Join the virtual Funder Briefing Friday, May 20 at 9am PST/12pm EST hosted by Live Free USA, Joyce Foundation, Ford Foundation, Arnold Ventures, and VOICE Buffalo. Registration is required to join.

“This past Saturday, a senseless, horrific, and pre-meditated shooting by a white supremacist left 10 Black people dead and a community ravaged in Buffalo, NY.”

“Once again a city is left to grapple with the trauma of violence and racism while the nation searches for answers and its black citizens try to navigate the fear and frustration that grows from a legacy of white supremacy, bigotry, xenophobia, and intolerance that seems to have no end.”

“Our loved ones will need short-term and long-term support to begin the recovery. They have a plan informed by their local needs. It is beyond time for comprehensive solutions and action!”

Register for the event here.

From the Mellon Foundation: “Rachel Chanoff, founding director of Artists At Work, speaks to the Mellon Foundation about forging a new model for artist-driven community collaborations and why we need artists as problem solvers.”

Chanoff speaks to the uniqueness of this model, “We put the artists on our payroll at a living wage with benefits for up to a year. They’re paid for two things: to make beautiful art and to be embedded in a social impact initiative. Not only are artists the messengers who help us make meaning of the world, they have the most extraordinary ability to bring creative thinking to a problem and help solve that problem.”

Read the full article here.

The Mississippi Center for Cultural Production (Sipp Culture) serves as an example of this model with their current community-centric projects.

Current GIA board member, Carlton Turner, serves as lead artist/director. “Sipp Culture is able to provide rehearsal space, housing, planning support and can participate as a partner and consultant in the realization of bringing new southern rural stories to the field,” according to the MCCP website. “Through this program Sipp Culture offers artists support which is tailor-made to fit their developmental needs.”

Candid interviewed Amanda Moniz, Ph.D., the David M. Rubenstein Curator of Philanthropy at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, who is responsible for, “[building] a collection of objects telling stories about Americans’ giving throughout our history.” The museum’s new exhibition, Giving in America, “includes one of the first copies of [the] Foundation Directory.”

“Part of the exhibit is organized around the questions of who gives, why do we give, how do we give, and what do we give, while another thematic section changes annually,” said Moniz. “The current thematic section, “Who Pays for Education?,” examines Americans’ debates over public and philanthropic funding for education.”

“The book featured in the exhibition is a first edition of the Foundation Directory, published by the Foundation Center Library in 1960, and generously donated to the national Philanthropy collection by the Foundation Center. It is a terrific object because it helps illuminate the creation of the Foundation Center to bring greater transparency to foundations’ work in response to mid-twentieth century congressional scrutiny of foundations’ power. The book is also important because it reminds us of the ways people accessed information on foundations before the advent of the internet.”

Read the full article here.