CEO Roundtable: Community Focus Report

Springfield Business Journal Executive Editor Christine Temple sits down with Leslie Forrester, executive director of the Springfield Regional Arts Council; Jonathan Groves, professor and chair of communication at Drury University and the facilitator of the Community Focus Report; and Carrie Richardson, executive director of Leadership Springfield.

Christine Temple: You all were on the steering committee that put together the Community Focus Report. It’s 20 years since the first Community Focus Report, and this has been tracking what has been called the blue ribbons and red flags in our community. Major themes that were discussed in this, and I want to get to some of those today, I want to start with sustainable funding. This was identified by you all as a challenge to look at as we look at funding for both our arts organizations and nonprofits. A Giving USA study said that 2024 charitable giving was down about 2% when factored for inflation over previous years after a real record that we had in 2021, and in the report you guys pulled together, too, arts organizations specifically are seeing a decline in funding. What are some of the reasons that you guys found behind some of those challenges surrounding funding, and have you figured out any solutions or any areas that you’re going to explore more in this topic?
Leslie Forrester: From the arts perspective, specifically, coming out of the pandemic, there was a huge influx of funding because we were all purely talking about survival. What was it going to take to ensure that all of our favorite organizations, the things that we go see every year, all of those pieces are still intact once we come out of that? So, we saw a lot of smaller donations happening and it was much more grassroots, and today what we’re seeing in terms of sustainability in funding is that the demand is going up, but the capacity to meet that demand is not matching, and that comes in the form of funding and where that funding is coming from is all over the place. We have funders that are super committed, but that has not necessarily translated equally across arts organizations. When we’re looking at other communities, even studying, understanding where funding is coming from funding in the private sector, it turns out to be just as volatile as funding in the public sector. I think this year what we’re seeing a lot of is discussion around the election. I’m not comfortable making any big decisions whether it’s funding or otherwise until the election is over. Programming still goes on. We have bills to pay. Nonprofits are just like any other business; it’s a tax code, not a business plan. We can’t wait until after the election is over to pay for our bills. Have we figured it out? No, I don’t know that we ever have. It’s just a new challenge now, and so trying to find increased balance between public investment for nonprofits and in our world for the arts with the private donors and really encouraging larger, bigger multiyear gifts over time that allows us to take a breath and not have to live month to month.
Carrie Richardson: The Community Foundation of the Ozarks has done a great job, I think, in opening up opportunities that are those multiyear, more really focused on how do we help something be sustainable. I think over time what we will see hopefully is that that’s one tiny little piece of a larger patchwork of what could work towards a long-term solution or try to make a dent in that. It’s difficult as a nonprofit to apply for a grant to something that’s only a one-year funding. It’s great and we’ll happily pursue those opportunities, but those multiyear, bigger projects are going to be more impactful and ultimately as a nonprofit can allow you to be a better steward of the funds over time, which is what we all want and the community wants as well.
Jonathan Groves: One of the goals of the report is to say, how do we set priorities for the community, especially when it comes to tax issues and bond issues. So, part of that sustainable funding picture, I think, includes that as well, because you can’t do everything and so hopefully there are the priorities that are set and saying, OK, how are we going to fund these various things that maybe there are some things like parks that we haven’t been funding quite as much as we have in years past, and maybe the time is here now that we should be thinking about some of these things. And you’ll see that in some of the tax issues and bond issues that have been passed recently.
Forrester: That public investment then can help to get private investment. If we want to be able to differentiate ourselves from the Springfield, Illinois, or Massachusetts, or the other Springfield all over the country, we have to be really mindful about where we’re investing our dollars. Yes, take care of basic infrastructure. We all need paved roads. We want to feel safe in our community, but the thing that’s going to bring us those creatives, and I say creative very broadly, that workforce we really want to see, we need to be able to differentiate ourselves from everybody else who also hopefully is taking care of their basic infrastructure.
Temple: Another theme that you all identified is housing availability and pricing. The report is looking at this concept of cost burden. A good rule of thumb is maybe 30% of your income or less should go to your housing. For renters in our community, about half of them are paying more than that, and for homeowners it’s about 17% are paying more than that. So affordability is a challenge that you mentioned, but also just keeping up with the demand, so how does that play into a community picture?
Groves: You’ll notice housing is mentioned in the previous report as well, as well as the update, and I think the committee, this is one of those long-range topics that came in. If you look at the first report in 2004, housing wasn’t mentioned. It was added the next year, especially once poverty was identified as an issue in the community. And I think there’s a recognition that safe, affordable, accessible housing is a big part of having a vibrant community and addressing poverty, which is still an issue in our community. If you look over the 20 years of the report, it’s gotten better slowly with lots of community effort, but housing is still a big piece of that, and it’s still a big issue in the community.
Richardson: I feel like one of the biggest benefits that we have in the fact that we’ve done this report for 20 years and we have a real data picture of what’s happening is that that intersectionality of housing into all of these other areas really does allow us to not look at housing as a singular, very narrow focus. Yes, it needs attention, but we need to have that attention to it in the context of all of these other areas. I think the intersectionality of all of these topics and all of these themes and then digging into them is how we really say, how can we actually move the needle on this? This is tied to wages; this is tied to economic development.
Groves: It’s also been listed as a priority in Forward SGF. We have these red flags, but part of the blue ribbons is there’s a recognition among the community that this is an area we need to address and figure out and work together to take care of. Forward SGF comes up time and again because that vision plan for the next 20 years really informs a lot of this. When you were talking about quality of place ... it’s not that we just want to grow, we also want people to invest in the community, not just with money but with themselves. I’m going to invest in the arts community, I’m going to invest in the schools and do these other things that really make the community a vibrant place that is set apart from all the other Springfields.