Americans for the Arts

Adolfo Henriques

 

This interview with Adolfo Henriques by Laura Bruney and Etain Connor of the Arts & Business Council of Miami was originally published May 6, 2014 on their blog, www.artsbizmiami.org/ArtsBizBlog.

Sitting on the 8th floor of the Gibraltar Bank offices, we are first struck by the incredible views of downtown Coral Gables. We are here to meet Adolfo Henriques, a paragon in our cultural community and an enthusiastic supporter of the arts both personally and professionally. As Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Gibraltar Private Bank & Trust, Mr. Henriques has embraced the value and economic impact of the cultural community. His civic contributions are extensive, including serving as Chairman of the Miami-Dade County Cultural Affairs Council since 2008. Under his leadership on the Council, he has helped keep local arts funding intact during the great recession and helped the Council continue to provide resources to strengthen the 1,000+ arts groups in Miami-Dade. He has also served in senior leadership positions at some of South Florida’s most prestigious institutions including Miami-Dade’s Beacon Council, the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau, and United Way of Miami-Dade County.

Thor Urness

Progressive employers want workers with high levels of what David Kelley calls, in his recent book of the same title, “Creative Confidence.” Kelley, the head of Stanford’s d.school and founder of the design firm IDEO, defines creative confidence as “the natural human ability to come up with breakthrough ideas and the courage to act on them.” As a partner in the Nashville office of Bradley Arant Boult Cummings, that is certainly what we want from our lawyers and staff.

However, the 2012 “State of Create” study by software maker Adobe identified a workplace creativity gap, where 75% of respondents said they are under growing pressure to be productive rather than creative, despite the fact that they are increasingly expected to think creatively at work. The study showed that 8 in 10 people feel that unlocking creativity is critical to economic growth, yet only 1 in 4 respondents believe they are living up to their own creative potential, with respondents across all of the countries surveyed saying they spend only 25% of their time at work creating.

Warren Buffet had it right when he committed to giving away more than half his money to charity. “If you’re in the luckiest one percent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 percent.” And, indeed, 86% of the $316 billion giving reported in 2012, is by individuals, says Giving USA, an arm of Indiana University. Buffett’s motivation seems to be about social justice, but it is also about social good. He appears to be a guy who believes in creating opportunity for others and in doing so, fuels ideas, innovations, and projects that ultimately have an economic impact on society.

In a new book, entitled “Why Philanthropy Matters,” Zoltan J. Acs advocates that the benefit of philanthropy is that it nurtures innovation and entrepreneurship which is essential for prosperity. I thought about this connection between entrepreneurship and philanthropy as I pondered a new national study put out by Americans for the Arts in which some 600 corporations of all sizes were surveyed. Bearing in mind that corporate funds are only 6% of the total giving pie, on the bright side, the survey reports that corporate giving to the arts from 2009 through 2012 is up by 18% - reversing some, but certainly not all, of the losses during the height of the recession. That is heartening.

The old model of employee engagement and volunteerism is quickly fading. In a world where everyone can be an artist, a creator, an inventor, or a key player in a project far-removed from his or her own experience, volunteering has morphed into something vastly different from its original shape. Employees now crave the opportunity to be integrally involved in a major aspect of a non-profit’s work, which not only gives each a sense of purpose and completion, but also can greatly expand the services provided to an organization if the volunteer projects are designed carefully with these shifts in mind. The same tenets that apply to new marketing, crowdsourcing, and product design strategies also apply to volunteering, as more and more people crave deeper connections and ownership that lead to greater satisfaction in all aspects of life.

Linda O'Dell

Many people aren’t surprised that Hallmark is a supporter and beneficiary of the arts. Our business is built around creativity. We have a clear interest in maintaining a symbiotic relationship with the arts, if for no other reason than to attract and nurture the people who make up Hallmark’s huge, and hugely talented, in-house creative staff.

But there also are Hallmarkers whose jobs aren’t usually viewed in a creative context.

I’m one of them. And from my vantage point as a corporate spokesperson, there’s great benefit to me, with similar potential to a business of any type, in investing in what Hallmark’s chairman, Donald J. Hall, has described as “the highest expression of the human spirit.”

So let me share a few examples of what Hallmark’s support of the arts means for “non-creative” me, for the company I represent, and for the community I call home.

John Bryan

CultureWorks is the privately-funded nonprofit organization that serves as the local arts agency for Richmond, Virginia. Although it is only the nation’s 43^rd largest city, Richmond has a significant business community as evidenced by it being the headquarters for 11 Fortune 1000 companies – 6 of which are F500s.

Five ongoing strategies have helped CultureWorks engage good relationships between Richmond’s arts and business communities:

1) CultureWorks is an active member of the Greater Richmond Chamber. “Active” includes volunteering for committees, paying to be part of the annual 3-day InterCity Visit, and attending Chamber gatherings – all of which help to establish and strengthen personal relationships.

2) CultureWorks publishes reports on its activities and accomplishments and makes sure that business leaders read the reports with interest. I snail-mail a hardcopy of each report to several dozen business leaders, and I attach a hand-written personalized sticky note that has a message such as, “Frank – Good to see you last week. I’ve highlighted a couple of things on this report that you might find interesting.” It’s a lot of work preparing 50 or more of these letters, but the personalized notes cause this to be a communication that the business leaders do read.

3) CultureWorks invites business leaders to volunteer isolated segments of their time to serve on short-term project-specific committees and task teams. Examples include the review panels for the CultureWorks Grants Program and our metrics task team. This not only builds relationships, but also gives the corporate participants a first-hand look at the value of the arts.