Unintended Consequences of Our Policy Promise in the Arts: Identifying Nonprofit Art Museum Practices toward Providing More Public Benefits (RPA Pilot/ Seed Project)

This study investigates how 501(c)(3) nonprofit arts organizations’ practices align with public benefit standards of the IRS 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizational form. More specifically, this collaborative, interdisciplinary research explores the relationship between nonprofit art museums’ obligation as 501(c)(3) organizations (the public benefiting qualities of nonprofit museums as dependent variables) and their current practices (organizational, programmatic, and financial practices as independent variables). While there is a need for proprietary data collection in the future, for this pilot study we will primarily utilize existing data from the SMU DataArts which contains longitudinal data on organizational, programmatic, and financial aspects of nonprofit arts organizations. By comparing nonprofit art museums that are culturally specific (e.g., the Studio Museum in Harlem) to non-culturally specific (e.g., the Metropolitan Museum of Art) along with many other variables tested, the aim of the study is to show differences in museum practice along the spectrum of qualities from public charity (501(c)(3)) to social club (501(c)(7)). By collaborating with the PADS Hub at UK Department of Statistics, we will use a series of logistic regression models to assess the impact of these independent variables on the degree of public benefits (dependent variables). We will initiate this pilot in January 2024 with a plan to generate a manuscript that will be submitted to Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly. Based on these results, we will design a larger-scale research protocol and data collection procedures to submit to the Law & Science grant program of the National Science Foundation. The larger scale project would be submitted for the August 1, 2025 deadline.