“Organized philanthropy, like most things, looks different on the inside than it does from the outside,” said author Nicholas Lemann in a recent article for the New Yorker. “’Philanthropy’ comes from the Greek for ‘love of humanity,’ and public perceptions of it have usually centered on donors and how humanity-loving they really are. The good guys are generous rich people who give to causes we all approve of, like combatting climate change; the bad guys give in order to launder their reputations (like the opioid-promoting Sackler family) or to advance unsavory goals (like the anti-environmentalist Kochs). Either way, the salient questions about philanthropy, for most people, have to do with the size and the quality of a donor’s heart and soul.”

“Saunders-Hastings, situated in the conventions of ideal theory, tends to exempt the larger society from the harsh, raking light she casts on philanthropy; her approach is like comparing your actual spouse to a fictional perfect spouse.”

“Even within philanthropy, the people who do most of the work at large foundations are grant officers, who aren’t rich and who usually aren’t as overbearing as the people who made the fortunes they are disbursing. A lot of the daily work of philanthropy takes the form of routinized exchanges between salaried bureaucrats on either side of the transaction.”

Read the full article here.

For the month of June, GIA’s photo banner features work supported by ArtsBuild.

In response to our questions for the GIA Member Spotlight, ArtsBuild shared the following:

ArtsBuild’s mission is to build a stronger community through the arts. Since our founding in Chattanooga in 1969, ArtsBuild has served as a catalyst for the arts in our community, investing more than $77 million in arts organizations, arts programs, and arts education. Throughout the past 53 years, the vision of our founders to build a stronger community through the arts has remained consistent. That vision includes creating access to the arts. We do this through grantmaking, arts education initiatives, and arts advocacy.

In the process of putting the show together, our team also helped our artists and creatives with professional, technical, and creative development – everything from new video production skills to fair contract negotiation to collaborative mash-ups with peers they didn’t know before. And of course when you assist artists with a few new simple tools in their toolbox, they take those and run in all kinds of creative directions you can never predict, which is where the real beauty and joy comes into play.

At ArtsBuild, we are excited about our Racial Equity Grants for Individual Artists. This summer we will award grants to five local Native American or Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) artists. The first two rounds of this grant program were awarded to Black and Latinx artists. Each artist receives a grant of $10,000 to do anything that furthers their careers and/or their practice. Funds have been used by artists to travel abroad to research storytelling, buy equipment, create large bodies of work for exhibition, and complete writing and music projects. We hope to be able to fund the next round of grants for BIPOC women artists from all disciplines.

ArtsBuild joined Grantmakers in the Arts in 2020.

You can also visit ArtsBuild’s photo gallery on GIA’s Photo Credits page.

Image: One of the paintings in the traveling exhibit “The Black Bible” by Chattanooga artist Charlie Newton. Charlie was a grant recipient in ArtsBuild’s first round of Racial Equity Grants for Individual Artists awarded to five local African American artists. The exhibit was on display at Stove Works, an ArtsBuild Mission Support grantee, whose mission is to serve the Chattanooga community by providing local, national, and international artists a venue for the production of, exhibition of and education through contemporary works of art. Courtesy of ArtsBuild.

Authors Aja Couchois Duncan and Kad Smith explore how, “in our nonprofit sector, we are often confronted with making sense of the widespread translatability of cultural moments and forces. We don’t have to look far to see how cancel culture informs the way in which we experience everyday interactions on the Internet and in real life.” How can we separate ourselves from toxicity, and bring healing instead?

Examples of, “[drawing] on inner work and healing practices to both replenish ourselves and cultivate our individual and collective resilience,” include tapping into awareness, honoring the sacred, cultivating compassion, re-yoking our bodies, and nourishing our human forms. “Our mutuality flourishes when our love ethic is strong. And our love ethic is nourished by the practice of loving accountability. Loving accountability means we are learning together, and that we are risking vulnerability in service of creating authentic connection and a better future.”

Read the full article here.

“Please join Chair Maria Rosario Jackson and NEA partners for an overview of the NEA’s Equity Action Plan,” on Wednesday, June 1 from 2-3pm ET via zoom. The session is free, but registration is required. Questions for the panel will be accepted until May 27.

Read NEA’s Equity Action plan here.

Register for the webinar here.