welcome, and when does it simply brush issues under the rug and avoid conversations that need to be had?

I will admit I had never really thought about whether an image an artist supplied was perpetuating a stereotype. Most frequently my concern is whether the image communicates that the performance will be interesting. I just had this conversation today about an image in which a pianist appears to have dozed off at the keys.

Taken together, these two blog posts remind us to be cognizant of the impression conveyed by the words and images we employ to promote our organization and activities. Are we saying we are innovative because we are or because innovative is the trending term? Do the images we use back up that claim?

I think it can easily slip our notice that while we may be explicitly saying, “we want to include you,” the images we use may implicitly be saying “No we don’t.” Certainly the environment and attendance experience in a performance hall can communicate this as well. But I think people recognize that dress code and knowing when to clap are already sources of anxiety and have taken steps to address this. It is probably time to start paying attention to the pictures too.

Foundation Data Wants To Be Set Free!

Last week Lucy Bernholz posted a collection of links on Philanthropy 2173. One of these was a video of a talk she gave last June on how the information foundations collect is as important to non-profits as the money they give.

She notes that foundations end up being huge repositories of information about successful activities in our communities and across the nation. In the best scenario, these projects get funded once and then filed away in the archives. In the worst scenario, they just get filed away.

As a result of their granting activities, Bernholz notes, the foundations know a whole lot about whatever their areas of interest are. But because the data hasn’t been aggregated into a usable form, even the foundation may not be aware of just how much they know. She advocates for making that data readily available so that groups can collate the information and make everyone aware of just what exactly is going on, what is needed and what the costs of delivering services are.

Bernholz uses the example of looking at all the requests made to Donors Choose, combined with what foundations are funding and the Race To The Top programs to learn exactly what is happening and needed in classrooms.

According to Bernholz’s post last week, there has been some progress since she gave her talk in using non profit data to help organizations.

To my mind, such transparency would probably also promote much more accurate reporting by non profits. It has been noted that grant reports have a tendency to be idealized. All the goals are met or exceeded and there are no challenges or unforeseen problems causing a deviation from the proposal. A system which files such information away and forgets it perpetuates this practice.

However, if the information is out there and circulating and people are repeatedly contacting you to find out how you designed your programs to achieve such wonderful success, there is greater pressure to have your results more closely reflect reality.

Only 15 Minutes Of Fame For Tragedies?

Lucy Bernholz at Philanthropy 2173 makes some fascinating reflections on the impact of technology on giving vis a vis the Haitian earthquake relief efforts.

I confess a huge amount of skepticism when I had first heard that one could donate to the relief effort via text messaging on your cell phones. I wondered how much the phone companies were profiting off this and how big a cut the donation processors would be taking. Apparently I wasn’t the only one because according to Bernholz, the phone companies have waived the fees under pressure of public opinion.

She also talks about the possibility that those who received funds may be under greater scrutiny. I remember after Hurricane Katrina, many people were horrified to learn how great a percentage of their donations were going to administrative overhead at the Red Cross and similar organizations. The Red Cross has shown some transparency by tweeting near real time updates of the climbing donation totals. Bernholz suggests that Twitter may become the platform where this is not only reported–but where people also question what has been done with the money.

The suggestion that really grabbed my attention was her idea that technology might cause/allow people to acquire “Donor Attention Deficit Disorder”

That people all over the world can be so instantly engaged and moved to donate is certainly a good thing. But does it come with costs?

On Wednesday, January 13, #Haiti was a trending topic on Twitter all day (a measure of what the millions of tweets are discussing). By Thursday, January 14, it was gone. Does the ability to give instantly and painlessly (mobile donors won’t even see a charge for the gift until they get their next phone bill) make it extra easy to give and move on? Will “donor fatigue” be replaced by “donor A.D.D.?”

The concept that even tragedies have only 15 minutes of fame before people move on is pretty chilling. If the best tactic for successful fund raising is providing people with an opportunity to give at the point where the emotional appeal is greatest, it is going to be increasingly difficult to sustain any sort of long term support. And how long will it be before people become inured to solicitations of calculated to concentrate a great deal of emotional response in a short span. Such an approach might stunt efforts to gather support for true tragedies.

It probably doesn’t help that we are told to just give money. Granted, in this case, it just isn’t practical to become physically involved. Much less so that after Hurricane Katrina. There is also something of an underlying message that once you have given, you no longer need to be engaged with the problem. All you are being asked to do is just give money and you can accomplish that by doing something you enjoy doing everyday–text a number.