Two things have taken up a lot of my attention recently and made me wonder why the decision making in this country is done by people who know so little about the consequences and folly of their decisions.
The most pressing thing concerns ArtHouse, my nonprofit for co-op artists’ housing and venues in San Francisco, which is losing its fiscal sponsor at the end of this month. After checking with another fiscal sponsor I have worked with before, I discovered that the policy that is depriving me of this service is happening in all fiscally sponsoring agencies here: they cannot sponsor any organization that deals in any way with real estate, or that could benefit a company or corporation.
When I started working with the current sponsor, 7 years ago, the director—who had run it for 40 years—told me that I should be looking for funding in the private sector. The three directors to succeed him should have known that forming partnerships with landlords was essential to my business plan, but no one told me that the guidelines had changed until I reminded the current director of what I’m doing. She decided my fiscal sponsorship was over by the end of the month. And now I’m beginning the process of filing for my own 501(c)3.
Anyone paying attention to the plight of artists in San Francisco should know that the current landlord policy is only to rent to people with paystubs proving they made three times the rent. They should also know that people in the arts mostly work in the gig economy and have no paystubs. The fiscal sponsors who exist for the purpose of helping artists survive and qualify for small grants don’t seem to care if their clients have anywhere to live. Or the people making the decision to cut artists off from working with the private sector have no clue that gig workers can’t get housing, because they have no trouble renting or buying property themselves. No thoughtful analysis of the problem took place.
This is madness. It’s been known for a long time that artists have been fleeing the city, priced out. No efforts were made to keep them here, and all my efforts to return them have received no help from the city at all. Even when the NEA offered to fully fund the ArtHouse project, if we could partner with the city, no one in City Hall would talk to me. They were glad to replace artists with people who had paystubs, and now the city can’t shake the economic downturn. No one in city government seems to have researched what artists do to benefit community mental health, longevity, quality of life, aesthetics, and economics.
Similarly, I was just involved in protesting a state budget issue this month, which cut off funding for acupuncture for MediCal recipients. I’m an avid fan of acupuncture, and the clinic I go to asked me to show up and speak at a protest. I was filmed speaking and it was sent to the governor. I said, among other things, that the person who decided to cut funding obviously knew very little about what acupuncture can do, and that if he or she had consulted the national Library of Medicine, they’d know that it can do things that Western medicine hasn’t figured out yet, like controlling the devastating symptoms of ALS, Parkinson’s, rheumatoid arthritis, and other diseases, while not relying on chemical pharmaceuticals that are poisoning the water supply. I also pointed out that a fifth of San Francisco’s population is Chinese, and for a lot of that community, acupuncture IS medicine.
This campaign to bring research and reason to solve a problem was successful, and the funding for acupuncture was restored to the budget. But it wasn’t just me that fixed a dopey budget decision; lots of big groups and important people joined the fray. But I do suspect I was the only one to point out, obliquely, that cutting funding for acupuncture could lose the Chinese vote in the governor’s campaign for the presidency.
As I pursue my own 501(c)3, I’m distressed by the obvious lack of research or critical thinking going on in government. In times when there are problems everywhere, the need for collaborative problem solving and cooperation between every potentially useful party is worth investigation. The business world is not the enemy of the nonprofit world, since it’s a major source of funding, and the fact that it’s not available to the fiscally sponsored seems like a way to make sure they can’t get ahead. Who made this decision, and why?
I have a few days left when I can still receive charitable donations through fiscal sponsorship, and donations over the next few days will be valuable in offsetting the expenses of filing. After that, I can only raise donations that aren’t tax deductible until the paperwork clears for my own nonprofit. So, if you have ever thought about helping ArtHouse to meet its goals, today is a most wonderful time to do it.
Donate to ArtHouse
Support the Mission of ArtHouse – Nonprofit co-op housing and venues for artists, writers, and musicians in San Francisco. Your donation helps make San Francisco better for everyone.
There is every good reason to make this happen.
~P Segal
Proust Said That © 