Art and Money
I was asked to give a fundraising presentation to a young women’s professional organization once. The group had an association with a girl’s empowerment nonprofit where they volunteered and for which, once a year, they’d raise money.
As the date neared I asked the director what else would be happening on the evening of my presentation. She said there would be another presentation, before mine, by the fundraising campaign managers, and then it would be my turn. “Great,” I said, “is there any way I could see their presentation slides so I could know what I’ll be following and tailor my talk appropriately?”
The campaign manager’s talk had it all. The mission of the nonprofit, pictures of girls building things and coding at computer terminals alongside mentors, the overall campaign goal, the schedule of events, main message, facts about girls in school, data-based results of girls who had gone through the program, dates of happy hour fundraiser parties, action steps for each member of the professional organization. They even had pre-loaded tweets for members to copy and paste.
They had everything I think most people think of when they think about raising money. All the hard elements. All the form.
So when my turn came, I stood and drew a yin and yang symbol on the dry erase board and on one side I wrote Form, and on the other I wrote Essence. Then I heaped due praise on the campaign manager and wrote some of the things I listed above in the “Form” side, and I informed everyone my intention was to talk about “Essence.”
I first asked them to think back to the last gift they personally had made to charity. One woman had given to an environmental organization her family has supported for a long time. Trust. Another had given to Planned Parenthood and shared impassioned words about government cuts to women’s health. Belief. Another gave to Habitat for Humanity, in another state, because her brother was involved and she wanted to be supportive. Family.
I wrote Trust, Belief, and Family into the Essence side of the yin and yang symbol.
Then I asked them, “Why is funding girls scholarships important to you? Why should anyone care?” And the electricity started to flow.
The professional women around the table began sharing deep and powerful stories about their pasts, stories of discrimination, stories of having no role models, being told they would not succeed, of feeling helpless, of wanting desperately to make a difference in girls’ lives, to help them to feel supported and empowered, to help them avoid the kinds of painful and disorienting and belittling experiences they themselves had had.
And at some point I stopped the conversation and said, “this.” And I looked around the room slowly. There were tears on faces, and there was deep connection. “This is essence,” I said, “and this is why people give.”
This, by the way is not a hierarchy. I use the yin and yang symbol for a reason. The excellent presentation about the Form of the campaign provided the scaffolding for the effort. It’s just that most people don’t have the vocabulary to talk about or the habit of considering Essence. And the result can be uninspiring transactional behavior that misses the larger truth.
No one “needs” to give to the arts.
It’s not food or fuel or shelter, and for all the reasons I’ve been talking about in this 9-part blog series we human beings have a really hard time assigning specific value – especially monetary value – to it at all.
So why does anyone give? They give because they resonate with the Essence of the art movement you have created. They are reacting to things like Kindness, Belonging, and Transformation. And there must be Trust.
Photo by Jack Harner on Unsplash
