In the song “The Book Report” from the musical You’re A Good Man, Charlie Brown, Lucy van Pelt struggles to complete her homework assignment: 100 words on Peter Rabbit. Falling short, she concludes it thusly: “And they were very very very very very very happy to be home. The very very very end.”

In honor of this blatant effort to reach a designated threshold without utilizing meaningful content, I would like to present the very very very first “Lucy Van Pelt Award for Verbal and Political Padding” to Senator Tom Coburn (R, Oklahoma), for the 2014 edition of his much-publicized “Wastebook.” For those who haven’t heard of it, the Wastebook is Coburn’s perennial compilation of excessive and/or unnecessary federal spending. It tends to generate a good bit of attention for its most absurd items in all manner of media. A careful parsing of Coburn’s annual lists may reveal a partisan bent and a truckful of snark, though in reviewing the past few years of reports, I did note that he wasn’t above calling attention to what he deemed wasteful spending in his home state too.

The new report, on its comic book meets tabloid cover, trumpets $25 billion in government waste in only 100 examples. Without being deeply grounded in every item he cites, I must admit that a few do make one wonder. However, I have to chide Coburn for a few of his 2014 examples, specifically those derived from National Endowment for the Arts grants. Alongside “Swedish Massages for Rascally Rabbits” and “Watching Grass Grow,” Coburn calls out:

• “Teen Zombie Sings, Tries To Get A Date To The Dance” ($10,000 for the musical Zombie in Love at Oregon Children’s Theatre)
• “Colorado Orchestra Targets Youth With Stoner Symphony” ($15,000 for a Colorado Symphony concert thematically linked to the state’s newly legal industry, but performing standard symphonic works)
• “Roosevelt and Elvis Make A Hallucinatory Pilgrimage To Graceland” ($10,000 to The TEAM for their play RoosevElvis, to be seen this winter at the COIL Festival)
• “Bruce Lee Play Panned As Promoting Racial Stereotypes” ($70,000 to Signature Theatre Company for the production of David Henry Hwang’s Kung Fu)

Libby King and Kristen Sieh in The TEAM’s RoosevElvis (Photo by Sue Kessler)

While Coburn surely hasn’t seen or read any of these productions, his efforts to make these minimal grants into shameful instances of government funds gone awry relies only on inevitably reductive synopses and selectively quotes from the odd negative review as if to justify his point about these NEA funded projects. The headlines are of course chosen to make the work itself sound as absurd as possible. Worth noting: Coburn seems to have a particular distaste for children’s theatre, having also called out $10,000 for the production of the musical Mooseltoe at the Centralia Cultural Society in Illinois in the 2013 Wastebook. There are other arts related items in the 2014 report, but they’re actually funded outside of the NEA, the largest being $90 million for the State Department’s Cultural Exchange programs, targeted by Coburn for a handful of unconventional performers he selected from a much larger pool, a rigged argument at best.

Coburn’s increased role as an arts critic is no doubt due to the mileage he got out of his 2013 list’s inclusion of a $697,000 grant to the theatre company The Civilians for their musical The Great Immensity, about climate change. Obviously the subject matter was a hot-button for the Senator, and I imagine that numerous arts groups must be envious of the sum (far in excess of what groups typically get from the NEA), but Coburn fails to take into account the respect accorded to the work of The Civilians in artistic circles – and arts groups should take note that the largesse came not from the NEA, but from the National Science Foundation, due to the specific subject. It may be a bigger and easier target for Coburn, but it’s not a worthy one.

Whatever the politics and bias behind it, I’m willing to grant that there’s some value in Coburn’s list, such as highlighting the famous Alaskan Bridge to Nowhere or calling out excessive spending on the incompetent overhaul of government computer systems. But his four NEA-based examples this year are simply padding, as they represent only 0.00042% of his report’s dollar total, but 4% of his report. It’s just another example of a politician attacking the arts as an easy target, when there are bigger and more essential fish to fry.

Cole Horibe in Kung Fu at Signature Theatre (Photo: Joan Marcus)

Regarding the four “wasteful” grants in question, I can offer a personal opinion on only one, namely Kung Fu, which was ambitious and perhaps not completely realized in its debut at Signature. But it was – and is – a worthy project by an artist whose work is always deserving of support. By the way, David Hwang has told me there’s more work to be done on the piece and he’s recently made public note of plans to remount it soon to implement further changes. When that happens, I’ll do my best to invite Senator Coburn to Kung Fu as my guest though he may be out of the public eye and not up to it – he’s leaving Congress at the end of the year for health reasons, and this year’s list may be his parting shot.

Of course, health permitting, Coburn could keep producing the Wastebook after leaving office, if he has a real commitment to exposing government waste. But I’m willing to bet that he won’t. Why do I say that? Because surely most people realize that his annual screed is produced by his staff, maybe even eager young interns, not by Coburn’s own personal research and writing efforts. Come to think of it, I wonder how much the Wastebook cost the U.S. taxpayer each year, in staff research and writing time? I suspect it’s more than the federal government gave to Mooseltoe.

P.S. Let’s all go see The TEAM’s RoosevElvis when it plays New York’s P.S. 122 in January 2015 and each decide for ourselves whether the $10,000 from the NEA was well spent. I, for one, wasn’t aware of the show, but I’m now looking forward to it. Gee, thanks Senator Coburn!

November 21, 2013

President Barack Obama

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue

Washington DC  20500

Dear President Obama:

There was an anniversary yesterday, and I’m willing to bet that you forgot all about it. You didn’t need to send a card, but it would have been nice if you’d made some gesture of recognition, of concern. Presidents often do that sort of thing, especially when they’re stalling about something. But since you were silent, I’ll remind you: yesterday was the one-year anniversary of the day that Rocco Landesman announced his resignation as Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts.

Now I can understand if you don’t remember the letter I wrote you about this in June, expressing my concern about this issue; it might have registered somewhere in your press office, but there are probably lots of bloggers yapping about this issue or that every day. Yet in August, your inaction on this topic was written about on successive days by Robin Pogrebin in The New York Times and Frank Rizzo in The Hartford Courant, and surely those are outlets that your media team pays closer attention to. But months have passed since then, still without a word.

I wouldn’t, as David Letterman says, give your problems to a monkey on a rock, especially with the current Obamacare debacle and the Senate denying hearings on some of your judicial nominations. But as a citizen who places the arts very highly among issues dear to me, your seeming abdication of responsibility or interest in the National Endowment for the Arts and its empty chairmanship has become not only absurd but insulting.  It’s bad enough that the NEA is a frequent and easy target for those who want to carve up the budget willy-nilly or wage some fatuous war on culture, but without the full force of the presidency behind the agency, the government’s commitment to the arts (and the humanities, since the NEH is in the same boat) suggests that they are of no value to anyone at all in Washington, since it is the Democrats who usually speak up most strongly in defense of government funding of the arts.

I said it before and I’ll say it again, if you don’t have the time to have someone on your staff deal with this, then by all means nominate Joan Shikegawa, the acting chair, and let her fully assume the leadership mantle. The agency may be functioning as it stands, but you’re hobbling it by not appointing an officially vested leader. It’s also worth mentioning that in the past few weeks, two key staff positions have also opened up at the NEA, as Ralph Remington, head of the theatre and musical theatre program leaves for a job with Actors Equity, and the agency’s chief of staff Jamie Bennett decamps for ArtPlace America. I’m not saying there’s any connection here, simply that at a time when the agency has important decisions to make very soon, you have proven unable to make one after a full year’s time.

I take no pleasure in watching you struggle these days, but after an almost playful tone in my prior communiqué, my sense of humor on this topic is pretty much gone. I still support you, Mr. President, but I’m impatient now. Surely someone in your staff can vet candidates and get someone appropriate ready for your review. But in the meantime, your silence is sending a very negative message about the future of government funding of the arts and the value of the arts in Americans’ lives. You disappoint me and my colleagues and to be honest Mr. President, when you start making us angry, you’re really chipping away at your base.

Sincerely,

Howard Sherman

Addendum: 20 minutes after I posted this letter, Mark Swed, music critic at The Los Angeles Times, posted an excellent essay about President Kennedy’s one-time role as “arts patron in chief.” It speaks directly to the leadership gap in this area today and throws the problem of the NEA into even greater relief.

Nonprofit? Not-for-profit?

Do you have a preference between the two? Do you use them interchangeably? Has your company determined a “house style” for the use of one over the other?

This may seem a semantic game, but I would argue that it is vastly more important than the “er vs. re” argument that rears its head over the spelling of theatre every so often. That silly debate is largely etymological and cultural, while this one is about meaning and understanding.

To get the simplest issue out of the way: hyphens are primarily a style issue. It may stem from the country you live in, or what manual you use as a guide. The hyphen is, basically, irrelevant, at least in regards to meaning.

Legally, there is no real difference between “nonprofit” and “not-for-profit.” Numerous resources confirm that they are essentially interchangeable, save for the Internal Revenue Service. Our friends at the I.R.S. say that “not-for-profit” is an activity which does not undertake to produce revenue, like a hobby, while “nonprofit” is an organization that doesn’t seek to make a profit from its activities, and does not consist of individuals or shareholders who personally benefit from the revenues of the company. You can find helpful descriptions of these terms at Idealist and Grammarist; the Merriam Webster online dictionary is caught in a endless loop, merely defining one as the other.So for organizations’ fine print on fundraising solicitations, since that’s about tax benefits for donations and status with the I.R.S., “nonprofit” appears to be the correct term. But we don’t speak in strict I.R.S. language on a daily basis, and that’s where my interest lies.

Although numerous sources say nonprofit and not-for-profit are interchangeable, I think they carry different connotations. On a purely anecdotal basis, I have arrived at a preference between them; it would be fascinating to test them to see if this bears out.

Over the course of my career, I’ve had a number of occasions where I have been asked to explain what a “non/not-for” company is (for the moment, before I explain my conclusion, I’d like to hedge and call these “N/NF”s). While it has always been second nature to me, and to the people I talk with on a daily basis, it’s actually not something, apparently, that comes up in a lot of people’s education, institutionally or practically. It almost seems anomalous for those working outside of fields where the status is prevalent (social service, health, religion, arts).

My friend Michael, who has an engineering degree, summed up the confusion best when, years ago, he said to me, “So your company can’t make a profit, right? What’s with that?” And that’s where my semantic preference was born, after what was a very lengthy conversation.

While N/NF’s are focused on generating profit, they are not forbidden from ending their fiscal years showing one. Certainly many N/NFs struggle to get out of the red and into the black, but it is hardly unheard of for these organizations to yield a surplus (a more proper term than “profit” in this context). Where they differ from commercial enterprises is that the funds stay within the company; they’re not distributed to partners, workers or shareholders. In fact, when these groups seek funds, donors often like to see that they’ve had a surplus: not so small that it looks like bookkeeping shenanigans, not so large that it looks like they don’t need support or are operating too close to a for-profit mentality.

Consequently, I have developed a strong resistance to “nonprofit,” because it seems to suggest that any company operating under that status is prohibited from showing a surplus. Secondly, I think it also suggests that the organization is the opposite of profitable, which to many businesspeople, would indicate failure. Without profit, how does a business survive? While those who travel in the significant universe of N/NF organizations may have no confusion, those we seek to cultivate and secure as donors may experience significant cognitive dissonance when they encounter “nonprofit business.” To some, it may be an outright oxymoron.

I think that “not-for-profit” suggests a mindset, rather than an operational stricture. It does not seem so hard and fast as to preclude profit or, again, surplus. It intimates that the company has something else on its mind, whether it be fostering the creation of art or assisting those in need. It doesn’t mean we can’t succeed financially beyond breaking even, and that exceeding that goal is wrong; it means that when we do, we use the funds to further the organization’s goals. I think “not-for-profit” is less likely to prompt people to an immediate conclusion, and while it may open up a conversation, that can only be to a company’s benefit.

Yes, perhaps it’s just the English major in me that invests “-for-“ with such meaning, but coupled with my real-life experiences, I’ve come to believe there’s more to it than that. I don’t expect you to just take my word for it; at least have a conversation with the key communicators in your organization about it, test it, make a decision. This may be a question of degree and nuance in the words we choose to speak and write, but to everyone fighting the good fight in not-for-profits, every little advantage helps. Even if that advantage is simply two hyphens and three letters.

P.S. For those in the arts, god save us all from “charitable.”

If you wanted to vote in Chase Community Giving, this shows what you had to give them for the privilege (click to enlarge).

This morning, my Twitter feed was filled with a series of almost repetitive messages from New York Theatre Workshop, the excellent Off-Broadway company that was the starting point for Rent, Once and Peter and the Starcatcher, to name but three. The messages were directed tweets to a number of people that they, and I, follow on Twitter, and the message was to ask for support through re-tweeting in NYTW’s quest for funding from the Chase Community Giving program on Facebook. The program deadline is today.

For those unfamiliar with the program, it is one of several corporate initiatives which enables the general public to vote for their favorite organizations, in this case a quest for a total of $5 million in funding. Populist? Sure. Using social media creatively? Yes. A terrific step in grant-making? Absolutely not.

This sort of funding mechanism forces companies to compete in the ugliest way; a couple of years ago, one NYC not-for-profit (which I won’t name, since they publicly apologized) actually tweeted about needing help to “beat” other organizations to the money. It also requires everyone who wishes to vote to “like” the sponsoring corporation, allowing them access to one’s Facebook timeline before one can express support. In the case of Chase, it gives a voting advantage to their own customers, so the process is already rigged, laying bare that this sort of funding is marketing in sheep’s clothing.

Last week I wrote about artistic directors who abdicate their responsibility when they allow audiences to vote on their program, and this mechanism shows how corporations are comparably willing to abdicate their responsibility for adjudicating and weighing where their philanthropic dollars can do the most good. Oh, wait, I’ve misspoken, since this isn’t philanthropy at all, it’s a contest, run by marketing. I keep forgetting. I bet most people do, in this era where we vote for idols on our cell phones.

No not-for-profit can afford to look a prize horse in the mouth, and so countless organizations do their best to rally their constituency in these Darwinian survivals of the fittest (or, really, most popular). But I worry that they cheapen themselves in their efforts to enrich themselves. And so many worthy causes have a truly uphill struggle: could the presence of The Ian Somerholder Foundation’s at Number 4 on the Chase “leaderboard” at the moment be due more to its founder’s youthful celebrity than its excellent focus?

Facebook giving contests have a strange corollary to politics, where so often people vote for the lesser of two evils, not someone they’re truly excited about. But here, most every candidate is probably worthy of our respect. It’s the process that is un-“like”-able.

Update, May 16, 2014: I read a blog post today from CreateEquity entitled, “Crowdsourced corporate philanthropy died a year and a half ago, and no one seems to have noticed.” It should surprise no one who read my post that I am delighted at the news. Whether this is a hiatus or true end remains to be seen.