Crain's New York Business reported that kids raise the bar on giving with Facebook fundraisers, even their own foundations.
When Shannon McNamara was 13, her parents took her and her siblings to Peru during summer vacation to volunteer in an orphanage.
“At the beginning of the trip, I was thinking, 'Why can't I be on a cruise ship instead?' ” said Ms. McNamara, now 17 and a senior in high school in Basking Ridge, N.J. But the experience was “worth more than any cruise or trip to Disneyland could give you,” she said.
The family took a similar trip to Africa three years ago, and Ms. McNamara started her own nonprofit, Share (Shannon's After-School Reading Exchange), shortly after to help educate African girls. She has since volunteered in Tanzania every summer, and has collected 23,000 books and shipped them to schools there. She has also begun raising money for scholarships.
Meet the teen philanthropists. Armed with new technology and an awareness of global issues, post-Millennials are engaging in social entrepreneurship in previously unimaginable ways. Though still materialistic, these teens and even preteens want to do something more significant than acquire the latest i-Pod Touch or Wii.
Looking for a purpose
Borrowing from trends in celebrity charity, kids are mobilizing their peers to address everything from infant mortality in developing nations to neighborhood concerns. They're donating presents to charity, and they're establishing their own nonprofits.
“The number of kids creating their own organizations and taking action for causes they care about is skyrocketing,” said Nancy Lublin, chief executive of DoSomething.org, a New York-based nonprofit that helps young people to engage in philanthropy.
“Kids today just saw their parents go through a recession, get laid off and struggle,” Ms. Lublin said. “They look around and say: 'What's the point? I don't just want a second car in my driveway. I want a life of purpose.' ”
In the past year, 79% of girls in the United States have contributed food or clothing, 53% have given their own money, and 66% have asked family or friends to give or volunteer, according to research commissioned by the United Nations Foundation.
READ MORE HERE.
Showing posts with label newmodels. Show all posts
Showing posts with label newmodels. Show all posts
Tuesday, February 1, 2011
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
For Artists’ Fund-Raising, a Social Network Site
The NY Times featured an article about United States Artists, a nonprofit group founded by foundations and wealthy art donors to broaden support for working artists, and their new Web site that solicits small donations from regular people to help underwrite specific artworks.
Part social network, part glossy brochure, part fund-raising mechanism, the site seeks to democratize arts patronage as government support for the arts continues to decline and private sources of financing also shrink.
“What we’ve tried to do is take the good ideas about microphilanthropy and the good ideas about social networking and put them together in a way that people can learn about artists and learn about their projects and how they work,” said Katharine DeShaw, the organization’s executive director.
In testing, the Web site attracted roughly 36,000 unique visitors and raised a total of $210,000, with an average of $120 from each of 1,500 small donors, Ms. DeShaw said.
Artists like Zoe Strauss, a photographer, who have received United States Artists grants in the past were asked to participate in the test, and 47 did so. Ms. Strauss sought $4,000 for a project to document the effects of the BP oil spill on the Gulf Coast and its people, and to make a book of her photographs.
Ms. Strauss said about fund-raising, “I would rather have someone stab me in the face.” She added, “I’m totally unskilled in how to hustle money and totally repulsed by the idea of asking people for it, so this site was a dream come true for me.”
She ended up raising $5,185, which is helping her make additional trips to the region to take more photos. “I probably would have had to stop at the one trip I made because I couldn’t afford anymore,” she said. “By making one or two more trips down there, I will have much more to choose from for the book.”
Ms. Strauss said she also appreciated the social networking aspects of the site. “I work very much by myself, and so the ability to talk back and forth with other artists and see how they go about raising money and talking about their work is great.”
Thomas Allen Harris worried it might be too much work. But he decided he could use the test to raise money for a documentary that grew out of his work on Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, a multimedia project that asks blacks to share their family photos as a means of broadening the historic record of the black experience in America. As part of that project, he interviewed Byron Rushing, a Massachusetts legislator who had played a pivotal role in the state’s debate over gay marriage, and saw a way of tying that issue to the civil rights movement in a film.
Using the new Web site and other resources, Mr. Harris raised $11,600, 16 percent more than he had sought, to pay for archival materials, a composer and other postproduction costs.
“In first week or two, all I raised was $25, and I started wondering what would happen if people started thinking about this as a failure,” Mr. Harris said. “I’m used to sharing my creative process, but sharing how I’m actually raising money in such a public way introduces another level of vulnerability.”
Bill Frisell, a jazzss guitarist, said he, too, was uncomfortable with so publicly soliciting money. “I’m not rich but I make a living, and so for me to say, ‘Please, please, please give me money,’ it felt a little embarrassing,” Mr. Frisell said. “I had to get over that.”
He raised $20,300 through the new site, which will be used to complete a program called “The Great Flood,” a suite of original music composed by Mr. Frisell and accompanied by a film by Bill Morrison about the Mississippi River flood in 1927 and its effect on society and music.
The money will enable him to take the band that will perform the music on a tour along the Mississippi River. “We’ll play in various places,” Mr. Frisell said, “set up on the street and play or get smaller gigs that wouldn’t pay enough to cover expenses without this money.”
Ms. Strauss, Mr. Harris and Mr. Frisell say they anticipate that the kind of incremental fund-raising on the site will become more and more important to sustaining art. Mr. Frisell said, “We have to try new things.”
Part social network, part glossy brochure, part fund-raising mechanism, the site seeks to democratize arts patronage as government support for the arts continues to decline and private sources of financing also shrink.
“What we’ve tried to do is take the good ideas about microphilanthropy and the good ideas about social networking and put them together in a way that people can learn about artists and learn about their projects and how they work,” said Katharine DeShaw, the organization’s executive director.
In testing, the Web site attracted roughly 36,000 unique visitors and raised a total of $210,000, with an average of $120 from each of 1,500 small donors, Ms. DeShaw said.
Artists like Zoe Strauss, a photographer, who have received United States Artists grants in the past were asked to participate in the test, and 47 did so. Ms. Strauss sought $4,000 for a project to document the effects of the BP oil spill on the Gulf Coast and its people, and to make a book of her photographs.
Ms. Strauss said about fund-raising, “I would rather have someone stab me in the face.” She added, “I’m totally unskilled in how to hustle money and totally repulsed by the idea of asking people for it, so this site was a dream come true for me.”
She ended up raising $5,185, which is helping her make additional trips to the region to take more photos. “I probably would have had to stop at the one trip I made because I couldn’t afford anymore,” she said. “By making one or two more trips down there, I will have much more to choose from for the book.”
Ms. Strauss said she also appreciated the social networking aspects of the site. “I work very much by myself, and so the ability to talk back and forth with other artists and see how they go about raising money and talking about their work is great.”
Thomas Allen Harris worried it might be too much work. But he decided he could use the test to raise money for a documentary that grew out of his work on Digital Diaspora Family Reunion, a multimedia project that asks blacks to share their family photos as a means of broadening the historic record of the black experience in America. As part of that project, he interviewed Byron Rushing, a Massachusetts legislator who had played a pivotal role in the state’s debate over gay marriage, and saw a way of tying that issue to the civil rights movement in a film.
Using the new Web site and other resources, Mr. Harris raised $11,600, 16 percent more than he had sought, to pay for archival materials, a composer and other postproduction costs.
“In first week or two, all I raised was $25, and I started wondering what would happen if people started thinking about this as a failure,” Mr. Harris said. “I’m used to sharing my creative process, but sharing how I’m actually raising money in such a public way introduces another level of vulnerability.”
Bill Frisell, a jazzss guitarist, said he, too, was uncomfortable with so publicly soliciting money. “I’m not rich but I make a living, and so for me to say, ‘Please, please, please give me money,’ it felt a little embarrassing,” Mr. Frisell said. “I had to get over that.”
He raised $20,300 through the new site, which will be used to complete a program called “The Great Flood,” a suite of original music composed by Mr. Frisell and accompanied by a film by Bill Morrison about the Mississippi River flood in 1927 and its effect on society and music.
The money will enable him to take the band that will perform the music on a tour along the Mississippi River. “We’ll play in various places,” Mr. Frisell said, “set up on the street and play or get smaller gigs that wouldn’t pay enough to cover expenses without this money.”
Ms. Strauss, Mr. Harris and Mr. Frisell say they anticipate that the kind of incremental fund-raising on the site will become more and more important to sustaining art. Mr. Frisell said, “We have to try new things.”
Helping 1,000 startups in 2,000 days
Veteran Silicon Valley entrepreneur Martin Babinec is looking for an Albany-area university to team up with him.
Babinec, of Little Falls, N.Y., founded Upstate Venture Connect in January and already has partnered with Cornell University, Syracuse University and LeMoyne College in Central New York to make it easier for technology startups to succeed.
Babinec formed UVC with a goal of helping entrepreneurs team up with advisers and find access to investors to increase their odds of survival. UVC seeks to help create 1,000 technology startups in upstate New York over the next 2,000 days.
“For entrepreneurs to get connected here is extremely difficult,” Babinec said.
UVC, a nonprofit, is developing a database and social network for mentors, advisers, startup companies, incubators and investors.
Teaming up with upstate universities to create a network of resources to help entrepreneurs solve funding, marketing, sales and commercialization problems is a key that Babinec said will help upstate encourage the development of more startup companies.
The resident of Herkimer County, N.Y., spent 22 years building TriNet HR Corp., a San Leandro, Calif.-based human resources outsourcing company, into a national firm with $200 million in annual revenue and more than 2,800 clients in the Unites States.
Babinec, who remains on the TriNet board and is the second-largest shareholder of the private company, said he is dedicating the next 10 years to bringing some of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurship culture to upstate New York.
UVC is run by Nasir Ali, president of The Tech Garden in Syracuse.
Last month, UVC opened an office in Saratoga Springs. Greg Gibson, an entrepreneur who moved to Saratoga Springs from Boston two years ago, is running the local office.
“Upstate has many of the assets necessary to build an innovation-oriented economy,” Babinec said. They include 113 universities and colleges, roughly 500,000 students who attract more than $3 billion in research funding each year.
Those assets are spread out and do not work together as much as they should.
By partnering with universities throughout upstate, Babinec said he hopes to start changing the entrepreneurship culture here.
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Read more: Helping 1,000 startups in 2,000 days The Business Review
Babinec, of Little Falls, N.Y., founded Upstate Venture Connect in January and already has partnered with Cornell University, Syracuse University and LeMoyne College in Central New York to make it easier for technology startups to succeed.
Babinec formed UVC with a goal of helping entrepreneurs team up with advisers and find access to investors to increase their odds of survival. UVC seeks to help create 1,000 technology startups in upstate New York over the next 2,000 days.
“For entrepreneurs to get connected here is extremely difficult,” Babinec said.
UVC, a nonprofit, is developing a database and social network for mentors, advisers, startup companies, incubators and investors.
Teaming up with upstate universities to create a network of resources to help entrepreneurs solve funding, marketing, sales and commercialization problems is a key that Babinec said will help upstate encourage the development of more startup companies.
The resident of Herkimer County, N.Y., spent 22 years building TriNet HR Corp., a San Leandro, Calif.-based human resources outsourcing company, into a national firm with $200 million in annual revenue and more than 2,800 clients in the Unites States.
Babinec, who remains on the TriNet board and is the second-largest shareholder of the private company, said he is dedicating the next 10 years to bringing some of Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurship culture to upstate New York.
UVC is run by Nasir Ali, president of The Tech Garden in Syracuse.
Last month, UVC opened an office in Saratoga Springs. Greg Gibson, an entrepreneur who moved to Saratoga Springs from Boston two years ago, is running the local office.
“Upstate has many of the assets necessary to build an innovation-oriented economy,” Babinec said. They include 113 universities and colleges, roughly 500,000 students who attract more than $3 billion in research funding each year.
Those assets are spread out and do not work together as much as they should.
By partnering with universities throughout upstate, Babinec said he hopes to start changing the entrepreneurship culture here.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
..
Read more: Helping 1,000 startups in 2,000 days The Business Review
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Profits for Nonprofits
The Nonprofit Newswire offered this recent view on an article in the Wall Street Journal, which highlights an idea that should be given more consideration: win-win business partnerships between nonprofits and for profits.
Recent Newswires in North CarolinaAugust 3, 2010; Source: Wall Street Journal For those of you that do not already know, the Wall Street Journal now prints a “Donor of the Day” column that has become a must read for many. Yesterday Suzanne Sunshine was profiled. This author knew Ms Sunshine at LISC where she was the unsung hero in LISC’s program for helping CDCs develop supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods.
Last year, she started a private, for-profit real estate brokerage and consulting firm specializing in nonprofit office space. In an era of much-hyped, short-on-evidence innovations, S. Sunshine & Associates LLC operates on an innovative model. On every deal, she arranges for 10 to 50 percent of her real estate commission to be returned to the client or an associated charity. In her first year of operations, she has made a profit and returned over $100,000 to New York charities. Read more here.
Recent Newswires in North CarolinaAugust 3, 2010; Source: Wall Street Journal For those of you that do not already know, the Wall Street Journal now prints a “Donor of the Day” column that has become a must read for many. Yesterday Suzanne Sunshine was profiled. This author knew Ms Sunshine at LISC where she was the unsung hero in LISC’s program for helping CDCs develop supermarkets in low-income neighborhoods.
Last year, she started a private, for-profit real estate brokerage and consulting firm specializing in nonprofit office space. In an era of much-hyped, short-on-evidence innovations, S. Sunshine & Associates LLC operates on an innovative model. On every deal, she arranges for 10 to 50 percent of her real estate commission to be returned to the client or an associated charity. In her first year of operations, she has made a profit and returned over $100,000 to New York charities. Read more here.
Saturday, June 26, 2010
Panera's new model of nonprofit restaurants
Syracuse.com offered the following national story:
As the first crowd of customers filed into Panera Co.'s nonprofit restaurant here, only the honor system kept them from taking all the food they wanted for free.
Ronald Shaich, Panera's chairman, admitted as he watched them line up that he had no idea if his experiment would work. The idea for Panera's first nonprofit restaurant was to open an eatery where people paid what they could. The richer could pay full price-or extra. The poorer could get a cheap or even free meal.
A month later, the verdict is in: It turns out people are basically good.
Panera, which operates 1,400 franchised and corporate-owned bakery-cafes across the country, plans to expand the nonprofit model around the nation, opening two more locations within months.
"I guess I would say it's performing better than we even might have hoped in our cynical moments, and it's living up to our best sense of humanity," Shaich said in an interview.
Its cashiers tell customers their orders' "suggested" price based on the menu. About 60 to 70 percent pay in full, Shaich said. About 15 percent leave a little more and another 15 percent pay less, or nothing at all. A handful have left big donations, like $20 for a cup of coffee.
The restaurant took in $100,000 in revenue its first month. He declined to say what kind of margin this left between total costs and revenue, but he predicted the restaurant will be able to cover its costs within months and eventually generate extra cash for charitable programs.
Panera's nonprofit plan is the largest example yet of a concept called community kitchens, where businesses operate partly as charities. Customers who need a discount, or even free food, can get it with no questions asked.
Shaich borrowed the idea from a restaurant in Denver and then connected with Denise Cerreta, who runs The One World Salt Lake City restaurant with a sliding scale menu. Cerreta's community kitchen and others he looked into were impressive, Shaich said, but operated on a smaller scale than Panera could afford to run.
The Clayton store is run under the company's St. Louis Bread Co. banner by a nonprofit organization called Panera Cares that publicly traded Panera Co. supports. But Panera won't bear the nonprofit's losses if the experiment fails. For the expansion, Panera spokeswoman Kate Antonacci said, the nonprofit is considering locations that, like Clayton, are upscale but accessible to lower-income customers. In Clayton's case, St. Louis County's offices and court house are nearby. Read more here.
As the first crowd of customers filed into Panera Co.'s nonprofit restaurant here, only the honor system kept them from taking all the food they wanted for free.
Ronald Shaich, Panera's chairman, admitted as he watched them line up that he had no idea if his experiment would work. The idea for Panera's first nonprofit restaurant was to open an eatery where people paid what they could. The richer could pay full price-or extra. The poorer could get a cheap or even free meal.
A month later, the verdict is in: It turns out people are basically good.
Panera, which operates 1,400 franchised and corporate-owned bakery-cafes across the country, plans to expand the nonprofit model around the nation, opening two more locations within months.
"I guess I would say it's performing better than we even might have hoped in our cynical moments, and it's living up to our best sense of humanity," Shaich said in an interview.
Its cashiers tell customers their orders' "suggested" price based on the menu. About 60 to 70 percent pay in full, Shaich said. About 15 percent leave a little more and another 15 percent pay less, or nothing at all. A handful have left big donations, like $20 for a cup of coffee.
The restaurant took in $100,000 in revenue its first month. He declined to say what kind of margin this left between total costs and revenue, but he predicted the restaurant will be able to cover its costs within months and eventually generate extra cash for charitable programs.
Panera's nonprofit plan is the largest example yet of a concept called community kitchens, where businesses operate partly as charities. Customers who need a discount, or even free food, can get it with no questions asked.
Shaich borrowed the idea from a restaurant in Denver and then connected with Denise Cerreta, who runs The One World Salt Lake City restaurant with a sliding scale menu. Cerreta's community kitchen and others he looked into were impressive, Shaich said, but operated on a smaller scale than Panera could afford to run.
The Clayton store is run under the company's St. Louis Bread Co. banner by a nonprofit organization called Panera Cares that publicly traded Panera Co. supports. But Panera won't bear the nonprofit's losses if the experiment fails. For the expansion, Panera spokeswoman Kate Antonacci said, the nonprofit is considering locations that, like Clayton, are upscale but accessible to lower-income customers. In Clayton's case, St. Louis County's offices and court house are nearby. Read more here.
Sunday, February 14, 2010
Southern Oregon Historical Society Looks to the Past for a Future
The NY Time reported on this Historical Society's plans to sell some of its historic properties. As the article relates:
They say economic collapse is what froze this place in time, a gold rush relic all but abandoned when the railroad passed it by. Decades later, that chance preservation positioned Jacksonville to benefit from new interest in the past. Boutiques moved to quaint California Street. Californians soon moved to town.
The U.S. Hotel building in Jacksonville, Ore., is one of the 19th-century buildings that a historical society has proposed selling. A high-end housing development, Nunan Square, is a recent addition to the historic town.
History sells, but now Jacksonville may learn that, the hard way.
The Southern Oregon Historical Society, which controls five of the most prominent historic properties in a town that is itself a historic district, has proposed selling some of the sites as a way to prevent the organization’s own economic collapse. After changes in state and county tax policies left it without a clear revenue stream in the 1990s and several short-term measures since then have run their course, the society says it is essentially out of money.
Last September, the society shut down the Jacksonville Museum, housed in a former courthouse from the 1880s. It has also closed the rectory of a local Roman Catholic church, built in the 1860s, and Beekman Bank, which still houses scales used to weigh gold. The rectory and the bank, as well as the U.S. Hotel, built in the 1880s, are among the properties the society said it hoped to sell. Read more here.
This is a trend across the country. Museums and cultural organizations have found themselves in the position of multiple properties with no way to sustain them, let alone maintain them. With facilities literally bleeding these organizations dry, what other alternatives do they have? Have your comments on this article? Share them here.
They say economic collapse is what froze this place in time, a gold rush relic all but abandoned when the railroad passed it by. Decades later, that chance preservation positioned Jacksonville to benefit from new interest in the past. Boutiques moved to quaint California Street. Californians soon moved to town.
The U.S. Hotel building in Jacksonville, Ore., is one of the 19th-century buildings that a historical society has proposed selling. A high-end housing development, Nunan Square, is a recent addition to the historic town.
History sells, but now Jacksonville may learn that, the hard way.
The Southern Oregon Historical Society, which controls five of the most prominent historic properties in a town that is itself a historic district, has proposed selling some of the sites as a way to prevent the organization’s own economic collapse. After changes in state and county tax policies left it without a clear revenue stream in the 1990s and several short-term measures since then have run their course, the society says it is essentially out of money.
Last September, the society shut down the Jacksonville Museum, housed in a former courthouse from the 1880s. It has also closed the rectory of a local Roman Catholic church, built in the 1860s, and Beekman Bank, which still houses scales used to weigh gold. The rectory and the bank, as well as the U.S. Hotel, built in the 1880s, are among the properties the society said it hoped to sell. Read more here.
This is a trend across the country. Museums and cultural organizations have found themselves in the position of multiple properties with no way to sustain them, let alone maintain them. With facilities literally bleeding these organizations dry, what other alternatives do they have? Have your comments on this article? Share them here.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Museum Offers New Venture Idea
The NY Times reported about one history museum's new approach and plan to engage audiences and increase visitation. Great example of new ways of thinking and an entrepreneurial approach. As the article relates:
When thinking of ways to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon, studying history is not high on the list for most families. Now, in a bid to make history more vivid, alluring and accessible for the Wii generation, an interactive “museum within a museum,” focusing on the lives of young New Yorkers, will open in November 2011 on the lower level of the New-York Historical Society, museum officials said.
The DiMenna Children’s History Museum, as it will be known, is part of the $60 million renovation of the historical society building on Central Park West, Louise Mirrer, the president and chief executive officer of the museum, said this week. The roughly 4,000-square-foot museum has been designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture & Design Partnership with a $5 million donation from Joseph A. and Diana DiMenna.
The new museum will focus on the stories of children, from famous figures like Alexander Hamilton, who came to New York as a teenage orphan to attend college, to the boys and girls who hawked newspapers on city streets 100 years ago.
“In schools, history tends to be about figures once they have matured and become important,” Ms. Mirrer said. “But if we want history to become alive for children, what better way to teach them than showing them children from other periods? We want to be on the permanent agenda of children and families in New York.” Read more here.
When thinking of ways to spend a rainy Saturday afternoon, studying history is not high on the list for most families. Now, in a bid to make history more vivid, alluring and accessible for the Wii generation, an interactive “museum within a museum,” focusing on the lives of young New Yorkers, will open in November 2011 on the lower level of the New-York Historical Society, museum officials said.
The DiMenna Children’s History Museum, as it will be known, is part of the $60 million renovation of the historical society building on Central Park West, Louise Mirrer, the president and chief executive officer of the museum, said this week. The roughly 4,000-square-foot museum has been designed by Lee H. Skolnick Architecture & Design Partnership with a $5 million donation from Joseph A. and Diana DiMenna.
The new museum will focus on the stories of children, from famous figures like Alexander Hamilton, who came to New York as a teenage orphan to attend college, to the boys and girls who hawked newspapers on city streets 100 years ago.
“In schools, history tends to be about figures once they have matured and become important,” Ms. Mirrer said. “But if we want history to become alive for children, what better way to teach them than showing them children from other periods? We want to be on the permanent agenda of children and families in New York.” Read more here.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
New place for R.I. culture
The following article relates a newly opened arts center that is a for profit enterprise. Is this a new trend? Share you thoughts. As the article relates:
The name is sure to grab the attention of would-be theatergoers. It’s catchy, it’s ambitious, it emphasizes a sense of place.
And yet, when the Rhode Island Center for Performing Arts at the Historic Park Theatre hosts its first stage production next weekend, the people who enter the state’s newest live entertainment venue will find more than just a theater.
In its new incarnation, the building that once housed the Park Cinema is also home to a café, a nightclub and a 200-seat all-purpose area that can serve as a restaurant for theatergoers, a comedy club and a room for receptions and business functions.
The extras are part of owner Piyush Patel’s plan to make sure the new theater at the corner of Park and Pontiac avenues does what any business sets out to do: make money.
That will not be easy. Even in good times, it’s hard for theaters to make money, industry people say. And with the economy in tatters, it will be that much harder.
There’s also the issue of size. With 1,050 seats, the new theater is relatively small in the world of live entertainment.
Patel, 69, a native of India whose business interests include real estate, hotels and personal care products, says that is why he has cast such as wide net.
“Every business plan has some kind of escape strategy, you know, what happens if it doesn’t work,” he said. “That’s why I came up with the idea, a total entertainment complex.”
This is not to say that Patel won’t be trying to make money from the theater end of the business.
He has hired Jack Nicholson, a New Englander with a long history in managing sporting and entertainment venues, to oversee the theater operation. And Nicholson, like Patel, is casting a wide net.
For patrons who think theater means plays and musicals, the new venue will be working with the Stoneham Theatre, in Stoneham, Mass., which has been producing its own shows since it — like the Park — reopened in a historic former cinema. The Park will help subsidize those productions — this year’s list includes “My Fair Lady,” “Gaslight,” “Always … Patsy Cline,” and “Hockey Mom, Hockey Dad” — and will host perhaps four or five shows a year.
Dates for those performances are still being determined, in part because Nicholson is also working to book live acts. Three will come to the Park during the late-winter/spring, though those dates are not set either: The Moscow Circus, the Rat Pack and the Glenn Miller Orchestra.
The live theater and live entertainment represent the jewels that the new theater plans to offer. Rounding out those offerings will be large-screen, high-definition broadcasts of sporting events — the Super Bowl, the World Series, World Cup soccer — and independent movies. Read more here.
The name is sure to grab the attention of would-be theatergoers. It’s catchy, it’s ambitious, it emphasizes a sense of place.
And yet, when the Rhode Island Center for Performing Arts at the Historic Park Theatre hosts its first stage production next weekend, the people who enter the state’s newest live entertainment venue will find more than just a theater.
In its new incarnation, the building that once housed the Park Cinema is also home to a café, a nightclub and a 200-seat all-purpose area that can serve as a restaurant for theatergoers, a comedy club and a room for receptions and business functions.
The extras are part of owner Piyush Patel’s plan to make sure the new theater at the corner of Park and Pontiac avenues does what any business sets out to do: make money.
That will not be easy. Even in good times, it’s hard for theaters to make money, industry people say. And with the economy in tatters, it will be that much harder.
There’s also the issue of size. With 1,050 seats, the new theater is relatively small in the world of live entertainment.
Patel, 69, a native of India whose business interests include real estate, hotels and personal care products, says that is why he has cast such as wide net.
“Every business plan has some kind of escape strategy, you know, what happens if it doesn’t work,” he said. “That’s why I came up with the idea, a total entertainment complex.”
This is not to say that Patel won’t be trying to make money from the theater end of the business.
He has hired Jack Nicholson, a New Englander with a long history in managing sporting and entertainment venues, to oversee the theater operation. And Nicholson, like Patel, is casting a wide net.
For patrons who think theater means plays and musicals, the new venue will be working with the Stoneham Theatre, in Stoneham, Mass., which has been producing its own shows since it — like the Park — reopened in a historic former cinema. The Park will help subsidize those productions — this year’s list includes “My Fair Lady,” “Gaslight,” “Always … Patsy Cline,” and “Hockey Mom, Hockey Dad” — and will host perhaps four or five shows a year.
Dates for those performances are still being determined, in part because Nicholson is also working to book live acts. Three will come to the Park during the late-winter/spring, though those dates are not set either: The Moscow Circus, the Rat Pack and the Glenn Miller Orchestra.
The live theater and live entertainment represent the jewels that the new theater plans to offer. Rounding out those offerings will be large-screen, high-definition broadcasts of sporting events — the Super Bowl, the World Series, World Cup soccer — and independent movies. Read more here.
Tuesday, October 6, 2009
New Model for Business?
Board Cafe's publication Blue Avocado offered information on a new development for businesses. As the article relates:
For-profit companies continue to seek ways to obtain two benefits that are usually reserved for nonprofits: foundation grants and government tax exemptions. These efforts are led by both well-meaning individuals as well as those that simply want funding without communityaccountability. Regardless, they offer risks and challenges to the nonprofit sector as we know and celebrate it. Rick Cohen tells us of one such effort that appears -- in the absence of opposition -- to be headed for adoption.
The hot topic in foundation circles is the L3C: the low profit limited liability corporation, the latest development in social enterprise. Several states are legalizing L3Cs and accompanying tax and philanthropic benefits, and its backers are pitching them for federal approval.
L3Cs are profit-making corporations, but their owners don't identify profit as their primary purpose. The mission of an L3C is a social benefit, doing socially productive and useful things, and only then earning a profit.
At the national level, the Council on Foundations has been actively promoting L3Cs, on Capitol Hill for the past two years. Already in four states and two tribes, individuals can form L3Cs and attract various types of investors, and, because of their charitable missions, tap into foundation loans and guarantees. At least they will be able to if Congress passes legislation giving blanket approval for such loans, or if the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issues a ruling authorizing them.
There may be some sound reasons for the creation of hybrid models melding features of nonprofits and for-profits, hopefully helping localities and states attract new sources of capital for critical economic and environmental ventures. But states, Congress, and the nonprofit sector might want to be cautious about this social enterprise innovation. Read more here.
For-profit companies continue to seek ways to obtain two benefits that are usually reserved for nonprofits: foundation grants and government tax exemptions. These efforts are led by both well-meaning individuals as well as those that simply want funding without communityaccountability. Regardless, they offer risks and challenges to the nonprofit sector as we know and celebrate it. Rick Cohen tells us of one such effort that appears -- in the absence of opposition -- to be headed for adoption.
The hot topic in foundation circles is the L3C: the low profit limited liability corporation, the latest development in social enterprise. Several states are legalizing L3Cs and accompanying tax and philanthropic benefits, and its backers are pitching them for federal approval.
L3Cs are profit-making corporations, but their owners don't identify profit as their primary purpose. The mission of an L3C is a social benefit, doing socially productive and useful things, and only then earning a profit.
At the national level, the Council on Foundations has been actively promoting L3Cs, on Capitol Hill for the past two years. Already in four states and two tribes, individuals can form L3Cs and attract various types of investors, and, because of their charitable missions, tap into foundation loans and guarantees. At least they will be able to if Congress passes legislation giving blanket approval for such loans, or if the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) issues a ruling authorizing them.
There may be some sound reasons for the creation of hybrid models melding features of nonprofits and for-profits, hopefully helping localities and states attract new sources of capital for critical economic and environmental ventures. But states, Congress, and the nonprofit sector might want to be cautious about this social enterprise innovation. Read more here.
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