consulting and project management for cultural institutions
What We've Done
Select examples include:
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Executive support, consulting, and advising for cultural leaders at the local, state, and national levels.
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Onboarding, values alignment, and process mapping for a state arts agency; positioning effort resulting in historic request and budget increase from $2M to $5M.
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Complex multi-party negotiation resulting in an $800,000 federal award to a POC creative enterprise to support workforce development.
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Team orientation for grants staff at a large city arts agency; designed and hosted dozens of facilitated trainings for staff, applicants, grantees, and panelists each year; created first step-by-step process for grants processing – from receipt of application to approval of final report.
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Organizational restructuring; staff and job shaping, 1:1 coaching, team and project management for multiple clients in a range of organizations.
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Developed grantmaking programs and processes for the Rock River Foundation, SonEdna Foundation, DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities, and the NextGen Giving Circle.
Scholarship
bandwidth partners are thought leaders in the field through scholarship such as:
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White Supremacy in the Arts: History, Theory, and Strategies for Change, (working title) forthcoming by Benjamen Douglas December, 2024. Examines how a climate of racial hierarchy and exclusion came to exist in the cultural sector, collaborates with racialized leaders to envision an equitable future, and imagines strategies toward that future.
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Creative Corps - Promoting the Creative Workforce by Prioritizing Public Service (working paper). Proposal for a partnership with AmeriCorps and the federal labor department toward registered creative apprenticeships as a priority strategy in local workforce development.
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Less Than We Thought: A New Analysis of Foundation Investment in the Nonprofit Workforce, by Benjamen Douglas, 2017. Provided in-depth analysis of 20 years of Foundation Center data on the scope and scale of foundation funding for grantee staff development to counter the argument that there is a leadership deficit, by understanding the dearth of investment in organizational talent as part of Fund the People’s toolkit.
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People-Powered Performance: Maximizing the Impact of Arts Organizations through Staff Investment, by Benjamen Douglas, 2016. Extensive literature review on staff investment related to cultural organizations; barriers and motives to staff investment; concepts and processes for creating a healthy workplace culture; professional development framework across the career, lifespan, and in organizations lifespan; comprehensive staff investment plan.
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Public Funding for the Arts at the Local Level, American for the Arts, 2004. Typical source of public funding for the arts in US municipalities; policy arguments and regulatory options; arguments and constituencies; leading examples. Information routinely updated through ongoing research.