by Jini Stolk Half way through a NPQ webinar on Nonprofit Leadership Transitions and Organizational Sustainability (which will be very helpful in planning our November 27th Creative Champions workshop on Succession Planning) it hit me. The performing arts has for years been using a shared or co-leadership model that the wider non-profit community has recently […]
Author Archives: Anahita
Boards adding value
by Jini Stolk I had a conversation this morning with a long-time arts board member who feels that now, just as when he first started, most board members don’t understand what they’re supposed to be doing. He personally took the time to mentor new board members and his board developed, over time, a detailed description […]
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How and why people attend
by Jini Stolk The more you know about your audiences and why they attend, the more successful you’ll be at filling your house. That’s the theory. Not everyone is as immersed in research as I am. And that’s okay. The National Endowment for the Arts research paper When Going Gets Tough: Barriers and Motivations Affecting […]
Posted in Audience Development
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Reading and writing
by Jini Stolk I’ve been thinking recently about my favorite pastime, reading. It’s more than just a lifetime joy (although it certainly is that.) The proliferation of book clubs, across ages and other demographics, indicates that reading helps answer a deeply felt need for thoughtful discussion and exchange of views. Book Clubs for Inmates at […]
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The scope of our impact
by Jini Stolk “How the arts helped kill off the NEA — by trying to play the conservative “economic value†gameâ€. The title alone of this piece caused me a few sleepless nights. It’s a cri de cÅ“ur from arts advocate Matt Burriesci who’s facing up to the reality “that the NEA and the NEH […]
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Coming up at Creative Champions
by Jini Stolk Creative Champions, Toronto Arts Foundation’s arts board network, continues its exciting line-up of workshops and events in 2017. We started on February 7th with a special session on governance and fundraising at Artist-run Centres, arts service and membership organizations. It was a hot topic: people braved the year’s slickest ice storm to […]
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Skills we don’t know we have
by Jini Stolk I hadn’t thought about it in these terms until I read this brief post in Nonprofit Quarterly. Could it be that the success of many arts managers rests on an unrecognized skill – that of being dauntlessly determined to succeed no matter how difficult and terrifying the situation? It sounds right to […]
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Remembering
I’d like to say a fond farewell to four wonderful women who had a great impact on my life, and whose loss in 2016 touched me deeply. Sandi Ross (1949-August 31, 2016) Sandi was an actor, activist and force of nature. She was an early leading champion of diversity on stage and screen; an untiring […]
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Fundraising’s shifting sands
by Jini Stolk The Ontario Nonprofit Network’s Nonprofit Driven 2016 conference revealed an unexpectedly forceful consensus. It’s time for both government and non-government funders to move to trust-based grantmaking. Vu Le’s description  of a gradual shift to “a default starting relationship between funders and nonprofits (that) is one of suspicion†is as recognizable here as […]
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