The Initiative for Financial and Creative Health, launched in 2013, aims to help Arizona’s largest arts-and-culture organizations strengthen their “Programmatic Core”—the products, services, connections, experiments, and approaches that allow an institution to achieve its goals and carry out its mission at the highest level.
The invitation-only Initiative provides technical assistance to identify priority capitalization needs and design strategies to impact those needs.
Arizona-based arts-and-culture organizations with annual revenues of at least $2.5 million are eligible to participate. At present, this involves 18 organizations in metropolitan Phoenix, Tucson, and Flagstaff.
The Initiative is shaped by the growing realization that arts and culture organizations cannot be separated from the economic and societal realities that are transforming audiences and uncovering the fault lines in established business models. Arts-and-culture leaders have increasingly realized that their institutions must be reflective of place, savvy financially, and bold programmatically. The Initiative supports trustees, executives, and artistic/programmatic decision-makers in developing programs and projects that build both financial and creative health.
The Initiative helps organizations to:
- Increase their capacity to experiment, adapt to today’s challenges, and thrive even through economic downturns;
- Understand ways to increase capitalization of programmatic initiatives to maintain and increase income and expand participation; and
- Understand better how to identify new assets for the organization that provide a return over time.
The Initiative was shaped through the input of expert consultants Susan Nelson of the Technical Development Corp. (TDC) in Boston; Alan Brown of WolfBrown in Detroit; and Shelley Cohn, longtime leader in Arizona arts and culture. Organizations participating in the Initiative receive technical assistance from TDC and WolfBrown.
Active grants awarded under the Initiative are summarized on our Grants page.
