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What's the Big Idea?
Knight Foundation gives free rein to grant applicants
As the nonprofit sector grows and blurs into a huge amorphous blob, foundations are getting more creative about how they dole out grants and who they dole them out to. Consider the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, whose piggy-bank is worth $2.5 billion. These guys have thrown out stodgy grant applications and are simply asking for "big ideas."
Mostly those ideas have to have something to do with innovative ways to gather the news, improve life in any of the 26 communities across the United States that Knight fosters, or improve the arts around the foundation's home base in South Florida. (If you've got really big ideas that don't exactly fit those categories, they're open to those too).
So yesterday, Do-Gooder found herself with about 100 other Big Idea-mongers at a general information session led by the Knight Foundation Program Director for Miami, Lorenzo Lebrija. The audience was packed with representatives from the area's arts institutions large and small, all eager to get a piece of the $60 million Knight is handing out over the next five years in an effort to boost South Florida's forever burgeoning arts scene into the big time.
For the first round of the Knight Arts Partnership, applicants need only submit the title of their proposed idea and a 150-word description. No muss with budgets, bios, or any of the usual grant trappings that weigh us down.
For many beleaguered artists and arts administrators in the audience, the idea of big ideas was both exhilarating and bewildering. Lebrija met question after question with the same response: "Three rules."
Mostly those ideas have to have something to do with innovative ways to gather the news, improve life in any of the 26 communities across the United States that Knight fosters, or improve the arts around the foundation's home base in South Florida. (If you've got really big ideas that don't exactly fit those categories, they're open to those too).
So yesterday, Do-Gooder found herself with about 100 other Big Idea-mongers at a general information session led by the Knight Foundation Program Director for Miami, Lorenzo Lebrija. The audience was packed with representatives from the area's arts institutions large and small, all eager to get a piece of the $60 million Knight is handing out over the next five years in an effort to boost South Florida's forever burgeoning arts scene into the big time.
For the first round of the Knight Arts Partnership, applicants need only submit the title of their proposed idea and a 150-word description. No muss with budgets, bios, or any of the usual grant trappings that weigh us down.
For many beleaguered artists and arts administrators in the audience, the idea of big ideas was both exhilarating and bewildering. Lebrija met question after question with the same response: "Three rules."
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