CANNIBALISTIC CULTURE WORKERS

By Wyatt Coday in UNPUBLISHABLE — Aug 2, 2024

Sometimes the best way to find out is to fuck around.

An excerpt from a redacted transcript featuring an exchange about a contract role at a Los Angeles arts nonprofit. Paying subscribers can see the full transcript at the bottom of this email.

034 — Turning the tables on exploitative admins. Ghost jobs at nonprofits. Images and PDFs with receipts.

DISPASSION is a newsletter about art, digital media, and emotional detachment produced by NOR RESEARCH STUDIO.

QUICKIES

RAINMAKER SUMMER PROGRAMMING

We’re excited to bring back our summer workshops. This time we’re running a convergent set of experiments involving grants and publications. We foresee a hostile funding environment in the coming year, so we’re doubling down on our proposition that a strategic loss can produce future gains.

Throughout the workshops, we’ll explain how to use a grant application to simultaneously develop a portfolio website, design a PDF publication for your work samples, and explore supplementary income streams — assets that will immediately improve your chances of receiving funding and attracting exhibition opportunities.

TICKETS, DATES, AND MORE INFORMATION

OPEN SESSIONS

The first of our two pay-what-you-can community research grant workshops takes place tomorrow. Sessions can be attended individually or completed as a set.

GRANT RESEARCH AND STRATEGY I
August 3, 2024

During this two-hour session, we’ll discuss the general granting landscape in the arts with specific attention paid to the changing role of curators. Reviewing art projects that were awarded funding by organizations like Creative Capital, the Graham Foundation, and the Teiger Foundation, we’ll break down the basic components of grants and discuss the elements that make for a compelling proposal.

GRANT RESEARCH AND STRATEGY II
August 10, 2024

Using the materials gathered during the first session, we’ll spend another two hours discussing how to convert grant applications into other assets like books and websites, and how to integrate your application with your online portfolio. Participants are encouraged to bring in-progress materials to be reviewed for feedback by the group.

GRAHAM FOUNDATION AND CREATIVE CAPITAL WORKSHOPS

In the later sessions, we’ll focus on two specific individual artist grants respectively funded by the Graham Foundation for Art and Architecture and Creative Capital. Participants can attend one or multiple sessions, but each workshop will be limited to 15 guests. Attendees can also book additional editing and consulting hours at a discounted rate — $50 per hour.

GRAHAM FOUNDATION WORKSHOPS

SESSION I
August 17, 2024

SESSION II
August 24, 2024

These two-hour workshops will prepare participants to apply for a 2024 individual artist grant through the Graham Foundation using our signature HOW TO COMMUNICATE IN WHITE PEOPLE framework. Drawing from research the studio conducted last year, which resulted in a funded project, participants will read against the grain of the foundation’s request and use the criteria it upholds to shape, evaluate, and strengthen grant and project proposals across the creative industries.

The deadline to submit letters of inquiry to the Graham Foundation is September 15, 2024.

Participants who are interested in learning about grants or improving their grant proposals are encouraged to attend even if they don’t plan to submit a letter of inquiry.

Per our ongoing practice, the studio will develop an application that it will share with applicants throughout the sessions. These dummy applications will model best practices and demonstrate how to, for example, center architecture in a project where architecture may only have a secondary role.

WHO IS THIS WORKSHOP FOR?

Beyond applying for a Graham Foundation grant, participants who want to learn more about the grant writing process and develop a project using the foundation’s application as a template are welcome to attend. PhD candidates in the process of completing a doctoral dissertation on architecture and its role in the arts, culture, and society may be eligible for Carter Manny Award and are also encouraged to enroll.

CREATIVE CAPITAL

SESSION I
August 31, 2024

SESSION II
September 7, 2024

These sessions use the Creative Capital grant to build a proposal template that can be used across projects for the 2025 application season. These workshops are best for artists and cultural workers who have applied for grants in the past without success. Attendees are encouraged to bring application materials from the past which they’re comfortable editing with the group.

UNPUBLISHABLE

FISHING FOR GHOSTS

A short essay on ghost jobs and organizations who circulate them.

At the bottom of this newsletter are images from an email exchange I had with a potential client who left me suspicious about their call for freelance grant writers. Responding to their listing, I found myself in what increasingly resembled a job interview without a clear sense of the budget allocated for the project or how the client planned to compensate me.

It was a major red flag when, during our first Zoom conversation, the board member I spoke with, who works in advancement at a private nonprofit art school in the greater Los Angeles area, said that the organization currently has no paid workers. Giving him the benefit of the doubt because the organization — at least according to him — had functioned for decades as a community operation and had only recently incorporated as a 501(c)3 nonprofit, I gave him my rates and decided to see how things played out. I also took him up on his suggestion that I attend one of their events later that evening to get a sense of their programming.

I actually found the event quite magical. I also took note of how much money they were likely able to collect with easily more than 200 people paying $10 to enter the packed event, the handful of cameramen strapped with mobile rigs, the security staff, and the unease that emanated from the board member when I approached him on my out of the event. In retrospect, he likely did not want me to see all the money they were receiving and spending through this single gathering.

I became even less empathic when the client said they would like to move forward with a second dialogue with a few other team members and requested that I send or write a sample grant for them to review. I wrote them back and explained that in my own experience as hiring manager who has commissioned contract work, we paid all applicants for materials they generated during our interviewing process and that many other organizations also honor this practice. I also shy away from offering free samples.

Their response was lackluster. I sent them a few paragraphs that could be found online if you search for the projects they’re attached to and proceeded with the second interview to get a sense of how well they were willing to commit to the performance. I had to badger them to get a response and weeks later I got an email saying they went with another candidate. Their website, which lists at least twelve team members with specific roles, does not feature a grant writer or advancement staffer. I also suspect that Stephanie, who does not appear on their site, is merely the humanized persona they’ve attached to their info@ account — should have given her a last name! Smart, but does not fool me.

As I touched on in my last post, I think it’s within reason to believe this organization posted a ghost job. Over the last few months, I’ve seen a number of similar listings from organizations that repeatedly post the same job and ask for valuable sample materials like successful grants. While there has been some discussion about clamping down on this behavior, the most movement we’ve seen is from states like New York, which now legally requires job listings to provide a salary range. Others have suggested that businesses should be mandated to clarify whether the search is long-term or for an immediate hire, but the pace at which businesses rightfully pivot according to their financial needs make this unlikely.

In the highly unregulated art market, including its sphere of administrators and creative professionals, there are few formal or informal protections against this kind of predatory behavior. As I’ve stated previously, the general assumption is that anyone engaged in contract labor believes themselves to be endowed with shrewd business acumen as opposed to forced shifts within their industry. I count myself as a seasoned member of the self-employed class. I’ve made mistakes and even recovered from some of them. I’ve even helped others navigate difficult negotiations and unfair working conditions. All that said, I’m still surprised that people think it’s necessary, beneficial, or efficient to go about business deceptively. In the end, there is always a consequence. Distrust kills vibes. Bad vibes kill business.

What amazed me about this particular experience is that the individuals involved either thought they had me duped or that their intentions were noble enough to permit exploitative behavior. I can only laugh because their strategy will no doubt leave them fruitless. If they were to open their eyes and examine the many similar operations around them they would realize that having two nonprofit gigs where you make no money has never improved anyone’s situation. Maybe desperation has blinded them to the realities of their faulty investment, but I’m sure the hustle-and-grind they’ve committed to feels like it’s going somewhere. I know one of the individuals I interviewed with recently received their first fellowship — granting them between $50,000 and $100,000 — through the California Arts Council’s CA Creative Corps Fellowship, which pokes a small hole in the idea that no one is getting paid through the nonprofit. Rather, they’re being compensated through what looks like a Model C fiscal sponsorship, which means another organization is paying them to conduct their project. At least $50,000 of the fellowship is meant to cover project costs, meaning those who receive the $100,000 can use the additional funds for living expenses. Having worked with clients that regularly generate that kind of revenue through selling their art or services, I can confidently say that it doesn’t last forever and wielding it foolishly will only shorten the ride. Especially when you pretend to lack resources, low-ball known talents, and leave a paper trail.

It’s important to remember that nonprofits are not equity-producing instruments. They are batteries that siphon, hold, and redistribute money under certain conditions that make them exceptionally expensive to operate — namely that incorporating as one requires an organization to comply with a number of federal, state, and municipal regulations that grow as the organization grows. (In the case of Model C fiscal sponsorship, there’s even more paperwork.) There are productive ways to engage in nonprofit-driven business, but demanding contract workers fulfill the obligations of employees while under-compensating them is one way to find yourself in legal red waters. On the financial side, chasing small mounds of money while exploiting a worker who will only become less efficient without adequate compensation usually indicates that someone should have never entered business in the first place.

I would likely be more sympathetic to my colleagues in the nonprofit sector if they didn’t usually offer some empty moral platitudes as justifications for their behavior. I’m reminded of a particularly nasty client of mine who bragged about having friends who owned slaves while running a nonprofit that presented itself as the anti-slavery project of the century. Sadly, we live in a delusional world, filled with delusional people. Some people think that even after receiving a large sum of money to cover their project costs, they’re still the victim. But what’s really missed in this equation is that grant and fellowships that cover project costs are designed to move money through a social or economic network. Being the bottleneck in that distribution network and pinching pennies for your own benefit? Seems like strong loser energy to me.

— AFTERS —

— FIN —

WYATT CODAY is intersex and autistic. She lives between Los Angeles and Chicago, where she is a practicing financial dominatrix. She is the director of NOR RESEARCH STUDIO.

UNPUBLISHABLE is a gossip column exclusive to SUPPORTER-level subscribers.

RAINMAKER is an event series about practical skills and difficult-to-hear realities that can transform your career as an artist. Taking up wide-ranging topics like grants, fundraising campaigns, contract negotiation, and product development while exploring their taboo undersides, the series hopes to inaugurate more transparent and accurate dialogues about money, debt, labor, and financial independence.

NOR RESEARCH STUDIO is a design research studio that develops didactic media, exhibitions, publications, and other forms of intellectual property for artists, nonprofits, and creative businesses.

SUPPLEMENT

THE TRANSCRIPT

To view a text version of the transcript please use the PDF file linked below.

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