Arts Professional Story: Paul Botts, The Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation

1) Basing your specific pitch to a foundation or corporate funder on anything other than what that funder says they want to fund.

Don’t try to “read between the lines” or whatever. Because in the first place much of what artists and art groups think they know about arts funders is outdated, over-generalized or simply dead wrong. And in the second place, foundations and corporate arts funders nowadays try quite hard to be clear and transparent with grantseekers. So read the funder’s website thoroughly first and take what they say at face value. If you still have questions then do call them and ask: they’ll be glad to talk about it, because nothing gives a funder more heartburn than receiving written proposals that they have to turn down as not even close.

2) Thinking that “the way to get grants is to start an outreach program.”

This is by far the most-pervasive urban legend about arts funding. At one time it was at least half true, but for some years now it’s been more of a trap.

General arts funders are now actually leery of arts groups creating new outreach or education programs to “chase the funding.” Lots of hard experience has taught those foundations that this is a big warning sign of organizational sloppiness, lack of focus, or desperation. Remember that arts funders are themselves non-profits carrying out a mission, and that mission is never served by having wasted grant money on an arts organization that turns out to be too poorly-led to get much of anything done.

So if you approach a foundation which lists arts and culture as something it funds and start talking about the snazzy new outreach program you started doing just last year, you might as well be wearing a big bright warning sign: “WILL SAY ANYTHING TO GET A CHECK.”

3) Thinking that “arts funders want to see artists giving back to the community by teaching.”
Same urban legend, second part:

Some funders do want to fund arts education or arts exposure for kids, and they say so. Folks at those foundations are quite knowledgeable about serious arts education and they emphatically do not think that it consists of simply getting real live artists in front of the kids. They have long since gotten over the idea that being an artist inherently makes someone a skillful teacher, or that simply taking kids to see the symphony or a Shakespeare play is a high-value exercise. (Such ideas can still fly with individual donors and perhaps help you attract board members, but with staffed arts funders they are non-starters.)

Arts education funders fund arts education organizations; that does not mean arts organizations which have added education or outreach onto their mission statements. Now if you and your organization are trained educators who happen to bring genuine artistic skills/experience to the table, then by all means approach arts education funders. They will want to hear from you, partly because you’ll be the rare exception among a much-larger pile of theater/music/dance/visual arts groups which have simply layered on some classes or workshops.

4) Thinking that “we can pay for part of our artistic director’s salary as time spent overseeing our outreach program/classes/whatever".

Nope, no chance, partly because roughly everyone on staff at foundations has worked for a non-profit and tried that very trick. Now if you do develop a serious, rigorous arts education or outreach program for which you can credibly seek grants, by all means go for it -- just don’t think that any of those grant funds will help cover any of your organization’s overhead or core staff salaries. They won’t, period. Such grants will be entirely restricted to the direct costs of the education or outreach program itself.

5) Thinking or assuming that grantseeking is just another flavor of fundraising.

Foundations and corporate foundations issue grants; individual and corporate donors make gifts. This is not just a semantic point -- it should completely change how you should think about them, approach them, and interact with them. (Count me as one arts-organization manager who for years had zero understanding of this.)

The practical applications of that difference are mostly common sense and can best emerge through experience. But just remembering the overall point (that the ways to talk to and strategize about individual or corporate donors do not correlate with approaching arts foundations) will help you avoid some pitfalls and wasted effort.

6) Thinking that you should schmooze foundation staff members or board members: take them to lunch or get them VIP tickets to your performance or whatever.

This is exhibit A of the previous general point. At best it’s irrelevant, and in more and more cases it’s actually a negative: the foundation person will start to wonder just how much time and energy you’re wasting on such nonsense rather than running your organization well and doing the art that they want to see you do.

7) Being afraid to call a foundation and ask some questions.

This is kind of the opposite extreme of the previous point, and relates to item #1 as well. A lot of folks in arts non-profits see foundation staffs as unapproachable, or worry that they’ll harm their chances for a grant by asking naive questions. This is something which foundations really regret and are trying hard to change; it’s one big reason that foundations today almost never hire program staffers who haven’t themselves been grantseekers. And just to repeat, nothing gives a funder more heartburn than receiving written proposals that aren’t plausible -- having you waste the time it takes to put together that paperwork and send it in is every foundation’s least-favorite outcome.

Really, truly there are no stupid or annoying questions aside from basic facts which you’d have found by simply reading a foundation’s website first. If after reading those written guidelines you’re still finding something unclear then do call and ask, and, of course, do really listen to the answer (in which case you’ll - if anything - earn a couple points for thoughtfulness).

8) Throwing every warm and fuzzy idea at them so something will “stick".

The term inside foundation offices is “kitchen sink proposal”, and all it really accomplishes is to inspire a lot of eye-rolling -- it’s a classic rookie grantseeker mistake that we’ve all made along the way.

Related to this you definitely want to minimize the jargon, because that’s a big thing in foundation offices and at conferences nowadays (and not just at arts foundations in particular). Foundation staffs have learned that the proposals which heavily deploy words like “synergy”, “community-based”, “issues of” and so forth are the ones least likely to be from genuinely useful and productive organizations.

[For more on this you could check out this link for a guy named Tony Proscio and download free copies of his three terrific essays published by the Edna McConnell Clark Foundation; everybody working for major foundations has read them.]

So to really impress a foundation grant reviewer you’re far better off keeping it clear, simple and to the point: describe what you do and how and why you do it. Feel free to use professional terms appropriate to your own artistic discipline, of course; but unless the jargon is really necessary and illuminating, avoid it.

9) Thinking that being artists should exempt you from needing a genuine disciplined plan for your organization.

Foundations have learned otherwise the hard way, by funding lots of arts groups that failed. What matters is not so much what your specific organizational plan is but more that you really have one: that you’re not trying to do everything all at once, that you’re managing your own group’s expectations, that you’ve looked around and examined your specific competitive position, etc. That somebody is genuinely driving the bus, basically.

A related hard-earned lesson for arts funders is the real-world truth of that maxim: that if your plan isn’t written down you don’t really have a plan. And if your plan boils down to “we can produce this year’s works if we get some grants and then we’ll figure out next year”, well...foundation staffs and boards long ago learned better than to buy into that.

10) Thinking that successful grantwriting requires a lot of specific expertise or arcane knowledge.

This is mostly untrue, and arts foundations try hard to keep it from being true. (Seeking grants from government arts agencies can get more arcane.) And after all, one strength that artists genuinely have in all this is being better than the average bear at communicating. So don’t waste money hiring an “experienced grantwriter,” and don’t listen to anyone who makes you feel that there is some special foundation code that only a specialist can properly deploy.

Now an experienced fundraising consultant can be very useful to you in understanding issues like item #5 above, or figuring out which sorts of fundraising steps make the most sense to try first second or last. That’s not at all the same as paying someone to simply compose your foundation grant applications, which is really unnecessary.


Paul Botts is the former Director of Chicago Programs for the Gaylord and Dorothy Donnelley Foundation from 2005 - 2010.   GDDF pursues a dual mission of land conservation and artistic vitality for the entire Chicago region as well as the Lowcountry of Couth Carolina; more information can be found at www.gddf.org. Paul was managing director, and before that board chair, of The Noble Fool Theater Company in Chicago; he serves on the boards of Gift Theatre Company in Chicago and of Chicagoland Theater Company at Pheasant Run in St. Charles. For 8 years ending in 2001 he was a senior staffer at the Illinois Chapter of The Nature Conservancy; earlier he had worked for a Great Lakes think tank after recovering from a short career as a daily-newspaper reporter. A Chicago native now living in Oak Park, he can also occasionally be found in small clubs around town playing the piano with these guys: www.reverbnation.com/jazzexplorers