ArtsCubed3 – Page 19

Self-policing code of ethics for Canada's charitable sector announced

The Association of Professional Fundraisers is show below updating its professional code of ethics in 1964. More than 40 years later the Canadian Charitable sector is catching up!

In the wake of exposes by the Toronto Star of fundraising practices by some charities that have resulted in as much as 90% of funds raised going to fundraising and administrative costs rather than charitable work, the charitable sector has announced the implementation of a self-policing code, reported in the October 22/07 Toronto Star story, “Charities Launch self-policing code” by Kevin Donovan. (note that link is time sensitive)

Is it enough?

The public is worried about donating wisely and–on the other hand– those of us that work in the non-profit, charitable sector understand that the problem of getting the most bang for the charitable buck is deeper and more complex than the simple solutions suggested as first steps. We have some idea of where the bodies are buried.

The frustrating thing for those of us working in the sector is when we see a great program working very effectively in a sector fail to gain support, while a noisy charity that really does very little beyond generate hoopla and organize fundraising events, gets media attention, celebrity support and commands public dollars.

Through Imagine Canada, charities are being asked to sign a voluntary code. One of the first provisions of the new code is that signators will not use commission fundraisers as this practice can lead to both aggressive marketing and the use of charitable funds to simply pay fundraisers. The information that is missing in this recent announcement is that the Association of Fundraising Professionals has included this rule in their code of ethics originally adopted in 1964! Using commissioned fundraisers has been regarded as both sleazy and ineffective by non-profit managers for at least a decade. So it is shocking to hear large charities like Sick Kids and World Vision only swearing off the practice in 2007.

The next provision of the code mentioned in the October 22/07 article is that charities will adhere to a code of honesty in reporting to their donors. Imagine Canada is said to be cracking down on “wild claims of success by the charitable sector.” Good idea but very vaguely worded.

Nowhere in the report is there a clear criteria how “wild claims” will be detected nor how the sector will amend the practice. While some issues are more complex, there eally there are a number of ways that some charities deceive the public that could be identified, a test of accuracy applied and the practice cleared up fairly easily. One example is the use of self-aggrandizing and confusing titles for organizations and programs. Many organizations have “International”, “World” and “Canada” or “Canadian” in their titles. The public can be expected to presume that an organization with “International” or “World” in the title has directly-administered programs in a number of countries around the world. The sector should/could agree that having directly-administered programs in less than a set number of nations, (7, 5, … 3?) and using “International” or “World” in the charity’s name or program title, is deceptive. By the same token, charities that describe themselves as the X organization of Canada, lead the public to believe that they offer programs and services to Canadians in a number of provinces. Imagine Canada should include benchmarks for the use of these common attributions.

Another way that “wild claims” could be curtailed is by adopting a strictly enforced standard for reporting on statistics for programs. This is straightforward for programs that are solely and directly administered. It becomes more difficult in jointly-run programs. Sometimes charities give small donations to programs and then claim the entire program and its activities as part of the work of the charity. Real collaborations between agencies in the charitable sector is to be encouraged, but the public should be able to tell clearly who is responsible.

Here is an example of the way this numbers dodge can work in the charitable sector. Charity X raises money to run a cross-country literacy program that involves authors in doing readings in remote communities for the purpose of both literacy awareness and also to promote local literacy programs. Then charity X contacts grass-roots organizations and gets them to do all the work, undertake the lion’s share of the work and all the marketing expense in organizing the events. Perhaps a small “how to run your event” manual is written by Charity X from freely available material found on the internet, providing a token organizing effort. Another token support is given to the event in the form of subsidizing author airfare for example—transferring a small amount of funds raised to actual program costs. Meanwhile there is virtually no work or expense by charity X other than the transfer of that small portion of funds raised and yet Charity X takes credit for a national series of literacy awareness events, and furthermore enhance their reputation as a national organization while potentially running no real programs in Canada and keeping the lion’s share of money raised for their administrative and fundraising operations. A staff salary is paid to a “program coordinator” but that person’s daily work assignments relate to fundraising and general administration. A report to donors on the project includes the information that X people attended events in 15 locations across Canada and X dollars were expended on program costs, however the report on program costs includes the salary paid to someone for administration and a pro-rated portion of administrative costs such as photo-copies, office suppliers… even if none of these were used for program materials. About 80 % of funds raised is claimed as being used in “program costs” with a modest 20 % being accorded to administrative support of the program. However a hard forensic accounting look at the program might show that only 10% to 20% of the money donated to the program was transferred to direct program costs in the form of low hassle airfare subsidies to grassroots groups organizing their own events.

This is the complex face of garden-variety “wild claims” in the charitable sector. This type of practice is damaging to the climate of giving in Canada. It also hurts legitimate charitable organizations, and is poisoning the working climate in the non-profit sector– both within “bad apple” organizations and within the good organizations who struggle to compete with the “bad apples” who misreport activities, results and proportion of money spent on administration and fundraising.

While Imagine Canada is to be commended on this first step of a self-governing code of ethics, it is a very, very small step. Much more work is needed and it is not clear that this can be accomplished by the sector itself. In my next article I will attempt to write about what I see as a sickness in the heart of some charities and non-profits and some thoughts on how to tackle those difficulties.

Tags: Management, Leadership, Arts Non-profit, Charities, Donors < a href="http://technorati.com/tag/Ethics" rel="tag">Ethics

Bread and Roses Life, L. Rogers

Will the real Second Life please stand up?

Very interesting post yesterday about the myths and realities of the virtual reality world, “Second Life”.

As a habitue of Second Life, I agree with the statements. Second Life is fun, it’s growing and there is a lot worth logging on for!

Yeah, it’s not perfect. There’s a lot of commercialism and seedy stuff that I have no use for but there is also the same heady feel of the early days of the internet. I love what people are doing on “Better World Island” a community for peaceniks and environmentalists full of hopeful displays and opportunities to learn about work going on in international development and conservation.

I’ve recently joined an intentional community on Cedar Island dedicated to exploring some of the positive uses of technology for education and social empowerment.

And strange as it seems I also have joined a virtual Quaker Meeting, pictured above at one of our regular Saturday am meetings.

Bread and Roses Life, L. Rogers

The Purpose of Music

An acquaintance recently stumbled across some old musings of mine on the Arts Journal site. It brought memories flooding back of memorable conversations with enigmatic, deep, controversial composer John Tavener.

originally posted @ August 6, 2004 10:46 am as a comment on Arts Journal

During two years as General Manager of Soundstreams Canada, a new music concert presenter in Toronto, Canada–the conversation we hosted that most animated the music community here was a lecture given by Sir John Tavener. He was in town at our invitation for a concert we were presenting of his music. It might be added that unlike the small attendance at most new music concerts, this was an SRO concert. We crowded about 1200 into an 1100 seat cathedral and had to send hundreds home in disappointment. Clearly this is a voice that is reaching people musically.

Prior to John’s arrival, he and I had discussed by phone, the fact that both the music community and the theological community wanted to sponsor a lecture and there was insufficient time in the schedule for two such events. At his suggestion, and with the cooperation of the two sponsoring faculties, we had combined the two into a lecture entitled, “The vocation of the sacred artist”.

In the lecture Tavener presented the view that music had a purpose and that purpose was to reach the soul of individuals in an uplifting, encouraging and enobling way. The purpose of music was fulfilled when the audience left the concert hall feeling troubles lifted and with a desire for a better world, filled with beauty. He continued in voicing the opinion that music had lost its way when composers began to use music as a way to express their personal tragedy and turmoil, unloading that depression and tortured visions on the audience. In so doing, he continued, the composer was contributing to a negative world-view and the entropy of a corrupted civilization.

Although I found myself uncomfortable with a certain black-and-white nature to his arguments, I found myself fundamentally agreeing. The idea that “if the world is to be saved, it will be saved by beauty”– a Tavener quote that so struck me that I made it the featured quotes in our marketing campaign–was certainly the central theme to my own love of music and what I want to achieve in music and also what is at the root of my own assessment of “good music” and “bad music”. I don’t necessarily want music to make me “feel good” but I want to leave the concert hall with the sense that my soul has been touched and nourished.

Tags: Music, Spirituality, Arts Arts Management, Tavener, Truth New Music

Bread and Roses Life, L. Rogers

Rostropovich, the world loses an authentic artist

Mstislav Rostropovich, dead at 80, fulfilled in life–not just some–but all of the functions that great artists play in our society. First and foremost he was a virtuouso master of his instrument, but that alone did not make him an important force in our society or in the living life of music.

He not only requested, he demanded that the composers of his own time created new works for his instrument and his virtuosity and style of playing was a living part of the creation of new music. In premiering 245 new works for cello, he took risks and played some works that audiences never wanted to hear again, but also gave birth to some wonderful music that are already standards in the cello repertoire.

He embraced the role of artist as truth-teller, independent of political pressure. Russian poet Yevgeny Yevtushenko, said of Rostropovich in 1990 that “he took a stand … for the basic truths of life, and he did not compromise.” He not only spoke out against political suppression and control of the arts in the Soviet Union but took great personal risk in sheltering dissident novelist and Nobel Prize winner Alexander Solzhenitsyn. Retaliation for this act of courage led to the great cellist being ostracized by the Soviet arts establishment at the time.

Celebrated as both a hero and an artist, Rostropovich could have dedicated himself to a few concert appearances and recordings but instead he kept pioneering new music but also was dedicated to the development of young musicians as a mentor, conducting and working with a number of youth orchestras and presiding over a great number of masterclasses.

It is interesting that Rostropovich’s father was a student of Pablo Casals, because he was definitely a cellist in the Casal’s mold. Brave and uncompromising, Rostropovich spoke truth to power in words, deeds and music.

The challenge is there for all of us in the arts to have the courage to follow in his footsteps.

Tags: Music, Leadership, Arts Arts Management, Rostropovich, Freedom New Music

Bread and Roses Life, L. Rogers

Non-profit Board responsibility for Human Resource Policy

The second in a series on arts management.

The World Bank has been in the news recently with the focus on the misdeeds of its CEO, President Paul Wolfowitz. As the revelations have come forward in the news, it has been publicized that a whistle-blower brought allegations of conflict-of-interest and other irregular human resources practices to the bank’s Board of Directors who took no action on these allegations. In retrospect, the Board looks pretty foolish and was certainly not fulfilling its stewardship role.

What is your board’s policy on whistle-blowing? What role does your board have in assuring that proper human resource management practices are being followed? If you can’t answer those questions, then this article is for you.

Board responsibility for human resource policy:
Boards do have a responsibility to assure that their organization is following fair and legal human resources policies. Beyond assuring the health of their organization and being good employers, the board’s oversight of human resource policies has fiscal implications and boards generally understand their responsibility for fiscal stewardship. High staff turnover costs money in training new staff and the expectation that new staff will be less effective during the period while they are familiarizing themselves with the job and key tasks. Egregiously inappropriate human resource management puts the organization at financial risk in a variety of ways: human rights complaints, employment standards complaints, wrongful dismissal law-suits, and fines and penalities for late or incorrect employment benefit deductions are obvious financial repercussions of poor human resource management. Less obvious is the loss of sponsorships, donors and grant funding when the “buzz” in the community about your organization is that it is ineffectively managed and a poor employer.

Separation of Board and Management responsibility:
“But what about the separation of management and board responsibilities?” you ask. “Isn’t human resource policy a management role?” The role that board plays in human resource management can vary, but it is an important one.

The role that board plays in human resource policy needs to be clearly defined in the organization. And the personnel policies of the organization also must be clearly defined.

This is one aspect of non-profit governance where Board and Management must work together and where responsibility is shared. Boards can sometimes overstep their bounds and compromise the role of manager by becoming involved in day-to-day supervisory management issues. But washing their hands totally of human resource policy issues—often in a mistaken belief that this is the way to show support for management’s role—is unacceptable. Doing so is to abdicate a key responsibility of the Board for stewardship of the organization’s financial position and reputation in the community.

Defining the Board’s role in human resource policy:
What defined roles can a non-profit board assume in human resource management? The answer depends on the size of the board, the size of the organization, the role of the board and the strengths within the board. Initially in a new organization or an organization without any human resource policies, the board will likely want to develop and assume responsibility for writing a human resource manual of policies, ideally in cooperation with management and department heads. In developing the organization’s first human resource manual the Board should 1) look for resources from national/provincial agencies supporting non-profit organizations, 2) collect manuals from other similar organizations to its own, and finally 3) look for evidence of existing policies within its own organization.

Finding existing policies in your organization:
How do you look for policies within your organization when you don’t yet have a human resource manual? Ask everyone in the organization to send you copies of memos and decisions that have been made on any human resource issue. If employees have been allowed to carry vacation time accrued for a year in your organization, you don’t want to write a policy that allows for no accrual of vacation time. You want to be consistent and fair in your development of policies. You may be pleasantly surprised by the amount of policy that is in place within the organization. By bringing these policies together in a manual, you make them accessible to all and reveal the few places where policy development is needed.

Ongoing Board oversight of human resource policy:
Boards can write policies, approve policies or merely warrant that proper personnel policies are in place. But in all cases they should be aware of the existence of a human policy manual and assure that those policies are appropriate and appropriately followed. Often a committee of the board, made up of individuals with particular expertise in human resource management is charged with the job of writing and oversight of human resource policy. This committee may be mandated to write all policy or take on only key policy areas as articulated by the Board.

Health and Safety policy:
Non-profit boards often forget health and safety issues when writing human resource policy. Don’t make this mistake. Beyond office workplace safety issues such as repetitive strain injury, non-profit organizations often engage in activities that can place employees at risk. You want to be on the record as mandating that employees follow safety precautions when lifting heavy materials, operating machinery or traveling on company business. You want to assure that federal and provincial safety standards are known and followed. If your workplace is large enough to require a Health and Safety Officer, insure that your Personnel Policy Manual articulates the procedure for selecting one. Accidents will happen, but you want to assure that you have policies in place to protect employees from being asked to engage in unsafe practices. Non-profit workers have reported violations such as being asked to work in food bank warehouses without safety boots or hard hats while stacking crates that could crush them if they toppled. Arts workers have been asked to ride unsecured in the backs of trucks carrying exhibition materials weighing tons, and workers have been made sick after being exposed to toxic levels of print fumes from working in unventilated conditions with boxes of thousands of freshly printed brochures.

Conflict resolution:
What is the Board’s role in workplace conflict resolution? Conflict resolution should be a part of the employment policies articulated in the personnel policy manual. The volunteer board understandably does not want to hear day-to-day employee complaints. If they are, this is symptomatic of a flawed system of dealing with complaints in the workplace. But it would equally be a mistake to shut down dialogue with employees. A policy of never listening to
employees would pave the way to a future embarrassment similar to the one facing the World Bank Board this year. They were presented with the evidence of management wrong-doing and they shut down the employee bringing them this evidence. As a result the employee went to the press.

Progressive system of dispute resolution:
Within the personnel policy manual there should be a clearly articulated progressive policy for employee complaint resolution in the same way that there should be a progressive discipline policy for employee violation of company policies and job role expectation.

What does this mean in practice? It should mean that the first step in any employee complaint is that the employee first discusses the matter with their direct supervisor, or where that is inappropriate (for example if the complaint were to involve harassment by that very supervisor) then to go to the next level of authority. Response to the complaint with a suggested plan of action should be delivered to the employee within a reasonable time frame that should be spelled out in the employee manual. Should the employee not be satisfied with the action plan, the organization should provide a vehicle for a final appeal process. It should be clearly stated in the employee policy manual that no punitive action for employee complaints will be tolerated by the organization.

Board role in dispute resolution:
The Board should provide some means for employees to carry complaints forward beyond the management level. By the time employee complaints are heard by the Board, usually two or more attempts to resolve the complaint will have been made at the staff level, departmental and upper management. It should be noted that it could be construed as a violation of the employee’s right to privacy to force the employee to discuss their complaint in front of the whole Board. Instead it is often advised that the Board develop a Personnel Committee to meet with employees in a confidential manner and to share their deliberations with the Board, without violating confidential information about individual employees. Such a committee will usually be comprised of two or three individuals that the Board views as having the best skills for such a committee.

It should be noted that in a unionized setting, the Board’s Personnel Committee will work within agreed upon arbitration processes.

Other duties of the Personnel Committee:
Other duties of the committee will include annual evaluation of the Executive Director or General Manager, periodic reviews of compensation levels in the organization relevant to the sector, reviews of organizational structure/departmental structure, and the important task of exit interviews. Exit interviews provide a series of snapshots of the organization from different vantage points from people who can provide impartial viewpoints as they no longer have a vested interest in protecting their jobs or advancement within the organization. A policy of exit interviews is effective only when conducted with all possible employees. It is less useful when the Board only chooses to interview either positive or very angry exiting employees.

In smaller organizations, one or more representatives of the Personnel Committee may be involved in employee evaluations and in all cases the Board should assure a fair, objective, consistent evaluation process and that evaluations are in a standard written format with opportunity for employee response.

Key indicators of an organization with effective human resource policies:

1. A Board approved consistent and regularly updated employee policy manual that is provided to all employees.
2. Employees are aware of company policies, can articulate them on query, and compliance is high
3. Most complaints are resolved at the departmental or management level without Board intervention. The occasional complaint that comes to the Board level is dealt with according to established policy.
4. Management and Personnel Committees work together on human resource policy and have good lines of communication
5. Annual evaluations of management and staff are consistent, fair and transparent. The results are written and staff response is invited.
6. The organization never or very seldom experiences law suits for wrongful dismissal, complaints to outside bodies regarding employment practices.
7. Staff turn-over is low in comparison to other similar organizations.

If all or most of these key indicators are present in your non-profit, congratulations, your board is doing all it can to promote a healthy, effective organization with high employee productivity and little risk of financial repercussion due to violations of workers rights.

Key indicators of an organization that needs to work on human resource policy.

1. No policy manual exists, or if it exists it is hard to find, inconsistent, has large gaps in policies.
2. Employees are unaware of company policies or employees have conflicting understanding of company policy based on local memos and departmental policies. Confusion leads to disregard of company policy and low compliance.
3. The organization lacks an effective dispute resolution process. There is no “court of last appeal” in the organization. The Board either hears nothing about disputes within the organization or periodically is inundated by employee complaints, deputations by employees. The Board lacks any policy for dealing with these employee complaints and either shuts them down, ignores them or takes on management roles in dealing directly with situations in the workplace.
4. Management and Board have no authentic communication on personnel issues, there is no committee of the Board charged with personnel issues. Board has a “not our business” attitude, shuts down or deals punitively with whistle-blowers, or alternatively, interferes in the daily business of management by instituting decisions on employee policy without consultation with the manager. No exit interviews are conducted. Staff are warned that communication with Board members is inappropriate and will be punitively dealt with.
5. Evaluations are sporadic, inconsistent, verbally conducted without written format or report. There are no objective measures applied nor is there opportunity for employee rebuttal or response. Evaluations seem punitive, only occurring when a manager has negative news to impart. Evaluations are without oversight. Alternatively, evaluations only contain good news and feel-good messages and board involvement is only requested to rubber-stamp good news pronouncements from uniformly positive evaluations.
6. The organization has experienced a high level of wrongful dismissal complaints, status of employment complaints, allegations of human rights violations, employment standards complaints, etc.
7. High staff turn-over is common-place in the organization. The organization has recently experienced a mass exodus of employees fed up with workplace unfairness and management inconsistency.

If your organization has to say “yes” to only one of these 7 points, likely you have one area of human resource management that you need to address in order to assure that you have an effective human resource policy. But if you answered “yes” to two or more points, your Board is leaving the organization open to potential financial loss and/or reputation loss. At the very least you are not doing your best to keep the resources of high-achieving, experienced employees productively employed in your organization. You are le
tting your employees down and compromising the Mission of your organization.

Some resources for the non-profit Board in Human Resource Policy:
A Checklist of Human Resource Policy Indicators for Non-Profit Boards
A Guide to Human Resource Policy for Non-Profit Boards, from Human Resource Council of Canada

Bread and Roses Life, L. Rogers

Developing a new Arts Manager role

(The first in what I plan to be a series of articles on arts administration and volunteer board development.)

Many arts organizations begin their existence with a single artist–an Artistic Director/Founder supported by a volunteer board and perhaps some paid staff members in administrative support roles. Some arts organizations begin and end with this configuration, not living past the lifespan of their founding artist.

Others through growth or succession-planning begin to contemplate hiring their first General Manager or Executive Director . If your organization is at this point then this article is for you.

It’s natural that in the selection process that Boards focus on finding the best candidate for their position and articulating the new role of General Manager or Executive Director in their organization. Most do this well and there is a lot written about finding the right candidate.

However, what most organizations in this position don’t think about doing–and where there is little guidance available–is to take the time to consider how the Artistic Director’s role is going to change, how the Board’s role is going to have to change to accommodate the new manager, and how the day to day life of the organization will change.

Without prior organizational planning and consultation about what responsibilities and authority the Artistic Director wants to surrender or is willing to surrender, the new General Manager or ED is going to be launched on a collision course and the organization will have a rough adjustment process. It will be very difficult for the new manager to be the change-management facilitator. Failure rates for first managers are high.

You know you want your manager’s job description to complement the role of the AD, but, do you really know what your founding Artistic Director does in the organization or are you basing this on assumptions? Don’t just ask him/her. You need to actually observe how time is spent. It may prove to be a different picture than the Board imagined. This observation can be accomplished best by job shadowing on a few days scattered through as long a period as possible. At the very least, much less reliably, ask your AD to keep a time chart for a week to indicate how time is spent.

What excites your Artistic Director? What part of the job do they really love and will they find hard to share or relinquish? Again, don’t just ask them, but observe and reflect on past experience. They may believe that they love artistic planning but if planning is always late and haphazard but grant applications are always masterful and ontime, then the assertion that artistic planning is top priority might be suspect. Our actual priorities are not always the same as what we believe our priorities should be. Ignore this and you may hire an excellent grant writer as a manager but your AD, who it turns out loves the “thrill of the hunt” that grant applications entail, may refuse to surrender the grantwriting. Meanwhile your artistic and production planning may continue to be late and haphazard because no one in the organization is priorizing that work. If you have an AD who is best at some of the administrative roles associated with a manager, maybe you need a different configuration to complement that business savey. Perhaps you need an Artistic Administrator or Producer role.

Once you have done your homework on the strengths, weaknesses and interests of the AD, you are ready to construct a job description for your new manager that complements your Artistic Director. Be aware of clusters of responsibilities so as not to create fragmented roles that are unworkable.

Next consider the authority that must match the responsibilities that you have given each role. Imagine and forsee likely scenarios. For example, if you have given the Artistic Director full power over artistic planning and the new manager the responsibility for maintaining the organization’s positive bottom line, what happens when the Artistic Director proposes a project that is not in the budget? Can the manager veto the project? Does the Board need to amend the AD’s job description to require him/her to seek budget approval? This is a central issue that is the downfall of many AD/ED relationships. It needs to be understood by all members of the Board that vetoing a project because it is too costly or too late in the planning cycle for successful integration in the season, is not artistic interference. If the authority is not given to the manager in this instance then what will the process be? Will the Finance Committee of the Board make the decision?

Who ultimately is in charge? This may seem like a simple question but I have experienced an organization where the Board President on hiring the new manager believed that new role was one of sole organizational leadership, the new manager believed their role was one of joint leadership and the AD believed that he continued to be the overall organizational leader. Spell this out and make sure everyone is on the same page. Does your organizational chart reflect the correct structure? Have you changed the organizational constitution and bylaws if needed to reflect the new management role? Is your salary structure consistent with the organizational chart? For example, do you have someone paid as an outside consultant who is shown as an employee or manager on your org. chart? It is always dangerous and unethical to misrepresent an employee as a contractor but it is particularly inappropriate to have an outside contractor making day to day financial decisions and signing contracts for your company on a permanent basis. Yet some arts organizations don’t consider the implications of having staff report to a contractor. Some board members may be unaware that their ED or AD is paid through a private service contract.

Who supervises junior staff? If you assume it will be the new manager, does your AD appreciate that he/she can no longer ask the nearest person to research something for him/her? Be realistic. There may be need to assign some staff support to the AD but that should be spelled out. What happens when this step is neglected? In all likelihood, the AD will continue to function as they have in the past, directing junior staff as they see fit. Junior staff will have two bosses with conflicting assignments. Good staff will suffer while opportunistic staff will manipulate in various ways. Your new manager will have their authority compromised in a way that will be hard for them to recover from.

Consider the planning/activity cycle for your organization in light of the job description you are giving your new manager and consider where you may need to finetune other job descriptions. If you have asked the new manager to provide a budget by April of Year One for the Year Two starting August 1, then when does your Artistic Director have to provide a completed program? A deadline for artistic planning must be set a month or more before the budget deadline. If you have set a deadline for the development of a season brochure or catalogue then artist decisions and contracting must be completed well before this deadline. Failure to consider these relationships in the planning cycle will leave your organization in the dark as to why things are delayed.

If information is power, what about corporate communications? Is your AD willing to keep a manager in the loop on program planning? Or will the new manager learn first about projects by seeing work junior staff has been asked to perform? The communications requirements that you set in place at the outset will determine the directional flow of communications.

Is your Board ready and able to support the new manager’s role? Do you have a management committee in place? Is your Board stacked with personal friends of the AD, making it difficult for impartiality should conflicts arise? If so, you might want to consider expanding the Board with some new members. It’s great to share t
he AD’s vision as a Board, but you are also going to have to support your new manager. Lastly are there management roles that the board has taken on that now have to be signed over to the new manager. Often finance committee and marketing committee roles become less “hands on” with a new manager and this adjustment has to be foreseen and planned for.

Once you have considered all these questions, you should be in good shape to find a good manager for your organization and not lose time spinning your wheels in change mangement.

Tags: Arts Management, Leadership, Board Development

Bread and Roses Life, L. Rogers

CBC changes–Letter from the President of the Canadian League of Composers

published with permission of the author:

Dear members of the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage,

I am writing to you as President of the Canadian League of Composers, and request that you enforce the Broadcast Act of 1991 with regard to CBC radio.

Recent changes in CBC’s broadcasts diminish the long-standing working relationship between Canadian composers of concert music and the CBC, as well as their required commitment as public broadcaster to provide rich, original content that reflects the diversity of Canada.

You may refer to my report on the meeting I had with CBC Senior Management <http://www.stopcbcpop.ca/CBC_New%20Music_Dec05.htm>.

Please note the lack of commitment to the Canadian Music composed by our membership of 400 composers (which, when added with the Canadian Music Centre’s Associate Composers equals 1000 artists).

Most importantly, recent changes at CBC Radio Two meant the cancellation of Two New Hours, the only program dedicated to Canadian Art Music. It had a devoted and plentiful following, and its loss is devastating to our field. Moving more closely to the commercial broadcasting category of “Adult Contemporary”. the CBC begins to emulate commercial radio, counter to its mandate as a culture-driven–not numbers-driven broadcaster. Radio One’s programs Freestyle and The National Playlist are two recent examples of the move to commercialism prior to the recent changes at Radio Two.

Significantly, Canada was instrumental in formulating and signing a recent UNESCO act pledging to support and respect diversity of creation in all its forms. In making the current changes, we feel that the CBC is, by including content available on commercial radio, reducing the diversity of public broadcasting. Canadian poets, scientists, writers, composers, etc. are losing their place on Canadian Public Radio, and we request that the Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage carefully review and enforce the CBC mandated role in our culture.

Unfortunately, as stakeholders in the CBC, we were not informed of this meeting, and are therefore unable to arrange our presence on such short notice, but as president of the organization representing Canadian Composers, I represent to you the collective views and concerns of our membership.

Sincerely,

Dr. Paul Steenhuisen

Tags: CBC, New Music, Public Radio

Bread and Roses Life, L. Rogers

CBC kills Two New Hours

Two New Hours producer, David Jaeger with Norwegian composer/performance artist Maja Ratjke (left) and Canadian composer Melissa Hui (right) in happier times .

Canadian music has been dealt a serious blow by CBC in their decision to axe the award-winning show Two New Hours, the last broadcast bastion for the live presentation of new Canadian art music. This program was truly world-class, occupying a prestigious place in the international music community and among international classical broadcasters. Knowledgeably moderated by host Larry Lake and produced by Canadian composer, David Jaeger, it was a jewel that has been thoughtlessly cast aside.

Will CBC stop presenting Canadian art music entirely? No, it seems not, but the replacement show, The Signal, in its initial show has broadcast only a small sampling of serious Canadian music from recording. By relying on recordings rather than taping live concerts as Two New Hours did so successfully for 30 years, CBC is presenting the works of composers who have already met with some success, rather than being a launching pad for new voices. It has ceased to be a partner in the creation of a unique Canadian musical voice and canon.

How do we create a Canadian canon of music with so little support from our national public broadcaster? Canadian icons like R. Murray Schafer came to international attention in large part through their concerts being broadcast by CBC and through CBC exchanges with international public broadcasters.

What is happening at CBC? Their corporate communications all cite a need to appeal to a younger demographic and have a larger market share. Surely this is a problem for commercial radio rather than public radio. Is not the mandate of public radio to serve the interests of the development of a national body of art and to serve the interests of minorities within the population–those NOT served by commercial media. Surely there is a plethora of commercial radio stations serving the interests of teens and young professionals with a taste for pop culture. One might say, “serving the lowest common-denominator”.

As an arts administrator I have become familiar with the basic criteria of Canadian national and provincial public funders when it comes to grants for Canadian performing arts. If it is populist it is deemed to not require public support, or require less support–the marketplace will fund it. If it has artistic merit but is unlikely to find an immediate audience–so not commercially viable–it is deemed to need support from the public sector. To give just one example: in 2001 I was serving as interim General Director of Opera Ontario when Canada Council of the Arts threatened to cut our funding in large part, because our opera seasons were–at that time–deemed as too “popular” in presenting standard opera repertoire rather than taking risks with new opera and less-performed works. We were encouraged to increase our presentation of Canadian works and Canadian artists to receive public funds. We made adjustments and commitments to new programming and a policy of presentation of Canadian artists to re-coup those funding cuts.

So why is CBC, a publicly-funded radio station being allowed to pursue a course of populist programming, when a regional opera company could not? And indeed once the CBC management has managed to wreck a national treasure–one of the things Americans have envied us for–and deliver radio and television just like their commercial “competition” will politicians not turn around and say, “why are we funding this”? I sure would.

Does the rush to serve the youth market even make sense?

It may have escaped the marketing braintrust at CBC but the older demographic that they have traditionally appealed to is not disappearing, but rather growing, as the baby boom matures–and older citizens will always be with us. The CBC seems to be saying, “if we don’t attract young people, our audience members are all going to be dead in 10 years” but this is a very simplistic analysis. Every day people are getting older, so there are new people always entering the mature demographic that has a taste for thoughtful, challenging programming in news, opinion and the arts. And serious music has always appealed to a larger proportion of the older demographic than youth. This has been true for centuries.

The CBC move to axe Two New Hours was made quietly and swiftly before effective opposition could be mounted. Now that the changes at CBC Radio Two are in place, there is opportunity for the mature, sophisticated music community to speak out if their interests are no longer being served by their public broadcaster. We need to reclaim our public broadcaster. In the meantime, oddly enough, in the Toronto market, the classical music community is being best served by WNED FM from Buffalo, NY.

Radio culture used to flow the other way across the border.

Want to speak out?

Lobby your MP to keep CBC Radio Two free of commercial pop music

Find your MP here

Contact Mark Steinmetz head of CBC Two programming

Contact members of Heritage Canada committee responsible for commenting and recommendations on the role of CBC as a public broadcaster in preserving Canadian culture

Read another more informed and involved voice on the demise of Two New Hours.

(I will add more links to this post as I find them)

Tags: CBC, New Music, Public Radio

Bread and Roses Life, L. Rogers

Mel Swart

There were a wealth of newspaper tributes to Mel Swart this week–one of the founders of Canada’s New Democratic Party, dead at 87. I won’t echo the tales that everyone has heard.

But I have a few personal memories that stick with me. Mel’s example of a life-lived together with his various words of wisdom have always been a big part of my own definition of democratic politics at its best. And that’s important to reflect on in times when we most often see democratic politics at its worst.

I’d met Mel first in the 1980’s but I only really got to know him when I was working on Peter Kormos’ 1996 campaign for the leadership of the Ontario New Democrats. This was an enterprise that most of us on the campaign team knew had a slim to no chance of ultimate success. Despite this realistic assessment, our view was that this initiative had to be undertaken in order to get some items of principle onto the convention floor for discussion. And in that latter task, we succeeded beyond our wildest dreams– as issues which had been shut out of the leadership debate came to be its central focus.

During the campaign, I ran into people who said things to me like, “You’re insane.” “You people can’t hope to win.” “What are you doing?”

What these people didn’t understand or had forgotten was the many successes of the NDP in opposition. You don’t have to win to have a voice and, ultimately, the success of the ideas outlives the success of individuals.

Mel was the fundraising chair for that campaign. I was the media chair. I remember calling Mel on the phone the first time and cracking up at the phone message. First there was about 10 seconds of nothing but wind sound and then a crackling voice like an old Edison cylinder that began with … “This is Mel Swart talking to you on a (pause and carefully enunciated) telephone answering machine… ” crackle pop.. I asked people, “How long has Mel had that answering machine, anyway?” It turned out–to my surprise–that it was brand new.

Throughout the time that Mel had been an MPP in Ontario he’d never had an answering machine at home, was always listed in the phone book and answered his own phone. Only when he “retired” did he feel that it was permissable for him to put the public at a little distance by purchasing an answering machine. It was his unfamiliarity with the device that caused him to be awkward in recording his message.

In this regard and many others, Mel really believed himself to be a “public servant” and lived that way. It just didn’t seem right to him that he should not be as available as possible to the people that elected him to help them in any way he could and he was famous for pinching every penny of the legislative budget he was given. He never took an apartment in Toronto. Instead he drove two or more hours back and forth to his home riding of Welland everyday, sometimes making it in time to attend mid-week events and meetings. Of course there are also a lot of stories of him crashing on his office couch and being seen tiptoeing to the Member’s loo in the wee hours.

Perhaps the thing that sticks with me most was an anecdote that Mel related that seemed humorous at the time but took on broader meaning as I have reflected on it over the years. A group of us were shooting the breeze about campaigning in general when Mel said,

“Well people want to talk more than they want to listen. So when you’ve got nothing they think want to hear I think it pays to listen. I worked a few times on some just hopeless campaigns and I’d walk up and say just one thing, ‘what are you thinking about the election.'”

“And then I’d shut up and let them talk.”

” They’d spout off for a few minutes and no matter what they said, I’d just smile and say, ‘You sound like a New Democrat to me!'”

” I’d leave them scratching their heads wondering what they had said that fit with our political program and my hope was that it got them thinking and listening more to what we were about. I don’t know whether it did or whether it didn’t, but it sure was better than arguing and leaving them angry and closed-minded.”

It’s a funny story and a clever strategy but it’s more than that.

Mel was telling us that politics IS more about listening to the people than trying to ram any “key messages” down their throats. And politics at its best is about developing some positive ideas–a political program–and engaging people in thinking about those positive ideas and reflecting on them. Would this set of policies would improve things for their family and community? His advice was to engage people in supporting your positive ideas and you don’t have to waste your energy in in negative attacks on the policies of other parties.

Mel was passionate about ideas but always able to separate a difference of opinion from respect for individuals. He could hate an opponent’s viewpoint on one issue while liking the individual and respecting him/her on other achievements or opinions. This statesman-like stance is so at odds with the unfortunate divisive politics that have become the norm. Communities are helped when politicians across the political spectrum can work together on issues in common.

It’s unfortunate that in recent years the NDP has been better at throwing people out than attracting new people to share in a positive vision. Most recently the furor surrounding an initiative to attract spiritual progressives comes to mind. Mel was all about listening, about bringing more people into a big tent of progressives that shared key values. It was that positive, inclusive, spirit that made me want to work for the NDP as a campaign worker, volunteer and staff member. I hope as we individually and collectively reflect on Mel’s legacy it helps us all to find that spirit again.

Tags: NDP, Politics, Canada

Bread and Roses Life, L. Rogers