Goal
Increase individual giving to the arts and build the ability of participating community foundations to exercise leadership in the arts.
Initiative Description
Working with several community foundations across California, Irvine created the Communities Advancing the Arts (CAA) initiative to increase individual giving to the arts, committing more than $9 million to this effort from 2004 to 2011. About half of this investment is for community foundations to regrant to small and midsize arts organizations in their regions. The remaining portion will enable the community foundations to increase their outreach to individual donors in order to raise permanent assets for the arts. Additional details about the fund are available here.
Evaluation
This evaluation is being conducted by Irvine staff based on data from the community foundation grantees.
Objectives:
To measure each community foundation’s progress at increasing:
- Total assets under management dedicated to the arts
- Total annual giving to the arts
- The number of arts donors
- New methods for supporting the arts
The following targets were established for phase one of the initiative (2004–07):
- At least $2 million in new resources would be mobilized for the arts
- Each community foundation would increase its total giving to the arts and involve greater numbers of donors in support of the arts
- Each community foundation would establish or expand a sustainable mechanism for long-term support of the arts, such as a field-of-interest fund
- Donors in each community would become more knowledgeable about the need for and benefit of supporting the arts
- Each community foundation would build new internal capacities to tap donors, conduct effective outreach and mobilize resources for the arts
Time frame:
Phase one was from 2004 to 2007; phase two is from 2008 to 2011.
Participating grantees
Phase one of this initiative included the following 13 grantees, from north to south:
Phase two includes nine community foundations. We will evaluate their progress using the same methods as in phase one.
Methods
For this evaluation, Irvine program staff collected administrative data in order to measure progress against asset development and arts-giving goals. These data are collected routinely by community foundations and are reported to Irvine each year, along with qualitative narrative reports.
Findings
Our assessment of phase one demonstrated many noteworthy results. The CAA grantees distributed an additional $7.8 million to arts organizations in 2007, compared with 2004 giving, which included their own grantmaking as well as donor-advised giving, and did not include regranting dollars from Irvine.
Community foundation assets dedicated to the arts grew by $59 million from 2004 to 2007. This represents a 48 percent increase in arts assets, compared with overall asset growth of 40 percent during the same period.
Additional results include:
- One-hundred-eighty-one new funds earmarked for the arts
- Arts assets per capita in regions served by grantees grew to $6.68 in 2007, compared with $4.56 in 2004
- A permanently endowed award for individual artists (Sonoma)
- Development of a local cultural plan and restored public funding of the arts council (Monterey)
- Strengthened arts councils in some sites (Marin, Monterey, Orange and Sonoma)
Contact:
Anne Vally
Special Initiatives Officer
The James Irvine Foundation
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