PROVIDENCE – Arts and cultural organizations in Rhode Island have a more comprehensive way to keep track of their finances through the Cultural Data Project, a web-based data collection tool operated by Pew Charitable Trusts.
Local arts and cultural groups that request general operating support or grants from the Rhode Island State Council on the Arts and the Rhode Island Foundation will be required to take part in the CDP, principals at both organizations told Providence Business News. Rhode Island is the 10th state in the nation to join the project.
Randall Rosenbaum, executive director of RISCA, and Daniel Kertzner, grant programs officer at the Rhode Island Foundation, said the Cultural Data Project will help both grant givers and grant recipients because the data it collects will provide a more complete profile of each artistic group and of the cultural scene in the state as a whole.
Collected data will include nearly all aspects of a group’s financial situation, from expenses to revenue, assets to liabilities, as well as complete programming and staffing information.
Rosenbaum expects 300 to 350 local artistic and cultural organizations will join the data project by the Oct. 1 deadline. There is no cost involved. The data will be confidential; only aggregate information would be released publicly, Rosenbaum said.
Compared to other existing measurement mechanisms for nonprofits, such as the IRS 1099 form, the Cultural Data Project is like a “high-resolution” digital photo that offers a lot of granular detail, Kertzner said. The groups themselves will be responsible for inputting the data, which will be screened and reviewed for accuracy by Pew representatives.
“It takes some work initially,” Kertzner said of the data collection, but he noted that Pew will have a national help desk to answer telephone inquiries about the CDP, “and these folks are going to stay on the phone with you as long as it takes to get answers.”
The financial data will include details such as gallery sales, food sales, in-kind contributions, cost of postage and shipping, cost of public relations, cost of supplies, endowment investments and credit lines. The CDP also asks for characteristics of the space each art group occupies, whether rented or owned, including square footage and amenities such as gift shops or concession space.
The Massachusetts Cultural Council began taking part in the Cultural Data Project in mid-2009 and has approximately 400 organizations enrolled, according to Anita Walker, executive director of the council. An arts organization can obtain as many as 77 different kinds of reports from the data, she noted, presented with charts, graphs and tables “in a way that people can really understand.”
As an example of one way that CDP information can be used to bolster a case in favor of the arts, Walker related how she recently was asked how Massachusetts arts groups reach out to the underprivileged and low-income residents. With the click of a mouse, based on data input by about 300 arts groups, she discovered the groups gave away 17 million free admissions in one recent year.
We don’t really care what Randall, the pimp from RISCA, says. We know he’s just a fake pin up doll for a fake bureaucracy with AS220 as the lead disinformation organization. So go write a real article. Thanks.