2009 was the culmination of a decade’s work, and a glimpse of where the next ten can take us.
We started the year with a deep breath — and the generous support of the Miner Anderson Family Foundation — and hired Clarisa Morales Roberts to serve as our first paid Executive Director.
Clare has been a force of nature: She’s tightened up operations, expanded services, and refined our mission to promote civic and cultural participation through independently produced media, arts and culture.
Artists, journalists, media producers and culture workers need to be making, creating, communicating and sparking conversations. Indy Arts facilitates their work and increases their impacts through fiscal sponsorship, community-building and organizational development services. Below, we’ve outlined how we did this in 2009, and what our fiscally sponsored affiliates have achieved.
INDY ARTS 2009 MILESTONES
• More than $90,000 in regranted donations to our 17 fiscally sponsored affiliates, from individuals and foundations
• Lead producer, Journalism Innovations II, May 1, University of San Francisco (with Society of Prof. Journalists, Public Media Collaborative)
• D.I.Y. Workshops: “Group Therapy for Artists,” May-June, 1254 Mission Community Space; “DIY Survival,” Nov.-Dec., Mission Comics & Art
• The First Symposium for Independent Arts, at Berkeley’s Brower Center, and the 10th Annual Expo for Independent Arts in Golden Gate Park
• Nuts-and-bolts support for fiscally sponsored affiliates in business development, grants and individual donors, permits and promotions
• Newsdesk.org receives major grant, hires veteran editor George Shirk to run News You Might Have Missed
2009 FISCAL SPONSORSHIP MILESTONES
• Our sponsorship program has grown to include 17 diverse, autonomous affiliates using media, arts and culture to promote dialogue among communities that aren’t served by mass media or existing institutions
• Print Media Congrats #1! The San Francisco Public Press produced the front-page Bay Bridge article for The San Francisco Panorama, the gorgeous broadsheet newspaper published by novelist Dave Eggers
• Print Media Congrats #2! Hyphen Magazine: Asian America Unabridged earned finalist status in the invitation-only 2009 Challenge Fund for Journalism. Great!
• New Projects! We’re honored to sponsor VoiceBox (“Public Radio’s Eclectic New Show Devoted to the Art of Singing”), NonprofitMapping.org (“The First Interactive Map of Today’s Changing Nonprofit Landscape”), Jazzheimer’s (“Bringing the Joy of Music to People with Alzheimer’s Disease”) and more
• New and expanded programming from Oakland Speaks/East Side Stories (“Building Community, Making Meaning, Recording History”), The Bay Bridged (expanded “Make Rock Festival”), MaximumRocknRoll (relaunched Web site with lively new multimedia daily), Hologlyphics, Circus Bella, the SF Women’s Film Festival and more
