This morning when I got to work, there was a little plate of brownies in our kitchen. A little card next to it said that this was from a wife of a co-worker. Specifically, it said "[Name], 3 Mile Cancer Walker."
Now, it's clear to me that she is looking for sponsors, and this is a fundraising tactic. This is the fifth time that there has been brownies or cookies (often with the pink breast-cancer ribbon in frosting or sprinkles). Only one of those five times was there a sponsorship jar to ollect money. Usually, the brownie has simply been consumed by myself and my co-workers without anything being returned.
Has anyone done research as to whether this is a more or less effective fundraising method (if done correctly, with points where the fundraiser does attempt to collect on it)? My hunch is that in the short term, this sort of altruism loses, and in the long term it wins. (Having read The Selfish Gene recently, I wonder if it can be analyzed using the ESS analysis... I digress)
It seems to me that the transactional fundraising model (you buy a brownie from me) isn't as good of a long-term strategy, because the transactional model seeks to finish the business deal in a single moment. Once the money is handed over, and the brownie is given, that's the end of your business.
The passive-aggressive fundraising model (I give you a brownie "on the house," and eventually figure out a way to call in the debt that makes you feel as though I haven't asked) leaves a more entrenched, long-term relationship. Even though the financial rewards aren't immediate, it seems to me that you are building up more of a sense of social connection.
Think of it this way. If you call up your neighbor and ask to borrow his wrench, and he says "Sure... the value of the wrench per day appears, at economic rates, to be 5 cents a day." Even though the cost is negligible, you won't walk away with a connection to your neighbor.
(Actually it occurs to me that this isn't necessarily the best example, because in this case lending for free is the social norm, so charging 5 cents a day will be seen as exceptionally tight-fisted, and actually creates a negative impression--for this example, just pretend that this doesn't happen).
If your neighbor lends you the wrench for free--with the chance of never seeing that wrench again--he's incurring some sort of (probably near negligible) cost to himself without passing it on to the neighbor. But later, when he asks to borrow a hammer and a screwdriver, he won't be charged the same thing.
At any rate, that comparison has turned out not to be my favorite comparison in the world. But the idea is that when we're fundraising, we have to take into account both the financial issues, and the social capital issues. It may be more worth it to incur a financial cost in the short term to incur social capital, and to later use that social capital (to a small degree) to return something financial later.
This is of course pseudo-economics, since I don't have any equations or studies to back that hunch up. But I think that's what my coworker's wife is doing with the brownies. I know that if she asked me today, I'd be willing to pay far more for the brownies I've already consumed than I would have paid up front.
Showing posts with label legitimacy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label legitimacy. Show all posts
Wednesday, July 29, 2009
Monday, July 27, 2009
Sustainability V: Legitimacy Pt. 4 (Local Context)
Well, over the weekend I finished reading Createquity's fantastic summary of Gifts of the Muse, and I thought that I would come in Monday ready to swing on that issue. But I want to carp on a bit about Sustainibility and Legitimacy for another moment, since this is becoming a dear idea for me.
Recently, there was an announcement that the former head of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Adrian Noble, would be coming to run the Old Globe theater in San Diego. In one of the articles (not, unfortunately, the one whose link I just found), Adrian Noble joked that he had never been closer to San Diego than the Los Angeles Airport.
Now, Adrian Noble's legitimacy in that position probably isn't up for debate. For one of Britain (and the world)'s leading Shakespeare directors/A.D.s to take over one of America's higher-profile Shakespeare Festivals is such a no-brainer.
On the other hand, there is something jarring to me to have a theater company turn over its artistic leadership to someone who freely admits that he has no experience with the town he's working in. The implication there is that Shakespeare is Shakespeare, no matter where you do it.
Now, I'm sure that Adrian Noble is a talented director, and I'm sure he's going to make good theater, but... well, obviously, creating good theater isn't enough. Plenty of people have been making good theater for a while now, and it still isn't drawing the crowds like it deserves. The point is that our theater needs to speak to its local context, it needs to find a way to make itself relevant to the people of its community. People that Adrian Noble has never met.
I'm torn, because I feel like if I wasn't wearing my "arts community development" hat I wouldn't be criticizing this move. When I heard about it, my gut instinct was "Yay! San Diego gets some good legitimacy!" I didn't mind that it was a British director. But something about never having once been in San Diego... how does he know what will strike a chord with San Diegans?
Is anyone on the same page as me on this issue?
Recently, there was an announcement that the former head of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Adrian Noble, would be coming to run the Old Globe theater in San Diego. In one of the articles (not, unfortunately, the one whose link I just found), Adrian Noble joked that he had never been closer to San Diego than the Los Angeles Airport.
Now, Adrian Noble's legitimacy in that position probably isn't up for debate. For one of Britain (and the world)'s leading Shakespeare directors/A.D.s to take over one of America's higher-profile Shakespeare Festivals is such a no-brainer.
On the other hand, there is something jarring to me to have a theater company turn over its artistic leadership to someone who freely admits that he has no experience with the town he's working in. The implication there is that Shakespeare is Shakespeare, no matter where you do it.
Now, I'm sure that Adrian Noble is a talented director, and I'm sure he's going to make good theater, but... well, obviously, creating good theater isn't enough. Plenty of people have been making good theater for a while now, and it still isn't drawing the crowds like it deserves. The point is that our theater needs to speak to its local context, it needs to find a way to make itself relevant to the people of its community. People that Adrian Noble has never met.
I'm torn, because I feel like if I wasn't wearing my "arts community development" hat I wouldn't be criticizing this move. When I heard about it, my gut instinct was "Yay! San Diego gets some good legitimacy!" I didn't mind that it was a British director. But something about never having once been in San Diego... how does he know what will strike a chord with San Diegans?
Is anyone on the same page as me on this issue?
Friday, July 24, 2009
Sustainability IV: Legitimacy Pt. 3 (Too Legit To Quit)
Another thought about legitimacy and worldview (see the previous post) strikes me as I was listening to Jaydiohead. If you don't know, Jaydiohead is a quite fantastic mash-up of Jay-Z and Radiohead.
Jay-Z is from the world of rap, and in the world of rap, legitimacy is currency. They work on a legitimacy-currency system called "cred," which is a measure of how "legit" they are. You get your cred on the street, and that's what makes you legit.
If I sound like the whitest person alive in that last paragraph, it's for obvious reasons. I am not from that background, so I don't know what in that phraseology was legitimate and what was absolute horse-crackers. When I talk the talk of art-bloggers, I know the language. I know how to judge "legitimacy." Although I might disagree with my fellow art-community folks, I feel fairly confident of my ability to smell bullshit.
When I listen to Jay-Z, it often sounds to me patently ridiculous--especially the ones where he's talking about his life as "hustler" (a word whose meaning I can't ever hope to grasp in a non-superficial way). One line in one of his songs is "This is black superhero music." I was listening to this at work, and it caused laughter amongst my workmates.
I am not condemning Jay-Z. I'm just showing that legitimacy is highly relative, very localized. It draws upon your knowledge of the world around you, and it's 100% perceptive.
William James, philosopher, spoke in his series of lectures on Pragmatism (collected in a volume called Pragmatism which is one of the books that defined who I am) of how we create and collect worldview. His theory of worldview is that we basically start with a supposition, and then test it in our local world, and if it accurately predicts the environment we live in, we keep it. These beliefs remain in our world-view until something comes along that challenges it, and then we make the simplest reshuffling possible to adjust.
This creates a barrier not of language, but of experience. Because the things I do will not resonate as "legitimate" in the world of "hustlers" and the things that hustlers do seem, well, foreign and strange in the world of an upper-middle-class art-blogger.
If an arts organization wants to be legitimate, they have to understand the experiences that have shaped the local worldview. If you want to change their worldview, you have to figure out what will be legitimate, but will challenge their current worldview.
It's also important to note that those things that you hold to be true will not strike people to be true just because you insist on it. You have to speak their language, and then challenge their notions.
One powerful example of this to me is a report I heard once from Iraq, in which they discussed that part of the reasons Sunnis feel disenfranchised in the current (at the time of the report, illegitimate from their perspective) government is because in the Saddam Hussein era, Sunnis were told that they were 50% of the population, and now the new government tells them they are only 20% of the population. The fact that the Sunni population is objectively 20% of the population doesn't change the social fact that Sunnis believe they are half of the population. This is a huge challenge that I don't have an answer for, but this was an example of legitimacy problems in action.
Jay-Z is from the world of rap, and in the world of rap, legitimacy is currency. They work on a legitimacy-currency system called "cred," which is a measure of how "legit" they are. You get your cred on the street, and that's what makes you legit.
If I sound like the whitest person alive in that last paragraph, it's for obvious reasons. I am not from that background, so I don't know what in that phraseology was legitimate and what was absolute horse-crackers. When I talk the talk of art-bloggers, I know the language. I know how to judge "legitimacy." Although I might disagree with my fellow art-community folks, I feel fairly confident of my ability to smell bullshit.
When I listen to Jay-Z, it often sounds to me patently ridiculous--especially the ones where he's talking about his life as "hustler" (a word whose meaning I can't ever hope to grasp in a non-superficial way). One line in one of his songs is "This is black superhero music." I was listening to this at work, and it caused laughter amongst my workmates.
I am not condemning Jay-Z. I'm just showing that legitimacy is highly relative, very localized. It draws upon your knowledge of the world around you, and it's 100% perceptive.
William James, philosopher, spoke in his series of lectures on Pragmatism (collected in a volume called Pragmatism which is one of the books that defined who I am) of how we create and collect worldview. His theory of worldview is that we basically start with a supposition, and then test it in our local world, and if it accurately predicts the environment we live in, we keep it. These beliefs remain in our world-view until something comes along that challenges it, and then we make the simplest reshuffling possible to adjust.
This creates a barrier not of language, but of experience. Because the things I do will not resonate as "legitimate" in the world of "hustlers" and the things that hustlers do seem, well, foreign and strange in the world of an upper-middle-class art-blogger.
If an arts organization wants to be legitimate, they have to understand the experiences that have shaped the local worldview. If you want to change their worldview, you have to figure out what will be legitimate, but will challenge their current worldview.
It's also important to note that those things that you hold to be true will not strike people to be true just because you insist on it. You have to speak their language, and then challenge their notions.
One powerful example of this to me is a report I heard once from Iraq, in which they discussed that part of the reasons Sunnis feel disenfranchised in the current (at the time of the report, illegitimate from their perspective) government is because in the Saddam Hussein era, Sunnis were told that they were 50% of the population, and now the new government tells them they are only 20% of the population. The fact that the Sunni population is objectively 20% of the population doesn't change the social fact that Sunnis believe they are half of the population. This is a huge challenge that I don't have an answer for, but this was an example of legitimacy problems in action.
Sustainability III: Legitimacy Pt. 2
So, if I just left you with the last post about the importance of legitimacy in arts organiztions as a key component of sustainability, it would be one of those frustrating things I see on the blogosphere where they make a solid claim ("Integrity is important!") without really giving you an approach to applying the claim. I can't promise I'll have a strong recipe for legitimacy, but here's one part of legitimacy, told yet again through our sociopolitical narrative lens.
(by the way, it is important to use the sociopolitical narrative lens to look at this sort of stuff because, as the Thriving Arts Report put it, our strength is drawn from status as a social movement)
So, at the beginning of the campaign, even as far back as the 2004 Keynote Address, it was clear to me that Barack Obama was a different candidate from others. I can't say I knew back then that he'd be a President, but I knew I wanted him to be a President. And it was from the way he spoke--I knew little about his platform, and he certainly hadn't emerged with his practical-idealist hybrid of society-changing reforms.
A lot has been made of his eloquence, but it's more than simple eloquence. In fact, not a lot has been made of the absence of his eloquence for a long time. For me, the greatest of Obama's speeches are far behind him: the rhetorical flourishes of the "Yes We Can" speech in South Carolina are substantively different from solid speeches like the Reverend Wright speech or the Inauguration speech.
For the rhetorical, "eloquent" speeches, he was channeling passion and a beautiful mastery of images and linguistic skill. The Inauguration speech was a far more minimalist speech, but it was simply revolutionary in terms of its content. But it wasn't "eloquent," it was simply straightforward.
Yet I would argue that it was that second mode of speech that got him elected, rather than the "eloquent" speeches that fired his base early in the primary. Why?
Jon Stewart was asked once why he backed Obama so strongly. He had backed John Kerry in 2004, but only a bit implicitly. He still had a lot of scorn for Kerry, and he clearly wasn't happy about the choice. In the time that I've watched The Daily Show, I haven't seen him excited about really any other candidate.
When asked why, Jon Stewart had simple answer. He said that Obama was the only candidate he'd seen in a long time who seemed to describe the world the way he personally saw it. He was sick of standing in the rain and hearing politicians tell him about how sunny it is.
That simple ability to look reality in the face and describe it accurately is what drove Obama into power, not the "eloquence" with which he wrapped those realities. That "eloquence" was him describing the world in the way that the excitable, idealist base of the Democratic party would see it. But when it got to the general election, he espoused a far more Moderate worldview. Because that's the world view that most independents and centrist Dems/Reps could agree with.
When Obama talked about our energy crisis, it rang true with a younger generation who had agreed with Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. When he talked about health care, he talked about it in a way that rang true with all of the uninsured or poorly insured. When John McCain talked about the world, it rang false--and let's not even talk about Sarah Palin. (We should be careful to over-generalize, because there are quite a substantial part of the population to whom McCain and Palin did ring true).
At any rate, this isn't meant as a political post, this is a post about art development. So what is this discussion of Legitimacy?
The point is that if you want to be a legitimate organization, you need to understand the worldview of the people you're trying to serve, and you need to be careful not to contravene it. There are a number of theaters that try to tackle "issues," but rather than trying to tackle the local issues that are close to the hearts of their neighbors, they tackle big global "issues," which to the local folk might not be as crucial.
If you want to be a Legitimate (and therefore Sustainable) organization, you need to tell people it's raining when it's raining, and tell people it's sunny when it's sunny. They have to trust your judgment when you describe the world. You need to look around at the community, and figure out how their day-to-day existence meshes with your artistic aims.
This, by the way, is why artists are most successful at making art for other artists: their personal day-to-day matches the day-to-day of their audience. But it doesn't necessarily match the day-to-day of their audience. And that makes them hard to get legitimacy there.
(not that everything has to outwardly resemble the day-to-day... try not to be overly reductionist with my argument!)
This, I think, is why in Germany they did a "theater piece" in which a man went into a field and farmed every day for a month, and other farmers came to watch. It's sort of a perverse over-the-top version of what I'm describing.
"The Office" is successful because it very, very accurately describes the awkwardness and absurdity of the way people actually interact, not in the way Hollywood thinks we interact. (note: "The Office" is NOT successful because it accurately describes office life. You could make a perfect representation of office life and it would bore the crap out of people. It's an expressionistic representation of the experience of office life).
So, that's one of the ways to cultivate legitimacy: to really strive to understand what people are actually going through, and find ways to represent that.
(a little closing note: this is my 200th post, and is very slowly growing in readership, which I hope might be a sign of this blog gaining just a tiny fraction of that legitimacy!)
(by the way, it is important to use the sociopolitical narrative lens to look at this sort of stuff because, as the Thriving Arts Report put it, our strength is drawn from status as a social movement)
So, at the beginning of the campaign, even as far back as the 2004 Keynote Address, it was clear to me that Barack Obama was a different candidate from others. I can't say I knew back then that he'd be a President, but I knew I wanted him to be a President. And it was from the way he spoke--I knew little about his platform, and he certainly hadn't emerged with his practical-idealist hybrid of society-changing reforms.
A lot has been made of his eloquence, but it's more than simple eloquence. In fact, not a lot has been made of the absence of his eloquence for a long time. For me, the greatest of Obama's speeches are far behind him: the rhetorical flourishes of the "Yes We Can" speech in South Carolina are substantively different from solid speeches like the Reverend Wright speech or the Inauguration speech.
For the rhetorical, "eloquent" speeches, he was channeling passion and a beautiful mastery of images and linguistic skill. The Inauguration speech was a far more minimalist speech, but it was simply revolutionary in terms of its content. But it wasn't "eloquent," it was simply straightforward.
Yet I would argue that it was that second mode of speech that got him elected, rather than the "eloquent" speeches that fired his base early in the primary. Why?
Jon Stewart was asked once why he backed Obama so strongly. He had backed John Kerry in 2004, but only a bit implicitly. He still had a lot of scorn for Kerry, and he clearly wasn't happy about the choice. In the time that I've watched The Daily Show, I haven't seen him excited about really any other candidate.
When asked why, Jon Stewart had simple answer. He said that Obama was the only candidate he'd seen in a long time who seemed to describe the world the way he personally saw it. He was sick of standing in the rain and hearing politicians tell him about how sunny it is.
That simple ability to look reality in the face and describe it accurately is what drove Obama into power, not the "eloquence" with which he wrapped those realities. That "eloquence" was him describing the world in the way that the excitable, idealist base of the Democratic party would see it. But when it got to the general election, he espoused a far more Moderate worldview. Because that's the world view that most independents and centrist Dems/Reps could agree with.
When Obama talked about our energy crisis, it rang true with a younger generation who had agreed with Gore's An Inconvenient Truth. When he talked about health care, he talked about it in a way that rang true with all of the uninsured or poorly insured. When John McCain talked about the world, it rang false--and let's not even talk about Sarah Palin. (We should be careful to over-generalize, because there are quite a substantial part of the population to whom McCain and Palin did ring true).
At any rate, this isn't meant as a political post, this is a post about art development. So what is this discussion of Legitimacy?
The point is that if you want to be a legitimate organization, you need to understand the worldview of the people you're trying to serve, and you need to be careful not to contravene it. There are a number of theaters that try to tackle "issues," but rather than trying to tackle the local issues that are close to the hearts of their neighbors, they tackle big global "issues," which to the local folk might not be as crucial.
If you want to be a Legitimate (and therefore Sustainable) organization, you need to tell people it's raining when it's raining, and tell people it's sunny when it's sunny. They have to trust your judgment when you describe the world. You need to look around at the community, and figure out how their day-to-day existence meshes with your artistic aims.
This, by the way, is why artists are most successful at making art for other artists: their personal day-to-day matches the day-to-day of their audience. But it doesn't necessarily match the day-to-day of their audience. And that makes them hard to get legitimacy there.
(not that everything has to outwardly resemble the day-to-day... try not to be overly reductionist with my argument!)
This, I think, is why in Germany they did a "theater piece" in which a man went into a field and farmed every day for a month, and other farmers came to watch. It's sort of a perverse over-the-top version of what I'm describing.
"The Office" is successful because it very, very accurately describes the awkwardness and absurdity of the way people actually interact, not in the way Hollywood thinks we interact. (note: "The Office" is NOT successful because it accurately describes office life. You could make a perfect representation of office life and it would bore the crap out of people. It's an expressionistic representation of the experience of office life).
So, that's one of the ways to cultivate legitimacy: to really strive to understand what people are actually going through, and find ways to represent that.
(a little closing note: this is my 200th post, and is very slowly growing in readership, which I hope might be a sign of this blog gaining just a tiny fraction of that legitimacy!)
Sustainability II: Legitimacy Pt. 1
I got into a discussion the other day about the future of Iran following the Iran Elections with my mother the other day (just wait, I promise this is about arts development). She was expressing her (understandable) frustration that Obama didn't intervene more in the Iran Election, to do something to help out the protesters. She didn't understand why Moussavi didn't call upon the world for help.
I tried to explain to her the crucial importance of legitimacy in government. An illegitimate government is an unsustainable government. In fact, I wish I had some high-power quotations from Rousseau or Montesquieu, or the founding fathers, because that's what the Enlightenment was based upon. Governments that are illegitimate are unstable, and the Enlightenment sought to bring stability to war-torn Europe by creating more legitimate governments into power.
Moussavi could ask for foreign intervention to help counterbalance the physical force of Khameni's government, but if he did, he'd lose that crucial bit of legitimacy that defines his movement. The movement is based on two key principles:
1) Allowing the Iranian people to self-determine their own government
2) Using legal, peaceful processes to ensure that this happens.
Clearly, whether or not Moussavi would be brought into power by a US-led intervention, or by UN Peacekeepers, is irrelevant. Forcing Moussavi into power violates both of those principles, and he loses his legitimacy. Moussavi understands legitimacy rather intimately, because the only reason he is in the position that he is is because Khameni rather stunningly gave up a huge foundation of legitimacy that the government was predicated on.
If you look at the above two principles, both of them were (at least to a large degree) applicable to the post-1979 Iran, well through Ahmadinejad's first election. There was a high degree of censorship (which is not what the people are protesting) and some election massaging, but in several structural ways you could demonstrate that Iran was holding to those principles more than any other Muslim nation in the area, minus perhaps Turkey.
To bring this to arts groups, which I've really been talking about all this time: the sense of "sustainability" of an arts organization is very much linked to the sense of "legitmacy." The question, really, is how does an arts leader:
1) Identify legitimacy
2) Cultivate legitimacy
I think I have a few posts left in me for today on the subject of legitimacy. But the first thing I want to say is that for an arts community, it is crucial to keep an eye on whether or not your actions are creating legitimacy--and not the window-dressing of legitimacy. For instance, a building is not legitimacy, never mind the fact that it tells the community that you're a powerful, stable organization. It is no more a sign of "legitimacy" than the Basij are symbols of the legitimacy. The demonstration of resources is not a sign of legitimacy (although the demonstration of stability might be, in some cases, part of legitimacy).
I tried to explain to her the crucial importance of legitimacy in government. An illegitimate government is an unsustainable government. In fact, I wish I had some high-power quotations from Rousseau or Montesquieu, or the founding fathers, because that's what the Enlightenment was based upon. Governments that are illegitimate are unstable, and the Enlightenment sought to bring stability to war-torn Europe by creating more legitimate governments into power.
Moussavi could ask for foreign intervention to help counterbalance the physical force of Khameni's government, but if he did, he'd lose that crucial bit of legitimacy that defines his movement. The movement is based on two key principles:
1) Allowing the Iranian people to self-determine their own government
2) Using legal, peaceful processes to ensure that this happens.
Clearly, whether or not Moussavi would be brought into power by a US-led intervention, or by UN Peacekeepers, is irrelevant. Forcing Moussavi into power violates both of those principles, and he loses his legitimacy. Moussavi understands legitimacy rather intimately, because the only reason he is in the position that he is is because Khameni rather stunningly gave up a huge foundation of legitimacy that the government was predicated on.
If you look at the above two principles, both of them were (at least to a large degree) applicable to the post-1979 Iran, well through Ahmadinejad's first election. There was a high degree of censorship (which is not what the people are protesting) and some election massaging, but in several structural ways you could demonstrate that Iran was holding to those principles more than any other Muslim nation in the area, minus perhaps Turkey.
To bring this to arts groups, which I've really been talking about all this time: the sense of "sustainability" of an arts organization is very much linked to the sense of "legitmacy." The question, really, is how does an arts leader:
1) Identify legitimacy
2) Cultivate legitimacy
I think I have a few posts left in me for today on the subject of legitimacy. But the first thing I want to say is that for an arts community, it is crucial to keep an eye on whether or not your actions are creating legitimacy--and not the window-dressing of legitimacy. For instance, a building is not legitimacy, never mind the fact that it tells the community that you're a powerful, stable organization. It is no more a sign of "legitimacy" than the Basij are symbols of the legitimacy. The demonstration of resources is not a sign of legitimacy (although the demonstration of stability might be, in some cases, part of legitimacy).
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)