Caused v. Exposed

I get one of those "check this out" emails.

It's a news article about yet another arts organization doing "emergency" fundraising to keep the doors open and the staff paid.

I read the article, there's no sense of why the org is such trouble . . . just one of those vaugue "caused by the recession" sort of things.

I go to the website of the org.  Again, no explanation of how they got there, no info about how they are going to get out of it . . . just talk of the recession.

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Let's draw a distinction:

There are challenges caused by the recession

And there are challenges caused by bad decision making that the recession simply exposed.

If an organization is in the midst of a financial crisis they need to let us know if the recession caused it or exposed it.

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Here's the thing, the President of the United States just placed 100 pages of detail on his federal budget on a website.

If he can do that then surely an arts organization in crisis can put a PDF on their website that says a few things:

1.  How it happened

2.  Who (within the organization) is accountable

3.  How are they going to avoid a similar situation in the future.

The thing doesn't need to be a master thesis.  You can probably do it three pages or so.  But if a company can't (or won't) explain what happened in a fairly public manner why should they get the emergency funding they seek?

 

Comments

[Ed]

In the article I read by Chris Jones, I think there was reference to a large amount of inherited debt from the previous artistic directorship. In this climate that's a death sentence- the triple whammy of lower ticket sales, lower donations, plus the coup de grace of being unable to refinance make it difficult to get out from under.

[Travis Bedard]

Ed,
Then that should make such a review of their status less guilt ridden.

I'm not giving to an emergency fund without some idea that they're not going to do it next year. And I don't think that's asking a lot.

[Adam]

About Face wasn't the group I was thinking of when I wrote the post, but it applies to them.