Entrepreneur the Arts » Money

210 Social Innovation Funding Sources

Lisa Canning — Mon, 16 Jan 2012 13:15:37 +0000

Social Entrepreneur, Social Enterprise and Social Innovation Sources of Funding

Here is a list of 210 social entrepreneur, social enterprise and social innovation funding sources (#socent) that a group member in Impact Entrepreneur posted on Linkedin. This is the most comprehensive list anywhere as far as I know. If you see something missing, you can go to ned.com, join, and then be able to edit the page.

Venture philanthropy, seed stage investing for social entrepreneurs, early stage investing for social innovation

Crowdsourced Funding, Crowdfunding, and Peer-to-Peer Microfinance

Social Entrepreneur & Innovation Friendly Foundations

Top SE College Programs

Social Entrepreneur & Innovation Prize/Awards

Search Tools for Grant Funding

Crowdsourced Funding for Musicians & Bands

CHICAGO: Join the IAE and WBEZ @ Catalyst Ranch to Celebrate Self Employment

Lisa Canning — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 07:20:00 +0000

On Thursday January 26th The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship (IAE) will be teaming up with WBEZ’s new project Front & Center to host a resource fair for the self employed, small businesses, start-ups, and freelancers.

Mini seminars and presentations will run through out the evening at the fabulous Catalyst Ranch located at 656 W Randolph St # 3W in the Polka Room.

Mini Seminar Topics Include:

Entrepreneurship 101
Presented by Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship

Receiving small loans as an independent worker
Presented Accion Micro Lending

Doing your taxes as a freelancer, small business owner, or independent
Presented by Center for Economic Progress

Create. Innovate. Repeat: featuring 4 fabulous presenters, 7 slides and just 5 minutes each to pitch their most innovative business idea to you.
Presented by Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship.

Partial List of Participants Include:

Co-Lab Evanston providers of shared office spaces.

Northside Freelancers Network who can help you connect to the growing Chicago self-employed community. Make sure to ask them about their weekly “freelancers soup” lunch.

Accion will be on hand to discuss how to get a micro-loans to jump start your own business.

Northside Community Bank can help you find funding for your small, local project.

IndieMade is itself a small business. They create websites for independents, artist, small businesses, and start-up projects.

Rockstar CPA offers CPA services specifically geared towards the self-employed, with a specialty in creative projects.

The Law Project offer affordable legal resources for freelancers, independents, and small businesses, such as creating contracts, negotiating pay, etc.

Chicago! Come on out and celebrate self-employment with us! We hope to see you on January 26th.

Fair begins at 6pm @ Catalyst Ranch 656 W Randolph St # 3W, in the Polka Room

Help Us Build The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship

Lisa Canning — Sat, 24 Dec 2011 01:28:44 +0000

On behalf of everyone at The Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship – our faculty, our students, our supporters and our families - we would like to wish each of you and your family  a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!

As many of you may already know, 2011 has proven to be an exceedingly eventful and rewarding year for the IAE. After several years of dutiful planning and extremely hard work, we launched our pilot program this past September.

About IAE’s Progress

Our recently concluded Module I coursework focused on student development of emotional intelligence, leadership aptitude and communicative skills. And within only a very few months, we have witnessed a blossoming of growth and excitement from 15 artists – from fashion, music, theater, visual arts, food, skin care and design- in our inaugural class ranging in age from 24 to 63! For those of us on the IAE staff, bearing witness to our student’s desire to learn, develop and flourish has served as a profoundly breathtaking experience.

And many new faces are sprouting up to support our work. This past fall over 12 individuals donated their time to mentor our students. We also have received immeasurable help with our curriculum design and development from Joyce Thomas, Deana McDonagh and Director Nan Goggin- all from The School of Art + Design at the University of Illinois.

And the interest has not stopped there. In January the IAE was selected to deliver our first paper about our innovative learning model at the U.S. Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference in New Orleans. Founder Lisa Canning was also invited to attend The U.S. Dept of State and The Aspen Institute’s 2nd Entrepreneurship conference in Marrakech Morocco in January. Additionally, 2 schools in Amman Jordan and someone who serves on the Fulbright commission in Sweden have all reached out to us to inquire how we can bring the IAE to their communities.

The IAE Needs Your Help to Bloom

During the past twelve months, we have been working hard to ramp up our fund raising efforts designed to firmly establish the IAE as a long-term, going concern with the ability to make a real difference – not only in assisting artists to develop meaningful careers applying their artistic talents – but to utilize their creative abilities in new ways that also can benefit our communities and local businesses. And while these efforts have not thus far been quite as successful as those in the classroom – our commitment to advancing the IAE’s mission remains as strong as ever.

Year End Giving

As we prepare for the New Year, we will continue to do our best to fund our pilot program. Unfortunately, without more support, we may not be able to realize our full vision to help artists change their lives and the world with their creativity. I wish you would come to our classroom to see just how big the impact is we have already made with our students. We have quickly become an invaluable resource; something our students do not wish to lose.

With this being a time to reflect on our values and beliefs, we would like to ask that you consider an offer of support for The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship. Whatever you can give will show us you value our work and care about the future of our students.

A tax-deductible contribution to the IAE may be made through our secure giving site or by mailing a check to The Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship, 2257 N Lincoln Avenue, Chicago, IL 60614.

To insure your tax benefits for 2011, online donations must be completed by 11:59 PM on December 31, 2011. Checks must be dated and postmarked by December 31, 2011. Please be sure to consult your tax adviser to confirm how charitable deduction rules may apply to your individual situation.

To each of you who generously support us, both today and over the past several years, please know we could never achieve our goals without you. Your kindness and generosity is so appreciated.

With blessings to you all for peace, love and prosperity in the New Year,

Lisa and Chuck Canning

The IAE has a new Facebook page. Click below and like us.

Please follow us on Twitter too!

20 Rules for Starting Your Art Licensing Business

Guest Blogger — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 14:09:30 +0000

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #4: Plan on 2+ years to get your art licensing business established.

Licensing is no different than other business, it will take time to create contacts, processes, and revenue. If you expect it to happen over night, you are most likely thinking about the wrong business, or perhaps entrepreneurial endeavors are not right for you.

I’m going to give you a timeline here that I know will be valuable when considering the art licensing industry and planning your time and budgets.

It would be reasonable to expect that gearing up your business will take at least a year. Six months might be spent creating your art licensing portfolio and collections, evaluating and refining them, as well as setting up your web site and establishing a rough business plan. In the next six months, you should kick-off marketing efforts targeted toward manufacturers or to prospective agents.

You may be able to close your first deal (or two) within a year, but only with active marketing efforts. Once you receive an offer, be aware, that it can still take 1 to 6- months to finalize the deal and get the signed contract completed. It certainly varies with every manufacturer. For example, if they are pursuing something topical and hot, then it may be a matter of weeks and you are done.

Let’s say it then takes the manufacturer 3-months to 1 year to produce the product, and this is actually a relatively short timeline, as many overseas products take even longer to develop. Then you add a 3 to 6-month window before the product is ready sold to retailers, distributed to them and available in stores.

If you add up all those numbers, I can tell you the total time is approximately one year to 2½ years before you see any royalty revenues. You may have negotiated an advance on that deal, so you had some money come in when you signed the contract. However, the core of royalty revenue is generated when product is sold by the manufacturer (wholesaler) to retail stores. Then it takes even longer to hit your bank, since most manufacturers will pay you quarterly for sales generated in a prior quarter.

Now, I’m sure during this time you wouldn’t be sitting still waiting for the revenue from that one deal. Licensing is a cycle; you continue the process of creating, marketing and selling—over and over again—utilizing both new and existing art in different ways. You can really understand the huge potential of licensing when one piece of art, or a single collection, sells well on multiple products and generates revenue way beyond it’s value as “a” piece of art for the wall.

And meanwhile, you create product and keep marketing. Plan ahead, knowing that you will need funds to live on until the revenue stream from multiple deals start to come in. So plan on 2+ years before you’ve got a solid revenue stream. Keep that in mind. It’s a great business to be in, but it does take time to build it and work to keep it going.

About J’net Smith

Jeanette Smith is the consummate art licensing coach—she is passionate about helping you achieve a level of success beyond imagining and definitely knows how to do it! In just six short years, J’net turned Dilbert™ from a relatively unknown syndication-based comic strip into a 200 million dollar a year global brand. Then in 2000, J’net translated and expanded on her extensive experience to train, advise and license all types of creators. She has helped hundreds of artists, graphic designers, painters, photographers, authors, illustrators, design firms, fine artists, creative companies, non-profits and agents to maximize the power of their brands and talents.

J’net is best described by her combination of specialties—she is one of those very rare people who possess a balanced combination of creative sensibility and extraordinary business acumen. It is this combination that has served J’net over the span of a very impressive career,and has garnered her equally impressive press and testimonials!

From her early days in New York building new divisions for such corporate giants as Official Airline Guides, MacMillan Publishing, Paramount Communications, and VIACOM International, to her six years of work at United Media spearheading the astronomical growth of Dilbert, Jeanette has compiled a long list of satisfied clients and has gained an enormous amount of respect and experience in marketing, licensing, advertising, PR, agenting, negotiating, and much more.

Growing Starbucks: Extending Brand Uniqueness or Diluting It?

Lisa Canning — Mon, 19 Dec 2011 13:07:18 +0000

At what point, if any, does extending brand uniqueness create a tipping point that then threatens the very foundation of the brand itself? Lately I have been asking myself this very question about the Starbucks brand.

Starbucks 1st store location in Seattle's Pike Place Market, 1971

As we all know, back in the 90′s Howard Schultz transformed the second most consumed drink after water, and the second most traded commodity after crude oil, coffee, into a unique retail destination for us all between work and home.

Putting people before products, Schultz used intuition more than “brand strategy” in those early days to develop Starbucks into the social place outside of work or home most of us did not even realize how much we needed. Schultz’s vision and intuition allowed Starbucks to leverage a low cost commodity, coffee, and transform it into a “$4.00-human-interactive-experiencial-brand.”

And now with Howard Schultz’s recent return to Starbucks as CEO, after a series of setbacks and financial downturns after his departure, the question is can he add more value to the bottom line while retaining the “human soul”- the uniqueness- he built into the Starbucks brand? Or is he reaching for the tipping point leading to the erosion of it?

According to Merriam-Webster something that is unique is defined as:

1. Being the only one.
2. Being without a like or equal.
3. Distinctively characteristic: peculiar.
4. Unusual.

There is no doubt Starbucks has managed to create a unique retail store environment with their friendly customer oriented staff, great music, comfy chairs and heartfelt emotional connective messaging.

And they have quite successfully been able to extend the feeling you get from their brand outside their stores too spending far less on advertising than other large retailers and consumer products companies to achieve tremendous brand loyalty.

Check out these 2006 comparative stats of what other companies spent on advertising for their brand.

Microsoft – more than 20 percent of their annual revenue or $11.5 billion
Coca-Cola – more than $2.5 billion
Yahoo – more than 20 percent of their annual revenue or $1.3 billion
eBay – 14 percent to 15 percent of its revenue – which was $871 million, much of that to advertise on Google
Google – In the millions rather than billions of dollars – with $188 million
Starbucks – $95 million

In 2006, Starbucks spent just $95 million on advertising with 7.8 billion in sales demonstrating their amazing strength as an “experiential brand”.

But is it possible to continue to expand the human experience of this brand while Starbucks’ transition into what Schultz hopes will be the first company to excel as both a retailer and a purveyor—in supermarkets and other mass-market channels—of consumer packaged goods?

According to Schultz, “This is a unique inflection point for Starbucks; I think we’ve identified a very big opportunity to do something that really has not been done before. And that is the following: there are many, many companies, domestically and around the world, that have built a domestic national footprint around retail stores, just like Starbucks—the Gap, Costco, Wal-Mart, Coach, Zara. And there are many consumer-packaged-goods companies—Pepsi, Coke, Kellogg’s, Campbell’s. There hasn’t been one company I can identify that has been able to build complementary channels of distribution by integrating the retail footprint and the ubiquitous channels of distribution—in our case, grocery stores and drug stores.

So the model is, Starbucks can seed and introduce new products and new brands inside our stores. We introduced VIA instant coffee in our stores. Instant coffee is a $24 billion global category that has not had any innovation in over 50 years. And no growth. If we took VIA and we put it into grocery stores and it sat on a shelf, it would have died. But we can integrate VIA into the emotional connection we have with our customers in our stores. We did that for six to eight months and succeeded well beyond expectations in our stores. And as a result of that, we had a very easy time convincing the trade, because they wanted it so badly.”

And while it’s true Starbucks has tallied up five years of positive earnings and five years of positive free cash flow, again, in part, under Schultz’s leadership, Starbucks stock has only just recently seen a rise above mid 2006 values.

However, food stocks should be on the rise. It makes sense that with unemployment up, the housing market down, and the world economy on shaky ground that food-makers would deliver stable sales.

So the question is can Starbucks continue to introduce produces like VIA into their stores and translate the uniqueness of their brand through them into distribution channels? Will their customers buy into all the products they introduce in their retail environment, bond with them, and then readily buy them from their local grocery store or drug store?

I don’t know about you, but I for one was completely turned off by VIA’s introduction at Starbucks. My sense of embracing the serenity of my “home away from work or home” felt threatened by the through I was being encouraged to take a little packet of dried coffee home as a substitute for the experience of being in their retail environment. I have always bought into Starbucks being an ” escape,” a destination, a home away from home. To add insult to injury, I was told if I liked their dried coffee, which I also perceived as cheapening the brand, I did not even have to come back into the store- I could buy it elsewhere. It almost felt like an invitation to never come back- I felt like I was losing a friend.

Howard Schultz in his 2011 book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul specifically talks about his mission in a way that’s very different from most CEOs. “Everything we’ve tried to do,” he writes, “is steeped in humanity.” I certainly find Schultz’s new goal as being very problematic for the brand.

Purveyors use distribution channels and have retailers who connect with end users for a reason- because retails act differently than purveyors. I have witnessed this first hand within the music industry. The clarinet company I represent, Buffet Crampon, increasingly in the 90′s adopted some of my best practices working with customers. Increasingly they acted more like a retailer than a distributor, or the purveyor they are, by increasing the attention they paid towards potential end users. They threw private parties and gave potential customers the opportunity, before retailers, to see and experience new products.

In the end, it pissed off retailers who felt side stepped and while left uninformed were expected to close the sale with the majority of the customers anyways. I am not sure how much it really did to help them grow their brand then but they have abandoned most of those practices now. While I realize, Starbucks first and foremost is recognized as an extremely well established retailer- a significant difference from being a purveyor dabbling in retail, placing people over products simultaneously in both distribution channels and retail environments will be challenging. Distributors exist to move product and retailers exist to sell those products to people. The motivation of each is different and as a result using the same messaging for both won’t be easy to effectively manage.

While I think Schultz’s idea is very interesting to try and be the first company to excel at both, how will Starbucks lead me or anyone else to rediscovering why we’re best friends with this as their end game strategy in their retail environment?

I don’t know about you, but I spend time with a best friend. I get to know them. I also frequently see them in the same places and I don’t just spend money on them. While distributors and Schultz alike may hope Starbucks can convincingly sell us many products at the local grocery from an experience or two in their retail environment, it is yet to be seen how well they can translate the uniqueness of their brand into repetitive buying decisions in locations outside their own doors.

20 Rules for Starting Your Art Licensing Business

Guest Blogger — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 13:12:40 +0000

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #3 Know your skills.

Art talent isn’t enough to make it in the Art Licensing industry. Even more interesting is the fact that you may do very well in Art Licensing for any number of other reasons. For example, your art skills may be good; they may even be awesome! But you could be incredibly successful in Art Licensing because you can market yourself better than other artists. Perhaps you have the innate ability to capture the attention of various media outlets, or you have a large following of active and demanding fans (which would be is very appealing to manufacturers).

I’ve seen artists make lots of money because they appeal to a certain niche audience (not a small niche, but one that’s large enough to warrant mass market attention) that is peaking and has a current need for art. Maybe an artist loves creating holiday themed art, for which there is always a need. Art Licensing is a commercial industry, so artists who have a distinctive style, enjoy creating a certain theme, and who also appeal to huge audiences have more potential for income than others.

Other skills that affect your Art Licensing business potential are:

Technical Skills

You definitely need computer and technical skills, or access to them. If you don’t have them, you need to get them or find a partner that does, because people will no longer put up with artists not having internet access, high resolution scans, layered files, etc.

Product Design Capabilities

If you can envision your art on products, then show your art to manufacturers on product mock-ups to help them. This is a really important skill set today and is going to help put you in the league of serious art licensors.

Trend Watching

Not everybody is going to be a trendsetter, because that takes a lot of forward thinking.You may have that, or you may just love to watch trends, and can keep up with them. Either way, don’t avoid learning about trends and seeing how your art can interpret them.

Entrepreneurial Abilities

Artists need entrepreneurial skills more than ever! And we’ll talk more about this later…

About J’net Smith

20 Rules for Starting Your Art Licensing Business

Guest Blogger — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:03:12 +0000

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #1 Learn all you can about art licensing before committing your time and efforts.

Licensing is big business. According to the 2011 annual Licensing Industry Survey released in June by the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association (LIMA), global licensed product royalty revenues reached $5.065 billion in 2010. Character licensing, from all types of entertainment venues, represents the lion’s share at 47%, while art licensing equals about 2.5%. Art licensing is by itself a $128 million dollar industry.

Licensing is the simple concept of taking your copyrighted art, and contractually arranging and agreeing to lease the rights to one or more images to manufacturers who develop product with the artwork and then sell product to retailers to market to consumers.

So, licensing is really both a business and distribution model. It’s simply one way of getting your art onto product, and out to the consumers. The licensing model is especially appealing to artists, since it doesn’t require you to invest your money up front in production, or to learn the complex in’s and out’s of manufacturing and retail distribution.

The basic players in an art licensing agreement are these: the artist is Licensor—the owner of the copyright. The licensor may market their art through self-representationor utilize the services of an agent. The Licensee is the entity (company or individual) who licenses the rights from you. Most often it is a manufacturer, but it could also be a retailer, or an advertising sponsor. The contract—the legal agreement between the two of you—is the Licensing Agreement.

Like any business venture you might be considering, I recommend you study the industry to see if it is right for you and learn all you can about what it will take to succeed in art licensing. So Rule #1 is that you must learn all you can about art licensing before you commit significant time and efforts. I can’t guarantee it will be easy, but if it’s right for you and you are willing to put in the effort, it can be rewarding and lucrative. Reading this blog series is a great place to start and here are some additional resources that also may be helpful.

About J’net Smith

U.S. Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference, January 12-15 New Orleans, LA

Lisa Canning — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:09:57 +0000

In 2012 The United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE) will be held from January 12-15th in New Orleans, LA. My colleague from University of Illinois, Joyce Thomas and myself will be attending to present material from a paper we wrote, with another Univ of IL colleague, Deana McDonough, about The IAE and our learning cloud model. I am excited to be presenting my first paper about The IAE at this conference. This will be the 3rd time I have attended USASBE. I think it’s a valuable resource and a great networking opportunity. I hope you will consider attending. You can register here.

About USASBE

USASBE is the largest independent, professional, academic organization in the world dedicated to advancing the discipline of entrepreneurship. With over 1000 members from universities and colleges, for-profit businesses, nonprofit organizations, and the public sector, USASBE is a diverse mix of professionals that share a common commitment to fostering entrepreneurial attitudes and behaviors.

USASBE is built around four pillars that guide the ongoing development of our organization. The pillars include:

entrepreneurship education
entrepreneurship research
entrepreneurship outreach and
public policy

By fostering advances in each of these areas, we support the development of entrepreneurship educators who in turn will create next generation of entrepreneurs.

The roots of USASBE go back over fifty years to the founding of the International Council for Small Business (ICSB) in 1957. The ICSB was founded in the United States as a comprehensive organization of outstanding researchers, scholars, teachers, administrators, and public policy makers interested in entrepreneurship and small business. As the organization grew, members decided to form national affiliates, and the U. S. Affiliate of the ICSB was established in 1981. In 1985, the name was changed to the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship (USASBE). Today, USASBE is an independent academic organization with its own unique mission, while also retaining its affiliation with ICSB.

USASBE is a community of scholars, entrepreneurship program and center directors, government officials, directors of entrepreneurship support organizations and others. It is a community that works to enhance our understanding of the phenomenon of entrepreneurship and to identify best practices in how to teach entrepreneurial principles and facilitate the creation and growth of new for-profit and social ventures. Ours is a culture of exploring, experimenting, innovating, sharing, challenging and giving.

As leaders in the emerging discipline of entrepreneurship, our members are making an impact on how we think about, conduct research on, design public policy around, and interact with entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial ventures. They are extending the field of knowledge and shaping the discipline to reflect the opportunities and demands of the 21st Century.

Building a Business Base for Creative Entrepreneurs

Guest Blogger — Fri, 04 Nov 2011 12:22:16 +0000

Written by Randy Woods, October 25th. Appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine online.

Andy Fife's mission is to provide a solid financial foundation for entrepreneurial artists.

In the drizzly Pacific Northwest, Andy Fife is a rainmaker for the region’s thriving arts community. Through Shunpike, a Seattle-based arts organization, he has helped nurture more than 2,500 creative enterprises across Washington, providing a solid financial foundation for the region’s most prominent entrepreneurial artists.

So what’s his big secret? “We mostly focus on writing a business plan, creating a marketing plan, securing funding, establishing lines of credit,” Fife says. “That, itself, could be considered innovative in the art world, where most people aren’t trained in the business fundamentals.”

“Artists always do badly with money,” admits Jennie Shortridge, a Shunpike client and co-founder of Seattle7Writers, a collective of published Pacific Northwest authors. “We just aren’t very good with spreadsheets and bank accounts and, frankly, we don’t always want to be.”

That’s where Shunpike comes in, offering two tiers of service for its financially challenged members. “Basically, we’re a service hub for all the back-office functions,” Fife explains. “Our mission is to handle all of that for them and let them spend their time doing what they do best, which is producing art.”

Shunpike’s first-tier program offers grant-writing services, tax-exempt 503(c)(3) status and consultation about fundraising, finance and advisory board development for a $100 annual fee and a 7 percent cut of revenue. The second tier, called the Partner Artist program, offers all of the above, plus assistance in bookkeeping, taxes, licensing, permitting, human resources, payroll and insurance. The same $100 annual fee applies, plus 10 percent of revenue.

Even in the shadow of the Great Recession, Shunpike appears to have no shortage of potential clients. A 2010 report by Americans for the Arts said Seattle is home to 4,370 businesses in the “creative industries”–museums, symphonies, architecture, advertising–employing more than 21,000 people.

When Fife joined as executive director in 2007, Shunpike’s annual budget was $400,000; today, it’s $1.4 million. About 55 percent of these funds come through donations by government agencies, corporations, foundations and individuals, he says. The rest comes from consulting fees and percentages of Partner Artists’ revenues. Shunpike, now in its 10th year, has about 115 Partner Artists on its roster.

Providing aid to nonprofits is Shunpike’s specialty, but the group also doles out advice to for-profit ventures. Katrina Toft, co-founder and owner of Two Ravens Studio in Tacoma, Wash., sought marketing and financial advice from Shunpike in 2010 when she and her business partners wanted to grow their metalworking business.

“Andy created a diagram for us, explaining how to get bank loans, address environmental concerns and go through the permitting process,” Toft says. “We also learned to be open to not just the standard methods of marketing. He gave us great advice on utilizing social media and venturing into Facebook.”

“It’s so important to learn business skills,” says Teresa Thuman, producing artistic director of the nonprofit Sound Theatre Company, a Shunpike Partner Artist since 2006. “We had no real structure when we started, so Shunpike essentially became our business office. They helped out tremendously with grant-writing, licensing and fundraising.”

Fife recommended that Sound Theatre eliminate overhead by renting out local theaters. He is also a champion of pooling artists into collectives and raising funds via online crowdsourcing, much the way Kickstarter works, with incremental PayPal donations.

“You might find other organizations that will help support your business, but no one else will support both your business and your artwork,” Thuman says. “There’s really no other organization like Shunpike.”

Soon that may no longer be true. Fife says he may try to export the Shunpike model. “The strength is that it’s a very local approach,” he says, “but there’s no reason it can’t be repeated in other cities.”

More Foundations Using Investment Assets to Achieve Their Missions

Lisa Canning — Sun, 30 Oct 2011 12:30:58 +0000

This is pretty interesting news for all of you out there with missions that have no funding sources- yet. All we need to do now is find out which foundations have missions clearly inline with our own…

What does the term Mission Investing mean? A growing group of foundations are increasingly thinking about their organizations as stewards of resources that can be applied to address some of the most challenging problems of their unique missions and program areas. The field of mission investing (MI) is making significant strides. Mission investing is another way for foundations to effect transformational change by using their long-term patient capital to invest in under-served markets.

“More Foundations Use Investment Assets to Achieve Their Missions.” Foundation Center Press Release 10/26/11.

The number of community and private foundations using their investment portfolios to help achieve a social benefit is growing, a new report from the Foundation Center finds.

According to Key Facts on Mission Investing (see link below, 4 page PDF), which benchmarks for the first time foundations’ engagement with mission-related investment, one in seven of the foundations surveyed for the report are directing their assets to market-rate mission-related investments or below-market-rate program-related investments (PRIs). The report also finds that more than half the foundations making mission-related investments started doing so within the past five years, while 28 percent started to do so within the past two years.

By investing endowment funds with an eye to advancing their missions, these grantmakers — which together hold some 20 percent of all U.S. foundation assets — are extending the public benefit of their financial resources, the report argues. While all foundations are allowed by law to make PRIs, which generally yield below-market-rate returns and count toward a foundation’s charitable distribution requirement, market-rate investments that support a foundation’s programmatic goals do not count toward the distribution requirement.

In 2010, private foundations in the U.S. awarded approximately $46 billion in grants, while their assets totaled more than $600 billion. “Foundations are striving for greater impact,” said Steven Lawrence, the Foundation Center’s director of research and principal author of the report. “Mission investing puts foundation asset dollars to work in ways that have the potential to go far beyond the social impact of their grantmaking dollars.”

Click Here to Read a 2011 Keyfacts Report on Mission Investing

The Value of One Tiny Tweet

Lisa Canning — Wed, 26 Oct 2011 10:45:59 +0000

Last night when I sat down to get ready to begin my social media class, I started up my computer and up popped Oprah Winfrey’s face and a Skype request to connect to her. Talk about a surprise. I wrote Oprah about nine months ago. She is the only “celebrity” I have ever written a letter to. Think it’s really her? Doubt it. Scammers are everywhere online.

Anyway, my social media class is run by Angel Oakley, Unicatis Marketing- quite the “branding” gal. In class we spent some time talking about the value of Twitter. Angel shared this video with us. It’s an interesting clip of Gary Vaynerchuk hanging out with ” The Harper Studio peeps“. Watch how he converts them into Twitter believers.

So did Gary convert you into a twitter believer too? He couldn’t convert me because I already have a ( fledgling) Twitter account @IAEOU. Remember: business skills are to artists like vowels are to words- pretty basic and necessary. But Gary did convince me to follow him @garyvee. Learn more about Gary @ http://garyvaynerchuk.com/

Gary Vaynerchuk is a 35 year old New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best-Selling author who is also a self-trained wine and social media expert. Gary does not claim to be a ‘techie’, but in 2005, he began video blogging and now has close to 1 million followers on Twitter and was included in Business Week’s list of the top 20 people every entrepreneur should follow. Pretty amazing self made creative entrepreneur really.

Fundraising Gala Economics

Guest Blogger — Wed, 19 Oct 2011 13:19:37 +0000

Written by Seth Godin on October 15th, 2011

The email feels like a welcome one. “I’d like to invite you to…”

And then you find out it’s a charity gala. 500 people at an expensive hotel, eating a not very good meal and paying a great deal for the privilege. Sure, some of the money goes to charity (but too much goes for the chicken in white sauce). Sure, it’s entirely possible you will have ten interesting minutes of conversation, and yes, it may be that you’ll hear a speech that will move you.

But I think we can agree that this is a ridiculous way to efficiently raise money for a good cause.

Galas and charity auctions and other events designed to raise money from the inner circle of a community suffer because they’re conflating several benefits at once.

First, being invited to a gala feels like a gift. It’s nice to be asked, to be noticed, to be included. The socially appropriate response is to accept the gift and say yes.

Notice that the invitation isn’t being accepted because it’s a good cause, it’s being accepted because it’s a social obligation.

Second, there’s a set of benefits to both the invited and the inviter. The gala is held in a reasonably enjoyable venue, with lots of money spent on wine and food and such, all to benefit the attendees, not the charity. The inviter gets the social gratification of hosting, plus the added benefit of feeling charitable. The guest gets the social benefit of being included in this stratum of society, of having an excuse for a night out, and possibly the commercial benefit (lawyers, brokers, etc.) of being part of a trusted circle.

Again, none of this benefits the charity. [And having a big donor pay for the whole thing changes nothing.]

For this reason, the gala is actually corrupting. Attendees are usually driven by social and selfish motivations to attend, and thus the philanthropic element of giving–just to give–is removed.

Attending an event that’s dramatically overpriced for what’s delivered to the recipient is a signaling mechanism as well. It says to the other attendees, “I can afford to overpay and so can you, we must be similar, and our hearts are in the right place as well.”

Do elements of our community need gala-like events to lubricate their social interactions? Quite probably. It’s a tradition, particularly in certain cities and tribes. But is it a scalable alternative to selling generosity for its own sake?

About Seth Godin

SETH GODIN has written thirteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

American Way Magazine calls him, “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and his blog is perhaps the most popular in the world written by a single individual. His latest book, Poke The Box is a call to action about the initiative you’re taking – in your job or in your life, and Seth once again breaks the traditional publishing model by releasing it through The Domino Project.

As an entrepreneur, he has founded dozens of companies, most of which failed. Yoyodyne, his first internet company, was funded by Flatiron and Softbank and acquired by Yahoo! in 1998. It pioneered the use of ethical direct mail online, something Seth calls Permission Marketing. He was VP of Direct Marketing at Yahoo! for a year.

His latest company, Squidoo.com, is ranked among the top 125 sites in the US (by traffic) by Quantcast. It allows anyone (even you) to build a page about any topic you’re passionate about. The site raises money for charity and pays royalties to its million plus members.

Building Your Portfolio Career Part 3: Doing the Math

David Cutler — Tue, 20 Sep 2011 11:00:49 +0000

This is part 3 on a series devoted to Portfolio Careers.

Part 1 of this series examined the kinds of work streams that might be included in your portfolio career. Part 2 unveiled 21 incomes models that can be integrated. Now it’s time to do the math, and determine your Portfolio Career Plan (PCP). As you’ll see, this process is quite logical. All you need is a pencil, paper, calculator, and a little creativity.

STEP 1: WRITE DOWN INCOME STREAMS

Determine all potential income streams that will play a role in your portfolio, as was discussed in Part 1. For this hypothetical profile, let’s consider the income streams of musician Arty Q. Lation:

Stream 1: Private teaching

Stream 2: Gigs

Parties
Restaurants
Concerts

Stream 3: Commissions

Stream 4: Part-time “day job”

As you can see, Arty maintains four large-scale income streams, one of which has three sub-streams.

STEP 2: PROJECT ANNUAL INCOME GOAL

When projecting a blueprint for your portfolio career, the first number to determine is your Annual Income Goal (AIG). How much do you hope to earn in a year? How much do you need to live?

“As much as possible” is an unacceptable copout. Be specific. And here’s a hint: Earn more than you spend.

Your AIG should take a number of factors into consideration: mortgage/rent, utilities, transportation, family expenses, health insurance, debt, savings goals, etc. And don’t forget Uncle Sam! For suggestions on budgeting, click here.

For now, let’s suppose your AIG is $50,000.

SteSTEP 3: PROJECT INCOME PER STREAM

How much Income Per Stream (IPS) do you project throughout the year? Obviously, the total amount identified should equal or exceed your AIG. If they don’t, there are three choices?

Lower your AIG
Add new streams
Increase amount earned within various stream

At this point, you’re still guesstimating. What is a reasonable amount that could be earned from each activity? For example:

Stream 1: Private teaching $20,000
Stream 2: Gigs $22,000
Stream 3: Commissions $3000
Stream 4: Part-time “day job” $5000

TOTAL: $50,000

STEP 4: DETERMINE PATH TO REACHING IPS

At this point, figure out what you need to do to reach your IPS targets. As you break down things further, numbers may need to be adjusted in one direction or the other. Here is what Arty eventually determined.

Stream 1: Private teaching $21,600

Arty charges $45 per hour for private students, and the average student takes 40 lessons per year. He will secure 12 hours worth of students.

12 hours x 40 lessons per year x $45 per hour = $21,600

Stream 2: Gigs $19,800

As we saw above, Arty is involved with three categories of gigs. His wedding band plays around two private parties per month (24 per year), paying an average of $250 per engagement. He has a regular restaurant gig 2 nights per week, around 45 weeks per year when accounting for vacation and sick leave. While compensation is just $100 per evening (plus dinner!), the work is steady and fulfilling. He also performs concerts with various groups. Though these engagements are sporadic, they average about $400 per month.

PARTIES: 24 gigs x ca. $250 = $6000

RESTAURANT: 2 nights per week x 45 weeks per year x $100 = $9000

CONCERTS: ca. $400 per month x 12 months = $4800

TOTAL: $6000 + $9000 + 4800 = 19,800

Stream 3: Commissions $3000

Arty has already lined up 3 consortium commissions for this year, paying $1000 apiece.

3 commissions x $1000 each = $3000

Stream 4: Part-time “day job” $5400

Arty has a part-time music store job, which pays $10 per hour. He is employed around 12 hours per week, and will probably work the equivalent of 45 weeks throughout the year.

12 hours per week x 45 weeks x $10 per hour = $5400

TOTAL: $49,800

$21,600 + 19,800 + $300 + $5400 = $49,800

Notice how several of the IPS numbers changed during this phase. That’s a common part of the process.

The nice part of breaking things down like this is that Arty knows exactly what he must do to make his AIG a reality.

STEP 5: ANALYSIS

In this blueprint, Arty came pretty close to his AIG. Just $200 under. If nervous that this model cuts things too close, he might try securing another commission, getting another student, asking for an extra hour per week at work, or hustling gigs just a bit harder.

The model above doesn’t used hyped numbers or an unrealistic scenario for portfolio career musicians. If anything, it shows that making $50,000 annually in this field is absolutely possible with the right blueprint. Even in this age of unemployment.

Obviously, if your goal is $75,000, $100,000, or $150,000, the career puzzle becomes more complex. Will you add more streams? Charge more per hour? Work more hours in a given stream?

But whatever you do, figure out your PCP on purpose. Do the math and think things through. This is too important to leave to chance.

Do you know about credit karma?

Lisa Canning — Tue, 06 Sep 2011 12:31:30 +0000

Credit Karma offers a new way to track your credit score and a unique way to benefit from it. A credit score is one of the most important components of a consumer’s financial profile and healthy credit is essential to be able to borrow money to launch a business. At Credit Karma you can get a truly free credit score with no hidden costs or obligations. They believe free access to one’s credit score is a fundamental consumer right. I could not agree more!

Save money with Credit Karma’s personalized debt management recommendations

Credit Karma “pays” for your free credit report by selling advertising to companies interested in getting your business. So as a result, offers to reduce your credit card interest rate, or find a better mortgage will be presented to you along with your odds of being approved based on your credit report.

Track & Optimize Your Score with Credit Karma’s free tools & Calculators

Now you can quickly and easily track your credit score, credit attributes, and debt over time from a single source. Credit Karma offers free interactive tools and simulators to help you learn how to anticipate changes in your credit score.

Credit Karma is a completely free pro-consumer service dedicated to demystifying the credit landscape. Their goal is to empower consumers to more actively manage their credit and their financial health with no string attached.

I just love this site and their philosophy!

To get started go here: http://www.creditkarma.com

Building Your Portfolio Career Part 2: The 21 Income Models

David Cutler — Mon, 05 Sep 2011 11:00:53 +0000

This is part 2 in a series devoted to Portfolio Careers. For Part 1: Imagining the Mix, click here.

If you have money to invest, any financial advisor worthy of their corner office will suggest you diversify the portfolio. In other words, don’t put all your eggs in one basket. Include a variety of investment types so that if one tanks, others will soften the blow. This balanced approach allows multiple ways to reach your financial goals.

The same logic can be applied to multiple-stream careers. Incorporate a number of income types in your portfolio.

Below are descriptions of 21 income models.

#	INCOME MODEL	DESCRIPTION	EXAMPLES
1	Full-time salary with benefits	Reliable, secure income year round. Because benefits are included, each paycheck is worth more than its face value. Cons include the large time commitment (will you have time to focus on other areas of your portfolio career?) and all of the disadvantages that accompany working for someone else.	College teacher, arts educator, full-time orchestra position, arts administration
2	Full-time salary without benefits	Comparable to the previous category, except that you are responsible for additional expenses (health insurance, retirement savings, etc.)	Same as above
3	Part-time salary	Part time work is also consistent and reliable. This solution requires less time, but also earns smaller paychecks. With this option, you still must play by someone else’s rule book.	Part-time arts supply store employee, part-time teacher, part-time ensemble member
4	Consistent self-employed income	Dependable, recurring work. Self-employed options in general offer you more flexibility and control, but are riskier. When things go wrong, you have no one to blame but yourself.	Weekly gig at a restaurant, private weekly dance lesson
5	Sporadic commitment	An employer is committed to hiring you whenever relevant work becomes available, but the number of opportunities is undetermined.	A business hires your band to play company parties
6	One off	An isolated gig unlikely to lead to additional work. Like a one night stand, these gigs might be fun and provide short-term benefits. But afterwards, you’re back to square one.	Out of town wedding gig
7	Lump sum	You receive a lump sum to perform work over a certain period of time. The good news is that compensation is guaranteed up front, and pay day feels great. But you must be disciplined not to exhaust this income before the next installment arrives.	Private acting teacher who charges by the semester
8	Multi-pronged payments	You receive a certain amount now, and the remainder of payment later.	Deposit for an upcoming gig, the rest of which is paid after work is complete
9	Flexible pay	For this category, a fixed amount of your time is required, but the amount earned is variable.	Gig where you work for a percentage of “the door”; the bigger the audience, the more you earn
10	Work-for-hire	You earn a fixed rate, but the amount of time required is variable.	A $3000 commission that might take anywhere from a week to a year to create
11	High ticket item	Every portfolio should include at least one high ticket item that pays handsomely. It’s hard to make a respectable living when juggling $50 or $200 gigs. Even if there aren’t many purchases in the first couple years, design some sellable offerings.	An in demand keynote speech that pays $2000, a unique arts event for businesses that commands $10,000 for the quartet
12	Freebie	Some opportunities don’t pay any direct income. Only take this work if it 1) provides another kind of valuable return (increased reputation, great networking, media coverage) or 2) has a high probably of leading indirectly to income. In most case, “employers” who propose freebies but promise “great exposure” are not to be believed.	House concert for a potential donor
13	Grants	Grants can provide support for projects or an income source that allows you to focus attention on that project. These competitive awards are far from guaranteed.	Grant that pays for you to create art
14	Prizes	Similarly, some competitions offer cash prizes. Obtaining this revenue is, well, competitive.	Van Cliburn International Piano Competition
15	Gifts	Donors may offer financial support if they believe in your mission or project. (If you have nonprofit status, donations are tax deductable!) Contributors are more likely to donate to projects than personal income, but perhaps some of that money is directed to pay workers like yourself.	Crowd-funding campaign through Kickstarter
16	Fundraisers	A huge array of fundraisers (from selling candy to auctions/raffles or donation-based events) are possible weapons for generating income.	Theater event where all proceeds are invested into purchasing new lighting equipment
17	Product sales	When selling a physical product, the investment of time and money is typically on the front end. Once it exists (and the initial investment has been paid off), additional income can be generated at gigs, through your website, or from other distribution methods.	CD, book, scores, art pieces, DVDs, photos, crafts
18	Advertising income	In order for advertisers to consider this option, you must have a platform and significant audience that offers the sponsor clear benefits.	Local businesses advertising in a program, brass instrument manufacturer advertising on popular blog for brass players
19	Passive income	Passive income describes anytime you earn money without working directly for it.	Private arts school director who earns a percentage when other people teach lessons, a digital item that sells online
20	Royalties	Royalties paid when your art is sold or reproduced.	A jingle you recorded is aired, a composition of yours is performed
21	Investment income	Investments in stocks, bonds, and mutual funds can generate income. The greater the risk, the greater the potential return.	Shares in Apple

As you can see, there are quite a few categories of income available to artists. While few portfolio careers take advantage of all the options above, including a variety is often a key component to reaching financial goals.

Stay tuned for Part 3…

From Gang Member to Thriving Entrepreneur

Guest Blogger — Mon, 15 Aug 2011 14:05:42 +0000

Appeared in Forbes, Written by Dan Schawbel, contributor

I recently caught up with Ryan Blair, who is a serial entrepreneur and author of the new book “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain.” Ryan established his first company, 24-7 Tech when he was only twenty-one years old. Since then, he has created and actively invested in multiple start-ups and has become a self-made multimillionaire. After he sold his company ViSalus Sciences to Blyth in early 2008, the global recession took the company to the brink of failure resulting in a complete write off of the stock and near bankruptcy. Ryan as CEO went “all in” betting his last million dollars on its potential and turned the company around from the edge of failure to more than $150,000,000 a year in revenue in only 16 months winning the coveted DSN Global Turn Around Award in 2010. In this interview, Ryan talks about how he re-branded himself after being in a gang, the issues with the education system, and more.

How did you shake your criminal record and re-brand yourself?

I remember when I was working my way up in the first company that employed me, I used to have nightmares that one day they’d find out about that I had been in a gang, call me into the office, and fire me. In the beginning I didn’t talk much about what I’d been through. But eventually when I got to a point where I had established myself as a professional entrepreneur, I embraced my past, used it as part of my branding, and crossed over.

In this day and age people want authenticity. Now that the world is social, people know all about you. Assuming you decided to join humanity, that is. It turned out that as I started showing my true identity, so did the rest of the world. One of the reasons my company ViSalus is one of the fastest growing companies in the industry today is because we share our good, bad, and ugly. Like sharing a video of me playing a practical joke on one of my employees, for instance. As a result of embracing authenticity, I turned the company around from near bankruptcy to over $15 million a month today. Unlike our competitors, our distributors and customers know exactly who we are, and I’d say that corporate America has a lot of catching up to do.

What’s your take on the educational system? Will a college degree help or hurt your chances at starting a successful business?

As a product of Los Angeles’s public school system, in a state with the highest dropout rate in the nation (about 20 percent), I can tell you from personal experience that some of our brightest minds are being misidentified because of a one-size-fits-all learning environment. Because I had ADD and dyslexia I never got past the 9th grade.

I recall sitting with a career counselor in continuation high school, being told that I didn’t have the intellect or aptitude to become a doctor or a lawyer. They suggested a trade school, construction, something where I’d be working with my hands.

The irony is that today I employ plenty of doctors and lawyers. Would you rather be a doctor or a lawyer, or a guy who writes a check to doctors and lawyers?

If President Obama phoned me today and told me he was appointing me Educational Czar, I’d turn education into a business, a capitalistic, revenue driven system, creating a competitive environment where each school is trying to attract customers, based on quality of customer experience.

As an entrepreneur, having a college degree or getting classroom training won’t hurt your chances for starting a successful business, but it’s ultimately not necessary. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers,” he makes a point that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master a skill set at a professional level. That means experience, over traditional education.

What three business lessons did you learn from juvenile detention?

I learned a lot about business and life from my time spent incarcerated. I like to call these pieces of wisdom my Philosophies from the Jail Cell to the Boardroom. One of the biggest lessons I learned was that in Juvenile Hall, new guys always get tested. When I went in the first time, I was just a skinny little white kid and I had to learn fast. People will be bumping into you on the basketball court, or asking you for things, testing to see if you’re tough.

And everyone knew that if a guy let someone take their milk during lunchtime, they weren’t as tough as they looked. Soon you’d be taking their milk everyday, and so would everyone else. It’s the same for business, if you give people the impression that you can be taken, you will be.

Also, adaptation is the key to survival. In jail the guy who rises to power isn’t always the strongest or the smartest. As prisoners come and go, he’s the one that adapts to the changing environment, while influencing the right people. You can use this in business, staying abreast of market trends, changing your game plan as technology shifts, and adapting our strategy around your company’s strongest competitive advantages. Darwin was absolutely right — survival is a matter of how you respond to change.

The last lesson I got from jail is that you have to learn how to read people. You don’t know who to trust. It’s the same for business because a lot of people come into my office with a front. I have to figure out quickly who is the real deal and who isn’t. Based on that fact, I developed an HR system that I use when interviewing potential new hires that I call the Connect Four Technique. Yep, you guessed it. I make my future employees — and I have hundreds of them — play me in Connect Four.

Can everyone be an entrepreneur? Can it be learned or do you have to be born with a special gene?

No. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur. There are two types of people in the world, domesticated and undomesticated. Some people are so domesticated through their social programming and belief system, so employee minded, that they could never be entrepreneurs. And they shouldn’t even bother trying. The irony is that this is coming from a guy who teaches millions of people how to become entrepreneurs. I’m literally selling a book about becoming an entrepreneur, telling you that not everyone should read it.

To be an entrepreneur, you have to have fighting instincts. Are instincts genetic? I don’t think so, but you ‘inherit’ them from your upbringing. Now, if you’re smart you can reprogram your beliefs. But there are still some people that would rather watch other people be entrepreneurs, like the people in the Forbes “richest celebrity list” than take the time to reprogram themselves, and live their lives like rock stars, too.

Is there a need for business plans these days?

When you’ve really got the entrepreneurial bug, the last thing you want to do is sit down and write a business plan. It’s the equivalent of writing a book about playing the guitar before actually knowing how to play the guitar. You don’t know what your new business is going to be like. And just like a guitar, a business will have to be tweaked and tuned multiple times, and you’ll need long practice sessions and repetition, before you can get even one successful song out of it.

In my book “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain,” I actually included a chapter called “I Hate Business Plans” where I talk about this. Most business plans that get sent to me, I close within seconds of opening them up because they are full of fluff and hype. A business plan should be simple, something you could scribble on a scratch pad. No more than three pages of your business objectives, expected results, and the strategy to get there. But the best business plan is one built from a business that is already up and running and that matches the business’s actual results.

The point is that you should be so obsessed with your business that you can’t sleep at night because that’s all you can think about. And that’s your ultimate “business plan.”

About Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, a full-service personal branding agency, and author of “Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future.”

Best Web Sites to Find Grants Outside of The Arts

Lisa Canning — Mon, 08 Aug 2011 12:14:33 +0000

This list was posted on Don Griesmann Nonprofit Blog on 7/12, 2011

How can the arts grow outside into other sectors and strands of society? One way is by finding new sources of funding from new sectors outside of the arts who can appreciate and understand the value we can bring to other subject matter.

The parameters for inclusion on this list of databases was:

no fees
open to all
meaningful list
broadly based
user friendly
timely

The Foundation Center has an excellent Guide to Funding Research for grantseekers that should be read by everyone, staff, consultant, volunteer or board member, starting out for the first or 30^th time searching for grants – http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/tutorials/gfr/ According to the Foundation Center there were over $7.6 billion in grants given to 15,675 international recipients in 42,169 foundation grants. http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/maps/

· Grants.gov is an excellent source for timely notice of federal grants, sorted by opening or closing date over the past 7 days. It includes domestic and international grants. I suggest this should be a “favorite” if you are interested in federal grants because it changes regularly http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do?mode=Search&dates=7&docs1=doc_open_checked
· Federal Grants Wire, a useful search tool for finding federal grants, government grants and loans. They currently index 2,481 federal grants and loans organized by sponsoring agency, applicant type, subject area http://www.federalgrantswire.com/
· Federal Business Opportunities (Fed Biz Ops) with 25,000 – 32,000 contract opportunities, some for nonprofits. This is not an easy site to navigate but if you are looking for business contracts rather than grants this where you can start https://www.fbo.gov/?s=home&tab=list&mode=list
· NonProfitExpert.com, detailed listing of grants and good information for grant seekers; review the categories listed on the left hand side. http://www.nonprofitexpert.com/federal_grants.htm
· Jon Harrison and Michigan State University have a comprehensive list of funders alphabetized by subject http://staff.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/2sgalpha.htm
· Youth Grants for NPOs working in that service area http://www.youthtoday.org/grants.cfm
· Rural Assistance Center has an excellent directory of foundations with funding links by topics, and links to state resources http://www.raconline.org/funding/funding_topic.php
· Common Grants material has a list of foundations that accept their universal grant application form. The list of foundations is in alphabetical order and is searchable by location, program type and beneficiary http://www.commongrants.com/participating-funders
· Meyer Foundation’s list about funding opportunities, outside Meyer, includes information on ways to strengthen nonprofit organizations, research about people and communities that Meyer cares about, and useful links for nonprofits and grantmakers
http://www.meyerfoundation.org/resources/Other+Funding+Opportunities/
· FundsNet Services.com has excellent information about grants and you can browse through categories of grants from Animal & Wildlife Grants to Women Grants – http://www.fundsnetservices.com/
· Women’s Funding Network connects and strengthens more than 160 organizations that fund women’s solutions across the globe http://www.wfnet.org/the-network/member-directory
· Grant Makers in Health has partners listed and linked alphabetically -http://www.gih.org/link_no_cat2664/link_no_cat.htm
· Environmental Grantmaker Association has an alphabetical list and links – http://www.ega.org/funders/funder.php?op=list
· Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation funders are listed at the University of Wisconsin grants’ library http://grants.library.wisc.edu/organizations/animals.html
· California Polytechnic State University, listed by subject in alphabetical order - http://www.calpoly.edu/~grants/3_FoundSubj.html
· Foundation Center has a list of the 100 largest U.S. grantmaking foundations ranked by the market value of their assets, based on the most current audited financial data in the Foundation Center’s database as of April 27, 2011. http://fdncenter.org/findfunders/topfunders/top100assets.html
· ChristianGrants.com features links by key words and by work projects including building campaigns, program support, outreach ministries and more http://www.christiangrants.com/
· National Association for the Exchange of Industrial Resources (NAEIR) features a catalog of donated merchandise for supplies http://www.naeir.org/
· A reader suggested – ScanGrants™ is designed to facilitate the search for funding sources to enhance individual and community health – medical researchers, social workers, nurses, students, community-based health educators, academics and others
http://www.scangrants.com/

For international grants:

Canada’s CharityVillage has a section with a list of grantors in alphabetical order, searchable by categories http://www.charityvillage.com/cv/nonpr/nonpr17.asp
Canada funders can be found on FundsNet Services.com http://www.fundsnetservices.com/searchresult.php?sbcat_id=29
Nobel Peace Prize has a list of international foundations http://www.nobelpeaceforum.org/grantsandrelatedresources.htm
Grants from foundations aimed at United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and other international funders at Fundsnet Services.com http://www.fundsnetservices.com/showcats.php?sbcat_id=10
Jon Harrison’s list of Women in International Development, a compilation of web pages of potential interest to NGOs seeking funding opportunities related to women in international development- http://staff.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/2wid.htm
The International Human Rights Funders Group has a grants tool designed to enable both grantmakers and grantseekers to search for human rights funders by several key criteria: areas of rights funding, activities supported and geographic focus at http://ihrfg.org/funder-directory-search
Grant Makers without Borders does not provide grants but does have an excellent directory of foundations and other organizations interested in international grantmaking http://www.internationaldonors.org/advicegs/index.htm
LGBTQ Funders Directory provides information on funders of organizations and projects working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) communities. All of the groups included in the directory have provided financial support, of varying types, to LGBTQ programs. http://www.lgbtfunders.org/seekers/directory.cfm
ChristianGrants.com features international opportunities with links by key words and by work projects including building campaigns, program support, outreach ministries and more http://www.christiangrants.com/
Grantmakers Online.com, an interactive database of world-wide funders, in Beta form, and a little clumsy but highly useful, http://www.grantmakersonline.com/

For other international listing see the companion piece, below, about free e-newsletters that provides timely notice of grant opportunities -

Through the Looking-Glass for International Grant Opportunities

http://dongriesmannsnonprofitblog.blogspot.com/2008/10/through-looking-glass-for-international.html

For e-newsletters about grants, see

How to Find Grant Opportunities

http://dongriesmannsnonprofitblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/how-to-find-grant-opportunities.html

Are you sure your organization is ready to receive and appropriately account for the assistance from a grant? Before you say “Yes”, please read this

One Phase of Nonprofit Organizational Readiness for Grant Funding – Recordkeeping

http://tinyurl.com/3tlrylr

How can the arts add more value to society?

Lisa Canning — Mon, 01 Aug 2011 12:15:53 +0000

What kinds of new jobs in the arts can we create? What combination of skills do we need to unlock new economic opportunities for us and to change society’s perceptions of what value the arts deliver? How can we add more to GDP by building hybrid careers that transmit and translate all of our skills across all sectors and strands?

Below are two lists that I think are valuable to creatively thinking through the possibilities. The first are interdisciplinary sites focused on the development of leadership skills through emotional intelligence building. Embedding emotional intelligence training as part of an arts based venture can have many applications across many disciplines outside of the arts.

The second list is a list of performing artists who have already figured out how to fine-tune their artistic and creative competencies to provide experience-based learning alternatives to traditional leadership training and development. This list might provide some reflection and generate some ideas for those of you who are interested.

Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Performing Arts-based Leadership Training

NEA Research on the Value Added By Cultural Industries

Lisa Canning — Sun, 31 Jul 2011 21:26:44 +0000

Press Release from The NEA, July 19th, 2011

Cultural industries are economic powerhouses and states have the data to prove it, according to a new analysis from the National Endowment for the Arts. Drawing on data from the Bureau of Economic Analysis, Arts and the GDP: Value Added by Selected Cultural Industries is a new NEA research note that examines the value added by three selected cultural industries: (1) performing arts, sports, and museums; (2) motion pictures and sound recording; and (3) publishing (including software). Combined, these three cultural industries contributed a total of $278.4 billion to the U.S. economy in 2009. The NEA research note also looks at dollars and jobs added to individual state economies by these cultural industries.

Each year, the Bureau of Economic Analysis estimates the value added by major industry groups, including performing arts, sports, and museums. “Value added” refers to an industry’s contribution to the U.S. economy through its labor and capital, excluding material and energy costs. More detailed industry breakouts that isolate the performing arts and museums from sports are conducted every five years, most recently for 2002 data. That year, for example, value added from sports was $16.9 billion, value added from the performing arts was $7.2 billion, and value added from museums was $4.7 billion.

Key findings:

In 2009, the performing arts, sports, and museums added $70.9 billion to the U.S. economy. That same year, the motion picture and sound recording industries contributed $59.8 billion, while publishing (including software) added $147.7 billion.
Cultural industries have contributed increasingly greater amounts to the U.S. economy. Between 1987 and 2009, for example, inflation-adjusted value added by the performing arts, sports, and museums nearly doubled.
The 2007-2009 recession affected cultural production. Real value added from the performing arts, sports, and museums fell by 1.4 percent in 2008; it dipped 5.5 percent the following year. Contractions also occurred in the motion picture and sound recording industries and in publishing.

The note also analyzes how the performing arts and other cultural industries contribute to states in terms of jobs produced and value added by the cultural industry to the Gross State Product (GSP). Among those findings:

The performing arts contribute more to states with large, diverse economies, such as California and Texas. Each new dollar of value added by the performing arts industry in California adds $1.38 to that state’s economy. The comparable figure in Texas is $1.28. These findings indicate that these state economies have more of the goods and services (e.g. stage curtains, materials for scenery, sound equipment, printing of programs, advertising services) needed to increase performing arts production without having to import them from other states.
Additional spending on the performing arts generates more new jobs in Utah, North Carolina, Ohio, and Georgia. In each of these states, more than 45 new jobs are generated for every additional million dollars in performing arts production.

This is the latest in a series of NEA research notes to look at different ways to assign value to the arts. The NEA research note Arts and the GDP: Value Added by Selected Cultural Industries is available for download in the Research section of arts.gov.

About NEA research

The NEA is the only federal agency to conduct long-term and detailed analyses of arts participation. For more than 30 years, the NEA Office of Research & Analysis has produced periodic research reports, brochures, and notes on significant topics affecting artists and arts organizations, often in partnership with other federal agencies such as the U.S. Census Bureau and the Bureau of Labor Statistics.The NEA is committed to extending the conversation about arts participation by making data available to both the research community and the public at large.

About the National Endowment for the Arts

The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government. To date, the NEA has awarded more than $4 billion to support artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector. To join the discussion on how art works, visit the NEA at arts.gov.

The Next Phase of Storytelling

Guest Blogger — Wed, 27 Jul 2011 14:01:00 +0000

This post was originally published on the Acumen Fund Blog.

For the past few months, I have been reflecting on the role of the storyteller in the context of the non-profit sector and more broadly across sectors and geographies. The most obvious example of the elevated role and importance of storytelling in recent years is the famous TED Conference, which invites leading thinkers across sectors, geographies, and backgrounds to share their stories and insights about the world.

To speak from personal experience in the non-profit sector, we place tremendous emphasis on developing one’s ability to tell powerful stories. Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools we have to create empathy, raise capital, and connect people. We, the ones who travel back and forth from the slums of Kenya to the conference halls of Aspen (I just returned from the Aspen Ideas Festival), are seen as the carriers of these stories. While I have been a storyteller most of my life, my current work leads me to ask: What are my responsibilities as a storyteller?

Storytellers bear an enormous responsibility to acknowledge the world’s endless complexities. I have had the privilege to travel extensively in emerging markets (Pakistan, Senegal, Kenya, South Korea). When I travel in developed countries, I often find myself as the only one in the room who has extensive experience in the developing world. Sharing stories from these parts of the world can be an intimidating hat to wear. My advice before you tell any story is that you remind your listener of the “Danger of a Single Story.” Your experience and perspective is just one of many.

Storytellers must be dynamic. When I am in an environment where few people have been exposed to the things I have been exposed to, I am constantly observing reactions, listening to questions, and repositioning my story and tone. I have to challenge myself to continuously re-imagine the different sides of one story, and craft my message in a way that pushes others to question their perspective – but in a way that is not so jarring that they will unable to really hear what I have to say. This balance is critical. You must push your listeners at a rate they can absorb.

Storytelling must come from a place of empathy. A few weeks ago, I spoke to the JK Watson Fellows, young up and coming leaders in New York, and we had a long discussion about how to tell stories about individuals you have met along your journey. One of the Fellows asked me: “How do I know I am preserving the nuance and complexity of the person whom the story is about?” My advice to her was ask the protagonist of the story (whether they be a low income person in a slum or a wealthy philanthropist) what they think.

Finally Storytellers must uncover ways to be replaceable. I think we are at a moment in time of inter-connectivity and democratized technology that rather than telling other’s stories, we can find ways to empower them to tell their own stories. To give you an example of what I mean, one of the most amazing speeches I have seen to this day was delivered by Alex Sunguti, a young man born and raised in the slums of Kenya. Alex could easily take his story to a global stage. I (we) don’t need to tell his story.

I am not saying we should stop telling other people’s stories because our stories are intertwined with theirs and the reality is that this is not always possible. What I am saying is let’s figure out some levers to unlock and some new tools to use that will allow more people to tell their own stories. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are doing this on a massive scale. So we can see that technology is already helping, but let’s remember that we must drive that technology. We, the storytellers, need to let some stories go so that the voices of the world can truly be heard.

Blair Miller is Global Fellows Manager for Acumen Fund. Check out her personal blog here and follow her on Twitter at @AcuBlair.

Entrepreneur the Arts » Money

210 Social Innovation Funding Sources

CHICAGO: Join the IAE and WBEZ @ Catalyst Ranch to Celebrate Self Employment

Mini Seminar Topics Include:

Partial List of Participants Include:

Chicago! Come on out and celebrate self-employment with us! We hope to see you on January 26th.

Fair begins at 6pm @ Catalyst Ranch 656 W Randolph St # 3W, in the Polka Room

Help Us Build The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship

On behalf of everyone at The Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship – our faculty, our students, our supporters and our families - we would like to wish each of you and your family a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!

About IAE’s Progress

The IAE Needs Your Help to Bloom

Year End Giving

With this being a time to reflect on our values and beliefs, we would like to ask that you consider an offer of support for The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship. Whatever you can give will show us you value our work and care about the future of our students.

With blessings to you all for peace, love and prosperity in the New Year,

Lisa and Chuck Canning

20 Rules for Starting Your Art Licensing Business

Rule #4: Plan on 2+ years to get your art licensing business established.

Growing Starbucks: Extending Brand Uniqueness or Diluting It?

But is it possible to continue to expand the human experience of this brand while Starbucks’ transition into what Schultz hopes will be the first company to excel as both a retailer and a purveyor—in supermarkets and other mass-market channels—of consumer packaged goods?

20 Rules for Starting Your Art Licensing Business

Rule #3 Know your skills.

Technical Skills

Trend Watching

Entrepreneurial Abilities

20 Rules for Starting Your Art Licensing Business

Rule #1 Learn all you can about art licensing before committing your time and efforts.

U.S. Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference, January 12-15 New Orleans, LA

About USASBE

Building a Business Base for Creative Entrepreneurs

More Foundations Using Investment Assets to Achieve Their Missions

The Value of One Tiny Tweet

Fundraising Gala Economics

Building Your Portfolio Career Part 3: Doing the Math

Do you know about credit karma?

Save money with Credit Karma’s personalized debt management recommendations

Track & Optimize Your Score with Credit Karma’s free tools & Calculators

Building Your Portfolio Career Part 2: The 21 Income Models

From Gang Member to Thriving Entrepreneur

Best Web Sites to Find Grants Outside of The Arts

How can the arts add more value to society?

Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

Performing Arts-based Leadership Training

NEA Research on the Value Added By Cultural Industries

The Next Phase of Storytelling

On behalf of everyone at The Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship – our faculty, our students, our supporters and our families - we would like to wish each of you and your family  a very Merry Christmas and a happy and healthy New Year!