Newspapers / Philanthropy Journal of North … / Jan. 1, 1996, edition 1 / Page 9
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January 1996 Volunteers Continued from page 8 manager Grant Moore. They include an accounting student from Korea and a computer programmer from Mexico, both of whom work in the shop to improve their Engiish, as well as students, retirees, working people and housewives. Some work one or two days a week, while others come in once a month. Not all stores operate full-time. The International Bazaar in Montreat, for example, has been open for 13 years, but only from mid- April to mid-November, says Flaith Buckwalter, a retiree from New York who volunteers in the store in the summer. The store is located at the Montreat Retreat Center, a Presbyterian conference center about 15 miles east of Asheville. Merchandise is sold only on con signment, with management provid ed by SELFHELP headquarters in Pennsylvania. All profits are returned directly to the crafts groups. Last year, sales totaled $170,000. SELFHELP Crafts also has a small catalog sales business - about $22,000 last year. In North Carolina, stores are located in Asheville, Hickory, Winston-Salem, Raleigh, Durham, and Montreat. For information, write to SELF- HELP Crafts of the World, 704 Main Street, PO. Box 500, Akron, PA 17501- 0500, or caU (717) 859-8100. To order a catalog, call 1-800-592-7238. Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina Young Continued from page 8 Jayne VanGraafeOand, communi ty service coordinator at Broughton High School, says student volun tarism is designed to heip youngsters become good citizens. In the 1995-96 school year, 1,500 students are participating in volun teer activities, helping staff members and adult volunteers for such agen cies as the Red Cross, the Multiple Sclerosis Society and other charities. Some teens in the program also worked during the summer as tutors for young children in YWCA summer camps. Mary Cromer, volunteer coordina tor for the Oberlin Road YWCA con cedes that some of the student volun teers participated oniy to meet their graduation requirement. But VanGraafeiland of Brou^ton Hi^ says the volimteer programs are an important opportunity to teach young people positive values. “This is their first experience in contributing to the community” she says. “We hope that they wili con tribute and voiunteer in the future.” Voluntarism also can pay off in the classroom. At Paisley Middle School in Winston-Salem, for exam ple, a program known as Care that was launched in September 1994 has helped improve student performance. School officials say voluntarism has helped students believe in their ability to do something useful - including their work in the class room. The Winston-Salem program received support from the federai Learn and Serve project funded by the Corporation for National and Community Service. The Integon Foundation, Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation and the locai ISwanis Club provided matching funds for the federal grant. Nonprofit leaders who work with young people say it’s important to sow the seeds of voluntarism early “There is still large gap in com munity services for kids 10 to 13 years old,” says Marty Weems coordi nator of the Peer Leader program in Durham County, which trains teenagers to serve as volunteer medi ators working with at-risk peers. “I beiieve that we could get more results if we started earlier.” Arts Continued from page 1 eral public or non-public,” says Jeanne Butler, executive director of the Kenan Institute for the Arts in Winston-Salem. “That thinking has caused some confusion and frustra tion with some people.” Regardless of whether the gap between the public and the arts is real or perceived, arts organizations are working to find ways to connect to the broader society For several years, arts organizations have been experimenting with ways the arts can be more useful, relevant and even utilitarian. A USEFUL VEHICLE The early results are promising. Art for art’s sake has been trans formed. Now, it’s art for the sake of workplace survival and international competitiveness. In its new form, support for the arts is being present ed to educators, legislators, school board members and donors as some thing with a much greater purpose than self-expression or reaffirmation of human nature. The arts have become a vehicle for teaching math or science and a promoter of life skills such as self-esteem, motivation and team-building. The thinking goes like this: when you learn the arts, you learn to think like an artist. When you think like an artist, you are engaged in constant questioning, analysis and problem- soiving. “Whether it be in the form of deciding what sentence follows the next, what color goes best next to another one, or what movement in a dance has to be followed by the previ ous one, artists are looking at prob lems and coming up with solutions,” says Richard Krawiec, novelist and founder of VOICES: A Creative Community, a Raleigh writers organi zation that works at homeless shel ters, housing projects, prisons and lit eracy centers. When confronted by arts pro grams deeply grounded in such basics, it’s difficult to sustain the argument that funding for the arts is frivolous. These types of programs are increasing in popularity They help create a separate and distinct image for the arts, one that enforces a message that the arts are as vital to the strength and identity of a commu nity as any social or human service organization. As arts organizations go about paying closer attention to how their image is shaped and perceived, it’s likely that arts providers increasingly will be asking the public to accept art not for what it is, but for what it can do. QUEST FOR FUNDS 'The arts, of ali nonprofit endeav ors, compete head-to-head with the for-profit sector. In this case, the com petition comes from one of the nation’s premier industries: enter tainment. Every time a local arts organization produces a work, it’s competing in some way with Hollywood, Nashville or Broadway The leviathans of entertainment spend billions every year promoting their products and deveioping a sophisticated understanding of their audiences. Local arts organizations are just now appreciating the impor tance of market research and the need to be more “market oriented.” “One of the problems we face is that we have invested an awfui lot of money into creating new products and creating institutions and have not invested the doilars in building the market demand for the products,” says Robert Bush, executive director of the United Arts Council of Ralei^ and Wake County Unlike companies in the for-profit sector. Bush says, arts organizations have not had the money to do the research and develop a sophisticated approach to their needs for audience development. Now, they must consid er tricky business questions of supply and demand, such as whether ticket prices should be lowered to increase attendance and revenues. Or whether fewer events shouid be scheduied at higher prices. “We just have not, as an industry addressed those kinds of issues,” Bush says. “This is a real opportunity to do that and in the long run, if we do it correctly, we will be stronger.” MEASURING IMPACT Artists in nearly all disciplines can now be found pursuing socially relevant goals, wortog, for example, with homelessness, the abused and the addicted. As the arts deveiops its own approach to these issues, howev er, its most challenging issue may prove to be the one thorny issue fac ing all nonprofits: How to prove that your work is having the intended effect. Consider the manner in which ope arts group is fitting homelessness. At first ^ance, a skeptic mi^t view teaching creative writing to the homeless as a dubious endeavor. But VOICES, the Raleigh organization, has put its finger on an important and complicated point about the home less: They often lack basic decision making skills and analytic skills to understand the person^ and social forces that are preventing them from getting by in life. So, at a VOICES workshop at a homeless shelter, participants will engage in writing a group poem, for instance, rather than simply learning “interviewing techniques” by rote and out of context. A group poem exer cise, says VOICES founder Krawiec, helps participants develop the types of skills most valued in the work place. “People in the group have to listen to other people, they have to con tribute to the group’s work, and they have to respond to their suggestions in a positive manner,” Krawiec says. “They have to come together and work collaboratively toward a com mon goal.” Unlocking creativity can have a powerful effect on people. For instance, Krawiec recalls one shelter workshop participant who repeatedly wrote angry manifestoes - not the reflective poems, short stories and journal entries that other partici pants were writing. The man was dis missive of creative pieces and using the imagination. Then, one day, another workshop participant toid him that if he couldn’t imagine, then he couldn’t Imagine his future. And if he couldn’t imagine his future, then he didn’t have one. The next day, Krawiec says, the man returned to the workshop with a short story that depicted a character as being trapped in life. It was the first time he had written using his imagination. “A week after that, he came back and he had found a job,” Krawiec says. “And within a couple of weeks, he had found a place to live and he was out of the shelter. A year and a half later, he still had the job and he had received his two raises. He rec ognized what he was doing with his iife. He had a piace. He had imagined a future tor himself and he had devel oped an ability to work toward that future. I believe it was throu^ the process of doing this creative work that he had this breakthrough.” But seeing quick and dramatic resuits is difficult and rare. Overall, the transitory nature of the homeless makes tracking such cases hard. “You have to be in the position two years later to bump into someone and see how it turned out,” says Krawiec. NEW STRATEGIES A recent focus group study con ducted for the Durham Arts Council and United Arts Council of Raleigh and Wake County, produced some startling preiiminary results. The participants in the study did not con sider the arts to be a part of the char itable sector. Further, they did not view the arts as having any sort of significant financial need. The results illustrate just some of the challenges that arts leaders must confront as they direct their oigani- zations through the next half of the decade. On many fronts, arts leaders say, there is a need to develop strate gies that will enable the arts to help define the community in which they exist and explore their untapped potential to leverage greater public support. First, as arts groups set about bringing the arts to all corners of society, they need to be certain how to teach what it is they know Being artistic doesn’t mean, on its face, that artists can convey those skills to oth ers. Likewise, teachers or social workers cannot necessarily deliver the artistic approach to their field without guidance. More collabora tion, thou^ not always part of the artistic repertoire, woifld seem neces sary. Second, arts groups and founda tions need to rethink the organiza tional behavior that equates growth with success. “As groups define success as growth, they end up growing beyond their means,” says Nello McDaniel of Arts Action Research, a New York- based consultant that works with many North Carolina oiganizations. McDaniel says arts funders are often to blame for the preoccupation with growth. “They encourage the growth and development of organizations, and yet more and more of these arts fun ders want new projects,” he says. “They don’t want to provide money for indirect costs or overhead. It’s just ‘Give me a new project and make sure it solves some major issue.’” Finally, the road ahead will require seeking new sources of fund ing. Here, says Butler of the Keuan Institute, there are many opportuni ties, some requiring greater advocacy than others. For instance, she says, arts groups should consider special local taxes to fund the arts, though she cautions this approach takes strong local support. Being intrinsically creative, says Butler, arts organizations need to consider the many opportunities the world presents them for partnerships - between small and large organiza tions within the arts, or partners out side the arts, or even partners out side the nonprofit sector. The Kenan Institute, for example, helps public schools incorporate the arts into the teaching of different subjects, such as math, history and En^sh. “But the partnerships need to be forged, not forced,” she says. “If it’s natural and it feels right, that’s the key to collaboration.” Winslow II Co NS iDiNE EXPERIENCE B SUCCESS •Capital Campaigns • Sponsorship Development •Planning • Public Relations Post Office Box 10973, Salem Station Winston-Salem, North Carolina 27108 910-722-7982 (phone) 910-722-8671 (fax) Internet: 73145.1 750(®compuserve.com Iron Horse Auction Co., Inc. Thomas M. Mclnnis Professional Fundraising Auctioneers For Charity And Nonprofits Award-Winning Auctioneers Who Will Generate Superior Results For Donated Real Estate And Personal Properties 413 South Hancock Street P.O. Box 1267 Rockingham, NC 28379 800-997-2248 Nonprofit Management Continuing Education from the School of Social Work at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Leadership Development in Grassroots Nonprofit Organizations Si Kahn April 16 Asheville Positioning Your Organization for Successful Community Support and Fund Development jill Gammon April 30 Raleigh Creatively Managing Change and Conflict Dave Newman May 28 Chapel Hill Developing Your Strengths in Supervisory Relationships Dave Newman May 29 Greensboro Call Vilma Welch, (919) 962-6545, for registration information.
Philanthropy Journal of North Carolina (Raleigh, N.C.)
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Jan. 1, 1996, edition 1
9
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