By: Connie Martinez, SVCREATES’ Chief Executive Officer
There is a deep chasm between our region’s capacity and its propensity to fund arts and culture. The question is why?
Silicon Valley is a relatively young region. Our entrepreneurial, risk-taking, and startup culture fueled a global center of technology and innovation and at record speed created unprecedented wealth and a perpetual culture of churn. But new money acts differently than old, constant churn does not deepen attachment to place and people do not give without attachment.
Philanthropy in Silicon Valley leans global right out of the gate. We are a “valley of immigrants” connected to some place else, and our local companies, foundations, and individual donors are typically drawn to large scale systems change that address global problems like hunger, climate change, and disaster relief. This helps explain why 90% of our philanthropy leaves the region, documented in the recently published Giving Code, and why arts and culture are not competitive as a ”charitable” contribution for the remaining 10%.
The rise of digital culture and our changing demographics has altered the way we connect to the arts and the way we spend our time, talent, and money. We can no longer make assumptions about what funders should fund and what mainstream art or a mainstream audience is or is not. Everyone is looking for impact, but through the lens of relevancy that is as diverse as our population.
Those who can afford it, pay for their curated experiences and become donors only when they are inspired by their engagement and believe their contribution will make a difference. And the priorities of the technology elite are different than the priorities of the social elite, who have historically funded the arts. Legacy gifts for the arts are more likely given to large, well-established, and well funded arts institutions. Silicon Valley does not have these large legacy cultural institutions for “old money” to chase or “new money” to scale.
I loved reading the Giving Code and the way in which its authors articulated the “information, network, language, and empathy gaps” between donors and nonprofits in Silicon Valley — if you have not read it, please do. These gaps are real for all nonprofits, but the value proposition for attracting investors to arts and culture is very different from attracting donors to safety net issues.
We need to change the conversation. We need to embrace the market place we have and use the language of the Valley. And by moving away from a “charitable donor” model to a “community investment model,” we have the opportunity to identify, test, and attract new revenue sources for arts and culture.
We are on a quest to grow the number of people who care about our cultural and aesthetic quality of life and to inspire local investment in this place. Stay tuned.
