reciprocity

(artist-design donor recognition wall by Zabel Acres at SpringBOX - don’t you want to see your name up there?!)

When we were at the very beginning of this project, I reached out to a lot of people for advice, resources and counsel (including these super helpful posts by Nina Simon about the MAH’s capital campaign and project, which I read multiple times.) I’ve carried a lot of that advice, and other great advice from colleagues and friends with me during this project. Now we are about two years into this project to turn a vacant used car dealership and parking lot into an amazing community centered creative space and a year into the capital campaign to raise the money to make that project possible. We’ve raised $3.5M of our total $5.75M goal, 6,000 people have already used the space and we’re ready to start construction on the renovation. And I’ve learned A LOT. In the hopes that this will be useful to other folks tackling building projects, capital campaigns and other big visions, I’ve tried to document some of what I’ve learned so far.

Money is complicated

People have a lot of feelings about money—feelings that are cultural, rooted in family, privilege and emotion. WE NEVER TALK ABOUT THESE FEELINGS, so most of us assume the way we feel about money is how everyone feels, or that it is how everyone should feel. Sometimes people have a very specific way they want to be asked (or not asked) for money. This campaign has challenged me to examine some of my feelings about money and taught me never to assume that I know how someone else feels. All the things that are complicated about fundraising on a normal day (power dynamics, inequitable systems…capitalism) are amplified by a capital campaign.

You need help

You’re going to have to ask for help. The only way to get from zero to a big campaign goal, or a vacant building to a new space is with a lot of people helping. Sure, you need money and you’re going to have actually ask people to give it to you. Honestly, I still kind of want to run away at the end of the tour so I don’t have to talk about money (see feelings about money above.) But you also need a lot of other things – connectors, advocates, cheerleaders, and strategizers. You also really need people who believe in the project. Make a list of your favorite people and ask them for help. So many people stepped up and in this year to help make this project happen in so many ways and I am so grateful.

Buildings are tangible

After 14 years of raising money for something that doesn’t fit perfectly into anyone’s box, I’m used to doing a lot explaining and framing. So it’s been a fun surprise that this project is really legible and doesn’t take a lot of explanation. There’s something really powerful about being able to say, “Imagine if this parking lot was green space or an ice skating rink” or “Imagine if this garage was an artists market” Being a part of building something tangible and permanent is really exciting.

Trust is joyful

The best thing about buying a building that was useable is that we could use it – and so could other people. Opening up this unloved car dealership to 200 community groups and over 6,000 people over the last year taught us so much. It taught us that the “door to nowhere” was actually a great DJ booth, that our community urgently needs open, flexible space, and that organizers, artists, activists, and leaders can gain a lot by sharing space and ideas. It also demonstrated that we can and should trust our community. These 200 groups mostly let themselves in, cleaned up afterwards and tended the space with patience, creativity and joy. This constant flow of people provided the fuel for the last year – for the campaign, for planning the project and for me, personally, to keep going. Whenever I was tired, or anxious, I could visit the space, or even just look at the booking calendar and see an amazing array of beautiful work happening in the building and it gave me the push to keep going.

Urgency is powerful

Whoo boy. We financed the building purchase, which means we took out two big loans. We used our entire R&D fund to create a pool of money that would cover the mortgage payments on these loans for 18 months. (Ask me more about the very cool details of the way this worked at a cocktail party – I’m super fun!) The huge advantage of this structure is that it ensured that the loans wouldn’t impact Springboard’s operations and programming budget. The adrenaline creating part of this structure is that when we signed the closing documents we essentially set a race clock for 18 months. In order to not to incur longterm debt (which we are determined not to do) and keep the project on time, we had exactly 18 months to raise $3.5M. Someone recently compared this to creating a capital campaign version of the movie ‘Speed’, and that feels pretty accurate. There was no “quiet phase”, there was just pedal to the floor. And a lot of waking up in the night worrying. Thanks to my friends, family and colleagues for talking me through a lot of anxious moments.

Have a well researched plan and then let it go

We started with a good solid budget for the building purchase, the renovation, the new programming and the longer term maintenance and capitalization of Springboard’s work. That budget is our campaign goal of about $5.75M. We did a ton of planning and research -- scenarios, cash flows, prospect lists – both for our own use and to show the banks we could do this. A year in, I’m surprised that the budget is pretty much the same. And the $3.5M we’ve raised to date has been about half exactly what we planned and half surprises (funders who didn’t give what we thought they might, new prospects that worked out, individuals that stepped up in incredible ways.)

Celebrate the milestones

I’m learning that a capital campaign is a marathon, so stopping to celebrate the wins along the way is important. Also, take a break every once in a while. I’m learning that I need to give myself some down time. As much as I love this project, I need to step away sometimes. The high stakes of a building project can easily create the illusion that you can’t take a break, but you can…and you should. I’ve been working on creating more ease this summer.

Make sure you are in love

The thought I have had the most this year is: I can’t imagine doing this for a project I didn’t believe in 100%. I love this project. I love all the people who are working on it. I love the ugly parking lot, I love the old sign, I love the dumb fence, I love the leaky roof, I love the “rustic” bathrooms, I love eating the weird leftovers from events in the fridge, and I have loved showing this space and talking about the possibilities for its future with hundreds of people this year. I love what this building and this lot are becoming.

A year from now we’ll be celebrating the opening of this new community asset: a space for Springboard, spaces of wild possibility for our many communities to use, a market and art space, the Vickie Benson Artists Resource Lab, a public roof deck, a beautiful green space in the summer and a winter skating pond, new public art and many improvements that will make this site gentler on the environment. Between now and then we’ve got a lot to do and I’ve got a lot more to learn. I can’t wait.

It’s nearly universal that nonprofit leaders say they need more general operating support to achieve their missions. But why? What makes general operating or unrestricted support so important?

Even as we argue for more general operating, as a field we do a disservice by categorizing general operating support as support that is only for overhead, operations or administration. Yes, those things are vitally important parts of how changemaking organizations function, and we need unrestricted money to make them work, but supporting overhead is not the only thing general operating can do. By definition, GenOp creates flexible working capital. And flexible capital is what enables us to fulfill our mission. Just a few of the impacts of flexible capital:

Innovation: the best opportunities and ideas rarely align with grant deadlines. General operating support help create organizations that take risks, try new ideas and prototype and learn from small pilots. Being able to test an idea and iterate puts an organization in the position of being able to leverage additional support once there is proof of concept that a new program is needed and works, which helps leverage programmatic support. GenOp allows an organization to fund R&D and risk, increasing innovation and helping to test ideas before scaling. At Springboard, we have used general operating support to: start our healthcare program, which became a 10+ year initiative; to create an early pilot of a neighborhood placemaking project that became Irrigate — a nationally recognized model that attracted significant national investment; and to design our CSArt program which has now been replicated in over 80 communities nationwide. These three programs that have had significant local and national impact all started because we had the flexible capital necessary to strike while the iron was hot, learn from early iterations and then demonstrate effectiveness before scaling.

Responsiveness: Just like opportunities, community needs don’t wait for a funding deadline or the right program to come along. To truly fulfill our missions, organizations need to be in the position to respond to community needs, changes to the environment and other challenges. General operating support creates organizations that can truly be in right relationship with their constituents, and create the kind of rapid response we should be able to expect from community-centered work. Springboard’s emergency relief fund has always been primarily supported with unrestricted dollars and we recently expanded it to include community emergencies as well as personal emergencies in direct response to requests from people in our communities. We have used general operating support to create space for community conversations, actions and healing in response to trauma and to support artists to create those spaces for their own communities. We have also used unrestricted support to be able to absorb programs from organizations that are struggling or going through crises, in order to provide continuity and resources for their stakeholders.

Collaboration: Good partnership requires sustained relationships. General operating can allow organizations the space and capacity to invest in relationship-building in a long-term and ethical way. At Springboard, we worked with a neighborhood health clinic for over 7 years before we attracted the attention of a large national grant to support and deepen our work together. General operating support is what allows us to make a long-term commitment to our work in Fergus Falls, even when specific philanthropic resources for rural places are rare. When a group of artists in Rondo was at risk of being left out of a big community festival, general operating support is what allowed us to pay for the infrastructure required to ensure that they were included. Unrestricted, flexible capital is what allows us to build a culture and relationships based on abundance, generosity and trust.

Talent retention and innovative workplaces: These values of innovation, responsiveness and collaboration are also critical to retaining excellent staff. Organizations that can create a culture where staff can get a greenlight for their best ideas, where staff are trusted to use resources wisely to support partnership and community and where staff feel the satisfaction of being able to respond to immediate community needs — these are organizations that will be able to attract and retain top talent. Unrestricted support also creates capacity for organizations to create cultures and systems that can lead the way for humane and leading edge workplaces. When Springboard is listed as one of the top places to work in Minnesota — it’s a recognition that is directly linked to our supporters who support the guts and culture of the organization with general operating.

A few resolutions on my mind for my nonprofit friends in 2018...

Apply your values internally

Chances are you have some beautifully stated organizational values or guiding principles. These should be the foundation of our work, the things we are willing to go to the mat for every time. These values guide our decision making, program design and partnership with others. Taking a few minutes to read and consider those values is a good way to start the new year. This time when you read them, think about how you apply those values internally—to the staff of your organization, with your board, etc. If one of our values is access, how does that show up in our space? Does our office make people feel comfortable dropping by? Is it easy to find and get to? Is it accessible for people with disabilities? If one of our values is integrity, what does that mean about the benefits and compensation we provide for our staff? The new year is a great time to call your insurance broker or financial planner and ask them to start thinking through staff benefit options that support your mission. If one of our values is inclusion, how does that effect our board recruitment? Does our board represent the people that our organization exists to work with and for?

Bringing an organization’s values into alignment externally in program design and delivery and internally in the organizational structure and ways you support the people doing and leading the work helps build an organization that feels whole. Organizations that are whole run faster, deliver on their mission more effectively and are more resilient.

Consider your relevance

Another driver of resilience is the organization’s relevance. A lot of us think about the relevance of our work to the people we serve or the communities we work with directly. If our aspiration is for real social change, though, we need to also consider the relevance of our work to the broader community. How do we articulate the challenges our communities face, the assets and opportunities of the places we work in to audiences who aren’t immersed in this work every day? Framing our work and communicating its value is part of the mission. Messaging the “Why?” of our work in a way that is simple and resonant for a broader public is part of what we need to do to enroll other people in the work – not just so that they become donors or supporters, but so that we might actually change how systems work. In 2018 let’s resolve to tell our story more forcefully and fully.

If you don’t have the resources to hire someone to help you, test your messaging on your family – does your aunt suddenly need to check on something in the other room when you are talking about work? Does your elevator speech put your cousin to sleep? It might be time to work on your messaging. Conversely, if your grandma regularly sends you newspaper clippings that relate to your work, you’re probably on to something!

Steward your resources ethically and transparently

This year, like most years, we’ve seen some high profile organizational disasters, implosions and sad endings. At the root of a lot of those organizational challenges are breakdowns of values and relevance…and also good, old-fashioned, financial management. Sometimes we make nonprofit finances sound so complicated or so different that we forget that nonprofit money is real money. The fundamentals are the same as our individual checking accounts--money in needs to be more than money out or you have a problem. But often an organization’s slide towards crisis isn’t because of one big error, or one big breach, it’s a slow erosion of practices that eventually turns into an avalanche. One of the biggest protections against financial crisis is supposed to be the board of directors. So let’s resolve this year to invest in board training, to equip our boards with the tools they need to ask good questions, to understand our financial model, to spot red flags and to commit the time and energy necessary to be engaged in the financial life of the organization in a meaningful way.

Making a practice out of board training and encouraging board members to ask hard questions even when there isn’t a looming problem helps staff feel supported and creates a culture of transparency and openness so that when unexpected things happen (which is inevitable) you can turn to the board for help and guidance.

We’re winding down the fiscal year at Springboard for the Arts, so the office is a flurry of budgets and year-end meetings, in addition to the regular fast pace of programming. And outside of the office, in our community and country, there is a punishing urgency of needed changes and work to be done.

As nonprofits we need to be engaged in the policy issues that affect our constituents and communities. We should be on the front line making the case for a higher minimum wage and talking about just how disastrous this latest healthcare bill would be for the people we serve and communities we care about. These are fundamental building blocks that are needed for individual and community health and unfortunately there are a lot of people that still need help understanding that, and others who are actively working against these rights, believing that their financial self interests should trump other people’s basic needs. So we have to fight. Please call your Senators about the healthcare bill. Support the folks organizing for a higher minimum wage. We need to be in solidarity with other groups leading this work, even if we don’t think it’s at the center of our mission or expertise.

And, we need to make sure our own house is in order. While we’re thinking about and working on system-change, one way we can tangibly, practically be a part of that change is to review our own HR practices and see if there are ways we could do better. As an organization that has artists at the heart of our work, there is nothing more important to me than how we treat the working artists that make up our staff. These are the people that our work relies on, the people that represent our organization to the world – without them there would be no organization, so our mission of helping artists make a living and a life better start with them, right?

As a nonprofit we aren’t beholden to shareholders or investors so we should be able to lead when it comes to being ethical, equitable employers. For me, it has been a pleasant surprise that I actually love digging into these practices and trying to make them better. Especially when things feel so hopeless and entrenched in the broader policy and political environment, being able to make tangible change, even if it’s for a small number of people, feels meaningful. I also believe that in order to affect policy change, we need culture change and that changing the culture of our organizations might begin to shift the culture of the nonprofit sector, which could actually shift the broader culture.

So, here, in the spirit of sharing, are a few of the principles and practices we’ve developed to support our work and our mission and that, I think, challenge some of accepted wisdom of what is possible and push back against the scarcity culture that tells us getting the most for the least is what success looks like. I’ll fully acknowledge that it feels pretty vulnerable to share these things—but it feels important to me to share them, not to say they are complete or right for everyone else but to provide some tangible proof that it’s possible to find your own way and maybe to give you a starting place if you haven’t thought about this stuff before (please let our pain in health insurance research be your gain!)

ROWE: we don’t track time off, vacation or sick time. Instead we use a Results Oriented Work Environment (ROWE) approach. The U of M has a whole center dedicated to research on this type of work environment with lots of great resources. 

In a corporate/large environment I think ROWE is much more detailed, there's a whole industry built on implementing it. But we simplified it to fit our needs as a small org with a lot of in person contact. In addition to helping build an environment of trust and accountability, this structure also provides efficiency gains in the form of not spending time filling out time sheets and cajoling colleagues to fill out time sheets etc.

Full office time away: Though its not mandated by our manual, I’ve made a habit close the office for a week in December (usually the week before New Years) and a week in July (usually the week of 4th of July) to make sure that the whole staff has these 2 weeks away from work – obviously everyone can and does take other time off, but this is a nice foundation and shared time away (when we’re less likely to bug each other for something!) Depending on the work you do, this can be a pretty simple thing to implement that doesn’t actually cost you much.

Artistic Practice: We put a lot of emphasis on time for artistic practice, staff take leaves, or work out flexible hours to accommodate for residencies, big projects etc. There’s huge value to the organization in their experiences as practicing artists, so this serves our mission directly. Think about the work you do holistically and find ways to recognize that the organization directly benefits when people can build their networks, travel, connect in new places and bring their whole selves to their work.

Parental leave: Staff have up to 12 weeks of leave, 4 of which are paid, typically we work out some kind of combination of full-time/part-time work that lets people stretch the leave/pay longer or come back in a phased way. I hope I don’t have to explain why this is important.

Healthcare: healthcare/insurance is a huge priority for us, we offer 100% health/dental premium coverage for employees and 50% premium coverage for their families – individual employees can also take that same amount of money and stretch it over a less comprehensive plan so it covers more of the cost of their dependents, or they can pay a bit more and get an even more comprehensive plan. We put in a HUGE amount of work and effort to reexamine our health insurance every couple of years to try to make it work best for the most number of staff possible.

Benefits eligibility: our benefits cover all employees who work 21+ hours a week, and we almost never have employees that work less than 21 hours. Covering PT staff benefits helps them make the organization more of a priority, helps with retention and makes sure that our part time jobs are great jobs for working artists and gets us great candidates. I can’t emphasize this enough, if you are mad about the terrible state of healthcare in this country and you’re not trying to figure out how to get your entire staff access to health insurance, then I am confused. Our insurance broker looks at me like I landed from Mars when I tell him we want a policy that covers part-time employees, which is how I know the culture needs to change.

Salaries: Look, no one is getting rich working at Springboard, but we do try to have transparent practices around salaries. We primarily use the MCN Salary survey to figure out salary levels, and our goal is that every employee is at least the 50th percentile for salary for their job title. Our annual salary increases range from 1-5%. When we are able, we use a performance based bonus structure that allows for bonuses based on contributions to the financial, programmatic and guiding principles of the organization in the previous year.

Again, it's not to say that these things are the right policies and practices for every organization or every business. If there's one thing I've learned about this stuff, it's that the systems for how we take care of our staff are a constantly moving target and you have to keep re-examining and reinventing them. Keep understanding the tools that are available to you and the changes in the external environment that impact your employees and keep investing in the people who make the work possible. We arrived at these particular practices and solutions after a lot of research, staff surveys, and with a lot of help along the way from coaches and consultants, specifically Nonprofits Assistance Fund, Chris Rodenkirchen, Chris Kemp and Susan Campion, who helped us rethink and reinvent the infrastructure of the organization to meet our mission. We have also had great boards of directors who supported this work and empowered us to think differently about human resources.

I wrote this during the election, but it’s been on my mind again lately because of...well, you know, because of everything.

I remember the first time I was harassed on the street. I've been thinking about it a lot lately because one of our candidates for president has reminded us (as if we need this reminder) just how prevalent harassing, dismissing, and horrifying rape culture is...and how many people normalize it as "just locker room talk" or "boys will be boys." I've also been thinking about it because I was only 10 years old. And now I have a 10 year old daughter. I was 10. I was a tiny stick of a kid, puberty was still years (so many years!) away for me. I was walking home from elementary school wearing my beloved tropical print culottes. I was walking with confidence and experimenting with a bit of a swagger, feeling happy and proud of myself. A car full of college boys drove by slowly and whistled and hooted and yelled some gross things at me. Wasn't really anything, no big deal. Certainly nothing compared to other things that have happened to me, let alone to other women I know. Harmless, really. Except...why do I still remember it now that I'm 41? Why do I remember what I was wearing? 

I remember it because it scared me, and it was the first time I felt shame for my girl-ness, shame for my body, for my clothes, shame for feeling confident and holding my head up and striding purposefully. It feels like a bright line--on one side childhood and hanging upside down from the monkey bars in a dress and I can be anything I want to be and on the other side awareness that how I walk or what I wear matters to other people and not all men are safe and watch out and be aware and don't hold your head up too much and definitely don't let anyone see you swagger. And I think about it now because it reminds me how much those ideas seep in unnoticed...at 10 I had many confident, feminist role models, I had a mom who was a leader in her field and a dad who did the laundry (and was also a leader in his field), parents who modeled a loving and equal relationship and told me I could do and be anything. Feminist values that prompted me as a toddler to tell a department store Santa that I would prefer a typewriter and calculator when he asked if I wanted to ask for a dolly for christmas. And despite all that, in that moment, when those boys yelled at me, I *knew* it was my fault. I caused it. Something I did made them behave that way. It wouldn't have happened if I'd been better, more demure, less colorfully dressed, more invisible. It just seeps in. It seeps in because we excuse it, because we let it stand, because we call it harmless locker room talk and boys will be boys...and girls will pay the price. 

Today I feel pain. I feel pain for our future. I feel the pain of disillusionment and fear. I feel a deep amount of personal pain for a person I do not know – not political pain, but simple human pain for a woman who worked really, really hard, who shouldered expectations and pressure, who tried so hard. And who was told, no, sit down, not you. And even deeper pain for my country that has lashed out in an angry, ugly way. My country has punched its fist in the wall and kicked over the table because it doesn’t know what else to do with its self-loathing, fearful anger.

I also know that I will be able to channel my pain somewhere, that I can own it as part of my identity, that I can share it and people will listen. That I can even make beauty from this pain.

I know that channel is born of privilege: the privileges of how I look and how the world sees me and the privilege of family and circumstances that reinforced my ability to be my whole self, that communicated possibility instead of barrier and helped me find the power in my own hands.

We’ve ignored that channel too long for too many people. We’ve tried to change the system without changing the people. We’ve left people out, pushed them to the margins, treated them as disposable. We’ve ignored the trauma of systemic racism. We’ve denied the scar of institutionalized misogyny.  And part of how this denial has gone unchecked is that we’ve left people to identify with their oppressor because their pain has no where to go.

I think we’ve been asking the wrong questions. The question shouldn’t be, “when will you get over the highway that slashed your beloved neighborhood and move on?” or “when will you understand it wasn’t me that stole your homeland?” or “when will you realize the factory that provided steady jobs in your town isn’t ever coming back?” or any variation of “why can’t you just get over it?”

I think the question needs to be, “how can we hear the story of your pain?” I am clinging to the hope that artists know how to open this channel and help us feel and hear our pain and help us see each others humanity.

I am inspired by poet Hawona Sullivan Janzen who said that after a great personal trauma, she couldn’t speak, so she wrote, and by writing for herself, began to write for others. And who showed up and wrote for her community following the murder of Philando Castile. She opened a channel to hear their pain.

I am inspired by musician Shannon Murray who resurrected the stories of farmers who were institutionalized at a state mental institution (often in order to take ownership of their land) and wrote them back into history through protest songs and fierce performance. She opened a channel to hear their pain.

These channels make it possible to see both the individual specificity and the commonality of pain across generations, geographies, identities and cultures.

Pain is part of individual identity and community identity. Pain is part of culture. And pain needs a way out. It is clear that there are many people who are willing to exploit our pain for their power, for their wealth, to protect the systems that serve a very few. It is not going to be easy to divert the river of pain that flows to that channel, it is the path of least resistance. Which is why our resistance is necessary, our creativity is urgent, our channel is needed. As artists, we need to find the channels that allow our neighbors and our communities to have productive pain: not less painful, but more useful. The channels that allow us to express it, to see it, to honor it, and most of all to truly hear it. 

You can’t own a nonprofit. It belongs to and answers to the community. Or at least it’s supposed to. I spend a lot of time thinking about this (it’s super fun inside my head.)

It can be exhausting to deal with people who want things, people who don’t understand what you’re trying to make, skeptics, doubters and other humans. But in the end, a nonprofit leader (even a founder) is just a steward for the organization’s mission. What does it mean to work for an organization that belongs to the public trust? What does that mean, practically? There are a few things I go back to as a touchstones that help me get back on track when I feel crabby or defensive, or misunderstood, or just tired and burnt out.

A responsibility to listen. You don’t have to take everyone’s advice, but you have a responsibility to hear it, to sit down with people who have ideas or critiques, to respond to complaints, to hear and consider suggestions for how the work could be better.

Make a transparent home for learning. It’s easy to complain about the volume of informational interviews or other requests for time, and sometimes people truly are time wasters, but even those people have a right to ask for 30 minutes to learn about the sector, ask questions about how to have a career in the nonprofit world, to hand you their resume. (I draw the line at the person who asked for an informational interview who then switched up her questions half way through to try to enroll me in her multi-level marketing scheme.)

Push power to the community. A nonprofit’s board should be the tool that puts power and governance of an organization and its mission and vision in the hands of the community it serves. Fundraising might be a byproduct or a part of the board’s work, but it’s not the goal and it shouldn’t be mistaken for a qualification for service.

Share more than you protect. Nonprofit is a business structure that doesn’t demand that you measure success by financial profit returned to investors-which is pretty awesome. You need to run the business ethically and soundly, to be sure, but I’ve encountered nonprofits who shield their work as if they are pharmaceutical companies inventing new drugs (maybe they are? Think of the earned income potential!) Maybe you don’t want to or can’t share your programs, but you can introduce one of your funders to some great work that you know about, or take the time to share a job description, or help another organization find a good insurance broker.

Care for the people who do the work. An organizations salary, benefits and organizational culture should support the mission. Figuring this stuff out (especially health insurance) is a constantly moving target and some of the most frustrating work you can take on, but it’s also fundamental to mission focused work. We have to take care of the people doing this work. What if the question is how can I make health insurance available to as many people as possible, rather than how can I create a position that is enough under the threshold so I don’t have to pay for benefits? This includes you, nonprofit leaders – you have a responsibility to take care of yourself, too. If you’re going to be the steward of a mission, the listener and sharer, you need to feel healthy, too. Find the people who see you and understand you and lean on them. Ask for help from your colleagues. Create outlets for laughing about the people who drive you crazy (not online!) with other people who understand that sometimes venting is necessary but who will also steer you back towards generosity and love.

up front caveats:

1. I am not an expert or spokesperson for Black Lives Matter, I only speak for myself and my experience. Following national and local Black Lives Matter groups and other activists is your best way to learn about this movement.

2. I would and will never tell other people how to parent. The decision to take your child to a protest is intensely personal and there are many, many valid reasons to make a different choice than I made.

I was not going to write about this. I get a lot of opportunities to talk and have my voice heard and part of how I choose to participate in social change and protest is to try to make space for other people to be heard. But then I read this post that my friend shared on Facebook (h/t Kemi Ilesanmi, from whom I get so many wonderful things to read and think about):

I love an asset based approach. I started thinking about this for myself. And questioning whether my attitude of making space for others might also be a way of not stepping up or out enough in support. One asset I have is a platform – in real life and online and some people who listen to what I say and read what I write. Another asset, also born of white, cis, femme, blonde, Midwestern privilege, is that people tend to not get mad when I say contentious things. Maybe that means they might hear something differently from me? Maybe it means I’m not being brave enough.

I attended the Black Lives Matter rally and protest that became the I94 shutdown. I brought my 10-year old daughter. My husband and I wanted her to see people who were standing up for what they believe in. We wanted her to understand that she can take action. While we were there we joined the march that started at the Governor’s mansion. It was well-organized, loving, peaceful, and hopeful. The organizers gave us clear instructions for non-violence and how to report someone to the organizers (and not take matters into our own hands) if we saw someone we thought might be violent.

We walked for several blocks. I didn’t know where we were going. I was a little worried my kid would complain about how far the walk was, because, you know, she’s a kid. She asked a lot of questions along the way and I tried clumsily to explain, to help her understand. As with a lot of parenting, trying to explain to her only made me realize how little I know, how shallow my understanding truly is. She asked “Why are we all doing this? Who are we talking to?” I tried to explain that taking big public action helps get the attention of the public, but also of politicians who make our laws and tells them we want them to change the laws.” She wanted to know which politicians, which laws? She said, “Because I know President Obama, he must be on our side, right? How many more people do we need to convince?” Good question.

I tried to explain the more insidious, systemic parts, I tried to start with how our country was founded, with taking land that didn’t belong to us from the Native American community. I tried to start with slavery. Somewhere in here, I brought Hamilton into the conversation (because she loves Hamilton.) I was stumbling all over myself. She said, “MOM! I don’t understand what you are talking about!” We walked in silence for another block, I still don’t really know where we are going, maybe we are going to University Avenue where there are lots of people who could see us. I start worrying that maybe I shouldn’t have brought her (not because I’m scared AT ALL, I felt completely safe during this entire experience) but because should I be asking her to stand up for something if she doesn’t yet understand what she’s standing up for?

I take a deep breath and say “Ok, let me try this one more time and if it doesn’t make sense, let me know, ok?” “Imagine if there is a big dandelion in the yard and we just yank it out, but we don’t get all the roots out. Then maybe that big dandelion is gone, but lots more weeds will spring up from those roots, right? Imagine that big dandelion is slavery, and we might have yanked the top of that big ugly weed so it wasn’t as obvious, but the roots were still there and now there are lots weeds that are still popping up. Those weeds are laws, and attitudes and sometimes feelings we don’t even know we have.” I was sure she would look at me and say “What?!” or ask if we could get ice cream after this. But instead she paused and said quietly, “Oh. Yes! I understand that.” And she ran over to explain it to her dad and grandma. And she didn’t complain about the walk.

We got to the on-ramp of I94 and I realized where we were going. The organizers very clearly explained where the march was going, again reminded us to be peaceful, and gave us an option to leave. My kid was gripping my hand tight and we walked onto the highway. This highway that is a scar through the Rondo neighborhood. A symbol of racism and disregard for black lives and black community literally built into our city. What I saw and heard on the highway:

people standing next to their cars smiling and taking pictures

people sitting in their cars awkwardly not knowing what to do

a bride and groom in their wedding clothes waving from the overpass

a leader of the protest--standing clearly where everyone could see and hear her, praising people’s love and peacefulness, giving calm, clear instructions--bathed in a beautiful evening light

the organizers and other protestors helping to facilitate a car that needed to get through get through the crowd safely

police looking bemused, annoyed, or like this was their job, that they believed in

protestors crying because they were doing what they believed in

protestors shouting because they were doing what they believed in

protestors hugging and holding hands because they were doing what they believed in

I felt pain, joy, sorrow, anger, and overwhelming gratitude to all of the people, and especially the organizers, for giving me hope that change is possible for giving me an opportunity to be a tiny tiny part of something that felt like action. My child was nervous, a little overwhelmed, but she didn’t want to leave, she knew why she was there. She has a very loud voice and she was using it well.

The organizers clearly told us when we should leave if we couldn’t or shouldn’t or didn’t want to risk arrest. Their directions were clear and calm and respectful to the police. We parted ways with a friend who was willing to stay and risk arrest to stand up for what he believes in. I know several of the people who were eventually arrested that night and know them to be some of the calmest, most peaceful, thoughtful people I have ever encountered. I am honored to share a nonprofit community with many of them. It should go without saying that I do not endorse violence against the police or any one else. I simply do not understand how these protestors can be blamed and charged for violence they did not condone, repeatedly asked to stop and explicitly condemned. This seems like deciding to charge some customers who happened to be in a bank while it was robbed because it was too hard to catch the bank robber.

We exited on the off ramp and walked back to the Governor’s mansion. It was a long walk. She never complained once.

---

P.S. Here is a great list of resources and more information on how to help, how to take action and how to learn and educate yourself on the issues (so maybe you’ll have better answers for your kids than I did):

specifically, these:

Black Lives Matter Minneapolis

Million Artist Movement

P.P.S. Another amazing and inspiring art and activism project, fellow theater artists, get involved with the Every 28 Hours Plays project.

P.P.P.S. Something else that inspires me is people who are moved to use their artistic skills and creative power who don’t define themselves as activists. Including Mary Engelbreit (yes that Mary Engelbreit) who makes the cherubic drawings of kids on the beach, and bowls of cherries to decorate your kitchen. This artist, this white, middle aged woman, whose work I have loved, but who I never really thought was a real person behind a brand. This person who very easily could have done nothing, she stepped up, she used her art and her platform of many followers to say something she believed, multiple times, and she stood behind it. I love that.

National Committee on Responsive Philanthropy: Place-based Philanthropy is People Powered

To contribute to long-term impact and equity, we need to look beyond, or behind, the usual suspects and leaders. Nonprofits and foundations need to work in a hyper-local way to help build and recognize leadership that is truly from and of the communities we hope to serve. But how should we go about this?

Guernica: Art As Activism

Filling sandbags is community ritual in North Dakota. Almost every Spring, the rain and melting snow that attempt to flood the banks of the river threaten the economy, safety and, in some years, the very existence of the towns like Fargo along the Red River Valley. In an exhausting race against time, neighbors come together and shovel sand into thousands of bags to keep the disaster at bay. They wonder about the failures of policy and infrastructure to protect their homes, they wonder about the relationship of humans and nature, but mostly they fill and stack and pray.

The Guardian: Culture Professionals Top 10 Stories of 2015

I was giving a presentation last week and I realized as I was going through my standard images and video clips of Springboard’s work that my daughter is in the background of a lot of the images. There she is throwing the dice from Robyn Hendrix’s Irrigate project at Northern Spark, there she is dancing with Dianne E’Lainne during the Springboard TVTakeover on TPT, there she is exploring Haley Honeman’s installation made during her Hinge Arts Residency. She’s in all those photos because she’s outgoing and likes having her photo taken, and it’s also because she’s been a part of my work life since she was born.

I’ve been at Springboard 10 years and Irene is 9, so you can do that math. (The kid was planned, the job was an accident.) In retrospect there is no better time to have a baby then when you are starting some other brand new thing and have no idea how that’s going to go either. Might as well leap into all the new things at once.

No one had ever had a baby at Springboard before and I remember bringing her to the office, and my colleagues generously, gingerly offering to hold her…much the way you might hold a sleeping crocodile—gently and away from your vital organs. Which turned out to be a wise choice since she spit up frequently and with no warning. Everyone was patient while I pumped in the bathroom for a year (it was that or the supply closet and honestly it didn’t bother me), understanding when I left early to relieve her dad or pick her up from daycare, and friendly and engaging when she graduated from sleeping in a sling to running around the office ringing the reception bell over and over and over…and over.

We opened the office in Fergus Falls and now that’s one of Irene’s very favorite places to visit and she gets mad if she learns I’m going to Fergus without her. And in the last 9 years, we’ve welcomed a lot of Springboarders who are parents and other colleagues have welcomed new additions to their families. Collectively we have 6 kids and on our way to 9 this year. We have a parental leave policy now. We’ve built a place that can flex and bend to accommodate kids, and also other family obligations and opportunities as well as artistic and other life stuff. I want everyone to be able to bring their whole self to work, regardless of whether that whole self includes a chatty kiddo. I know what that feels like because my colleagues have done it for me.

I also know that as a parent, I am supposed to feel guilty about work and guilty about parenting in equal measure. I am supposed to say “I feel like I’m failing at both – I guess we can’t have it all!” But you know what? No. I don’t feel guilty and I don’t feel like I’m failing. 

I feel like it’s super hard sometimes, and exhausting and attention dividing. I have a million moments each day when I have no idea what the hell I’m doing as a parent. I also have a million moments when I have no idea what I’m doing in my work. Or, you know, as a person. I also feel like I have an amazing job and an amazing kid. And I love that my girl sees me work really hard and care about something I believe in and that she gets to be a part of that work.

I do not feel that working a lot will ruin my kid or that having a kid will ruin my work. For me, part of being a good mom is being good at my job...and vice versa. Having it all. My definition of having “it all” doesn’t have to be the same as yours, it probably isn’t. The “it all” that I am having is messy and hard and beautiful and fun and weird and exhausting and exciting. 

I know that I am incredibly lucky and privileged to have a place where I can bring my whole self (including very chatty kiddo) to my work. I know that for many parents, bringing your whole self to work is not an option and I feel guilty about that. We all need to be working for paid sick leave, higher minimum wage and other rights that would make things better and more humane for other parents and humans. And those of us who have the ability to change, question and model what it looks like to have work that includes your life should make sure we do that openly and honestly. 

(”Hello, comedy hotline, how may I help you?”)

Here in Minnesota, the MN Fringe Festival just concluded another successful season. With over 170 different shows, it truly has something for everyone. It has also become an important showcase for new work and especially for new, comedic work. I was lucky to perform in two newly created funny shows this year. Which meant I had the privilege of spending 11 days making people laugh, feeling the energy that several hundred people laughing in unison creates and testing different pauses, inflections and reactions to see what makes people laugh harder. I can’t think of much I love more than hearing an audience break into a big boisterous belly laugh together.

Laughter is a conversation. It can communicate surprise, embarrassment, knowing understanding, catharsis and community. Most artists make work to get a reaction, artists who do comedy get that reaction right away and in a very immediate way.

Comedy often gets left out of the conversation about art. And when it comes to how art can address social issues, we are almost never thinking about comedy. It can be hard to imagine that humor could be a part of addressing the most serious issues of our time.

But we should. We need play to break us out of our entrenched ways of doing things, we need joy to help us see that change is possible and laughter is the quickest, most tangible path to shared experience.

We can call on comedians to speak truth to power, to point out the absurdities of things we take for granted and challenge us to think differently. We can call on comedians to give us relief from a hard day. We can call on comedians to reassure us that we aren’t as weird or different as we feel. And we can honor that when we come together and laugh we are being vulnerable with strangers, letting ourselves have a physical and emotional reaction in public.

In a recent piece in the New York Times, former Bogota mayor, Antanas Mockus describes how fun and play can help remake cities and neighborhoods, “People respond to humor and playfulness from politicians. It’s the most powerful tool for change we have.”

I’m taking a sabbatical! It starts in two weeks!! Aaaaaughgh!

I’m going to write, think, breathe and spend time with my family. I don’t know much more than that. I don’t know how hard it will be not look at my email every 5 seconds. I don’t know how hard it will be to hold myself accountable for the things I want to accomplish during the break. I really don’t know. And I’m trying to be ok with the not-knowing for now.

I know I will miss my colleagues. I know I’ll miss the daily rhythm and confidence of knowing what I need to get done each day. I know I’ll miss the office and the accidental hallway conversations that fuel our work. I know I won’t miss fretting and worrying about the next deadline/hard conversation/unpleasant meeting on the calendar. I know I won’t miss looking for parking in lowertown. I know I won’t miss out on spending the summer with my daughter. That’s about all I know right now. 

And that’s ok. For now.

Here’s my official little announcement:

Dear friends and colleagues: In April of this year I celebrated 10 years as Executive Director of Springboard for the Arts (the staff dropped balloons on me, so you know it was a party.) It has been an amazing 10 years, filled with lots of learning, growth, and powerful work by and for artists. I am so tremendously grateful to be a part of Springboard's mission and work and I am energized and excited about the opportunities and work before us.

As part of my 2014 Bush Fellowship, I will be taking a sabbatical from Springboard for the Arts, starting on July 1-October 31, 2015. I'm excited about this opportunity to take a breath, reflect on all that has happened and do some deep learning and writing. I'm also already looking forward to coming back with new ideas in the fall.

While I am on sabbatical, Managing Director Molly Chase will step into the role of Interim Executive Director, supported by our wonderful and engaged Board of Directors. There is a lot of leadership in the artists who make up the Springboard staff, and I know that the organization is in good hands with Molly, Andy, Carl, Dan, John, Jun-Li, Kathryn, Michele, Nikki, Noah, Naomi, Peter and Zaraawar.

I will be checking my email intermittently, so you can continue to use this address to contact me...or to check in and admonish me for checking my email too often._

Holy buckets. I’ve been at Springboard for the Arts for 10 years this week. I still remember the feeling of sitting at my desk on my first day and not having the foggiest idea what to do or what I had gotten myself in to. I looked like this:

(actual photo from my first week at Springboard by Scott Streble.)

Terrified. Definitely a fake-it-until-you-make-it moment. And, now, well, I still don’t know what I’m doing a lot of the time. I have felt my way along, had incredible mentors and colleagues and friends, and I have learned so much.  I’ve learned enough that now I get invited to bore grad students with my opinion and thoughts on leadership and nonprofits and I say things like “the sector” and “the field.” One thing I’ve learned is that writing helps me process and clarify things I’ve learned. And, so, here are 10 things I’ve learned in the last 10 years.

1. Be valuable. It’s not a financial crisis. It’s a relevance crisis. Dig deeper than a new marketing plan or even a new strategic plan. Put everything on the table and ask “if we recreated this organization today, what would it look like? How are we engaged in the most relevant issues facing our community? How are we demonstrating tangible value to our constituents?” Build useful, relevant programs that people value and then keep doing that. (Also, take a class at Nonprofits Assistance Fund so you can understand financials.)

2. Operate from abundance. Scarcity doesn’t feed you. Figure out what you can offer, maybe it’s money, or time, or space, or partnership or creative thinking and then offer it. Say yes to everything for a while until you learn more about what you should say yes to. Even then, make sure your “reckless yeses” outweigh your “prudent nos.” Share what you’ve learned as freely as you can.

3. Organize around people’s passion & ideas. People don’t change. People can (and should!) learn new skills, but their fundamental personalities and proclivities don't change. You’ll be super frustrated if you expect or try to force them to change. So hire awesome people who care deeply about the work, and then let them do awesome things. Support new ideas that get people excited. Let go of ideas that don’t have a champion…even if you think they are great (unless you’re willing to do them yourself.)

4. Humans are human Humans are not robots, they are human. Humans are messy and weird and surprising and awesome. People have a lot of other stuff going on in their lives. They also have emotions and baggage and passions. Try to create a place where people can bring their whole selves to their job and a place that understands when family, artistic or personal priorities need to come first. Try to have grace and patience for your colleagues, and hopefully they’ll have grace and patience with you.

5. Let collaborators change you. Work with people you love. Learn the languages of other sectors and fields, listen to their challenges and opportunities, try to see their perspective on the work. Find partners who will ask hard questions and challenge you to see things differently. Be responsive and flexible. What if we aspire to mission growth, rather than fear mission creep?

6. Know your principles. What are the things you’re willing to go to the mat for every. single. time.? What are your dealbreakers, your must-haves, your non-negotiables? Write them down and then be confident that you can let those fantastic collaborators change you and push you, because you know who you are.  “Tight on the mission, loose on the method” as Erik Takeshita says.

7. Show up. I’m pretty introverted, so at the beginning I really had to force myself to go to events, conferences and other gatherings. I learned that it’s so important. Building a network of colleagues outside of your organization, your field and your sector can bring all kinds of energizing collaborations, ideas and knowledge to your work. It also shows people you’re invested in their work and ideas. Go to things outside of your comfort zone, learn about other people’s passions, see your role in a larger context, and make new friends. Ask people you admire to have coffee. Go to coffee when other people ask you—yes, you’re busy, but the relationships are the work.

8. Beware best practices. Sometimes it’s better not to know the right way to do something. Sometimes you come up with a better way. Or at least you learn something. Nonprofits are filled with have-to-haves. Board committees, employee time tracking, dedicated development staff, an annual gala, a fundraising board, an endowment, doors on my office…I could make a very long list of things that someone else has told me we “need to have” that it turns out we didn’t. The infrastructure and policies of the organization are the tools for enacting your mission, so they should support and enable the culture, values and pace of the work you want to make.

9. Embrace the creative process. For everything. Find the right collaborators, put people around the table, ask questions, rehearse, iterate, fix, try again, look at it upside down, iterate, iterate, iterate. Also, fun…have lots of it.

10. Do. Do something! Do it now. Figure out how to break off a small manageable chunk and try it. Don’t wait around for permission or funding or the perfect plan. Start small and try it out. A pilot or prototype will give you so much more information than a plan ever will. And a successful pilot will help you raise support, rally partners and gather the resources necessary to take that prototype and make it bigger. The show doesn't go on because it's ready; it goes on because it's eleven-thirty. -Lorne Michaels

Thanks, Springboard for the Arts, for 10 amazing years. I found my purpose, my work, my identity in these last 10 years. I'm so proud of what we’ve accomplished and so excited and challenged by all we still need and want to do. And most importantly, I have gotten to work with some of the most amazing, surprising, weird and awesome humans in the world:

“Love the Art in Yourself, and Not Yourself in the Art.”

-Konstantin Stanislavsky

I think my high school drama teacher introduced me to this phrase. It became one of many “serious theater student” quotes that I would painstakingly print out on my dot matrix printer, color in with markers and tape to my bedroom wall. Alongside quotes from Martha Graham and Uta Hagen, and of course the official Thespian motto “act well your part, therein all the honor lies.” I took drama very seriously.

But this Stanislavsky one sticks with me. It is such a good touchstone, a guidestar and ego check. Are you doing this for the right reasons? You, your person, your guts and heart are not separate from the art—they are unique and important and necessary. You must find the art within yourself—your unique voice, the thing you must say or do or you will go crazy.  But you, your glory, is not the reason for the art nor the measure of its success. Put bluntly, it’s not about you, babe.

Particularly in work that is with or alongside community, this should be our north star. Love the community in yourself, not yourself in the community seems a relevant adaptation. As artists we are part of communities–we live in them, work in them, we are neighbors, parents, friends and stakeholders as well as artists. We should revel in those multiple identities and love that we can carry that part of ourselves that is “community” into the work. Indeed it is the community within us that often makes this work effective and authentic. And yet, beware of the “Lorax syndrome”--communities do not need us to be saviors or superheros, communities do not need us to speak for them.  

For me, fall seems to prompt changes and thoughts of moving on or letting go. Although I like fall, I always feel a little blue this time of year, letting go of Minnesota summer and it’s bare feet, eating outside, digging in the dirt, swimming in the lake wonderfulness is hard when you can’t help but remember how long it will be before we see our toes again.

  This fall’s change and melancholy has held a number of moments that push me to think about place and change and art and the ways that we make our mark and tell our stories.

In my family: We are moving. We are selling our house. We are only moving 10 blocks away. We are moving by choice, but it is not without complex emotions and reasons. We have lived here almost 11 years – a drop in the bucket really, less than 10% of our house’s life. I wonder about all the other families who have called this place home, who have changed it and molded it and tended it. All the people who watched as the trees grew around them, who walked across these floorboards, who sat on the porch and watched the neighborhood go by.

We obey the common wisdom of realtors and remove our personal items from the house, paint over the weird colored rooms, and clean up the crumbs to help the next family, wherever they are, imagine themselves as the “owner” of this place. My husband and daughter and I hold hands in the living room and whisper our memories into the walls. 

In my community: Dudley Riggs’ Brave New Workshop Theater moves out of 2605 Hennepin Avenue, where the historic comedy theater has been for 49 years. The theater is moving by choice, to greener pastures and a space downtown with more visibility and less leaks and holes and places to bash your head. I worked in that space for a few brief years--a drop in the bucket compared to other actors and writers who spent literal lifetimes in the space. But it was one of the first places I worked as an actor and I met my husband in that theater, and we performed and wrote together in that theater. We learned who we were as people and as a couple in that theater. We made lifelong friends.

We gather with those friends and the many others for whom that place has meaning well beyond it’s physical structure. And we tell the stories, we shout them into the rafters, as if they weren’t already there. We write our names on the doors to make our mark, as if the building isn’t already held together by our sweat. We listen to the wisdom of Dudley Riggs with a special reverence. He tells us “Nothing is sacred. Except the circus.” I know the circus is defined by the people and the activity and not the space. The circus is moveable and so it moves.

In another place: In Fergus Falls, Minnesota. On a beautiful September day, 700 people gather to watch a play. A play, based on the history of the Kirkbride building. Vacant for the last ten years, this 120-year old building was home to the Fergus Falls Regional Treatment Center and State Hospital. It is a beautiful, sprawling campus that is awe-inspiring, contentious and complicated. On this beautiful September day, 50 residents of Fergus Falls perform in the play, which is written from 100 interviews of former employees, patients and other community members. A drop in the bucket really, when you think about the many thousands of people who have passed through that building. These stories and these voices are strong and beautiful and complicated. Together they make up a nuanced and complex history of mental health treatment and community history and pride.

The community tells its stories into the breeze and sunshine, into the ears of the generations of people who came to witness. A community imagines a future where the past is not forgotten. We walk together around the 500,000 sq foot castle and see the place in new ways. At the end we perform a kind of ritual motion together, based on a movement repeated many thousand times by a former patient at the Kirkbride. My daughter looks at me and says, “Mom, you are crying A LOT.” It is true. The stories are held in our hearts now, not just in the walls.   

  The leaves fall, time marches forward, we tell our stories, we make our mark, and the circus moves on.