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November 23, 2009
STARTING A "COMMUNITY OF INTEREST"
Hello everyone.
“And the beat goes on….”
COMMUNITIES OF INTEREST:
Wikipedia defines a “community of interest” as a “community of people who share a common interest or passion. These people exchange ideas and thoughts about the given passion, but may know (or care) little about each other outside of this area.”
A couple of months ago I got an invitation from my friend Amy Kweskin (a very experienced and smart long time arts administrator, consultant and advocate here in California) that she sent out to a dozen or so people she knew who were active consultants in various areas within the nonprofit arts sector here in northern California, seeing if any of us might be interested in the idea of starting a “community of interest” based around the aggregate of our individual consultant practices.
Virtually everyone she contacted jumped at the idea. As in all communities of interest, the primary motivation in gathering is self-interest. In our case, the economic downturn has been as tough on those trying to earn a living as a consultant as it has been on the artists / arts organization clients. For consultants, the lack of clients that have the funds to engage the consultants they want and need, coupled with the influx of ever greater qualified and experienced retirees and displaced arts administrators swelling the consultant ranks, has made it tougher to make a living. There is increasing isolation as people struggle as sole practitioners. By banning together, it was our mutual hope that we might complement each other’s strengths, fashion joint efforts and collaborative opportunities, or at least make referrals to each other, improve our knowledge base by learning from each other, and provide a single spot which potential clients might use as a starting point to explore consultants with whom they might consider entering into a professional relationship.
And so was born C2Arts: Consultants and Coaches for the Arts
Check out our Website: See individual Consultant names for phone and email contacts.
With varied backgrounds, we are a diverse group with substantial practical experience representing a wide variety of skill sets and areas of expertise and interests. There is plenty of room for us to complement each other and to work collaboratively. We cover everything from Audience and Board Development, Executive Coaching, Financial Planning, Fundraising, Leadership Development, Marketing and PR, Organizational Development, to Strategic Planning and more.
The very idea of intersections with good people in your own area is of course stimulating and motivating. I know many, but not all of those who constitute this new little community. The chance to belong to a community of people (some whom you do not know) similarly situated and similarly engaged is probably a core attraction to joining grassroots communities of interest.
There is no national registry of nonprofit arts consultants and coaches – no single place for those seeking a consultant to go to access who might be right for their project (though there have been regional or localized attempts in the past in some places to create such a registry.) Most of the national organization / larger foundation work is monopolized by a small group of just a few well known consultants, and most of the pedestrian consultant work is small time local client based. Forming localized communities of interest might very well be the best approach in any given area for brokering linkage between those who need (and can afford) consultant services, and those offering those services. Were I still running the California Arts Council, and if I had the funds, I would establish a centralized “user sustained” website clearinghouse of all the communities of interest that might be started in our field – if for no other reason than as an experiment as to how this social networking offshoot matures.
This current effort is still somewhat embryonic as we struggle to figure out how to best position this community to our potential client base. The group has done some preliminary outreach to foundations and umbrella organizations (to great interest on their part) that might engage consultants and / or make referrals, and we have begun to schedule regular meetings to share ideas and thoughts about moving forward. There is genuine enthusiasm and support among ourselves for what we are trying to accomplish (though we are still working on what exactly that is). Some of our members have already done some free consulting as a billboard for our offerings. I suspect we will try to figure out other ways each of us can trumpet what we have to offer as a community. One would hope some things untold and exciting might emerge from the synergy of energy. My guess is that one area we will try to tackle is how to provide first rate, needed and meaningful consultant services at an affordable rate to a struggling client base. Perhaps that will be easier in a group than it might be each of us acting alone.
Doubtless if our little community of interest gains traction, has some success, and continues on, we will grapple with a whole host of issues – ranging from admitting new consultants to our small base (already an issue as we have had several inquiries about membership) which will bring up the issue of some kind of vetting process or minimal standards, to referrals and revenue sharing for joint efforts, to advertising, to collaboration, and so on and so on. The longer a community of interest exists, the more likely it will have to develop some kind of structure, and in that process and all the little details of sustaining an effort, come the hard part – building ongoing consensus, dealing with structure and apparatus, and running the darn thing as it grows. We are not yet at the point where enthusiasm is tempered by workload, but success usually has such a result. Right now, I think we rightly feel we are filling a void for both ourselves and a potential client base and that the positives far outweigh the negatives. Only time will tell whether this effort has legs or not.
The idea of starting locally based communities of interest centering on any of a myriad number of mutual interest areas remains an attractive alternative within the wider nonprofit arts community. While we have any number of excellent national and regional umbrella service provider organizations, many, if not most, of which have sub-groups that might qualify as smaller communities of interest under their umbrellas, most of those remain somewhat unwieldy on the local level. Launching grassroots communities of interest (many of which are now web centered) is appealing as a way to interact with peers and move a specific consensus agenda forward. Like cooperatives of old, the idea isn’t really new. But some of the reasons and the technology used to facilitate them perhaps is. Younger generations seem particularly comfortable with this kind of enterprise (especially using technology to instigate and manage the effort), but the benefits resonate with all segments of our community, and the mere effort of reaching out to each other often justifies the effort. I think we are likely to see more of these efforts in the near term. Some will last and grow, many more will be transitory and have limited life spans.
They are relatively easy to start, though you need one person who takes up the challenge and has the initiative to push others (in our case, Amy filled this void). But once the idea is out there it seems remarkably easy to attract interested people.
INTERESTING LINKS:
I subscribe to at least 100 newsletters, other blogs etc. I try to peruse them all in my search for topics and links for this blog. It takes time to wade through them all, but it is an effective way for me to (at least try to) keep up with all that happens in our community, and allows me to maintain a bigger picture of what is happening across the country. Much of what I see each week isn't useful to me at the moment, but I almost always come across items I think are interesting, heartfelt and emblematic of our field. I admit I have a soft spot for the personal ones.
The Ohio Alliance for Arts Education puts out an excellent online newsletter for those who work in this field in Ohio. The current November 23rd entry has a reflection by Board member Judy Flamik on a recent trip to my hometown San Francisco. I am delighted the city lived up to its reputation as open and friendly for Judy's visit, and her heartwarming and sweet telling of her experience made me feel good - about my city, the people and the arts. Thanks Judy. Click here:
www.oaae.net/ - then click on the November 23rd entry on the right hand side.
Have a good week.
Don’t Quit.
Barry
Posted by msaunders at November 23, 2009 08:58 AM