The Ford Foundation and NFF present latest monograph, featuring the Steppenwolf Theater Company

Written by Tony Proscio and NFF President Clara Miller, with contributions from Alice Fisher, Jason Kuschner and Wells Chen of NFF, "Rising in Stages: How Steppenwolf Excelled, First on the Boards, Then in the Boardroom, and Ultimately on the Balance Sheet" profiles how the Steppenwolf Theater Company's attention to business/capacity, capital investment, and artistic quality has helped it grow over the past 25 years into a nationally-acclaimed theater.

"Rising in Stages" is the latest monograph in NFF's Business of the Arts series, produced as part of the Ford Foundation New Directions/New Donors program. The Business of the Arts series documents Ford Foundation grant recipients' ideas and experience in building their individual donor base, and draws upon NFF capitalization principles.

Over the past 23 years, NFF has learned that capital structure is crucial to the financial sustainability of nonprofit organizations, and directly affects programs and the people they serve. To read more about NFF's work on capital structure, read Clara Miller's article "Hidden in Plain Sight: Understanding Nonprofit Capital Structure," published in the Spring edition of The Nonprofit Quarterly, and NFF's two other capitalization monographs Capital Structure Counts: The Business Roots of Capacity and Mission at Nonprofits and Linking Mission and Money: An Introduction to Nonprofit Capitalization.

Read more: Ford Foundation New Directions/New Donors, NFF Research Findings