Student Profile: Arts Funding

Ian Moss '09
Co-chair of 2008 Philanthropy Conference
Co-leader, Arts and Culture Club
Internship: Hewlett Foundation

I graduated from Yale with a degree in music, and then worked for the American Music Center, which is a nonprofit service organization in New York focusing on new American music. While I was in New York, I founded an experimental rock band called Capital M, short for "Music with a Capital M," and a collaborative chorus called C4.

One of the things that first drew me to business school was my interest in how funding programs are designed. Those kinds of decisions end up having a huge impact on the way that an arts scene unfolds — a discussion over lunch or a meeting in a conference room can change the fate of an organization forever, along with all of its employees and all of its artistic partners. I think it’s dangerous for grantmakers to make decisions based solely on narrow interpretations of donor priorities — foundations and government agencies have an obligation to consider the overall needs of the field when making funding decisions. And I thought that I had something to contribute in that area.

One major concern I had about getting an MBA was about cost. I anticipated coming back to this field after graduation, but that was going to be a financial challenge, especially living in a place like New York. Having gone to Yale as an undergrad, I remembered SOM having a reputation for being strong in nonprofit management, so I just happened to check out that website first. And one of the first things I saw was the loan forgiveness program. I was reading the details of it and looking at it from every which way, and this thunderbolt struck me. I said, "They will help me pay for business school if I just do what I want to do anyway after graduation?"

Overnight, all of a sudden, I was planning to get an MBA. I knew it was the right decision, because the next morning, all I could do was daydream about this whole different direction that my life was about to take. I did some research to find out what the loan forgiveness situation was at other business schools, and I was very pleased to find out that Yale’s program is one of the strongest out there.

I was also excited about the new curriculum. I appreciated the fact that Yale was courageous enough to come out and say, "Look, the way we’ve been doing things is wrong. It would make much more sense if we brought it in line with the new realities of how business is working in the 21st century." I’m someone who is interested in big-picture thinking and has an entrepreneurial, creative nature, and I felt like it was a really good fit for me. I appreciated how the structure of the curriculum, being more interdisciplinary and concept-focused, allowed for bringing in social concerns and questions of coordinating across sectors — understanding the total impact of a company’s decisions not only in an economic sense, but also on other registers as well.

And I loved the focus of the school on business and society. The first thing I read on the cover of the brochure was "This is a school where mission matters," and it completely spoke to me.

My first year was an incredible experience. I learned a ton. Then I spent the summer at the Hewlett Foundation, developing a strategic plan for a multi-year initiative to aggregate data on arts organizations, audience engagement, funding flows, demographics, and plot them geographically using a dynamic, interactive interface. It has the potential to really advance the conversation about metrics and outcomes in the arts. A year at SOM had definitely prepared me to attack that problem — in fact, I used Professor Barry Nalebuff’s "value net" paradigm from Competitor to help define the relevant data modules for the strategic plan.

The school gives you the tools to synthesize and assemble a lot of seemingly disparate information and put it into a framework where you can work with it, where you can say, I may not understand 100% of every aspect of X, Y, and Z, but I know what information really matters and what doesn’t. It’s an incredibly powerful way to consider complex problems and think about what one can do about them.

Interviewed on April 16, 2009.