We’re happy to share The Clark Hulings Foundation’s 2019 Annual Report, which includes a description of our major programs, eye-opening stats from 2019, and direct commentary by artists on how CHF moved the needle for them toward profitability and success.
EXCITEMENT: CHF, if you haven’t heard, has been recognized as one of the 49 most innovative nonprofits in the country—a prestigious shortlist to be sure. We were a semi-finalist for the Drucker Prize, which recognizes cutting-edge nonprofits that produce socially transformative change. This represents a clear understanding that the innovation of CHF is seeping into the popular consciousness, and is about to pop.
TIMELY & PIVOTAL CHANGE: Instinctively, perhaps, social investment is often targeted at basic needs—buying a person a fish so they can eat today. Can we make the case that investing in CHF, which is necessarily teaching people HOW to fish, is directly impacting basic needs? Yes. Now, more than ever. The Annual Report demonstrates that, by putting our efforts and your contributions toward a cultural need, it creates a direct impact on basic needs across multiple sectors of the economy and society. That starts with the artist, now profitable and self-sustaining as a contributing business, but extends to the local and state economy, with demonstrable job-creation and economic fortification of non-art businesses, and a substantive impact on the national GDP, at a time we need it most.
CHF’s Annual Report goes beyond providing updates on continuing programs that have been successful in previous years—although you will see some notable additions, expansions, and important growth. By featuring the results of CHF’s Data Science Initiative documented in 2019’s The Report on the Working Artist, we’ve documented the effectiveness and need for business training, and demonstrated that artists can contribute at a much broader economic level when this need is met.
WHAT’S NEXT? CHF is in a unique position to help the cultural sector right now. Artists and the organizations that serve them must now “go digital” urgently to survive. They don’t know how to do this quickly, efficiently and effectively enough. CHF is already digital, and our mission is to help artists and the organizations that serve them thrive through integrated virtual and in-person programming. The artists and organizations CHF helps will not only survive the current crisis, they will be best positioned to thrive long-term, because they will have made the leap to digital, and they will integrate their new virtual capabilities with their in-person activities.
We’re expanding rapidly to meet the demand. It’s a great time to offer your support to CHF, and we can’t wait to welcome you. Donate here.
