The Emerging Artist Funder: Darryl Chappell
a grass roots and community-based approach may resonate with some members of the next generation of young philanthropist who may be more accustomed to having their opinion asked and to knowing that their investment is going towards solving identified problems not solutions seeking problems.
5 QUESTIONS WITH Darryl Chappell
Chairman, President & CEO, Darryl Chappell Foundation
Montevideo, Uruguay
Mr. Chappell is a start-up entrepreneur, strategic advisor and process excellence executive achieving greater than USD$84 million in cost savings, revenue generation or loss mitigation in financial services, manufacturing and nonprofit organizations. Mr. Chappell has more than 20 years of experience, in the United States and abroad, as a catalyst for change inspiring partners, customers, employees and management to embrace new and creative ways of thinking and behaving resulting in tangible, mutually beneficial and measurable outcomes. Mr. Chappell is fluent in English and Spanish, and currently resides in Montevideo, Uruguay. He also holds the Six Sigma Master Black Belt certification to promote and support business area improvements.
Mr. Chappell is the founder, president and chairman, of the Darryl Chappell Foundation (The Foundation). The Foundation is a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit providing grants to other nonprofit organizations to enable aspiring artists to achieve their highest potential. The Foundation has awarded over $45,000 to three nonprofit organizations within its first year of existence. Chappell’s full bio follows this interview.
1. The vision of the Darryl Chappell Foundation is to “contribute to the cohort of artists who are positively impacting communities in new, exciting and mind-altering ways on a global scale, with local impact, through art”. What led you to this specific vision around artistic support?
Since I was a child, I was exposed to the fine arts through frequent visits to museums, galleries and other cultural artistic hubs by my parents. Through young adulthood and on into adulthood, I maintained an interest in the fine arts through visits to the Chicago Art Institute, the Walker Museum of Contemporary Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), The National Portrait Gallery, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Sackler Gallery, Serralves Museum, Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales (MNAV), the National Museum of Modern Art (Tokyo) and so many more institutions. Often during visits to institutions of fine arts, I noticed my thinking influenced by what I saw or by how a piece of fine art evoked some emotional response in me. I was truly moved by these experiences and began to think, how might I support individuals who have the ability to produce fine art and thereby influence the observer through their art. I have made the support of emerging artists a living legacy through the Foundation.
Two specific examples come to mind to bring the power of artists and their work to life. In 2012, I visited Serralves Museum in Porto, Portugal. There I encountered the remarkable work of Mel Bochner. The central message from Bochner’s work was the power of words. His work, Amazing!, 2011, oil on canvas, imprinted in my psyche that words do matter. With time, others began to pick up the importance I place on the use of one’s words. Words matter and they matter significantly. I pass on the credit to a work of art in northern Portugal at Serrvales for forming a large part of how I communicate with the world through the careful use of words and language. Art impacts lives in powerful ways.
The second example comes from an experience at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Upon viewing Paul Gauguin’s Where Do We Come From? What Are We? Where Are We Going? I was cast into a moment of existential angst. The work of art precisely raised the questions I have asked or pondered since the age of 12. What exactly is the purpose of it all and where did it all start and why did it start and what happens next. So many years later, I have not made much progress on answering those questions. However, I have developed a greater ability to face the great uncertainties of existence and to focus on going about the living legacy for which I would like to be known; enabling emerging artists to achieve their highest potential. Global focus, local impact.
2. Mentorship is a key component of the Foundation’s work. How do you see the practice integral to promoting the arts as a sustainable career?
By design, a mentor is included in the artists-in-residence grants issued by the Foundation. Our partner organizations may also provide mentors. We have learned through our strategic advisors (one who is an established artist and another who is an art historian and curator) that providing access to a mentor is critical for the early growth and sustainability of the emerging artists’ career.
Mentors provide an opportunity for the artists to ask questions in a safe environment, serve as role models, provide access to critical network connections and assist the emerging artists in reaching their next level of artistic mastery with confidence.
For the Foundation, mentors serve as a source of critical, objective data to assess the effectiveness of residency programs given their proximity to the artists-in-residence. We look to measure key success factors such as organization engagement, productivity of the resident, quality of work, engagement with the community, and donor engagement and interest. Collected data is used as input for continuous improvement of artists-in-residence programs, partner relations and donor outreach and engagement
3. We have spoken about how impact, legacy, and urgency drive the Foundation’s work, which includes “grantmaking with a design, innovation-oriented, mindset” and “listening intently to our individual donors and art patron beneficiaries”. Tell me more about this methodology in your grantmaking practices?
One of our core values is “doing it right the first time”. Doing it right the first time implies that we have carefully thought through the needs of our stakeholders in everything that we do. Important stakeholders are artists, partner organizations, donors, our volunteer board of directors, our volunteer strategic advisors, our vendors and the general public for our Artists Talk Series. We believe in applying design principles to draft, develop and quickly launch programs that are centered on artists. To that end, we partner with the Illinois Institute of Design (ID). Dr. Vijay Kumar and Dr. Andre Nogueira have both been crucial partners along our human-centered design journey. We focus on artist-centric designs of our programs (e.g., unrestricted rapid funding of $1,000 for artists given the global pandemic and resulting financial crisis) while also being donor-centric (e.g., understanding the philanthropic and emotional needs of high-net worth donors and how best to match those needs to programs for emerging artists).
We also regularly use concepts from Alex Osterwalder’s Business Model Generation to craft and evaluate business model canvasses aligned with our core programs (artists-in-residence, photographer-in-residence, emergency response grants for artists and our artists talk series). We carefully think through what our value proposition is for each program offering, which organizations are best to partner with on an initiative , what resources do we have at our disposal based on trusted investments from our art patrons and individual donors. We review our business model regularly and at least once a year critically consider what enhancements we may need to make to the business plan or to pivot into a new direction.
Last, for our Artists Talk Series, where we have a moderated discussion at least twice a year with an emerging, or established artists, we start out with a hypothesis on what theme will compel our audience to register, once we have the topic, how many people we think would be interested in registering for the talk, how many may actually show up, how many will view the YouTube recording once posted and how many will complete the survey providing critical information on the event itself. After the Artists Talk we measure actual results to the test hypothesis case and flag any new insights based on the actual data.
4. For years, research has told us that the next generation of supporters and audiences want to see the arts address and help solve our greatest global challenges. Your vision aligns with theirs. Tell me about your focus and philosophy on next generation engagement, and the importance of demystifying the arts for these rising cohorts.
We strongly believe in the crucial and central role of the next generation as emerging art patrons (philanthropists), as emerging artists, as individual donors, as board members, as vendors or in some future capacity that we have not yet considered. Central to the Foundation’s Emerging Artists Pathway is the role to be played by the next generation. Let’s consider engagement of the next generation in each of the four phases of the pathway.
In phase one of the pathway, parents and guardians are encouraged to foster an appreciation of the fine arts in their children. The early work we are doing with a partner organization on the East Coast of the United States strikes at the heart of this opportunity. Survey questions are being developed to understand and classify the needs of the local community. Instead of assuming that the needs of the community are known, the intention is to ask the community. Meet the community where they are. I think such a grass roots and community-based approach may resonate with some members of the next generation of young philanthropist who may be more accustomed to having their opinion asked and to knowing that their investment is going towards solving identified problems not solutions seeking problems.
Phases two and three of the Emerging Artists Pathway focuses on youth who receive mentorship through one of the Foundation’s artist-in-residence programs or are aspiring artists participating as a resident and partnered with a mentor themselves. The artists-in-residence programs (including the photographer-in-residence) are our premier programs that have the greatest impact on artists and the local community. We invite art patrons to end of year events where art residents showcase their accomplishments. There is an opportunity to further target these end-of-year events to the needs of next generation art patrons.
Last, but not least, is phase four where established artists who may be at the top of their game but may struggle with gaining recognition and attention by global art patrons are provided with forums to showcase their experiences and their work partially through our Artists Talk series. We have explored, with success, use of next generation leaders to serve as moderators of Artists Talk virtual events.
In addition to our established emerging artists pathway, we are starting to hear from the next generation philanthropist that they are concerned about climate change and the resulting environmental crisis. They would like to know what nonprofits are doing today to address what they see as a current crisis, not a crisis that is a decade away. As a Foundation, we are just beginning to consider and address this reality. We are hearing from artists in our network that climate change is real and that they are experiencing it from Botswana to Chile, from Montreal to Quito.
Today, we align our work to three of the United Nations seventeen Sustainability goals: Quality Education (4); Decent Work and Economic Growth (8) and Reduced Inequalities (10). There is an opportunity to explore future alignment with Climate Action (13) perhaps centered around the adverse impact on emerging artists on specific islands that are being adversely impacted by rising sea levels.
5. We have entered the 2nd quarter of 2021, spring is coming and there seems to be glimmer of light at the end of this long, dark tunnel. As an arts advocate, philanthropist, and CEO of a foundation, how do you most want to see the cultural philanthropy sector integrate the many events and lessons of the past year?
I would like the Foundation to continue to be the catalyst encouraging organizations to join forces to meet the needs of the artists community. So much more can be accomplished together. An example of the power of partnerships was evident with our recent Artists Talk. We featured cinematographer John Simmons from Los Angeles and established photographer Earlie Hudnall Jr from Houston. We intentionally reached out to the Chicago South Side Community Art Center (SSCAC), an 80-year-old established arts organization, to jointly sponsor the Artists Talk. Our intention was to reach a broader audience, thereby providing a global platform for Mr. Simmons and Mr. Hudnall to tell their fascinating stories regarding photography. By partnering with the SSCAC, attendance at the latest Artists Talk increased 3-fold and accolades regarding the jointly sponsored event continue to come in while the featured artists see their profiles raised globally.
We intend to stay focused on the needs of the artists. Keep our programs artists-centric, provide unrestricted and rapid funding to artists through emergency response grants to our non-profit partners and continue to improve our programs by listening frequently to all key stakeholders in an ever-changing global environment.
Mr. Chappell is a start-up entrepreneur, strategic advisor and process excellence executive achieving greater than USD$84 million in cost savings, revenue generation or loss mitigation in financial services, manufacturing and nonprofit organizations. Mr. Chappell has more than 20 years of experience, in the United States and abroad, as a catalyst for change inspiring partners, customers, employees and management to embrace new and creative ways of thinking and behaving resulting in tangible, mutually beneficial and measurable outcomes. Mr. Chappell is fluent in English and Spanish, and currently resides in Montevideo, Uruguay. He also holds the Six Sigma Master Black Belt certification to promote and support business area improvements.
Mr. Chappell is the founder, president and chairman, of the Darryl Chappell Foundation (The Foundation). The Foundation is a private 501(c)(3) nonprofit providing grants to other nonprofit organizations to enable aspiring artists to achieve their highest potential. The Foundation has awarded over $45,000 to three nonprofit organizations within its first year of existence.
Mr. Chappell also serves on the Executive Committee of the board of directors for the Center for International Policy (www.ciponline.org) headquartered in Washington, D.C..
Prior to establishing The Foundation, Mr. Chappell served as the Director of the Innovation Lab (iLab) at the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, known as Freddie Mac (www.freddiemac.com), from 2017 to 2019, in McLean, Virginia. As the iLab Director, Mr. Chappell conducted internal business crowdsourcing challenges resulting in 75 business ideas with involvement from over 400 employees. Mr. Chappell also organized a human- centered design strategic team to train over 6,000 employees in design methodologies.
Mr. Chappell earned a Masters in International Public Policy from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins in Washington D.C., and a Masters in Business Administration from The University of Chicago Booth School.