And now for something completely different

Thanks to a link from Poetry Hut I read this article from the Times which talks about the $100 million Ruth Lilly gift to Poetry five years after (the fights, the whining, the envy, etc.). A couple of pat highlights that bugged:

“If you make poetry easier to read, does that make poetry better? Or is that finally good for the readership?” Mr. McClatchy asked. “Poetry is supposed to complicate people’s lives, not to reassure them, or to be a humorous relaxation or an amusing spot on the radio.”

First of all, McClatchy’s claim that poetry is supposed to do one thing (complicate you) completely contradicts his argument that it is wrong that the Poetry Foundation has made poetry into one thing: suitable for public consumption. Whether you make it one thing on one extreme, or one thing on the other, it is the same problem.

Secondly, McClatchy discounts all the other things poetry has done throughout the ages: make people laugh, entertain, reassure – who’s to say that poetry can’t do those things and complicate you? No one.

“The foundation has also selected a Chicago firm to design a 25,000-square-foot downtown office scheduled for completion in 2010.”

What on earth do we need another building for in this world? Fix an old one. Dude. Come on. You are acting like Paris Hilton, buying something just because you can, with no regard for the big picture.

“I’m not big into a leadership style where the leader becomes the story. I think it’s diversionary to the goals and mission of an organization.” (H. Peter Karoff)

I agree. Boards need to think good and hard about whom they hire as presidents and executive directors. Is the goal personal careerism, or the support of the mission? Most often, it’s careerism, but I tell you people who care about the mission are out there. You should find them. You can afford some headhunters now. And ps: the ones with the fancy degrees and the old jobs that made huge bucks are not automatically the best candidates. It’s the biggest mistake non profits make again and again: hiring “big guns” based on their papers. Sit in a room with a person for a few hours. If your gut tells you you like them, then hire that person. If not, and it’s just the bells and whistles you’re swooning over, send them packing.

And something I liked because I am a poet, the manager of this contest site, and a development professional:

“Tree Swenson, executive director of the Academy of American Poets in New York, says she finds many of the foundation’s plans admirable but wishes that the organization would “use the money to leverage additional funding for the entire field” from other nonprofit groups through mechanisms like challenge grants.”

Yes. As one of the oldest journals, and most respected, Poetry has a duty to share the wealth. Creating an endless endowment is a ridiculous idea for this day and age. Soon, the Dollar is going to be completely useless, and not only will Poetry no longer have money themselves, but the opportunity to raise other journals out of the mire of their poverty and foster the work of undiscovered poets in the meantime will have been lost.

My suggestions for Poetry:

1) Support small presses by doing a few awards for “best book published by a small press in the year.” Give 5K to the press, and 5K to the poet ensuring both another book from that poet, and another book from that press.

2) Support small presses by becoming a distributor/promoter: get poetry in the stores. Distribution, marketing, and promotion is where presses and poets fall down a sinkhole: no one has time or money. But you do. And it is one of your priorities.

3) Do not, under any circumstances continue to grow that endowment! It’s going to get so big you will never be able to pay it down, and it is all going to go to waste. Hire the people you need to hire to make arrangements for the development of programs that will keep your endowment reasonable. I’d say reasonable was somewhere in the area of $20 million. Not $200. Get rid of that money.

4) Hire me as your development director. We’ll get jiggy with re-granting, and spreading the love. I’ll tell you what.

Foundations everywhere in every field are finding ways to maximize their impact and pay down their endowments. Why? Because our society as we know it is on the cusp of a great change. The nature of the planet is changing, the nature of the dollar is changing, the nature of our lives as we have lived them for the past 100-or-so years is changing. Now is the time to do the most good possible, because by 2050, all your big digits and fat endowments are going to be moot. It’s fiscally irresponsible to grow an endowment as opposed to spreading that money around at this juncture. I hope you are making that giant building a green one…

Tags: fundraising, H. Peter Karoff, JD McClatchy, new york times, poetry foundation, poetry magazine, Tree Swenson