Ben Cameron's Field Letter
Written April 15, 2006
Dear Friends,
Spring is on the way for most of us, I assume. Here in New York, we are experiencing bizarre swings of temperature and temperateness, even while we read of extreme weather patterns and storms elsewhere—patterns that raise questions in all of us but the most stubborn of minds about the impact of global warming and our personal responsibility in taking steps to be ecologically responsible. (OK, I drive a Prius—recently called a “Pious” on South Park, one of my favorite shows—so it’s really tempting to get up on my soap box.) That said, there are two questions I am being asked with increasing frequency, leading me to mull about them for this month’s Field Letter.
Topic #1: Is the 501(c)(3) Model Broken?
Although there seems to be a growing sense in some circles that the model is at least buckling under significant strain, if not broken, I easily could argue that the model is a thriving and wildly successful one. Over the last 45 years, we have seen our field grow from a handful of not-for-profit professional theatres to more than 1,400 theatres today. We now have thousands of community members donating their time, their energy, their counsel and their resources to our work; we have hundreds of thousands of individuals making personal contributions to support us; and businesses, foundations, government agencies offering their support as well—an unprecedented collaborative effort in our nation’s history to nurture and sustain the arts for the benefit of citizens in every state. The emergence of MFA programs, almost by the day it seems, and the record number of applicants to those programs suggest that we have succeeded in changing lives and are at least nominally attractive to young people as a career choice.
Yet “the 501(c)(3) is broken” is threatening to become a mantra in some circles. Talk turns with increasing frequency to the search for alternative systems for the future—a quest fuelled to some degree by the venture capital movement and its impact on redefining a for-profit sector. Are there comparable new ways for those of us in the not-for-profit world to think about our economic structure? In many conversations, I hear young artists and managers especially descrying the collapse of the system and saying that they don’t want to go the not-for-profit route but only rarely does the conversation go far beyond fiscal agents or refashioning the grant system to allow groups to receive grants without the encumbrance of boards and administrative structures that traditionally are part of the system.
What do we really mean by “breakdown?” What are the specific flaws or breaking points? On a purely logistical level, certain frustrations tend to dominate conversations—an inordinate amount of time, money and energy are increasingly spent in the struggle for resources, rather than in pursuit of the work we feel called to do. Board meetings take more time, more energy; funding calls take more time, more energy; surveys and efforts to measure results and evaluation—each of which seems to need to be tailored for different audiences—are increasingly oppressive. According to Daring to Lead 2006, a new report from Compasspoint, 75 percent of executives plan to leave their jobs within five years, citing most significantly the pressures from boards of directors and funders as a primary contributor to executive burnout. And if current trends hold, the likelihood is that, in the face of crushing work burdens, organizations and leaders will be asked for even more. Grant applications grow longer every year, boards want more documents and more studies, Sarbanes-Oxley reforms compound workloads and impose additional layers of oversight—more work in periodically shifting auditors, etc., etc., etc.
Burnout, of course, is only partially related to exhaustion and workload. More critically, it is a product of our disconnection from our core values, from our inability to renew ourselves and our organizations. The path to effective leadership must always involve ongoing renewal. Space must be given in a life (organizational or personal) to renew energies, to reflect, to nourish. For those of us working in the not-for-profit world, the instant temptation is to add “renewal” on to an already overflowing checklist of things to do—an approach that, in itself, is probably fatal to renewal. But, as Ronnie Brooks taught me, the real challenge lies not in adding something new to do but in giving something up to make the time and the space for the renewal work to be pursued. What is it we can put down and stop doing for the sake of greater organizational and individual health? This is a question we need to pursue within our organizations, with our boards and funders. Can we make do with less documentation, for example? Can we distinguish more strategically between “must know” and “would like to know?” How can we cultivate true trust and faith in communication as part of our work? How can we together re-imagine the system to entrench renewal as an ongoing practice? (Remedial renewal is really no renewal at all.) Even while I know that much of the mania for oversight stems from system abuse (witness Enron, for example), is the pendulum swinging too far in an overwhelmingly oppressive direction?
These logistic considerations aside, there are larger global issues at play as well. In conversations with colleagues in environmental, social change, education and other 501(c)(3) groups, I am hearing many of the same concerns about what our life in the not-for-profit sector may mean—the continuing struggles of most organizations, the real difficulties in achieving ongoing organizational health and the decreasing value the larger society tends to place on our work are indicative of some kind of breakage. Rather than seeing a nation of strong and healthy not-for-profit organizations, we often see a landscape of small, struggling groups, often resentful of (rather than celebrating) the few larger organizations within their discipline or sector. Given chronic states of being under-resourced and under-capitalized, organizations generally offer uncompetitive financial compensation (for which we compensate by exploiting the sense of calling in a kind of spiritual compensation) and expect people to work backbreaking schedules. Not surprisingly in the theatre field, at least, we are seeing an increasing sense of burnout and extraordinary turnover in leadership—especially on the management side.
In essence, the resources going into the sector are insufficient to nourish and sustain the number of organizations we have. And as ugly as it may sound, we have to at least entertain the question: are there too many of us? I remember Ronnie Brooks telling a story about the first time she planted carrots. Friends had told her that she should plant them a certain distance apart and rigorously pare the crops periodically, keeping the garden relatively sparse. This being her first garden, Ronnie was thrilled to see the green tops flourish beyond her wildest imaginings—a lush carpet of vegetation. Surely, she thought, my carrots are all doing so well—look how green they appear, there’s no need to prune or separate at all—words that came back to haunt her at harvest time when she began to pull in the crops, only to discover that she nurtured an entire garden of stunted, malformed, inedible carrots. Have we lacked the discipline in our sector to weed our gardens?
This is an ugly question, clearly—no one, least of all me and TCG, wants to be a weeded carrot, as it were. But might this argue for reforms within the sector—that not-for-profit status might not be appropriate in the early stages of an organization’s life, for example? (I remember when we interviewed the past presidents of TCG for our oral history project, Preserving the Legacy, how many of them, like Zelda Fichandler, talked about founding theatres as commercial entities, selling shares to finance and mount seasons, only later—often at Mac Lowry’s urging—turning into not-for-profits and incurring their first deficits.) Should organizations have to prove a certain level of viability or activity before applying for their 501(c)(3)? Should not-for-profit status be reviewed periodically, rather than granted in perpetuity? Might there be a point when enough is enough—e.g., when hugely endowed organizations might take a back seat in the line for foundation and government support (an admittedly easy question to pose in our field since virtually none of us would have to worry at this point about meeting such a measure of ample endowment?)
On the other hand, we might solve this issue from the other end, not by contracting the number of organizations but by amplifying the resources to the field. As taxpayers, are we willing to pay more taxes? (I am, if it leads to a healthier society.) What would happen if organized foundation, corporate and government philanthropy (which now contributes less than 20 cents of every contributed dollar in this country) were encouraged to match in aggregate the amount individuals put on the table? Should foundations that have seen substantial growth in assets be allowed to give away less than the year before (as some foundations, according to an article in the New York Times, plan to do)? What would happen if foundations were required to spend out in a specified period of time? Should there be formal steps taken to reassert the notion of corporate citizenship—beyond mere shareholder return—that used to be a twin star of corporate purpose but that seems increasingly abandoned?
I offer these questions more to stimulate discussion than because I would answer each affirmatively. If there is a serious conversation about these issues going on out there (and I mean going on with an eye to a healthy system supporting important collective values rather than politicians trying to fashion a system to support pet causes or beliefs), then I’m not hearing it.
Whatever the breakdown, however, what seems clear to me is that the very premise of a not-for-profit is far from broken. The idea that there is value in work that the marketplace cannot sustain and that it is right that we collectively support such work is a noble one for our country. Lewis Hyde argues this point far more eloquently than I can. In The Gift, he offers an analysis, predicated not on a for-profit/not-for-profit divide, but on a market economy vs. gift economy one. He sees in a market economy a transaction based on reciprocal exchange (I give you $1.89, you give me a grande latte), while seeing in a gift economy a transaction based, not on reciprocity, but on an assumption that the “commodity” will be passed along to others. (e.g., I teach you something and you pass it along to others—a concept popularized by the “Pay It Forward” idea.) Rather than seeing these economies as adversarial, he argues (and I agree) that the two systems complement one another and that the health of a nation can be measured through the degree to which these systems co-exist in a rough tension. Arguably, Jim Collins’ Good to Great and the Social Sectors (which I recommended so highly in a previous Field Letter) offers an implicit endorsement of Hyde’s view, measuring the worth of not-for-profit work in mission fulfillment rather than economic profit and calling for us to nourish the sector in very different ways than we do the commercial.
In essence, the creation of the not-for-profit sector through the tax code was a visionary step taken by our government. Today, many of us worry that we as a nation are in danger of abandoning the gift economy entirely in wholesale pursuit of the market; yet I for one refuse to believe that we will be strengthened as a nation by allowing the market to be the ultimate arbiter of value or that we really collectively believe the central premises underlying the not-for-profit model are flawed. The 501(c)(3), for me, may be ailing in some ways—we may be collectively cutting off its air supply, metaphorically speaking—but that is not tantamount to saying it is broken—yet. And some of the means for improving it may still lie within our grasp.
Topic #2: Is the Two-Headed Beast Outmoded?
Leadership transition is increasingly at the center of many conversations I have been having. One of the striking phenomena of the past six months has been the extraordinary degree of turnover in top management positions at large theatres—turnover that only rarely is the result of retirement. Is this an aberration or is this likely to be seen with increasing frequency? The latter is probably the case, if the aforementioned Compasspoint study is true.
I hope, over time, that we at TCG have disabused anyone of the idea that we believe that the artistic director/managing director structure is the optimal model for all theatres. It has been wonderfully successful at many theatres—but in other situations, producing artistic director structures, ensemble governance structures, etc., have been more appropriate and just as successful. That said, among those who have used the traditional “two-headed beast,” the question about the viability of this model for the future seems to be on the table more frequently than ever.
I especially hear this when engaged in discussion with our largest theatres. Should we consolidate our leadership into a single figure? With so much pressure on theatres these days, with so much potential tension with boards and issues of accountability, is our work simplified if there is one person to take the full responsibility in all dimensions? Are board-staff relations clarified—and certain kinds of conflict altogether avoided—if the leadership is vested in one person? Or should we expand the circle of leaders beyond just two? In many cases, the expertise of the top management leader has grown as the theatre itself has grown. Now, with succession looming on the horizon, is it unfair to ask new and (often) younger leaders to make such substantial leaps from smaller theatres they have led to these larger groups—often with much larger staffs, significantly larger boards, larger physical plants, larger financial drive needs, etc., all of which require different expertise? Artistic leaders also wonder whether the one-person artistic directorate is ideal. The double responsibility that falls on the shoulders of that leader when he/she enters into rehearsals as a creative artist, the limitations on creative prep time in the wake of organizational needs, the potential—if the artist really focuses on the production in which he/she is involved for the artistic side of the organization—to go silent (or at least to become severely muted) in the public arena of funders, boards and others has potentially damaging implications. Corporations now are led in different degrees by CEO/CFO/COO figures. Is comparable redefining of roles and expansion of the leadership circle a likely scenario in our future? All are questions that are leading more and more of us to re-examine our structural assumptions of leadership.
I, for one, can never quite imagine how producing artistic directors do it. God love them, there are some fantastic ones out there—and they lead wonderfully strong organizations. But the workload would strike me as crushing, and I don’t know how I would keep my artistic talents and skills at the top of my proverbial game while trying to oversee management, fundraising, advocacy, ad infinitum. I am struck by how wonderfully opening the idea of leadership has served certain large theatres—the artistic circle at the Goodman Theatre, for example, where a circle of artists works, plans, cultivates, etc., along with Bob Falls or the power of the Dan Sullivan/Doug Hughes partnership in a different chapter at Seattle Repertory Theatre that allowed both the artistic voice to always move forward in the community and the artist’s needs to be fully served. Is it an accident that the longest-running artistic leadership in our largest theatres is not filled by a single person but by two—the great Martin Benson and David Emmes partnership at South Coast Repertory, with the extraordinary Paula Tomei as a third executive leader? Especially as we move to fill these positions with younger and newer leaders, this question is likely to be increasingly on the table and rather than merely filling open slots, should we be asking, “What structure do we need to move the organization forward? What structure do our specific leaders now need to maximize their talents, to help them soar forward in every way?”
Clearly, the board will have increasing responsibility, both to be both thoughtful and flexible in addressing these issues. Additionally, boards will need (in these moments of transition) to be increasingly thoughtful about their role in insuring the success of new leaders. I’ve seen a number of boards breathe a sigh of relief once a new leader is named, as if the hard work is done. Increasingly, though, I think we should look at that moment as the beginning of a new level of work—a level that demands new strategic involvement. What can we do to maximize a new leader’s chances for success? How can we collectively complement his/her skill set? How do we take responsibility for integrating him/her into the community? I can’t imagine any married person I know saying, “You know, the hard part was finding someone to marry. But once we said ‘I do,’ the real work was over. It was all a proverbial piece of cake after that and I now just get to relax.” On some far-fetched level, the board’s choice of a leader is a marriage of sorts—a new kind of contract demanding new, thrilling, rewarding, focused and yet intensified work and the moment of the hire is the onset of a thrilling new journey.
Enough mulling. The last month as always has been one of fantastic travel and wonderful opportunity—off to Phoenix for the APASO Annual Conference (Association of Performing Arts Service Organizations, a consortium of groups like TCG, Theatre Bay Area, the League of Chicago Theatres, etc.) where we engaged in an extraordinary exchange of information and ideas; a colloquium at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA, to discuss the intersection between arts and education; the chance to keynote a symposium about the theatre at the Columbia University Law School in New York; a lovely and stimulating afternoon with the board of Westport Country Playhouse in Connecticut; a jaunt to St. Louis to address the impassioned volunteers of CAVORT; and a wonderful salute to Guthrie leader Joe Dowling at the National Corporate Theatre Fund dinner. Perhaps most bittersweet was a trip to Louisville, KY, for the Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival—the last to be mounted under the management leadership of Sandy Speer. Sandy has served as leader of ATL for more than 40 years—a record of management at a single theatre that (to the best of my knowledge) is unmatched in the history of the not-for-profit theatre. Sandy has always been a gentleman, a man of extraordinary wisdom and counsel, a gracious presence, a persistent partner, an inspiring leader. How our field will miss him—and how grateful those of us are who worked with him during his chapter in the field.
On a final note, let me ask for your help a bit. As I presume you know by now, I have announced my departure from TCG—a departure scheduled to take place on the heels of the National Conference in Atlanta. Transitions are always tricky, of course, and I think the bulk of the next Field Letter is likely to be focused on change—and the shift from the asking side of the table to the giving side of the table can be especially delicate. I so look forward to being at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, to understanding, from the inside, their priorities and values in hopes of guiding a responsive and important arts program within one of our nation’s most important foundations. But I’m not there yet. I have yet to integrate myself into that organization and engage in those intense discussions and meetings that will make the future path clearer. And (lame duck status and all) I’m still at TCG, still working on your behalf, still traveling and meeting your boards and trying to work for a better future. It would help me if conversations about Duke could wait until I’m there—and that you help me finish my chapter at TCG most effectively but not inadvertently pushing me out that door quite yet.
On that note, all my very best to you all, as always. Two more Field Letters in my future—but I’ll try not to burden you with two Proust-like tomes.
Best as always,
Ben Cameron
Executive Director