Goal

To improve the financial sustainability, management, governance and growth capacity of leading California arts organizations outside of the major metropolitan areas of Los Angeles, San Francisco and San Diego.

Initiative Description

The Arts Regional Initiative (ARI) enables regional arts organizations to respond to structural changes brought on by technological advances, demographic changes, funding fluctuations and shifting consumer behaviors. The initiative funds activities meant to increase operating capacity, improve financial sustainability, refine artistic products, reach more diverse audiences and strengthen management and board governance. The initiative supports leading organizations that occupy an important role in communities outside of Californi's largest metropolitan areas. These organizations are critical to providing quality and publicly accessible programming, fostering the careers of emerging artists and contributing to community development. Additional details about the fund are available here.

Evaluation

The evaluation of the Arts Regional Initiative is documenting and assessing the capacity-building efforts of grantees. Every year, the evaluation team reports to ARI grantees and the Foundation to provide ongoing opportunities for grantees to adapt and refine their work. Findings about which strategies proved useful will inform Irvine's future grantmaking and be reported to the field.

Objectives:

To examine if and how investing in capacity building in midsize and large non-metropolitan arts organizations can lead to more effective organizations, as measured in part through leadership, management, cultural participation and their resulting impact on arts programming.

Time frame:

2006 – 2011

Participating grantees:

This evaluation includes 27 grantees from two ARI cohorts, one in Southern California (outside of Los Angeles) and another in the Central Valley. The foundation plans to award grants to a third cohort in the Central Coast in June 2008. A full list is available here.

Methods:

This evaluation involves interviews with individuals inside and outside the grantee organizations, document review and multiple surveys. The surveys assess the organizations' efforts to broaden, diversify and deepen their audiences; the strategies employed to build their internal capacity; and organizational effectiveness.

Findings:

We plan to report findings from this evaluation after the conclusion of the initiative in 2011.

Related materials:

Evaluator:

Jared Raynor
TCC Group
EmcArts Inc.
31 West 27th Street, 4th Floor
New York, NY 10001
212.949.0990
www.tccgrp.com

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