Shunpike is a consultant and technical assistance provider for emerging artists and arts organizations. It partners with more than 100 small and mid-size arts groups to help them develop the business tools they need to succeed. The organization is on solid financial footing, being careful to grow within its means and generating a small operating surplus each year.
Best Practices
In a time when arts groups across the country have been forced to reduce their operations, Shunpike is strengthening the arts community by capitalizing on shared resources and teaching best practices. Through its offerings in board development, fiscal sponsorship, fund development planning, financial systems development, and strategic planning, Shunpike helps artists get behind-the-scenes work done—either by training them in the steps they need to take, or by taking on necessary components that they don’t have the capacity to manage.
Collaboration
Collaboration is a key part of Shunpike’s work, as the organization is predicated on the idea that the combined strength of the community of small and mid-sized arts groups will yield greater success for those groups as a whole. Shunpike’s primary program of fiscal sponsorship and back-office support relies on an economy of scale- a collection of groups can access services that would be inaccessible to each of them individually. Their Storefront Activation Project is a collaboration between Shunpike, the City of Seattle, neighborhood groups and artists creating works in vacant storefront spaces.
Accessibility and Cultural Competency
Most of the small and mid-sized arts organizations Shunpike works with do not have access to the type of back office infrastructure they need due to lack of capacity. Additionally, the audiences they reach are, on the whole, younger, more culturally diverse, and more economically diverse than the community reached by major cultural institutions. Shunpike offers its services at highly reduced or free rates, fostering both sustainability and accountability in the emerging groups they work with.
Grant History with The Seattle Foundation:
Grants Awarded through The Seattle Foundation Grantmaking Program:
| Date | Amount | | Purpose |
|---|
| 9/10/2012 |
$10,000.00 |  | support general operating expenses. | | 9/10/2011 |
$10,000.00 | | support general operating expenses. | | 12/10/2008 |
$10,000.00 | | support general operating expenses. | | 12/14/2006 |
$5,000.00 | | support general operating expenses. |
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