Have you and your college theater buddies been putting on plays in the local church basement, trying to figure out how to sustain your efforts?  Are you a small arts organization looking for answers for your growing pains?

smARTstart has been developed with you in mind.  It is a compendium of on-line resources that addresses questions that emerging and small arts organizations might have about operating as a not-for-profit organization.  Inspired by and adapted from the Virtual Arts Incubator (VAI) project developed by the Arts Services Office at the Cincinnati Fine Arts Fund, smARTstart draws from VAI material, additional material developed by expert legal, nonprofit and business volunteers in Chicago, and on-line resources available through arts service providers from around the country.  By culling from the best resources available on-line, smARTstart gives you varied perspectives on the critical components of running a nonprofit arts organization.

Throughout this resource, rather than replicating what is available on-line, we link you directly to original sources of information.  Two of these, BoardSource and the Alliance for Nonprofit Management, are referred to often.  Their websites include comprehensive and accessible information concerning nonprofit organization governance and management, and are organized by topic around frequently asked questions gathered from nonprofit practitioners. 

In Illinois, we are fortunate to have a number of organizations that provide management support to nonprofit arts organizations through on-line information, phone, and in-person consultation, conferences, workshops, and publications.  Some of these are specifically focused on the arts, while others serve the entire nonprofit sector.   See a comprehensive resource list.   In addition, networking with your fellow arts organizations can provide valuable lessons learned.

We welcome your comments and any additional information you discover that might be useful to others, so that we might continue to update this resource to serve you more effectively.  

smARTstart is made possible through the generous support from:

           

Thanks to The Arts Service Office of the Cincinnati Fine Arts Fund for graciously sharing their Virtual Arts Incubator model with us.