Data and Funding

We've spent a great deal of time this semester looking at database programs. Data is incredibly valuable - what is shows, what you can extract from it, and how you can use it to track your development. The conversation we've had around the gathering and using of data has, of course, focused on arts organizations. Another major user of data is funders. As Lisa Philp writes on Philantopic, "When funders want to do more than just make good grants, they often seek targets of opportunity -- places where their support could be especially influential, help develop a new direction or innovation, or align with others to accomplish more. Activities that accomplish these goals are what we mean by "scanning the landscape." Philp's post, "Scan 2.0: New GrantCraft Guide Helps Funders Scan in the Digital Age", discusses GrantCraft's guide Scanning the Landscape 2.0, which looks at how funders can take advantage of technology to gather, maintain, and analayze data (aka scan) to determine how to best make grants. The scope of the guide is about funding in general, but has information that arts funders can make use of. For organzitions, it may be worth a look as well:  knowing how funders view data can help organizations not only understand the possibilities their data holds but how to read that data through a funding lens. A better understanding of the environment leads to better proposals, which in turn lead (hopefully) to increased funding. The GrantCraft guide is free but registration will be required.

Read Philp's blogpost at  http://pndblog.typepad.com/pndblog/2012/04/new-grantcraft-guide-helps-funders-scan-in-the-digital-age.html

Guide available at  http://www.grantcraft.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=Page.ViewPage&pageId=3680

-Adrienne