Over the past year, the Cultural Data Project has worked with a more than a dozen advisers from across the nonprofit sector to explore ways to gain a better understanding of the demographic makeup of the professional staff, boards, volunteers, and artistic personnel who are the lifeblood of cultural nonprofits. This summer and fall, the Jerome Foundation and the McKnight Foundation are piloting the new demographic data collection module developed by the CDP as a result of this work. Our goal is to provide organizations with tools for confidential, individual self-reporting on race and ethnicity and to build on the learning of periodic surveys by creating a more systematic and longitudinal approach to collecting and analyzing this data. Contact us to learn more.

In related news, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, in partnership with the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD) and the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), recently announced the results of the first comprehensive survey to assess the ethnic and gender diversity of the staffs of art museums across the United States. Undertaken to replace anecdotal evidence with hard data, the survey provides the museum field with the first statistical baseline against which progress can be measured.