Goal

To increase individual giving to the arts and build the ability of participating community foundations to galvanize support for and lead the arts sector in their regions.

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 initiative are available here.

Evaluation

This evaluation is being conducted by Irvine staff based on self-reported quantitative data from the community foundation.

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
Diversity of vehicles used to support the arts

The following targets were established for phase one of the initiative (2004-2007):

At least $2 million in new resources will be mobilized for the arts.
Each community foundation will increase its total giving to the arts and involve greater numbers of donors in support of the arts.
Each community foundation will establish or expand a sustainable mechanism for long-term support of the arts, such as a field-of-interest fund.
Donors in each community will become more knowledgeable about the need for and benefit of supporting the arts.
Each community foundation will 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:

* The Marin, East Bay, San Francisco and Peninsula community foundations worked collaboratively, regranting in their communities through a combined "Fund for Individual Artists."

Note that the Peninsula Community Foundation merged with the Community Foundation of Silicon Valley in 2006 to form the Silicon Valley Community Foundation.

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 collect administrative data in order to measure progress toward 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. This approach is a cost-effective way to measure progress since the data are readily available and of reliable quality.

Findings

Our assessment of phase one shows that CAA grantees distributed an additional $7.8 million to arts organizations in 2007, compared with 2004 giving. This includes their own grantmaking as well as donor-advised giving, and does 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:

181 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
575 Market Street, Suite 3400
San Francisco, CA 94105
415.777.2244

top of page