New York City, for all its wealthy patrons, charitable foundations, and municipal support systems, is a treacherous place for arts nonprofits, but a new cooperative framework dubbed ArtsPool seeks to alleviate organizations’ administrative stresses.
Conceived as a project of the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York (ART/NY) and launched with three pilot members — ART/NY, Big Dance Theater, and Harbor Lights Theater Company — the service provides assistance with financial and workforce management, tools for meeting various nonprofit compliance requirements, and other essential support. ArtsPool’s creators know all too well how important these services are.
“ArtsPool’s development team collectively have over 80 years of nonprofit arts experience and have seen firsthand the need for a new administrative framework,” Sarah Maxfield, one of the initiative’s managers along with Guy Yarden and Max Dana, told Hyperallergic via email. “Fundamental to the design of ArtsPool is an economy of scale model, so we plan to grow smartly, at a rate that keeps pace with our developing infrastructure.”
Though hardly as sexy as the more creative projects that performing and visual arts nonprofits pursue, the financial, managerial, and bureaucratic stability provided by ArtsPool can empower organizations to push themselves aesthetically and conceptually. Its array of services includes everything from providing board members with quarterly reports and processing tax forms, to maintaining various New York State filings for nonprofits.
The idea for the service grew out of a paper that Maxfield and Yarden wrote in 2011 titled “Collective Insourcing: A Systemic Approach to Arts Management.” At present, in addition to providing support to the three pilot member organizations, the service offers a free “Compliance Toolkit” for groups to use to stay on top of the various municipal, state, and federal requirements for meeting nonprofit requirements. The toolkit offers organizations that might be interested in joining ArtsPool a taste of the expertise and resources it offers.
“During the pilot year we hope to increase membership to approximately a dozen organizations, though the rate at which we expand will be contingent on next rounds of funding so that we can scale up responsibly,” Maxfield added. “Organizations interested in becoming a member should contact us by filling out a simple formon our website.”
No comments:
Post a Comment