Does Size Really Matter? Institutionalizing the Past

When it comes to interpreting, preserving and presenting the past, what are the pros and cons of big, midsized and small institutions?

First, we must consider how we are defining the size of these institutions/organizations. By budget? By collection? By building? By constituency? Likewise, what is the measure of effectiveness? Collection maintenance, exhibitions, dissemination, activisms, or all of these?

If they are to be defined by budget, small organizations (at least those lacking an endowment fund) often struggle to (1) properly maintain and preserve collections and/or properties, and (2) have sufficient staff to develop new programs and exhibitions. Small organizations also lack access to the very grants that might address these issues because of they are under the minimum budget size for application.

Midsize organizations may have access to a broader range of funding sources, but many still struggle to adequately house their collections. With larger grants, also comes more of an obligation to maintain a brand presence in all things great and small – from social media to press coverage to the slick “strategic plans” I spoke of last week. The additional monies midsize organizations receive may not be enough to meet the requisite obligations.

Large organizations are, budget-wise, well positioned to maintain their collections, to develop new projects, to take risks with exhibitions and interpretations, and to maintain a brand presence for public consumption. Indeed, our city’s largest cultural nonprofits tend to constantly draw the focus of the press and the public, “sucking the life out of the room” and leaving little air for smaller organizations to gain notice. Moreover, they typically also have endowment funds from which to draw general operating support and lines of credit to maintain cashflow.

The readings for this week propose models through which Philadelphia-based history nonprofits and related entities could collaborate to strengthen their offerings and the field as a whole. Although neither of the full-scale models proposed currently seems feasible given the competitive nature of grant funding (e.g., in last week’s post, note how NSNP’s Strategic Plan referred other cultural nonprofits as “competitors” rather than colleagues or partner organizations). However, we do see some signs of small and midsize cultural organizations coming together to share resources in the city. For example, five local theater companies recently banded together to form a new set-building nonprofit, Philadelphia Scenic Works, in order to better serve their collective needs. Meanwhile, CultureWorks Greater Philadelphia is a one-stop management shop for smaller nonprofits and other community organizations – providing shared accounting, marketing, and fundraising services.

As a final note, I'd like to respond to @jfeagan proposing that smaller organizations may have more “passion” for the work. Is passion really a function of size? For example, once a grassroots coalition has incorporated an entity to address its issues/preserve its heritage – might the commensurate bureaucracy (from IRS filings to building maintenance) kill the passion and distance the organization from its constituency? And what if a small organization addressing the grassroots issue came in from the “outside,” opportunistically (for grants) or otherwise, rather than having been created organically from community activism? Ultimately, whether defining passion or effectiveness, we need to look at the organization’s connection to its mission:

“In institutional theory [for nonprofits], organizational effectiveness is not an objective reality; rather, effectiveness is a social construction, an achievement of organizational agents and other stakeholders in convincing each other that an organization is pursuing the right objectives in the right way. This way of describing the institutional theory perspective might suggest to some that effectiveness does not exist and, thus, is not important. This is not our understanding. Rather than being an independent, abstract notion, effectiveness is socially created by the actions and interactions of stakeholders. The idea of effectiveness is important, and stakeholders care about effectiveness. Effectiveness is real and real in its consequences in the same way that “race” is a (socially constructed) reality with real consequences.”

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