Earlier this year I wrote a post explaining why I think Objectives and Key Results (OKRs) are great ways to track goals. As a quick refresher, OKRs allow teams and organizations to align goals for a set period of time in a transparent and connected way. Since then, I’ve gotten questions about the logistics of implementing the OKR framework in an organization and the process that Fractured Atlas uses. I decided to compile this information into a toolkit that you can use and iterate on. I hope that it helps in your process of deciding whether to use them in your organization and how to implement them.

by Colleen Hughes, Program Associate at Fractured Atlas After November 8, 2016, there were a lot of feelings circulating through the American arts sector: fear, confusion, anger, disappointment, sadness, lostness. Many people, myself included, were asking, “Where does my art and my identity as an artist fit into a USA run by our 45th president?” Well, luckily, Beth Pickens’s newest book, Your Art Will Save Your Life, is here to answer that question. I first discovered Pickens when I heard about her FREE Making Art During Fascism pamphlet, and once I learned of her book, I knew it would be an impactful one. Pickens is part counselor, part consultant for artists in Los Angeles. She began working on Your Art Will Save Your Life after November 8, 2016, as a way to support and encourage artists to keep doing what we do best: make art!

In October 2017, Fractured Atlas began meeting in race-based caucuses. Several months later, we shared a list of the resources that the White Caucus had been reading and discussing in the hopes that that resource list could help other white people on the long journey of anti-racism.

An Early Look Into Fractured Atlas’s Shared Leadership Model Preamble Those playing along at home will recall that Fractured Atlas recently embarked on a few new adventures. One of which is the creation of a four-person, non-hierarchical leadership team for the organization. (I recently shared a collection of research on the topic. If you can wait a bit longer, I’m publishing a subsequent post that distills the key findings from the hundreds of hours I spent reviewing material.)

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 Liberation Theatre Company.

Twenty years ago, most thriving small businesses and nonprofits had one fabulous public relations person, one techie sorting out what emails and websites were all about, and one executive director who could solicit fundraising dollars by hosting a cocktail event. Fast forward to 2018, and everything is about real time, instant gratification and, more importantly, appreciation. Fractured Atlas has partnered with JMT Media to learn more about how for-profit entities can connect with the nonprofit sectors through visibility, partnerships, and strategic outreach.

Photo by Oliver Fluck. (Image unfortunately does not represent the setting of my actual think week, which is more along the lines of small apartment in New York City.) I’m going off-the-grid for a sorta annual Think Week. On the docket for this year: process and distill learning from material related to non-hierarchical, shared leadership teams, the role of the CEO, and — if I have time (fingers crossed) — global virtual teams.

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash It’s easy to think that, thanks to the Internet, our services are 100% accessible, but that’s just not the case. The D/deaf and hard-of-hearing community are still underserved by online video and audio providers, and many websites are still not friendly to screen readers used by people who are blind or low vision. There are still a variety of barriers to using Fractured Atlas’s services, but we’re working on it, and thanks to our time during All Hands and our work with Equity Quotient, we’re growing our understanding and implementation of access.

The world of corporate giving and fundraising more broadly can be opaque, to say the least. Corporations, for instance, don’t always report on where their philanthropic dollars are going the way that a foundation does, and figuring out the right person to talk to at a corporation isn’t always as clear cut as identifying an individual prospective donor. You’ve probably even heard that there isn’t much corporate giving in the arts these days. All this means is that you just need to get a little creative, and that shouldn’t be a problem for you — as a Fractured Atlas member, creativity is what you do best.

Savvy arts entrepreneurs chase any and every funding opportunity under the sun. If this describes you, you’ve already got a robust plan to solicit individual giving and know which foundations best aligned with your work. So you’re probably also eyeing that yummy, yet problematic, buffet of corporate cash. Before you try to fill your tray with these dollars, it’s important for you to know the distinction between corporate sponsorship and advertising. Any support that you receive from a corporate funder will fall into one of these two categories.