Sarah BarackSupporting Cultural Groups and Artists in Brooklyn
My summer fellowship is with the Brooklyn Arts Council (BAC), an arts-focused non-profit organization located in DUMBO. This group, founded in 1966, is the umbrella organization for Brooklyn’s wide range of cultural groups and individual artists working in the visual, performing, media, and literary arts. Additionally, BAC ensures that thousands of people throughout Brooklyn have access to a variety of free arts programming each year. I am splitting my time between Arts in Education (AIE) and the Development Manager (fundraising).
While I was not quite sure what to expect before I began, I knew I would be helping the AIE group implement a series of recommendations that focus on increasing the efficiency of the AIE team, whose school programs have been growing faster than their capacity. With the Development Manager, I assumed I would provide support for general grant writing and reporting.
I hit the ground running - attending everything from teaching artist focus groups, a dance workshop at senior center and a very interesting strategic planning meeting with the Development team, the Executive Director of BAC and a team of non-profit consultants working with BAC. These gave me a great introduction to the complexities of the AIE programs, and the necessity of such work in underserved communities. Working on fundraising, I became immersed in the vagaries of public funding. I reviewed successful grant applications, helped to manage the fundraising database, and wrote a final grant report which was sent to a foundation after the completion of the supported event.
Overall I am confident that this summer will prove to be a fascinating study of the inner workings of a small non-profit organization and look forward to the challenges ahead!
