The Work Of The Elite One-day Career

By Author: toryburch
Total Articles: 56
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This is the day in the life of a fictional foundation officer, with a mission to serve nonprofit organizations crossing three states along the East Coast. In total, the foundation gives away $50 million a year. The foundation officer is part of a three-person team charged with giving $11 million in grants annually to arts and culture organizations in the region.
8:15
Arrive at the office a bit early so that you can answer e-mails before the phone starts ringing. You’ve been tied up in so many meetings this week that you have a mountain of messages you haven’t even opened yet. About a dozen are from grantees that have sent interim reports at the six-month point of the grant. You shoot e-mails thanking them for the report and telling them you will get back to them with any questions. You scan through other six or seven e-mails with news clippings on various topics-reviews of local theater productions, a profile of the new executive director of the city’s chamber or chestra and a feature article in the Enquirer (the primary newspaper for the region) on the status of performing arts in the region. You take a ...
... minute to read these articles in full.
You also respond to an e-mail from your boss, the director of the arts and culture program, confirming that you are available for lunch. There’s also an e-mail from him asking for a list of the letters to be discussed at the next review meeting to occur at the end of the month. You quickly tick off the 13 organizations that have sent you letters, a three-page request summary that serves as the first step in the proposal submission process for the foundation.
9:20
Start returning phone messages; you had five from yesterday from various grantees. You call the grant writer at the natural history museum, who had a question about how to update outcome measures in the letter of intent that the museum is about to submit to you. You tell her it’s not necessary to update them at all, that the ones submitted last year provided a lot of information to the foundation’s board on how the museum was evaluating the impact of new programs on audience attendance. You leave a message for the director of development for a dance company giving her three days next month when you would be available for a site visit. You also ask that she send you a copy of the company’s latest marketing plan to review before the visit; the grant the foundation gave last year was to help the company hire a new marketing director and a contract publicist. You’re curious to know how the new hires are working. Then you speak with the executive director of a small puppet theater, assuring him to submit a letter of intent some time next week. He is extraordinarily apologetic that the letter will come several days later, explaining that the director of development and her assistant are both out with the flu.
　
10:15
Join the monthly conference. Your foundation has invested in an online ticketing and audience management system to be managed by the Cultural Alliance. The software developer has set up these monthly calls to discuss progress on the system. Today, the developer introduces the web site and interface for the system through an online presentation. It’s impressive and seems easy to use. The developer declares he is confident that the system will be running for three performing arts groups to use it for ticket sales next season.

11: 35
Step out the door with your boss for a meal at the Chinese restaurant. The two of you can catch up on things outside of weekly staff meetings. You spend most of the lunch describing the presentation by the software developer. Your boss asks if you could arrange a one-on-one meeting with him and the developer so that he can see the system for himself.

13:15
Get back to your office to make a few more phone calls. You talk with the development directors for two different organizations-a youth orchestra and an art galleryand schedule site visits. You also get in touch with the professor from New York University, who is about to catch the train down for a town hall meeting you have helped organize. The meeting is meant to bring urban planning experts and economists, city officials and leaders from the arts community together to discuss the impact of urban revitalization efforts on arts and culture institutions in the city. He asks if you can join him for dinner, but you decline. You don’t think you have time today, especially since you need to review a couple of letters today and tomorrow. You notice that while you have been on the phone, you’ve received three voice mail messages. You don’t have time to review them now, since you’re late for a meeting.
　
14:05
Run down the stairs for a meeting in the conference room on the Regional Arts and Culture, Information Project. Five funders, including your foundation, have joined officials at local art councils and state cultural agencies to create a new mechanism for capturing demographic information about audiences that attend art events to gauge their health and growth. Unfortunately, the project is going slowly. You hope the project can move along at a faster pace.
15:45
Return to your office and review your voice mail messages. None of them are urgent, so you decide to focus on the draft letter of intent you received yesterday. It’s from a fledgling performing arts groups focused on incubating new theater and dance pieces. Six months ago, you read an article in the local paper of one of their workshop productions. You were impressed with the quality of the production. You spoke to the artistic director. After inviting her to your office for a longer conversation about the direction she wants to take the organization, you asked her to submit a letter of intent.

16:35
Leave the office in order to grab the train to the city. You should be able to get to the central library, where the town meeting is to be held.
　
18:15
Sit down as the town meeting gets underway. The large meeting hall is three-quarters full. The discussion is lively and there are some strong statements made against real estate developers. There’s a rich conversation about the festivals in creating unity in neighborhoods.
19:50
Grab a bottle of sparkling water at the drinks table and you catch your boss’ eye. He joined the meeting about a half-hour late. He’s very excited about the discussion of the theater fringe festival; it’s one of his pet projects. You talk to him about the letter of intent you read this afternoon from the small theater group focused on new work. You all discuss that the foundation might find some opportunities for the artistic director around fundraising.
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