Leading for the Future, a program of Nonprofit Finance Fund funded by the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, is an pilot initiative designed to help a group of ten artistically outstanding performing arts organizations strengthen their business in a shifting environment. NFF is providing grants, technical assistance, and consulting services to help each organization innovatively meet environmental challenges, such as the erosion of audience and the impact of technology on live performance, while developing models of sustainability that can be used by arts organizations nationwide.

Participants will have access up to $1 million over four or five years. Their projects will also provide instructive examples and models for other arts organizations to learn from and possibly replicate.

These investments are intended to allow participants to take transformative rather than incremental steps to remain artistically relevant, effective and excellent while ensuring long-term financial viability. These grants are not for the purpose of supporting or adding ongoing programs, but rather to invest in new approaches to doing business that will lead to greater organizational strength.

Participants

Alvin Ailey Dance Foundation, New York, NY
Center Theatre Group, Los Angeles, CA
Cunningham Dance Foundation, New York, NY
Jacob's Pillow Dance, Becket, MA
Misnomer Dance Theater, New York, NY
National Black Arts Festival, Atlanta, GA
Ping Chong & Company, New York, NY
SITI Company, New York, NY
Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Chicago, IL
The Wooster Group, New York, NY

LITERATURE

Over the course of this initiative, NFF is publishing articles and reports exploring the impact of the initiative and how Change Capital is best given and used. 

Case for Change Capital in the Arts: In Spring 2011, NFF published a series of reports and videos on the need for and uses of capital in the arts. These materials share the philosophy governing the Leading for the Future Initiative and discuss the need for and application of change capital in the arts. It also outlines core principles and best practices for both nonprofits and funders that can improve capitalization in the sector.

Conversation with Ben Cameron of the Doris Duke Foundation:  Watch this video between Ben Cameron, Program Director for the Arts at the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation in New York, NY, and NFF Founder Clara Miller on innovating and changing practices in arts organizations. Through DDCF, Ben Cameron supervises a $13 million grants program focusing on organizations and artists in the theatre, contemporary dance, jazz and presenting fields.

PRESS RELEASES AND MEDIA

• A New Kind of Money for the Arts: An Interview with Rebecca Thomas, on Social Velocity August 2011
• Steppenwolf Setting the Stage to Attract Millennials  December 7, 2010