Resource scarcity leads us to borrow, and that pushes us deeper into scarcity. Why? Because when we have scarce resources we tunnel (i.e., we focus on the here and now, the fires, what needs to get done right now). Tunneling leads us to neglect. Tunneling today creates more tunneling tomorrow, and leads us to borrow — in a borrowing from Petra to pay Paula and eventually needing to pay back Petra with significant interest scenario — so that we’re using the same physical resources less effectively, placing us one step behind.

Welcoming a new addition to the family can elicit all the feels, excitement, anxiety, joy, and wonder (like what is a nose frida and why is everyone raving about them?). There will be lots of changes in store both at home and at work, so the more you can prepare yourself and your team for the new unknown the better. I’ve been at Fractured Atlas through the birth of both of my kiddos, and was the first person to use our company’s family leave benefit in its entirety. Below are some of the things I’ve learned that may help you and your team prepare for leave.

From time to time, we feature one of our fiscally sponsored projects who have been successful at using our program to advance their art/cause/career. Today, we’re featuring Time to Tell.

If you haven’t yet heard of Void Academy, we’re excited to make the introduction. Void Academy strives to make an impact in the art world by providing free and affordable resources to help artists sustainably fund their work and make a living. Their first free online course Fundamentals of Crowdfunding offers insights into the history of crowdfunding, how to set yourself up for success before you launch a campaign, and more. It is a valuable guide for any artist looking to use crowdfunding as a tool to fund their work. (And keep reading to learn how Fractured Atlas members can access other Void Academy courses at discounted rates.)

There are a lot of resources out there to help fundraisers think about, plan for, and execute a year-end appeal. But if you’re not a full-time fundraiser or someone who thinks about this stuff all the time, then you may find yourself getting anxious once you start reading any of the extensive how-tos available online. (Especially since many will tell you that you should have started planning 2–3 months ago.) Today, I’m giving you permission to accept what you can do for a year-end appeal with limited time, money, and resources. But first, what’s a year-end appeal? In general, a year-end appeal is a letter that reminds your donors and patrons of the important work that you do while encouraging them to send a contribution by the end of the year. As you may already know, making a charitable donation by the end of the year can be compelling for tax purposes, but it’s possible that some of your donors have access to a matching gift program through their employer that may also have a year-end deadline. In addition to these financially-motivated reasons, most donors give because they truly believe in the mission of an organization or project, and many make donations to celebrate the holidays.

Why People Ops Can’t Wait Until Tomorrow This piece details a core belief of mine, and why, especially if you’re a leader in the cultural sector, I believe you should share it too. Strategic HR — or People Operations — is a senior-level management competency that needs to be embedded in every decision we make in our organizations.

The Education/Experience Proxy is what I call the phrase organizations include near the end of their job postings: “High School Diploma Required,” “Bachelor Degree Required,” or “Masters Degree Preferred.” Please nix it. It’s a lazy proxy used to approximate experience or ability that’s making it harder for otherwise talented people to be a part of your candidate pool. It neglects people who learn differently, or have different life experience, from being considered for positions.

Photo by Arif Wahid on Unsplash Today, we’re announcing the creation of a new entity to advance Fractured Atlas’s mission of democratizing access to the arts and advancing human creativity: Exponential Creativity Ventures, a new investment enterprise that will make early stage investments in start-ups that are innovating at the intersection of technology and human creative capacity.

Learning with Others to Improve Ourselves Learning new things with other people is fun! After publishing an extensive list of HR resources and announcing the launch of our Strategic HR Bootcamp in January, a colleague recently asked me where I turn for my own professional development training. Here are some of the highlights I’ve enjoyed for structured learning:

Hi, Philadelphia artists and arts organizations! I’ll be in town for some meetings this Wednesday, November 8 and have a few open windows in my schedule.

As part of our commitment to anti-racism and anti-oppression, Fractured Atlas has been hosting race-based caucuses since late 2016. Each space serves a unique role in our work. We’re sharing our experiences in the hopes that more organizations will implement the practice.

Next Thursday, October 26 thirty artists and arts administrators from various disciplines and walks of life will gather in Detroit to learn the ins and outs of running for political office as the inaugural cohort of Artist Campaign School.

Deadline to Apply: November 30, 2017 I’m thrilled to announce that Fractured Atlas will be offering a one-day Strategic HR Bootcamp on Saturday, January 27, 2018 in New York City. Only 20 people will be accepted into this cohort, and the deadline to apply is November 30, 2017. (Don’t sweat, it’s a brief application with only two questions aside from your name and contact information).

Back in February, I announced that I’d be temporarily stepping aside from ordinary CEO duties at Fractured Atlas to work on creating a new impact investing fund. Dubbed The Exponential Creativity Fund, this new effort would invest in entrepreneurs and innovators at the intersection of technology and human creativity. For the first couple of months I was pretty good at posting regular updates and meditations, but I confess I have been remiss of late. Time to get caught up!

My mentor and friend, Steve Morris Over the weekend, I learned that one of my longtime mentors — Steve Morris — passed away from cancer at the end of July. Not knowing this at the time, I emailed him in August to see if he had any availability to meet up for our semi-annual breakfast this fall.

From time to time, we feature one of our fiscally sponsored projects who have been successful at using our program to advance their art/cause/career. Today, we’re featuring Drawn To Help.

For the Aspiring or Accidental HR Professional What resources have you found helpful in your People practice? Break out your Trapper Keeper, throw the Jansport strap over your shoulder, and sharpen your no.2 pencils. It’s back to school season! This post is full of resource recommendations for those looking to put a couple more HR arrows into their quiver.

If you’re looking for an older sister to help guide you along and offer both practical counsel and bottomless encouragement, Ciara Pressler has got your back. Game Plan is a workbook to help you think through and define your personal, career, and project goals. Pressler works with artists, creatives, and other innovators collaboratively to develop strategic plans to achieve their missions, and founded the Pressler Collaborative, a marketing collective devoted to that work. In that vein, this is not a book offering advice or “how-to” information. This book won’t tell you what your game plan should be, but rather how to go about crafting one, giving you blank space on the page to jot all your ideas and dreams down, and refine an actionable plan to meet those goals.

Do you want, or need, to talk with someone about an HR challenge your cultural organization is facing? For the next few months, the three members of the Fractured Atlas People team — Nicola Carpenter, Jillian Wright, and me — will be available a few hours each week for anyone interested in picking our HR brains. We’re offering this free of charge as a way to share experience and expertise with cultural sector colleagues.

Our AlterConf Contingent Fractured Atlas’s offices are in New York City, but most of our software development team works remotely. So, while we see each other during conference calls and chat on a daily basis, the on-site and remote staff don’t often get the chance to hang out in person. But when there’s an opportunity to hang out and talk about social justice? Sign us up! Last month, members of our Product, Engineering, and People teams got the chance to attend AlterConf NYC, a conference focused on marginalized people and those who support them in the tech and gaming industries. (As of September 2017, they have conferences coming up in Australia, Oregon, and San Francisco — check ’em out.) What got you excited about going to AlterConf NYC? Tasha Jones, Software Developer I had attended AlterConf in Washington, D.C., in the past and it was amazing. I couldn’t pass up on a second opportunity to experience it. Selena Juneau-Vogel, Director of Product Management Tasha! She was so excited about it, I just went with her recommendation. Also, I was excited to meet Angelique in person for the first time. Angelique Weger, Senior UX Engineer I went to AlterConf DC last year and still reference some of the great talks from that event. Plus, I was jazzed there was enough interest across our company that I would be able to attend with and meet coworkers! What aspects of the conference environment or setup impressed you the most? Marcus Swift, Product Management Specialist The organizers made a thoughtful effort to make sure the event was accessible to as many people as possible. They had conference rooms set up for people to take a break if they needed one, childcare was available, sign language interpreters were present, and talks had thorough content warnings. What blew me away the most, though, was the open captioning/live transcribing of the talks on two displays above the stage. At first, the speed of the captioning was disorienting. But, as someone who watches a lot of shows with closed captioning, I really appreciated them being there, along with the stenographer’s skill in transcribing the talk for everyone to read it. Tasha Jones The organizers provided attendees with multi-colored slips of paper to indicate our level of interest in social interaction. A green paper was used to indicate that you’re happy to speak with anyone, while the yellow indicated a preference for interacting with people who you already know, and the red paper indicated that you need space. As a person who swings pretty dramatically from feeling social to feeling like I need to have some personal time, I’d really love to see these at other conferences in the future. I definitely saw attendees and speakers taking advantage of these as a tool for nonverbal communication. What were your biggest takeaways from the presenters at AlterConf? Selena Juneau-Vogel Over the span of several presentations, I started to hear a theme I’m calling “how might we adjust so everyone can contribute?” A talk called “Design Ethics: Inclusivity in the Design Process” made me think: how can we adjust our software development process to include more perspectives without slowing down our commitment to agile and iterative deployment too much? A talk called “Low Spoons Leadership” introduced me to “Spoon Theory,” and made me think: how can we better adjust for one another’s emotional and physical capacity? And a talk called “Integrating Family & Career: Ensuring Women’s Dreams Continue to Take Flight After Motherhood” included a striking comparison: the hormones produced during pregnancy are more intense and span a shorter period of time than those produced during puberty. This reality impacts many pregnant individuals’ decision-making capacity. The speaker was pregnant herself, and was by no means suggesting that we take away or discount pregnant people’s decision making. Instead, she is working to develop AI technology to help pregnant people feel confident making their own decisions throughout pregnancy and the postpartum period. Also, attendees pointed out that people other than cis-gendered women can be pregnant. So, what’s the takeaway here? Maybe it’s only awareness at this stage, but there’s so much more we can do to accept ourselves and our colleagues as humans, while also respecting their varied contributions. Angelique Weger I was very impressed by the talks that specifically addressed issues of poverty, illness, and disability within tech communities and teams, not just as people or issues tech can help/address. I hope the broader tech community engages with those topics. Also, Seán Hanson gave a talk on “Quiet Developers” that really helped gel a lot of thoughts I’d been having about who is visible in the tech communities I participate in, and at the conferences I attend. I expect I’ll be referencing his talk for months to come. Tasha Jones So many of the talks were really amazing. Seán Hanson’s talk on “Quiet Developers” was full of really valuable perspective that I didn’t have before. I recommend reading his blog post on the topic. Also, as a person who accidentally volunteers herself for things WAY too much, Emily Metcalfe’s talk on “Low-Spoons Leadership” was really helpful. I definitely feel like I had something to take away from every talk there, and I’m so grateful to each of the speakers for their time. AlterConf timed nicely with the eclipse, too. Marcus Swift Christine Bryant-Ryback gave a talk titled “Standing Desks and Free Pizza: Body Image Negotiations in Tech Spaces” that offered so much to consider about navigating body image in the workplace. The talk ranged from how “all bodies are good” philosophies can be unintentionally exclusive to people who may have legitimate reasons for finding their bodies problematic, to making sure that office wellness programs are optional and offer ways of including everyone in the office— taking into account both visible and invisible disabilities. Katriel Paige’s presentation on “The Privilege of Making” raised great questions about the intersection of space, making, and privilege. How do we ensure makerspaces are equitable and affordable? What are the gendered and socio-economic implications of terms like “making,” “crafting,” and “DIY?” How does the value of time and leisure factor into class in tech? As online shopping makes tech and other goods cheaper, are we leaving people behind who can’t access goods at cheaper prices because it’s not feasible or safe to have packages shipped to them? I know I’ll be thinking about these questions for a long time. What other conferences or events are you excited about attending this year? Selena Juneau-Vogel In a few weeks, I’m headed to San Jose for my first Women in Product conference. Also, our VP of Engineering and I are submitting presentation proposals to a few tech conferences coming up. We’re excited to talk about the product+engineering team process we’ve developed and be inspired from others to keep improving. Be sure to follow us to hear more. Tasha Jones I’m excited to be speaking at Windy City Rails in September, which will be extra fun since a couple members of our team will be meeting up there. Our team is fully remote, so it’s pretty exciting when we get to see each other in 3D. If you’re at Windy City Rails, be sure to say hi!

Attention all presenting artists and arts organizations! If you’re fiscally sponsored by Fractured Atlas and interested in applying for the MAP Fund, keep reading to find out important grant review deadlines, and how to apply.

Image credit: rawpixel.com Editor’s note: this post originally appeared on Angélique’s blog, Dev Journal. I’ve been thinking a lot about teams and, based on my own lucky experiences, what makes them work well. I’ve been at Fractured Atlas for three months now and am legitimately delighted at how quickly and easily I gelled with my new team. The one thing I keep coming back to when trying to describe why I’ve been able to connect so quickly and accomplish so much is this: safety.

Image credit: @backfromthefuture2 via Twenty20 If “weekend protesting” has replaced your normal “weekend brunching,” if you now have your Member of Congress’ phone number programmed into your phone, if you have Facebooked, Tweeted, Instagrammed, or Pinned any sort of political commentary in the past several months… THIS POST IS FOR YOU.

Tomorrow, July 12, 2017, Fractured Atlas will be among the numerous websites, internet users, and online communities coming together to sound the alarm about the future of net neutrality, and the internet itself, as part of the Battle for the Net’s “Day of Action.”

The Unwritten Employment Contract Here’s the link to this exciting video episode. Most of us in the cultural sector — and in the American workforce, for that matter — operate without a written employment contract. We apply for, and accept, jobs based on an understanding of the type of organization we’ll work for, its mission, the kind of work we’ll be expected to complete, and the conditions under which we’ll do the work: Dance company, the work of X choreographer, accounting, largely weekdays from 9 to 5.

Each month we feature one of our fiscally sponsored projects who have been successful at using our program to advance their art/cause/career. This month’s featured project is Miki Sawada.

The Magic of SCARF Image by herryway When was the last time you felt the Fight or Flight urge? Were you trapped on stage as a speaker droned on well past their allotted time? Was a donor giving you an earful about how you “screwed up their entire gala experience because they couldn’t have bottle service for their table”? Or, had you just received an email from your supervisor with those four dreaded words … We … need … to … talk.

Prefer this post in an audio format? Here you go. Change comes in an assortment of flavors, each impacting people in different ways. For the most part, any change initiative is less about the thing you’re changing and more about people’s reaction to the change. Don’t believe me? See Adam’s Equity Theory, Vroom’s Expectancy Theory, or Herzberg’s Two-Factor Theory, for starters. The world in which we live today is constantly changing, and the rate of change feels more like it’s increasing exponentially rather than simply incrementally anymore. For organizations trying to remain relevant and effective in this environment, they’re either moving forward or falling behind.

Time for another exciting update on adventures in impact investing during my not-a-sabbatical! (If that sentence doesn’t ring any bells, you might want to read the two linked posts to get caught up. Not a requirement, though!)

We hear a lot these days about the importance of having great organizational culture. “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” is the infamous Peter Drucker refrain. But what exactly do we mean by “great company culture,” let alone company culture that changes the world and enables people to leave their dent on the universe?

photo credit: Marcel Münch via Flickr As scout for the Exponential Creativity Fund at Fractured Atlas, I’m in the unique position of finding arts entrepreneurs to pitch to our impact investment fund, helping them prepare, and participating in the pitch sessions.

Party On, Artists! Warmer weather brings many social events: why not use some of those events to support your fundraising! Before you do, however, Fractured Atlas would like to remind you of some of the best practices for planning your fundraising events. We’ve talked about planning, marketing, and running a fundraising event before, so now felt like a great time to revisit some of the best tips and tools for your reference.

by Tim Cynova, Chief Operating Officer at Fractured Atlas I used to work with someone who would always ask “Which would you rather” questions. Which would you rather: Wear a bathing suit in Antarctica, or a snow suit in the desert? Which would you rather as a musician: Be a one-hit wonder with a song that defines summer for a generation, or a member of a band with modest success for 10 years?

An interview with the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Creative Many Michigan Joe Voss, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Creative Many Michigan This is an interview in a series featuring a broad range of reactions to President Trump’s first 100 days in Office, conducted by Lauren Ruffin, Vice President, External Relations at Fractured Atlas. In this interview we hear from Joe Voss, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Creative Many — Michigan’s creative sector advocacy organization.

An interview with Tiffany Wilhelm, Deputy Director of the Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council

Communicating over space and time [Editor's Note 3/17/10: While the information below is still useful — particularly how channels are used — we also published this related and updated piece.] “Communication is key” is one of those business-isms, like “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” that seem to appear in most of the articles I read about organizational culture. It’s not misplaced. Open, honest, and respectful communication is a key ingredient in high performing teams and organizations.

Interview with Founder & CEO, Shaheen Lavie-Rouse Earlier this year, Hire Notes — a booking platform for musicians that helps them manage their paid gigs , seamlessly get paid on time, and find new bookings— was selected as an honoree for the 2017 Arts Entrepreneurship Awards. We sat down with Hire Notes, CEO and Founder, to talk about how a music conservatory student founds their own technology start up.

Poetry and its unique use of language are how some of us make sense of the world and our place in it. It’s how some of us got through our turbulent adolescence. And for some of us, it just reminds us of high school English class, trying to find some meaning in the words to write a coherent essay before the bell rings. No matter your relationship with poetry, we’ve all been touched by that perfect phrase, that perfect rhyme, and that perfect cadence. Poetry is vital to culture, both now and throughout history, and we at Fractured Atlas are thrilled to celebrate it in April with National Poetry Month. Periodically throughout the rest of the month, we’ll be sharing some of the poems that are important to us and even some that we’ve composed ourselves! So, whether you’re a poet yourself or haven’t thought about Poetry since school, check back in every once in a while this April to possibly find your next favorite poem and learn more about us as people in the process. Be sure to follow us on Instagram to get them in your feed as soon as they’re posted.

Interview with Founder & CEO, Robert Warren

by Tim Cynova, Chief Operating Officer at Fractured Atlas Over the years at Fractured Atlas, we’ve invested a great deal of time, effort, and research into improving and honing our hiring process. In this episode of How We Work — created primarily for those staff members involved in our hiring process — we delve into the history, our philosophy, and the stages of the interview process.

The quality of our team, our organization’s very ability to deliver on its mission and remain agile and relevant, relies on the skills our staff bring to the office and use every day. In this episode of How We Work:TV, we explore ways to develop our most valuable of organizational assets, our people. We’ll cover eight strategies — all that don’t cost a dime! They include: (1) Career Conversations (2) Musical Chairs (3) Bring in Outsiders (4) Never Eat Lunch Alone (5) Co-Learning (6) SMART Task Forces (7) Job Crafting (8) Objectives & Key Results (OKRs) Want more ideas, tips, and assistance? Check out my previous posts about creating innovative workplaces and investing in our people, the job crafting workbook available from the University of Michigan, the Inspiring and Motivating Teams course by National Arts Strategies, or try Radical Focus to learn more about OKRs.

A little over a month ago, I announced that I was stepping aside from day-to-day Fractured Atlas responsibilities for 6 months to explore the idea of launching a new impact investing fund. Now that I’ve been doing this for a few weeks, I thought I’d share a brief update for anyone who’s interested in stalking me.

Throughout our lives, we’re constantly fighting the Battle of The Urgent versus The Important. If left unchecked, the urgent will fill our days, seducing us with its sweet, false sense of accomplishment and distracting us from the *important* work that changes the world.

Individually never as successful as the sum of their parts I have number of friends who are teachers, and I’ve noticed a theme over the years. Each spring, school principals start sketching out their faculty line up for the following year. They look at who’s leaving and what positions they’ll need to fill. They look at test scores and evaluations to see how they can curate the best teams. And here’s where it gets interesting.

Facebook has become one of the most dominant marketing tools of our time. It’s impossible to interact with the platform without encountering creative projects promoting themselves. While using Facebook socially is fairly simple, using it to market your project — particularly for fundraising — is much harder. One of the consistent questions we receive from our fiscally-sponsored projects is “how can I solicit donations via Facebook?” Luckily, Facebook’s “call-to-action” feature has made it much easier. Here’s how it could work for you.

What is #SavetheNEA Video: A Little Help From My Friends? A Who’s Who of Broadway, Hollywood, Theatre, Dance, and Music came together at the legendary Avatar Studios in New York City to record and film a single of the iconic Beatles’ song “ A Little Help From My Friends” to inspire support for the arts in America and help save the NEA.

How We Work:TV Remember that time you tried to teach yourself how to use a green screen, and well, one thing lead to another and you launched a web series instead? No? Uh, maybe I’m doing it wrong. I’ve published a number of pieces about how to create innovative workplaces — with a sense of shared purpose — where people can do their best work and thrive. The aim in doing this is to share our philosophy and experience at Fractured Atlas in hopes that it might be helpful to other organizations tackling similar challenges.

In final Deutsch fellowship project, Courtney Duffy spearheads 3D/DC For the second straight year, Fractured Atlas sponsored 3D/DC, a 3D printing policy event on Capitol Hill, which was produced by our friends at Public Knowledge. While 3D/DC has grown and changed over its six years, its mission remains the same: to connect makers with federal policymakers to promote policy that will encourage, rather than hinder, innovation in the industry. This was my second year at the helm of 3D/DC — you can read up on last year’s event here — and it was sadly the last major project of my two-year fellowship.

Five arts groups that are as creative in the rehearsal room as the board room 2017 Arts Entrepreneurship Awards Honorees: The Black List, Hire Notes, Gigsy, Southern Theater, Opera Vireo This past year saw new paradigms for defining entrepreneurship in the arts and culture sector, and we had an amazing group of nominees. We are excited to honor these five organizations whose experimentation and innovation in the field truly stood out. Whether its elevating Hollywood’s unproduced hidden gems, helping musicians get booked and get paid, solving New Orleans’s digital media needs by training the next generation of media artists, bringing the content bundling model to the performing arts, or creating an new genre of opera by embracing online television… these organizations are each in their own way using cutting edge solutions to deliver their messages.

2017 Arts Entrepreneurs Awards — Honorable Mentions: Inclusive Fashion + Design Collective, Jukely, Mosaic America, Sofar Sounds, and Theater of Public Policy This year, the nominations for the 2017 Arts Entrepreneurship Awards were chock full of amazing and entrepreneurial arts projects. While we forced ourselves to name just five honorees, we also wanted to tip our collective hat to these awesome creative projects that impressed us with their ingenuity, drive, and business savvy.

Last week, the Trump Administration rolled back protections for transgender students. The issue of trans people and their use of bathrooms is much bigger than mere septic concerns, this debate is fundamentally about trans people’s right to exist in public space. We, at Fractured Atlas, believe emphatically that trans people’s stories deserve to be given equal weight and access in the public commons, as well as the cultural landscape. That’s why we’re proud to support these fierce trans arts projects.

Fractured Atlas office following our 2016 renovation Remember that time you tried to change something and it involved other people? People will love this new thing, you said. It will make their lives so much better and easier, you said. Remember how you were blindsided by the push back, the skepticism as to your motives, and the accompanying anxiety, angst, and negativity directed towards you? Remember how you shouldn’t have been surprised because behavioral scientists have spelled out why change initiatives — large and small — can be fraught?

Each month we feature one of our fiscally sponsored projects who have been successful at using our program to advance their art/cause/career. This month’s featured project is Out by 10.

Image credit: Nicolas Raymond The world has changed a lot since November, and we just wanted to take some time to remind you of who we are and where we think we’re going.

by Adam Huttler, CEO of Fractured Atlas From March 1, 2017 through August 31, 2017, I’m going to be stepping away from all day-to-day Fractured Atlas management responsibilities. We’ve taken to calling this my “sabbatical”, but to be honest I kind of hate the term.

Clockwise from top left: Sarah Carson, Sriram Emani, Erica Taylor, Jess Peterson. Event featured Adam Huttler and Courtney Duffy as panelist and moderator, respectively by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas What better day than February 14 to celebrate our love for creative entrepreneurship? Last Tuesday, Adam Huttler and I joined four arts entrepreneurs for a Capitol Hill panel hosted in conjunction with the Congressional Arts Caucus, and in collaboration with Public Knowledge. In addition to Adam, our talented panel consisted of the following entrepreneurs:

Credit: Tim O’Brien, Source Last month, I met a lovely white woman from Texas at a friend’s Women’s March afterparty. Our conversation didn’t begin with politics — she’s the director of a Montessori school and avid biker, I’m an education policy hobbyist and avid biker — so things were going well. And then, out of the blue, she makes a casual comment about wishing she didn’t have to make the trip to Washington to protest.

14 Unabashedly Feminist Artists and Groups

Searching for purpose in our work and life Me and my mom Today would have been my mom’s 68th birthday. Instead, my family lost her four years ago to brain cancer. Near the end of her life, my parents were preparing to retire and downsize to a smaller home. As an apartment dweller ever since I graduated from college nearly 20 years ago, I had more than a handful of boxes containing my belongings still stashed in their basement all these years later. I began that rite of passage where one needs to reduce their entire pre-adult existence into a small box that will fit in the back of a small closet inside of a small New York City apartment.

by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas Source: Flickr Event will feature Founder/CEO as panelist and Deutsch Fellow as moderator Fractured Atlas has a history of supporting artist innovation and entrepreneurship — our mission is to remove practical barriers to creative expression, after all. We’re not alone: the arts and culture sector is a $699 billion industry, and arts-related businesses employ nearly 3 million American workers. In this spirit, we’ve teamed up with the Congressional Arts Caucus and Public Knowledge to sponsor a conversation on Capitol Hill in celebration of arts entrepreneurship (RSVP here) on February 14. I will moderate a panel discussion with five entrepreneurs in the arts space — including our own Adam Huttler — who have disrupted the worlds of fashion, music, technology, animation, and design. Over a catered lunch, the panelists will discuss the challenges they’ve overcome, as well as policy opportunities to bolster the creative economy moving forward. Joining Adam at the event are the following entrepreneurs: Sarah Carson, Founder and President of Leota Sriram Emani, Co-Founder and CEO of Raga Labs Jess Peterson, CEO and Creative Producer of Mighty Oak Erica Taylor, Co-Founding Partner of Tinsel & TWINE The event, which we are hosting in conjunction with Congressional Arts Caucus co-chairs Rep. Louise Slaughter and Rep. Leonard Lance, and in collaboration with Public Knowledge, will take place in Cannon House Office Building (Room 121) at noon on Tuesday, February 14. We’d love to see you there! Be sure to RSVP. Have questions you’d like our panelists to be asked? Post them on Twitter using #ArtsEntreLunch. You can find Courtney on Twitter @cduffy90.

Attention artists and arts organizations in New York State: the New York State Council on the Arts (NYSCA) has posted guidelines for its 2018 funding cycle! Before I share Fractured Atlas’s timeline, let’s go over some important details about the application process and eligibility:

14 Artists and Creative Projects from, by, and for Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen The Statue of Liberty on Ellis Island in New York City President Trump signed an executive order on immigration which indefinitely banned Syrian refugees from entering the United States, suspended all refugee programs for three months and blocked citizens of seven Muslim-majority countries (Syria, Iraq, Sudan, Libya, Somalia, and Yemen) from entering the country.

Here’s the good news. Your company has core behavioral values! Here’s the bad news. They might not be ones you want, ones you’re particular proud of, or ones you would print on a t-shirt even to wear on laundry day. Every organization — and every individual, for that matter — has core behavioral values. Values that define and drive the way we act, inform our work and decision-making, and signal to the world in a calling card of sorts, this is what’s important to us.

Source: keepwatchstayfree.org Lessons from the SOPA/PIPA Battle Are Relevant As Ever by Courtney Duffy, Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy Fellow at Fractured Atlas On Wednesday, January 18, 2012, major Internet websites united to protest censorship and defeat SOPA/PIPA. Five years later, it’s as important as ever that we — both the arts community and the Internet community at large — rededicate ourselves to the principles of Internet freedom. Join the conversation on Twitter by using hashtags #InternetFreedomDay, #SOPA, and #PIPA. Remind me exactly what happened. Five years ago last week, more than 50,000 websites made their homepages dark, uniting to protest both censorship and threats to Internet freedom posed by two bills in Congress: the House version, the Stop Online Piracy Act (“SOPA”), and the Senate’s Protect IP Act (“PIPA”). Participating websites included such recognizable names as Google, Amazon, Reddit, Craigslist, Wikipedia, and more. The move made Congress take notice, resulting in the failure of both bills. What was wrong with SOPA and PIPA? While the bills claimed to protect copyrighted works from piracy, their enforcement mechanisms would have had a dangerous effect on the Internet power balance, promoting censorship. The proposal was essentially a “guilty until proven innocent” model — it would have been easy, for example, for an organization to claim copyright infringement against a competitor in order to shut down the competitor’s website. Even if the accused party was innocent, they would need to pay expensive legal fees to defend themselves. It’s important for us to note that we at Fractured Atlas believe wholeheartedly in copyright law, as well as the importance of artists being fairly compensated for their work. We simply felt strongly (and still do) that the solutions proposed in SOPA and PIPA were tremendously flawed and posed dangers to the constituency of artists that we serve. Did Fractured Atlas speak out against SOPA and PIPA? We’re proud to say that we did — in fact, we were the first major national arts services organization to take a stand. Adam Huttler, our founder and CEO, urged in a letter to Senate leadership to consider other solutions and avoid passing PIPA. We were soon joined by a number of other arts organizations, who together signed onto a second letter to Senate leadership. The coalition consisted of friends like Dance/USA, OPERA America, Theatre Communications Group, and Chorus America, among others. Our efforts were part of a large coalition of Internet defenders, large and small, that spoke out against this harmful potential legislation. Has anything major happened in this space between then and now? In February 2015, the Federal Communications Commission adopted strong rules to protect net neutrality. This victory was largely a result of yet another large-scale advocacy effort that caught the attention of policymakers — 4 million people submitted official comments in support of strong open Internet rules. What does this mean to the arts and Internet communities today? As has historically been the case when the D.C. power balance shifts to a new party, the Trump administration and Congressional Republican majority will put forth their own broadband policies. There is a strong possibility of new FCC commissioners overturning the net neutrality rules, as well as other rulings made over the last several years that could resemble the frameworks of SOPA and PIPA. As artists and Internet users, we must actively keep ourselves informed about these developments, and vigilantly defend an Internet that allows for continued creativity and innovation on an even playing field. Where can I find more information? A new Medium post called “Keep Watch, Stay Free,” is chock full of additional resources. You can also check out this video about the blackout, along with articles from TechCrunch and BoingBoing. You can find Courtney on Twitter @cduffy90, and join the conversation by using hashtags #InternetFreedomDay, #SOPA, and #PIPA. Courtney Duffy is the Robert W. Deutsch Arts & Technology Policy fellow at Fractured Atlas, a nonprofit technology company that helps artists with the business aspects of their work. To learn more about Fractured Atlas, or to get involved, visit us here.

Media Impact Funders, a network made up of philanthropists working to create social change through media, has partnered with the Foundation Center to launch a free database and mapping tool of grants and other funding opportunities. For impact producers working in media and film, finding philanthropic support in alignment with specific causes and communities takes major research. While there are no short cuts to good prospecting and relationships, this new tool certainly lightens the load. As a non-profit technology company serving artists, Fractured Atlas is all about empowering people with information about funding sources worth your valuable time investment — time away from your critical creative work. While there are a number of documentary film grant lists out there on the internet (International Documentary Association has one of the most comprehensive, and of course the Foundation Directory Online is a ‘go to’ for research), the unique value I see in this new mapping tool is this: you are ONLY looking at funders of media who believe in the power of storytelling to make change. Also, media is broadly defined on the map and includes documentary, photo journalism, online platforms, trans-media, games, and more. Impact producers, you can be confidant you are searching within the right network with this tool. Before you click through and start exploring on your own, here are my tips learned from leveraging the Media Impact Funder database in my role as Director of Client Development at Fractured Atlas where I coach our fiscally sponsored projects: Explore the ‘Population Served’ search filter options. Your impact project is ultimately about and for people. The funders who care about the same people you’re serving through your storytelling are the funders you want to have on your radar. This is important not only for funding, but also for potential partnerships and screenings. Because many social impact media projects are intersectional, you will want to think about the multiple populations you serve. Think broadly. Get creative with your ‘Keyword’ search options. Keyword matches are made from the 1–2 sentence description of the media project, written from the funders’ perspective (because they are the ones reporting the grants into the database). So, for example if you are making a documentary about the militarization of policing in America and want to see who else is funding around this topic, you might search for projects that received funding using words such as ‘police’, ‘democracy’, ‘privacy’, ‘criminal justice system’, and ‘counter surveillance’. Your taglines and marketing language are less useful here, and this is the space to get creative with the descriptors from other points of view. Don’t forget about outreach campaigns. There is funding out there for more than just production expenses. Outreach campaigns often include media and are a whole other phase of expense and funding for producers. This tool lets you search by ‘Support Strategy’ and ‘Outreach’. Use the ‘Constellations’ visualizer. The database search results default to a list view, however it can often be difficult to get an intuitive snapshot when looking at a spreadsheet. By using the constellations view, that data is visualized and you can immediately see who is coming together around a specific topic, and see the different levels of support. Provide thoughtful feedback. The folks behind this new tool are genuine, and are actively seeking feedback on how to make this data actionable within the field (shout out to project lead Sarah Armour-Jones). Once you have dug in and given this new tool a thorough dance across the floor, suggestions can be sent by email through the mapping tool. Okay, ready to jump in and explore? You can also check out this 10 minute video tutorial of the database, and there is an FAQ on the site. Tips and Tools out.

by Aisha Jordan, Program Associate at Fractured Atlas Each month we feature one of our fiscally sponsored projects who have been successful at using our program to advance their art/cause/career. This month’s featured project is Doppelgänger Dance Collective

Being an “innovative workplace” isn’t just about having a great idea. Great ideas are a dime a dozen. The halls of history are littered with great, unrealized innovative ideas. Innovative workplaces instead are about the people and systems that allow and support ideas to be explored, nurtured, and often, nixed.

Attracting and retaining great people who move organizations forward Several years ago, I set out to interview a collection of senior-level executives about what they felt it took to attract and retain really great people who could move organizations forward.

We’ve entered a New Year — the future is upon us! It’s that time when people take stock of their life goals and think, time to change things up. As an employer, you can ignore this reflection point and pretend people aren’t thinking about it, but chances are at least a handful of those who work for your organization are dusting off their resumes and using this mile marker to take the next step in their careers. Happens every year. As an employer, it’s a good time to think about what you need to do to find that next stellar staff member when a position opens up.

But very much look forward to cracking open in 2017 It’s that time of year again. That time when I feel surrounded by “Best Books” lists and realize that I purchased more than a handful of them during the past year that I’ve yet to crack open. It’s not because I’m no longer interested in reading them, it’s more because a few other things jumped the queue. (Thanks a lot, Netflix, for dropping The Crown and making me unexpectedly binge watch it.)