• A Corps of 21,000? You Bet!
• Roudolf Kharatian to lead National Ballet of Armenia
• Join the Conversation at the Collective Arts Think Tank
• The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle

A Corps of 21,000? You Bet!

Oprah's Kickoff Party Dance

It's the flash mob that took over Chicago's Magnificent Mile. Watch 21,000 of Oprah's biggest fans perform one of the biggest dances in the world to the Black Eyed Peas' "I Gotta Feeling."

http://www.oprah.com/article/oprahshow/20090908-tows-flash-mob-dance

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Roudolf Kharatian to lead National Ballet of Armenia

Roudolf Kharatian, choreographer and ballet teacher, is returning to his native Armenia where he has been appointed artistic director of the National Ballet of Armenia. Since 1991, when he was invited to join the faculty of the Kirov Academy of Ballet, he has resided in Washington, DC.

Trained at the Armenian National Ballet School in Yerevan, Kharatian also studied at the Vaganova Academy in St. Petersburg under the legendary Alexander Pushkin. He began his professional career as principal dancer with the National Ballet of Armenia, performing the great male roles in Giselle, Swan Lake, Romeo and Juliet, Spartacus and other famous works. Kharatian enjoyed a very successful performing career spanning 25 years and was adored by audiences and critics alike. He also starred in films and toured the world with Stars of Soviet Ballet.

read the full press release

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Join the Conversation at the Collective Arts Think Tank

As Contemporary Performance stakeholders, these bloggers pull together their observations, concerns, and recommendations to advocate on behalf of their peers. In "First Letter to the Field: What's Working, What's Not, Recommendations", they share their insights, suggestions, and provide a vehicle for feedback and discussion.

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The Nonprofit Starvation Cycle

A vicious cycle is leaving nonprofits so hungry for decent infrastructure that they can barely function as organizations—let alone serve their beneficiaries. The cycle starts with funders’ unrealistic expectations about how much running a nonprofit costs, and results in nonprofits’ misrepresenting their costs while skimping on vital systems—acts that feed funders’ skewed beliefs. To break the nonprofit starvation cycle, funders must take the lead.

by Ann Goggins Gregory & Don Howard
Fall 2009
Standford Social Innovation Review

Organizations that build robust infrastructure—which includes sturdy information technology systems, financial systems, skills training, fundraising processes, and other essential overhead—are more likely to succeed than those that do not. This is not news, and nonprofits are no exception to the rule.

Yet it is also not news that most nonprofits do not spend enough money on overhead. In our consulting work at the Bridgespan Group, we frequently find that our clients agree with the idea of improving infrastructure and augmenting their management capacity, yet they are loath to actually make these changes because they do not want to increase their overhead spending. But underfunding overhead can have disastrous effects, finds the Nonprofit Overhead Cost Study, a five year research project conducted by the Urban Institute’s National Center for Charitable Statistics and the Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University. The researchers examined more than 220,000 IRS Form 990s and conducted 1,500 in-depth surveys of organizations with revenues of more than $100,000. Among their many dismaying findings: nonfunctioning computers, staff members who lacked the training needed for their positions, and, in one instance, furniture so old and beaten down that the movers refused to move it. The effects of such limited overhead investment are felt far beyond the office: nonfunctioning computers cannot track program outcomes and show what is working and what is not; poorly trained staff cannot deliver quality services to beneficiaries.

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