cadre: the $10 artist grant

We’re not gone,

we haven’t absconded with your donations,

and we’re close to setting a deadline for a summer grant round.

Here’s what happened. During the last grant round we found that this was simply more work than we could sustain given our jobs and other commitments. So we set about dreaming up a technological solution for which we didn’t have the skills, nor the money to pay someone else. But as I write this I’m thrilled to say that Alex, a generous volunteer and computer wizard, is working away at creating the underlying structure that will allow us to simplify and automate much of the grant procedure. So stick with us - we’ll be back with you within the next couple of weeks with an application deadline and a stronger, faster, more technologically savvy cadre!

Yes–we’re still here! We’ve migrated our site to Wordpress and have $700 and counting to give away! We’re creating a Facebook group and are still working to automate and streamline our application procedures.

This will come as little surprise to our supporters–the $10 art grant is on a bit of a hiatus but is by no means done!

No, we aren’t out spending the donations–we’re still slowly adding them up and saving them to give away–we just hit a bit of a wall after the last round regarding the time and labor that was required to process the applications. We’re just two folks with 2 full-time and numerous part-time jobs, and we just couldn’t sustain it!

We know that we need automation of the process, but we also have limited tech skills. Any volunteers that could help us out?!?!??!? We have more or less determined based on advice that wordpress.org is the way to go with customization of forms, etc., but we’re just not there yet basically because we don’t know how to do it.

We definitely want to give this money away, and more of it, so please, if you can help us, or know of anyone who can, please contact us.

We also had a glitch with our E-mail marketing–we switched Web Hosts last fall, and our new host, which doesn’t use Constant Contact, requires that all subscribers have to verify their subscriptions, which meant we lost about 3/4 of our mailing list, which is why no newsletters have gone out (this is why it’s always important to respond to those E-mails you receive). We’re budgeting (not out of donations!) to pay for a different E-mail marketing program so we can reclaim our mailing list.

Thank you to everyone who has donated and who continues to donate. If you sent us an E-mail in the last couple months and haven’t received a response, we’re in the process of catching up, and we will get back with you!)

Yesterday, after sending our new emailer out, we received an reply from a donor that surprised us. Carla and I felt it merited a response, because we make every effort to ensure that the grant process is completely transparent.

The author of the email wrote that he’d supposed if we’d given the first grant to a friend here in San Francisco; “not a bad way to help out a friend in need!”

So just in case you’ve wondered the same thing, we want to be very clear that we’ve tried to build that possibility out of the process. Admittedly, the majority of both our donors and applicants are from the Bay Area. We live here, and starting a project on this small scale is initially a word-of-mouth deal. However, we recruited jurors from around the country (selected from our board and from the donors), and if you check out our recipients, they hail from Tokyo, London, Canada and the States. We knew none of them personally, though we were familiar with some of the work. So if you have a moment, check out our grantees through the link below. And remember that any donor is eligible to be a juror. Please let us know if you’re interested.

http://cadreart.org/grantees.html
As we go forward, our challenge is to build momentum and expand our audience. Sustaining a grant on $10 donations is harder than we expected. We always invite your ideas for new and innovative ways to get the word out.
Cheers.