Good luck on the playground

I've heard that a crane symbolizes good luck. A dear friend gave us 100 golden Origami cranes when my daughter was born in 2010. That was the year that 1.206 million gallons of oil leaked into the Gulf of Mexico poisoning loads of birds, including cranes. That was also the year that Time Magazine told us that a family needed a household income of $75,000 to be happy. Wisconsin, by the way, is home to the International Crane Foundation and lots of sandhill cranes. The median household income in Madison, the capital, is $57,000.

I'm trying to make some connections here and let's see if I succeed.

Construction cranes seem to be all over the city. That is a symbol of jobs and promise and prospects. Forbes, which said Madison was a great place for young professionals to find jobs and live (in 2011), explains what seems like common sense to me: Companies look for places where there is always a fresh crop of college-educated people when deciding where to locate. And, duh, these 24-35 year-old people want to live in "tight-knit urban neighborhoods that are close to work and have lots of entertainment and shopping options within an easy walk." (Great news: fewer young people are buying cars)

That describes my neighborhood! The cranes in my landscape are making real one of a bunch of great-sounding projects at various stages of planning and discussion, all very promising for my downtown neighborhood. A central park, a full-service grocery store, and an improved playground. And lots of high-density housing.

I'm interested in the playground. It is in a big, well-loved and well-used field and near a very cool sports stadium where amateur soccer games attract small crowds and taco carts. There are plans for more strategically showcasing that stadium, too.

I'm not the only parent with young kids in the neighborhood, but there should be more of us. One of the city's best elementary schools is on my street. The big lake is a couple blocks away, as is a charming lagoon with ice skate rental and hot cocoa in the winter. It takes me 5 minutes to get downtown on the bus, but usually we just walk. Mature trees, sidewalks, cafes, restaurants, much-cherished businesses, you get it: it's such a cool neighborhood.

Families with young kids can be like artists to revitalization. Destination playgrounds are landmarks in a city. They end up on postcards and featured on tourism websites. 

Families want affordable homes in decent neighborhoods and they want a certain amount of critical mass. They will congregate around a park or a school or a playground. Families create stability. They reinvest in the neighborhood, feel allegiance, draw in like-minded families, the tax base grows, the housing prices reflect it. 

So don't botch this playground thing.

There is $75,000 set aside for the playground. Sounds like a lot but I'm told it is not. It's all a family needed to be happy in 2010, but my Alder told me to expect a modest play structure and not to rock the boat too hard or plans will be stalled.

Back in 2010, I had my heart truly broken. The newly elected Governor Walker sent back the money Wisconsin had to build a passenger Amtrak route through Madison. An $810 million federal grant refused after the trains had been bought! I'd been going to meetings, giving some thought to where the station might best be located. I had full-blown imaginary scenes of myself and my daughter taking the train to Chicago for the weekend, then on to visit family in Ohio....

I really am not over it.

Please, let's not miss this train. It's just one little playground, but let's pay attention.

Who is doing good business?

I read that a 2006 study of 251 businesses proved that charitable contributions enhances revenue growth. Not surprisingly, it helps consumer companies most.

So I started thinking about myself, a consumer, and what I care about. I have spent my career working with culture, but I am passionate about urban planning. I have no degrees. I just have experience living in cities (Columbus OH, Austin TX, Washington DC, Hanover GERMANY, Aix-en-Province FRANCE) and have traveled extensively around the world (sometimes on a bike). I appreciate cities that are built for people because I love walking and biking.

That makes me a consumer of shoes and bikes.

First, bikes: I'm NOT one of those people with a bunch of pretty bikes in the basement. I just ride a bike to get places and I always have. I realize now that I'm unusual for my generation (I was born in the mid-seventies) because I actually biked in high school. I had panniers and went touring in Acadia with my parents. They still make fun of me for not using my gears efficiently on those crazy big mountains, but my legs were young.

I have always just had one, highly functional but not very pretty bike. More important to me is bike gear. There is a Madison-based company called Planet Bike that makes great stuff (lights and fenders, etc). So I look on their website and find "Planet Bike helps out by donating 25% of company profits to grassroots bicycle advocacy groups." I see someone from the company serves on the board of the League of American Bicycles. The average company in America gives less than 1% of its annual pretax income to charity.

I have far less to say about shoes. This little exercise, however, has brought to my attention a local business I've never been to but have known about for years. Reading about Movin' Shoes makes me want to support them because they promise both good deals and a really good mission. And seeing that they've been around since 1975, when "the only way to purchase running shoes was by mail order," I'm sure some graduate student could do a research paper on how their business has shaped the city into what it is today. 

I wonder if these two businesses can correlate their annual pretax net income with their annual giving program? What is the difference between an irrelevant and flimsy giving program and an effective and meaningful corporate contributions program? 

Strategy. Process. Relevance to both society AND the company! Create more consumers for your product by making the world into a place where your product makes sense. Duh. 

But what if I don't like the world where your product makes sense?


People I believe in, doing good business in Madison:

Are we living in a third-world state?

May Day celebration in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Wisconsin will spend 15 cents per person on the arts this year while Minnesotans will get $5.77!

That is public money. I keep hearing this totally shocking comparison between Wisconsin and Minnesota, our neighbor to the west, thanks in no small part to Gayle Worland's article in the Wisconsin State Journal last month. Along with a color-coded map showing where arts have it good it the U.S. is general information about where money for the arts comes from (ticket sales, etc).

Nationwide, 9.5% of money comes from foundations; 8.4% from corporations.

I can't find number for humanities spending. People tend not to know what you mean when you say the humanities. In fact I've spent much of my career explaining the difference between the arts and the humanities but I'm not sure it's a good idea to do that. Anne Pasternak of New York's CreativeTime, at a talk here in Madison last week, reminded everyone that the reason we separate arts from humanities is to suit funders. It's a false distinction in order to get at the pots of money.

The Wisconsin Arts Board has worked hard to show how the arts are intricately linked to the economy. It's nice to hear numbers, like "local nonprofit arts organizations generate $535 million in economic activity annually" and "resulting in $479 million in resident income." But I think that a lot of folks inherently understand that artists are trendsetters who revitalize neighborhoods, bring in high-end tourist and clients, and make a city look and feel good. The argument, really, is about who should pay for the art.

The humanities are tied to higher education and are seen as elite subjects, so they have other challenges. Governor Walker just made some statements about how funding for the Wisconsin university system should be tied to the success graduates have in getting jobs. It translates to mean that degrees in the humanities, where there are surely fewer jobs to be had, will get pushed out. Ironically, or whatever, that means there will be even fewer jobs in the humanities. Go to a private school if you want to study anthropology, he says.

Public money is drying up for things that I think are important.

The arts and the humanities are just different ways to say culture. Universal human capacities we have for making meaning of the world.

What about all those businesses out there that depend on, serve, and want to distinguish themselves to a cultured client? Isn't it in their best interest to support the arts and humanities?

Organizing thoughts

"If American businesses could be convinced to ramp up their philanthropy to just 1% of pretax earnings (1/2 of what it was 25 years ago), an additional $8 billion would be injected into the nonprofit field each year."

-Curt Weeden

I'm starting a blog because Penelope Trunk said to. She is very convincing. She has a strong voice and big ideas that often stick in my brain for days. 

My big idea these days is that more money from the private sector is key in keeping Madison, where I live, a nice place. I love it here and am raising my kids here and don't want to move. But it's not perfect (Don't all our kids deserve perfect!?!) and the suburbs around the city are getting ranked higher in CNN Money's list. Recent elections suggest that people in the rest of Wisconsin think we in the Capital are smug and spoiled.

One thing I like about Madison is that the scale of the city (I live downtown) feels functional, like the best kind of European city. Full disclosure: I grew up living in and traveling around Europe. That was in the 1980s. It's been a no-brainer for me my whole life that socialism makes good sense. Clearly that is not happening any time soon! So here I am starting a blog with the word Money in it!

Basically, I'm coming to terms with capitalism.

I have two little kids, which forces some level of pragmatism, and am practical by nature anyway. I am frustrated when people seem to be ignoring what seems obvious to me. Yes, climate change is happening. No, unions are not particularly popular these days. Yes, the school system in this country is still teaching kids as if it's the industrial era. No, taxes are not high enough to cover normal, decent things like education and health care but still, somehow, they are going up for the average American.

And money is being made. Not just the big CEO salaries. Even during the recession, many businesses are booming. I'm reading a great book called Smart Giving is Good For Business that is rocking my world. So, I know I can't be the first person to wonder why those of us in the public and non-profit world are so disconnected from, and scared of, that money.

Task number one: Find other bloggers talking about this.