blog by arwen

I had the extreme pleasure to spend last Sunday working on a film that is part of this year’s RIPFEST. I was doing extra work as a yogi and gym regular for a friend who was the Director.

What is RIPFEST you might wonder (as I did)?

RIPFEST is a unique collaborative filmmaking project that allows filmmakers the freedom to do what they do best – just make films. At the launch of a RIPFEST event several teams of filmmakers who have never met are given guidelines to create a 5-10 minute film. Each group is comprised of a Producer, a Writer, a Composer, a Director, a DP, an Editor, a Choreographer (for musicals), 2-4 Actors and 2 locations. The teams are given guidelines to create a 5-7 minute film. Then they have:

-  2 days to write the first draft
-  2 days for re-writes
-  2 days for pre-production
-  2 days to shoot the film
-  1 week for post production, scoring, and graphics.

All the films are premiered, just 16 days after the process began.There are no restrictions on content or style – pieces range from the most serious to absurdly comic and for musicals, in styles from R&B to operatic to traditional Broadway. Each team is, however, given the same guidelines for creative inspiration and a theme, and the teams are required to only shoot in the two locations provided and to tailor their movie to the actors on their teams.

I got to chat with one of the Exec. Producers on set and learned all about the process & philosophy behind it. It is pretty amazing that this project/program has survived on bare-bones funding and a completely volunteer staff for the last decade. While working for free is never the best situation, I think the real benefit RIPFEST provides is networking – it is structured so artists can meet and work collaboratively with people outside their normal circles. I can’t wait to see what the different teams created in their 16 days.

They are screening all six films during three showings at Anthology Film Archives next Monday night 4/26. You can get tickets and full details here.

Given that tomorrow is Tax Day, I wanted to write about a volunteer project I’ve been doing for the last few months.

For three years I have been an active volunteer with the amazing New York Cares, which is a volunteer-aggregation organization. If you are local to NYC, or have been through Grand Central Station anytime during the holiday season, you may know them for the Winter Coat Drive program which provides gently used outerwear for free to homeless people. In the past, I’ve helped out with a gigantic Easter egg hunt in Prospect Park and did a one month stint in my neighborhood at a special ed high school helping teach life skills to kids through an after-school cooking club.

In this time of growing economic insecurity, I felt compelled to do something more, so I joined the IRS’s Volunteer Income Tax Preparation program (aka VITA) to serve low-income New Yorkers by helping them file their taxes for free. Sexy, no? I have done my own taxes for years but this was taking my penchant for completing forms to a whole new level. I had to take an extensive online course through the IRS and do in-person training to cover the NY state & city forms. I spent the week after Christmas getting deep into tax law – what better way to start the New Year than dissecting recent Congressional revisions to the tax code!

I was scared at the beginning – I’ve never done any economic development work and the constituents of this program are people I rarely comes across in the gentrified world of the performing arts. Reaching out to help people who live radically different lives than my own was actually the biggest attraction.

This is the final week, and while I don’t have totals yet for the whole season, I can tell you this (from the NY Cares program director):

As of the beginning of March, halfway through the season, New York Cares volunteers have completed more than 4,600 returns. You have helped return $10.6 million to low-income New Yorkers, about $6 million of which is from the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC). The average refund is about $2,300.

Total refunds secured through our program are up by over $2.5 million from this time last year. In the current economic climate, this will have a great impact on our community and will change the lives of many of the families you have served.

My tax site specifically (housed at the wonderful Brooklyn Cooperative) got this progress report last month:

As of the end of February, New York Cares volunteers at the Bushwick site have completed 432 tax returns for a total of $875,469.

We were also visited by an IRS quality control agent and received exemplary remarks and ratings based on interviews with folks we helped and a random audit of returns we prepared – no mistakes at all.

I didn’t realize how rewarding it would be to help someone who qualifies for the Earned Income Credit, or work with a young adult who is filing their taxes for the first time, or help a retired widow collect her refund. We in the arts often live on meager income and develop resourceful strategies to get by, but it is a whole different thing when you meet a someone in their early 20s who qualifies as Head of Household by supporting their parent & siblings on less than $20,000 in NYC.

This program was an amazing learning experience for me on many levels. Do you volunteer and if so, what kinds of programs do you like to participate in?

Bonus link: I recently found another great resource for artists & taxes. Check out the FREE worksheets that the fantastic folks at Riley Associates PC have put together to help artists keep accurate records for tax purposes.

I promised the participants of my recent appeal letter workshop that I’d share two great resources we discussed.

First, we have an academic examination of the typical language included in appeals. I found this fantastic linguistic analysis last autumn and was surprised it didn’t get more notice in the arts blogosphere (the intrepid Artful Manager covered it). Written by Frank C. Dickerson, Ph.D., the work is based on doctoral research he conducted while attending Claremont Graduate University’s Peter F. Drucker School of Management. Mr. Dickerson has an extensive resume and decades of experience working in fund raising, so we would do well to heed his warning.

What is he saying exactly? Well, the title says it all when it comes to the direct appeal (also known as an “ask” or solicitation letter): “The Way We Write is All Wrong“. He argues that most appeals are written in the style of an academic treatise or worse yet official government documents, which creates distance and alienates the reader. He proposes that we write with personal passion and infuse our appeals with stories that connect emotionally to the reader instead. As a measure of his commitment to public service, he has made several important documents available for free on his website. For that, I’d like to say “Thank you, Frank!” on behalf of independent artists everywhere.

The other important resource is a recent market research report called “The Next Generation of American Giving“.

A landmark research study into the charitable giving behaviors and attitudes of Gen Y, Gen X, Boomer and Mature donors from Convio, Edge Research and Sea Change Strategies. The art and science of fundraising, as we know it, is undergoing rapid and permanent change driven by technology, the imperative to attract new donors, and by the evolving traits of different generations of supporters. This report is a contribution to understanding this change and offers some strategic guidance for fundraisers who are struggling to keep up with it.

This is huge to anyone undertaking an individual campaign – especially given the rapid evolution of fund raising trends & techniques as we now straddle the worlds of the old school (unsolicited direct mail form letter) and the new school (online & email appeals, donating via text messages, Facebook causes etc). You have to provide your contact info to download the report, but in my opinion it is WELL worth it. Nonprofit marketing expert Nancy E. Schwartz agrees and offers a quick summary of the findings.

When looking at these resources together, I think two big takeaways are:

1. when asking for money, effective writing for individuals is completely DIFFERENT than effective writing for grants, so do your homework and figure out how to tell a compelling story (as opposed to demonstrating your capacity for program success via measurable criteria);

and

2. appeal letter writing/campaigning might require just as much work as writing a grant if you want to do it right, given technological advances in digital media and the range of generational preferences relating to communication channels.

What do you think about these reports? Any additional appeal letter resources we should add into the mix?

I am excited to announce two events I have coming up in the next few weeks.

First, I am moderating a discussion that is part of a salon series presented by The Performance Project at University Settlement and the Ontological-Hysteric Theater Co‘s Incubator program. These legendary downtown organizations have teamed up to host a series of salons for artists and the public, free of charge.

Scheduled for Monday, March 29, 7p.m. at University Settlement located at 184 Eldridge Street (corner of Rivington), the salon is titled:

The Long Haul – Defining and creating a sustainable career-path.

Artist participants: Alec Duffy of Hoi Polloi, Jules Gimbrone and Elliot Montague of WREST, and Sandi Carroll of MUD/BONE.

Join us to discuss how independent artists think about their careers in the long term. Hear from a variety of participants how they sustain themselves during the feast & famine cycles affecting not only income, but also creative inspiration. Does thinking about the long term matter? Is it better to only worry about the next 12 months? What are some of the benefits of planning ahead and making strategic investments for your future and how does one go about it? Is goal setting important or does it restrict flexibility and opportunity? Artist participants will share thoughts, tips and tactics about how they have managed to survive and thrive over the course of their career so far and how they plan to continue it in future years.

Second, I am teaching another new workshop at The Field – this time on individual appeal letters. If you have ever wondered about or wanted to improve your skills in the area of soliciting donations via the written word, this workshop is for you. If interested, you can sign up here.

Individual Giving Letters – April 10, Saturday, 11am-1:30pm

Appeal letters are the primary tool artists use to raise funds for their work by soliciting friends, family, and audience members to donate money, goods and services. This workshop focuses on writing effective individual appeals and their integral position within the spectrum of fund raising efforts. Participants are encouraged to bring in past letters for discussion and attendees will work on crafting potential letters for future use.

Every day I am amazed at how the technological revolution is changing our lives, sculpting our cultures and expanding our consciousness.

I found myself at a wonderful event last night amidst social and political activists working in the fields of human rights, education reform, climate change – just about any cause you could name. It was held at my office-away-from-home Brooklyn Creative League and presented by theCoup and Witness.

10 tactics for turning information into action is a film produced by the Tactical Technology Collective. They say:

10 tactics for turning information into action is our newest project and our first go at documentary film-making. It explores how rights advocates around the world have used the internet and digital technologies to create positive change, featuring 35 stories of successful info-activism in 24 countries. The 50-min documentary comes with a set of 15 hands-on cards featuring examples from the film and tools and tips to help you plan your own info-activism.

After a screening of the film, we broke up into groups based on topic of interest (stories, visual representation, mobile & tech, community & networks) and briefly discussed the film in relation to our topic, our work and our experiences. I was in the community and networking group and was somewhat relieved to learn that every cause seems to be having trouble turning virtual networks into physical action. How to get people (besides the Mad Tea Partiers) off their butts and out of their seats and into the world to do something in real-time seems to be the $64,000 question.

10 tactics is a great resource for those of us looking to connect with people in meaningful, authentic ways and Tactical Technology Collective provides free tool kits and informational resources as part of the project. It was fascinating to reflect on how these tactics have been used (or misused)  in advocacy/awareness campaigns in the arts. More on that in another post…

Congratulations and thank you to everyone who made this an inspiring, informative and engaging event.

I found this some time ago – it was a guest post on one of the finance blogs I follow – and I meant to write about it, but somehow forgot. So, here it is, better late than never.

The author provides a great list of Do’s and Don’ts when trying to cultivate online press contacts and woo the blogosphere into covering your product/service/show/album/whatever.

It is specifically written for people who work in PR & publicity, but I think Lindsay outlines some great principles that independent artists can adapt and apply in cases where the PR/pub duties fall to us.

My favorite tips are these two:

2. Pick Eight Blogs

While the rest of the publicists in her company were sending out mass emails to everyone, hoping to get bites from Perez Hilton, Gawker, HuffPo, or wherever, this publicist focused on a lower traffic tier with the (correct) understanding that these days, content filters up as much as it filters down, and often the smaller sites, with their ability to dig deeper into the internet and be more nimble, act as farm teams for the larger ones. A site can be enormously influential without having crazy eyeballs, because all eyeballs are not equal.

4. A Monkey Can Send a Mass Email: Build Relationships and Understand What Your Real Job Is

I don’t know why one of the oldest truisms of publicity, marketing, salesmanship, and basically every other field is ignored by online publicists: it’s about relationships! I can find my own content without the help of any publicist — any blogger worth his or her job can. I just get annoyed that my time has been wasted. If a publicist shows that they know what they’re doing, the resulting surprise on behalf of the blogger/reporter/editor will lead to more attention paid to that publicists offerings. Duh.

Amen sister! The original post is a really quick read and if you are dealing with online publicity, I suggest you check it out.

In this post, I’ve included links to some important financial resources that were mentioned in Saturday’s workshop. Among them, you’ll find some of my favorite blogs and sites, as well as a gigantic financial glossary, three articles on how to hire a financial planner and some handy tools and calculators (loan, savings, retirement) courtesy of FINRA.

Banking & Lending

Bankrate is the place to get the best available rates on just about any kind of consumer financial product; Mortgage 101 is an educational site for potential home-buyers; if you’ve gone to college recently and wanted a scholarship, you probably remember filling out a nightmare of a form called the FAFSA; and if you are looking for basic, general information about all-things-banking why not head to the source and check out the educational resources provided by the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City?

Credit

Be sure to review your credit history each year using Annual Credit Report (it’s FREE); learn how your credit score is calculated and what affects it by visiting MyFICO; if you are trying to avoid debt collectors and bankruptcy, the National Foundation for Credit Counseling can put you in touch with a free credit counselor; if you are new or just inspired to learn more about how the game works, visit Credit.com; and next time you are ready to shop around for a new card, be sure to check out Card Ratings first.

Insurance

Such a topical issue given the health care “debate”…If you are an artist looking for health or liability insurance, you can find it at Fractured Atlas; if you are any kind of freelance worker looking for health, dental, life or disability coverage, check out Freelancer’s Union.

Investing

If you are curious about or ready to take the plunge into investing, here are some resources to help you learn the lingo, grasp key concepts and demystify the complicated world of “Wall St”: Investopedia, The Motley Fool, Morningstar, and Mutual Fund Education Alliance. The topic of peer-to-peer lending as an investment strategy came up, made famous by the international organization Kiva.

Retirement

The U.S. Social Security Administration sends you a statement twice a year to report on your taxable income and projected benefits. If you haven’t received one in a while, you can request it online. Be sure it matches your tax statements – I found they missed crediting me over $15,000 of income one year!

And obviously Social Security won’t be enough to support those of us under 40 when we reach collecting time, so you should consider participating in an employer sponsored plan (usually a 401K or 403B) and maximize any matching funds opportunities they provide. If that isn’t an option, consider an Individual Retirement Account.

Taxes

Why not start at the top and just contact the IRS (or consult their new YouTube channel – seriously!) with your questions? In preparation, you might want to spend some time on these blogs: Don’t Mess With Taxes and TAXGIRL.

Personal Finance

My top blog picks are The Simple Dollar and Get Rich Slowly – I have been reading both for years now, and think they are two of the best places online to find tips, tactics and techniques for reducing debt, saving for retirement, learning to craft a frugal lifestyle that doesn’t cramp your personal style and more. Of course, what is theory without practice, so be sure to investigate the free money management tools offered by Mint and Wesabe.

Finance, Economics, Policy

Here a few of my favorites blogs: naked capitalism, The Big Picture, and The Baseline Scenario. These are serious blogs written by serious minds who really know their stuff. Sometimes I don’t follow every little detail, but reading them has helped me dramatically improve my understanding of macroeconomics, fiscal and monetary policy, and the financial calamity we are currently living through.

Business

SBA stands for Small Business Administration – it is the part of the Federal government designed to help support small businesses; SCORE is an amazing national organization that provides business education, resources, templates and even mentoring in locations around the country; and if you are looking for general business advice, check out inc.com or allbusiness.com.

If there are any questions we didn’t have time to cover in the workshop, or follow-up thoughts or resources you’d like to share (whether you participated or not), please post in the comments section.

This Saturday February 6th, I am teaching a brand new workshop - Finance Basics for Artists – at The Field.

Here is the description:

From planning your next project budget to managing your personal finances, join us to explore tips and tactics to help maximize your financial resources. We will discuss basic principles of saving, investing, budgeting, short-term vs. long-term planning, frugality, goal setting, personal risk tolerance, cash flow, bartering and other practical techniques to help cut overhead costs and meet your bottom line.

If you are in the NYC area, and want to get your finance on, please join us. You can register here and there is a small fee to participate.

The radio silence of late is due to illness – one of my teeth just decided it was done with me.

I closed out 2009 with a bang, being the Maid of Honor and featured vocalist at my mother’s wedding, becoming certified as an IRS volunteer tax preparer and spending New Year’s Eve at the best dance/art party in NYC that didn’t get shut down. It was hectic and wonderful and exhausting.

And right before it all started, on Thanksgiving eve, I found out that I had somehow cracked a tooth – one of my bottom molars #19. Under the care of my amazing dentist and new periodontists I had no symptoms and I got through the holidays without incident.

Not so much after the New Year hit. The pain started in the early morning hours on 1/1/2010 – I went to sleep as the sun came up and my mouth started to smart. The discomfort over the next week was intermittent and I had scheduled a follow up with my doctor, so I just lived with it.

Another week later, an infection has ravaged my fractured tooth causing an abscess and my face has been swollen for the better part of five days. I saw the doc on Monday and got the meds I need to get better. I will probably have surgery in the next week or two. I’m no stranger to dental surgery, but this is much more involved (titanium screws?) and will take more than six months to complete. What a way to start the New Year!

The frustrating part is that this broken tooth is actually a failed root canal. Twice now this tooth has betrayed me, while no other teeth have anywhere near this level of difficulty maintaining the daily grind.

The good news is that for the first time in my entire life I have real dental insurance. Thank you progressive NY State health care laws allowing Domestic Partners to buy into employee sponsored group plans! Staring down the barrel of several thousands of dollars of work to be done (on a tooth I’ve already spent $2000 on out-of-pocket for the root canal – talk about sunk costs), it is amazing to know that even some of it will be covered.

Now that I have returned to a semi-normal mental state without the throbbing, blinding pain in my face, postings shall resume.

Happy 2010.

I’m pleased as punch to announce that I will be serving as Associate Producer for Tisch School of the Arts‘ 2010 hotINK International Play Reading Festival. The festival runs during the last two weekends of January on 1/23 – 1/25, and 1/30, 1/31.

A completely FREE festival of plays from around the globe, this year features playwrights hailing from Uganda, Ireland, Canada, Russia, France, Romania, Finland, Austria and Japan.

Now in its ninth year, hotINK is an annual, international festival of play readings, presented by the Department of Drama, that brings together playwrights from around the world with distinguished actors and directors from the New York theatre, as well as students, alumni and faculty from the Tisch School of the Arts.

The many distinguished U.S. playwrights, directors and actors who have taken part in hotINK include Bill Camp, Kathleen Chalfant, Migdalia Cruz, Liz Diamond, Kathryn Erbe, John Gallagher, Jr., Joe Grifasi, Kathryn Grody, Rinne Groff, Stephanie Roth Haberle, Jeffrey Hatcher, Jessica Hecht, Marin Ireland, Len Jenkin, Francis Jue, Arthur Kopit, Michael Laurence, Paul Lazar, Robert Lyons, Joan MacIntosh, Heather McDonald, Steve Mellor, Itamar Moses, Victor Pappas, Keith Reddin, Henry Stram, Caridad Svich, Mac Wellman, B.D. Wong, Frank Woods and Janet Zarish.

As an alumni of Undergrad Drama, I am thrilled to be working again with some of my favorite people on staff at 721 Broadway. Full details for the festival can be found here. Tickets will be available after January 4th through Smarttix and more information will be forthcoming after the New Year.