Report from the California Art Council 8/18/22 Public Meeting

Chair and Acting Executive Director Report

The California Arts Council’s public meeting on August 18, 2022, scheduled for a lengthy 6-hours, began with Council Chair Lilia Gonzalez-Chavez’s addressing the culmination of research by Scansion | Wolf Brown into the CAC’s grant making procedures. She acknowledged the reports key findings and remarked that a lot of work still needs to be done to advance equity in the arts. She expressed the need to “back down” and “slow down” to commit more authentically to positive solutions. 

Following, Ayanna Kiburi, acting as Executive Director in Jonanthan Moscone’s leave of absence, reported that the CAC’s decision to withdraw the Arts in Corrections (AIC) RFP put many organizations in a tenuous position, but promised the RFP would be re-released expeditiously. She accounted for the misstep and harm done to organizations and individuals. Apparently, two RFPs were not evaluated properly by staff and this error legally complicated the process. Kiburi admitted the error could have been caught had it not been for the short timeline. CAC council member Ellen Gavin called upon leadership to step-up and fix the RFP manual. 

Council members agreed on the following next steps:

  • Council program committee to review the AIC RFP manual before it goes out

  • Re-release RFP

  • CAC to help disqualified applicants take errors out of their applications, so they can reapply

Public Comment: Live

The first and second Public Comments drew a variety of public opinion on the mishandling of the Arts in Correction RFP process. Organizations called on the CAC to rapidly remedy the situation by extending contracts to all awards rescinded. There is also hope that the re-release of the RFP does not affect funding by reducing awards. California Lawyers for the Arts urged the council to expand the program to $4-5 million. Individuals who have benefited from Arts in Corrections programs highlighted the transformational impact of arts opportunities in jail. Sabra Williams, of Creative Acts, noted the devastation caused to smaller organizations and called upon the council to increase funding to make up the difference.

Voting Items

The council moved forward to approve the two voting items below:

1.)  Allocations Committee Recommendations for Funding Cycle B Grantees: Statewide and Regional Networks, Folk and Traditional Arts, CA Creative Corps and Cultural Pathways - Technical Assistance grant programs.

The council recommends:

  • The re-release of the Cultural Pathways Technical Assistance RFP

  • 100% percent of ask to be awarded to ACTA in the category of Folk and Traditional Arts

  • State + Regional Network—  Award funds to applications that ranked 6 at 100% of the request amount, applications that ranked 5 at 90% of request amount, and applications that ranked 4 at 75% of request amount. Applications that were ranked 3 or below are not recommended for funding.

  • Creative Corps — Award funds in Scenario 1. Applications that ranked 6 receive 95% of the request amount, and applications that ranked 5, in areas where 5 is the highest rank and in the Statewide service area, receive 84.60431% of request amount.

2.) Programs Policy Committee Recommendations on Clarification of Fiscal Sponsor Policy 

The council recommends: 

  • Allowing language for extraordinary circumstances in fiscal sponsor packet and deferring to the Executive Committee for determination. The council also motioned to approve the justification of change of fiscal sponsor by Steven Lavine Productions.

Scansion | Wolf Brown Presentation: Summary Report on 2021-22 Grantmaking Evaluation

Consultants from Scansion | Wolf Brown provided a summary presentation of their multi-year research into CAC’s 2021-22 grant funding procedures. The report, produced under the purview of CAC’s Strategic Framework Committee, helps create a roadmap to improve the CAC’s grant giving processes. It  provides the public a closer view at how the CAC functions and a rubric to hold the CAC accountable. Specifically, it analyzes the agency’s programs and business processes. In the meeting, Scansion | Wolf Brown shared their key findings and proposed a framework that, if adopted, the CAC could use to plan, direct investments and evaluate their success moving forward

Prior to the presentation, Council Chair Lilia Gonzalez-Chavez commented that CAC Executive Director Johnathon Moscone wants to use the report as a tool for community engagement to expand access to the arts and BIPOC inclusion. She thanked the consultants for sharing their findings and noted there is a strong commitment to move it forward “to move California foward.” With these closing remarks, the consultants proceeded to present their work.

The presentation had three components: a Field Scan of Equity in Arts Funding in California, a Grantmaking Business Process Evaluation and a Portfolio Review and Agency-Level Theory of Change. While the report is not yet approved for publication, its findings offer important insights into our field and how we may want to think about the CAC’s functions and goals. The draft report can be accessed here in TAB F.

Field Scan

The Field Scan of Equity in Arts Funding in California analyzes how the state’s arts nonprofits access different types of funding, how that access is distributed across the state and how the California Arts Council’s grant programs compare in terms of distribution and equity. The scan was conducted in partnership with the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies (NASAA), which compiled a database of all known arts nonprofits in California. 

The Scansion | Wolf Brown methodology included two rounds of in-depth interviews with 16 CAC staff and Council members; interviews with 60+ CAC non-applicants and unsuccessful applicants in three regions: Fresno, Imperial Valley, and South LA; focus groups with 36 participants around the state as part of a preliminary process; and a comparative analysis of other state agencies in the country, including size, total grant dollars, and organizational structure/ staff size.

To guide the research process, Scansion | Wolf Brown defined equity as “just and fair inclusion in an arts ecosystem in which all can prosper and reach their full potential.” They identified BIPOC-centered organizations as “organizations that have a primary mission of serving or representing communities of color,” with an accuracy rate between 87% and 92%. Quantitative data was pulled from 1.) CAC applicants & grants; 2.) US Census population demographics; 3.) NEA direct grants; 4.) IRS business master file; 5.) Urban Institute NCCS core files; 6.) Candid arts grant recipients; and 7.) SMU Data Arts California arts organizations. The data was then cleaned by the National Assembly of State Arts Agencies. 

Further qualitative data was sourced from 3 Community Consultation sites, including Fresno, South LA, and Imperial County. In these community settings, the research team worked with local artists who are operating outside of infrastructures. They asked, how do people organize culture without infrastructural support? And realized the difficulty of capturing organizations who are “just doing the work.” 

Key Findings include:

  • Resources for the arts are distributed inequitably 

  • The network of arts nonprofits is uneven across California. Arts nonprofits tend to be in census tracts with:, above average education levels, higher median income levels, below average representation of BIPOC communities 

  • The nonprofit arts are only one portion of the non-commercial arts and culture ecology. Not captured: individual artists, artist collectives, small businesses, and community enterprises that ground arts and culture in local communities

  • Access to the arts can vary substantially at the hyper-local level.

  • Resources for the arts are distributed inequitably 

  • 67% of all CA arts nonprofits have annual budgets of less than $50k and 92% of those have no record of receiving grants of any kind, indicating they are volunteer-led and community supported. 85% of CA arts nonprofits have budgets under $250k. It is likely that these small organizations do not have paid staff or development professionals writing their CAC grant applications, so application processes should not be geared towards that skill set. 

  • The vast majority of resources go to a small number of large CA arts nonprofits. The 108 nonprofits with budgets over $10 million receive 70% of all resources, including 50% of grants from private foundations and 73% of donations from individuals. Only six of the large organizations are located in rural areas and just four are BIPOC-centered.

  • Only 11% of private foundation funding for the arts go to BIPOC-centered organizations, although they represent 18% of all arts nonprofits. Rural organizations receive just 3.1% of foundation dollars, although they make up 9% of the arts nonprofits. Individual giving is even less equitable in terms of the proportion of donations that go towards the arts in rural areas and to BIPOC-centered organizations.

  • The evaluators find that CAC’s grants are more equitably distributed than other sources of funding. While BIPOC-centered organizations represent 18% of the arts nonprofits in California, they receive 30% of the funds that CAC distributes in the form of grants. 

The FIeld Scan summary goes on to say that in total, private foundations annually distribute an estimated $670 million to CA arts nonprofits and individual donors may contribute an additional $1.34 billion. While the CAC funding has increased to $26 million, that is still a relatively small amount of arts dollars in comparison. The Field Scan concludes with this fact: the CAC is severely under-resourced. Also, the CAC’s focus on efficiency puts a strain on effectiveness; efficiency puts a strain on equity; equity is stymied by favoritism, accessibility barriers, and embedded bias. Lastly, the grant application process does not apply to the reality of small enterprises and individual artists.

Business Process Evaluation

The Grantmaking Business Process Evaluation section explores the “inputs and work steps in the grantmaking processes at CAC, how the grant programs intersect with each other in the larger portfolio, how communications and decision-making about the grantmaking process flow within the organization, and where the system is overloaded or stressed”, according to the report. The evaluators analyzed efficiency, effectiveness, and equity in funding in their assessment of CAC’s business systems, relying on in-depth interviews and focus groups with staff, council members, grant applicants and non-applicants, as well as comparisons with other state agencies.

Some key takeaways from this portion of the report are that the CAC is severely under-resourced in staffing and technology and its imbalance forces the agency to focus on efficiency which undermines its effectiveness and puts additional strain on achieving equity. The report finds  that the agency’s structure and business process are “incongruous with the volume of grants it must process” and are inadequate to manage the fluctuations in funding that it receives. The findings  confirm what agency leadership is concerned with – , that the grantmaking process undermines equity by favoring larger, predominantly White organizations. And while there is global agreement within the agency that these are urgent challenges, there is not yet alignment on the causes or solutions. The report offers some detailed recommendations for the CAC to consider, including structural changes, re-designing grant programs for smaller organizations and artists, utilizing re-granting programs that are held accountable to equity outcomes, developing a culture of research and evaluation and more. Many of the findings in both the Field Scan and Business Process Evaluation inform the final section of the report, the Portfolio Review and Agency-Level Theory of Change.

Portfolio Review and Agency-Level Theory of Change

In this section, the report shifts from analysis to articulating a framework of a chain of outcomes and investments that can affect the intended long term outcome of “more equitable and more accessible systems of support for artists and organizations,” which will, in turn, help the agency achieve its strategic vision of “a Californian where all people flourish with universal access to and participation in the arts.” This theory of change is understood to be a work in progress that, when adopted, will provide a road map for guiding program decisions and prioritizing investments, and will position the CAC as not only an arts funder, but as a convener and leader in building the field. 

Developed in partnership with an Evaluation Task Force composed of staff and council members, this framework identifies seven outcomes that would feed into achieving the long term goal of more equitable and accessible systems of support. These desired outcomes include:

  1. Policies that make California’s arts sector more inclusive and accessible to all Californians are debated and adopted at the state, county, and municipal levels

  2. Through cross-sectoral partnerships, the arts are responding to social, health, educational and environmental challenges facing California residents

  3. A more diverse pool of knowledgeable and capable leaders, including artists, volunteers and paid staff, are supported in building a more equitable sector

  4. A strong, equitable and sustainable infrastructure of regional, county, and municipal arts agencies, support organizations, and networks support the full spectrum of cultural practices across California 

  5. Artists and culture bearers choose to live and work in communities across California, and flourish in their work 

  6. Children, youth, families, and elders across California have equitable access to culturally and linguistically responsive life-long arts learning and arts exposure 

  7. Improved systems of financial support redress historical inequities in access to capital amongst BIPOC artists and BIPOC-centered organizations 

For each of these outcomes, the report offers additional subsidiary outcomes, resource allocation ideas and other recommendations. Using this framework, the report also identifies which current and past grant programs in the CAC portfolio are aligned with each of the seven outcomes.

As part of the presentation, Evaluation Task Force members discussed some of the recommendations, including Council Chair Lilia Gonzáles-Chávez, Council member Vicki Estrada and staff members Ayanna Kiburi and Josy Miller. Some of the reflections they shared included the need to facilitate partnerships with local and regional advocacy leaders in advancing policy development, to bolster cross-sector collaboration with meaningful evaluation and to enlist other expertise in developing models, to coordinate efforts with foundations in addressing the urgent need to increase capacity building in the field, and to strengthen partner networks and hubs within the ecosystems in order to deepen the agency’s reach and the success of its grantees.

Summary Thoughts

These possibilities point to CAC positioning itself as a leader and facilitator of systems change. As both the report and consultant Alan Brown state, the CAC is “a small player in the larger ecosystem of support for arts and culture in California” but it does carry weight and authority beyond grantmaking that can be leveraged strategically to affect change. And this report encourages us all to think beyond grant cycles to imagining and defining the long term. As Josy Miller pointed out in the meeting, “this is 20 year/50 year thinking - we have to talk about long term capital investments, not just one-time grants.”

Next Steps

The presentation reflected the summary findings of the 77-page report, which provides deep and candid analysis, data visualizations, testimonials, detailed recommendations and new possibilities. We find it to be an important read for all of who are engaged with the CAC, and a valuable resource for those of us committed to strengthening our field and championing racial, economic and geographic equity in the arts. As Ayanna Kiburi shared in the meeting, the next steps for the CAC are to undergo a public engagement process to get feedback on the evaluation outcomes and the theory of change to get feedback from the field. In the meantime, we hope that you will take the time to read the report and let us know what you think via email or during our Regional Conversations - coming in November! 

Thank a Member!

We are very excited to offer CAC Meeting Briefings to the field and we hope you value these snapshots. If you do, thank our members! Their support makes this content free for everyone to access. If you are not yet a member, please join us.  

Eduardo RoblesCAC, Insight