Funding Innovative Ideas

The recent Community Foundation Challenge for Arts & Culture is a concept that needs to spread to helping emerging and smaller - struggling organizations.  While the participating organizations are all worthy of support, we need to take things to the next level to fund innovative ideas from creative minds on the visionary fringe.

There is also the current:  "The New Economy Initiative for Southeast Michigan, an innovative philanthropic effort to help restore southeast Michigan to a position of leadership in the new global economy.  Ten national, regional and local foundations have committed $100 million to this unprecedented eight-year initiative to encourage innovation and entrepreneurship in new and existing enterprises in the region." 

Here are my Awesome Ideas on how to provide funding opportunities to individuals & projects that can make the D a more creative place.

Creative Visionaries Program

(Funded through the New Economy Initiative) 

Modeled after the MacArthur Foundation Fellowship program but with a bit of a twist, that being a focus on creative projects and include persons with great ideas but who may not yet be established. 

"The MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on a track record of significant accomplishment, and potential for the fellowship to facilitate subsequent creative work.

The MacArthur Fellows Program is intended to encourage people of outstanding talent to pursue their own creative, intellectual, and professional inclinations. In keeping with this purpose, the Foundation awards fellowships directly to individuals rather than through institutions. Recipients may be writers, scientists, artists, social scientists, humanists, teachers, entrepreneurs, or those in other fields, with or without institutional affiliations. They may use their fellowship to advance their expertise, engage in bold new work, or, if they wish, to change fields or alter the direction of their careers.

The Foundation does not require or expect specific products or reports from MacArthur Fellows, and does not evaluate recipients' creativity during the term of the fellowship. The MacArthur Fellowship is a "no strings attached" award in support of people, not projects. Each fellowship comes with a stipend of $500,000 to the recipient, paid out in equal quarterly installments over five years."

The Creative Visionaries Program could involve several levels of support such as:

Creative Visionary -  $500,000,  

Creative Community Leader - $250,000

Emerging Creative Leader - $100,000

Creative Pioneer - $50,000  

Angel Patrons Program

Embracing Creative Vision and Nurturing Creative Pursuits

(Set-up on the Community Foundation website) 

In 1999 I was one of three grand-prize winners of $50,000 through a competition sponsored by Absolut Vodka called Absolut Angel.  One of my co-winners idea was actually an idea I had a couple of years earlier shortly after I started using the internet and there have been similar ideas that have been out there.  

The idea was Art Angels which is a website is set-up for individuals and groups to post a profile of a project or program they are seeking support for and persons who want to make a donation can look for something they would like to fund.

The Angel Patrons Program could help get the ball rolling for projects and individuals who might have trouble securing funding from the foundations.  

Creative Innovation Fund

(Could be a part of New Economy Initiative or set-up as a separate fund) 

This would be modeled on the Federal Empowerment Zone, “Innovation Fund” which was intended to fund innovative projects by emerging nonprofits that might have difficulties being funded by traditional sources.  There was $10 million available, unfortunately the arts weren’t considered that innovative and received a token amount.

 

This fund could be used to help supplement both the previous programs so persons who receive initial support could get additional funding if needed instead of submitting a number of proposals to different foundations.

 

        How they all tie together 

                                

To be eligible for the either the Creative Visionaries Program & Creative Innovation Fund, individuals or groups would put up their profile and project request on the Angel Patrons site, which would be reviewed, and potential candidates would be nominated and grants would be made periodically on a discretionary basis.

 

The Innovation grants would work as follows:  they could be used to supplement both the Angel Patron and Visionary recipients; a challenge grant could be issued to Angel Patron - project requests, which could catch the eye of potential benefactors; grants could provide full funding for certain Angel Patron projects or programs.

 

So the Angel Patron site would be the one-stop proposal submission portal for multiple funding possibilities and perhaps some of the foundations or corporations or groups that do special fund-raising events for different causes could use it to dole out support.

 

The Creative Economy segment of the New Economy needs new models of funding that looks at projects & programs that individually may not have a major financial pay-off but collectively can improve the Creative Climate that will help attract & retain Creative Professionals and Creative Businesses.