Cultural Resources

The following show art, music, theatrical, and other organizations and information that may be of interest to you, in no particular order. There are also links to resources of interest to artists and to non-profit arts and cultural organizations.

You can also find links to local arts and cultural organizations and arts related businesses by searching the Artists, Groups, and Galleries section of this site.

Around the Grand Junction Area

Resources for Artists

Colorado Creative Industries (CCI) is the statewide organization which provides grants to artists and arts and cultural organizations for many different projects and programs, supports arts education, facilitates the annual Governor's Arts Award, and is a resource and links to numerous visual arts and performing arts organizations in Colorado. The Office of Film, Television, and Media is located within CCI.

Resources for Arts & Cultural Organizations

Fundraising

With over ten million hits last year, Guidestar is far and away the most popular online source for finding information on non-profit organizations. Most important is that the site encourages organizations to provide supplemental information to the raw data drawn from IRS 990 forms that it presents. If your organization hasn't yet visited the site to review its profile, don't delay. By providing information on your mission and programs, your organization will become far more visible to the funders who want to find and research you before considering a contribution. Guidestar requires registration for all users, even the casual browser, but the process is simple, fast and free.

Advocacy

The Support Music Coalition is celebrating its fifth anniversary and the creative team and continues to do an outstanding job of providing tools to make a compelling case for music education in schools. The site tracks current debate, offers a "Grade Your School" assessment, and provides extensive tools for organizing local efforts, including everything from media templates and printable fliers to pre-recorded Public Service Announcements. It even provides resources in Spanish.

Americans for the Arts also provides a library of resources to assist in making the case for the importance of arts education. Visit their Public Awareness Campaign page.

Hot Topics

While it provides no specific tools to governance leaders, we find ourselves often checking the news section at ARTFORUM's website for quick updates on current controversies in the worlds of the visual arts and museums. It's like gossip without the guilt.

Also visit Arts Journal's blog compendium, which offers fresh perspectives from every sector of the visual and performing arts, including architecture and jazz.

Board Development

The Complete Toolkit for Boards, sponsored by the Management Assistance Program for Nonprofits, offers an extensive library of resources covering nearly every aspect of nonprofit operations. Well-organized, comprehensive, and concise, The Complete Toolkit is an indispensable source of nuts-and-bolts information on effective governance. Newly formatted with a graphic presentation that is much easier on the eyes, this collection of fact sheets, forms, board manuals, and sample policies continues to provide the web's single best source of free information on non-profit operations.

Additional Resources

No review of tools available to board members on the web would be complete without mentioning BoardSource, hosted by the National Center for Nonprofit Boards. Technically, it doesn't qualify for our list because it requires visitors to pay a fee for most resources, but if you are not familiar with the site, it's well-presented and worth a visit.

Arts Consulting Group's archive of "Arts Insights" magazine articles, covering many topics of interest to leaders in arts and cultural organization management and governance is available online.

Think 360 Arts serves K-12 schools in Colorado through teacher training, direct services to classrooms and public awareness programs.