Week 8: The Arts and Advocacy

Alright, so the theme of this week is Advocacy and Arts & Culture so I’ll start out with our old friend Michael O’Neill. The first chapter titled Advocacy focuses on the nonprofit advocacy organization typically involved with issues like women’s suffrage, abolition, and environmentalism. Among one of the more surprising organizations that fell under the category of nonprofit advocacy organizations was AARP. What also surprised me was the actual difference and impact these organizations have had despite their relatively low number of employees for example minority rights organizations (woman’s rights, african american rights, and LGBT rights).  The second O’Neill chapter focused on nonprofit organizations concerned with art and culture and much like advocacy organizations there organizations have had a pretty large effect despite their size. It was interesting to find that museums are the largest part of this breed of nonprofit organizations. Because of the absent role that government plays in art and culture in todays society, it isn’t surprising that the majority of revenue for these organizations is private donations. Despite governments support of the arts as seen in institutions like the Smithsonian Museums, compared to other developed countries America’s support for the arts is much lower.   

In the article The Power of Nonprofits, asserts that the ideal of being involved in the policy making process is one that has existed since the star of our nation and as a foundation of American people. It has been seen throughout our history that if the American people have seen something they wish to change, they have fought for government to change it. I feel like this ideal and the work that nonprofit advocacy organizations do, is one of the best parts of America today. I think that it's awesome that in the Middle East right now, so many people in these nations are doing this exact thing. They are seeing things that exist in their government and they are standing up and advocating for things to change. 

It was interesting and kind of sad to read the information on Senate Bill 40 and to read what the Nonprofit Association of Oregon had to say about the bill. I think it is sad that this bill needs to be passed in the first place, that being said, I think that this is a good thing to have in oregon in order to monitor nonprofits as well as create more trust and comfort for the public when it comes to donating to these organization. 

In the article about arts and the money they have pumped back into the economy was really interesting. I was surprised to hear that these non profits economic impact grew by 24%  between 2000 and 2005. With these numbers the organization Americans for the Arts is boldly asking for a 40% boost in funding. While I do think that the arts are important, I find it hard to believe they will get what they are asking for especially in this economy where  cuts are being made across the board. Here is an article about how recently some art nonprofit funding is being cut:


http://www.reporternews.com/news/2011/feb/08/historic-sites-local-arts-nonprofitsthreatened/

I think that article that for me showed the importance of art nonprofits was the article Poetry Gives Teens a Voice. I like how the article gave a face to all of the numbers and showed how the Youth Speaks nonprofit had a personal, positive and important effect on these youth. For me this kind of article speaks more to the importance of art and culture nonprofits than the fact that arts groups pumped $166.8 billion back into the US.