NAMAC Helps Arts Organizations Plan For Fiscal Soundness

MONEY, MONEY, MONEY. When asked what support arts organizations need most, NAMAC members consistently ask for help with the fundraising. In response to this growing demand, NAMAC (The National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture) has added robust resources for fundraising planning to our online resource, The Fundraising Toolkit.

In 2005, NAMAC partnered with organization development consultant Morrie Warshawski to provide four member organizations (Center for Digital Storytelling, Berkeley, CA; Project: Think Different, Boston, MA; Reel Works Teen Filmmaking, Brooklyn, NY; and Visual Studies Workshop, Rochester, NY) with fundraising planning services through the National Peer Technical Assistance Project.

Each recipient received a one-day board and staff retreat preceded by preparatory conversations with the consultant via telephone and email. The planning included assessing the organization’s readiness; data review of past fundraising effectiveness; review of current reality & projected goals; and identifying target audiences, developing implementation, evaluation and monitoring strategies. The participating organizations agreed to make the products of their planning available to use as examples to the field.

Sample plans are available at NAMAC’s Fundraising Toolkit site. This important capacity-building resource includes sample assessments, agendas and plans from the participating organizations and is available to the nonprofit arts sector.

NAMAC is the national association serving independent media arts organizations and offers information, advocacy, research, networking, professional development and capacity building to its members and the general public. NAMAC is deeply committed to capacity building and professional development of the independent arts field, and makes many other toolkits available on its site, including the Strategic Planning Toolkit and the Evaluation Toolkit.

NAMAC’s 2005 National Peer Technical Assistance Projects were made possible by grants from The Nathan Cummings Foundation, The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts. The technical assistance for youth media organizations is made possible by a grant from the Youth Initiatives Program of the Open Society Institute.