Funds for the Future: Southern Exposure’s Comprehensive Campaign

Southern Exposure (SoEx) is a nonprofit visual arts organization that supports emerging artists and youth in a dynamic environment in which they can develop and present new work and ideas. An active presence in the Bay Area for nearly 35 years, the organization evolves in response to the needs of artists and the community, engaging the public in the artists’ work.

SoEx encourages artistic experimentation and provides creative, financial, professional and audience support to artists. We extend our reach into classrooms and after-school programs in order to connect youth to working artists as mentors and teachers and to provide critical and conceptual models for addressing the challenges of young urban life.

BACKGROUND
Founded in 1974 by a community of artists seeking an alternative to the commercial gallery scene, SoEx quickly gained a reputation for being one of the most experimental alternative arts spaces in the country. While times have changed, and SoEx with them, the organization’s principles of being artist-run and unafraid to present risk-taking, noncommercial visual art continue to guide SoEx’s board and staff.

In 2006 we were forced to leave our longtime home at 17th and Alabama streets. Seizing our new nomadic status as a platform for programming brought fresh energy and life to our work and gave us the opportunity to invent new models of support for artists, including two successful programs: SoEx Off-Site and the Alternative Exposure grant program. We have gained new audience members through nontraditional outreach, and expanded our capacity for serving artists. Along with new partnerships in our Artists in Education (AIE) program, these developments have made the last two years some of the most exciting in our history.

OUR NEW HOME
Southern Exposure has found our ideal home at 3030 20th Street and secured a 15-year lease. The building features 4,000 square feet of raw space and a fantastic location on the corner of Alabama Street in the Inner Mission. This new facility presents us with the opportunity to design the space that will best serve our community, while also giving us increased control of our destiny and enhancing our ability to evolve to meet the changing needs of artists. We can remain true to our roots as one of the most daring, fun and accessible arts organizations in San Francisco.

Designed by local architect Richard Johnson of Richard Johnson Design, the new space will feature:

• Two flexible program and gallery spaces, boasting high ceilings and significant floor and wall space that can be configured to accommodate art as well as gatherings on an intimate or a grand scale;
• A dedicated education space that includes a classroom/workshop, computer stations, and storage for personal possessions and supplies, enabling year-round after-school and summer youth programs to take place in an environment that celebrates the needs of young artists while remaining in the context of SoEx’s galleries;
• Prominent street presence with an enormous entry comprising three industrial, roll-up garage doors that create a sense of openness as well as connection to the street, the neighborhood and the life of the city;
• An open-plan office area with swing space for the many volunteers who enable SoEx’s small staff to meet their ambitious goals.

FUNDS FOR THE FUTURE
Although we have provided support for artists for nearly 35 years, SoEx has never asked the community for funding for a comprehensive campaign—until now. Our $700,000 Funds for the Future campaign will provide resources to transform our new building; bolster our Working Capital Cash Reserve; and support the organization’s core programs. The campaign will ensure that we remain viable over the long term by galvanizing our community as well as connecting SoEx with new funders, who we hope will become lifelong friends. The campaign will engage our entire community and culminate in a grand opening at our new home.

We are pleased to announce that Funds for the Future has received significant seed funding from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the Bothin Foundation.

FISCAL RESPONSIBILITY
SoEx is a resourceful organization with a balanced operating budget that we have nearly doubled over the last six years as part of a plan to strategically grow the organization’s capacity. During that time we established a Working Capital Cash Reserve, brought our employees’ salaries up to competitive rates, improved employee benefits, and paid the many artists and teachers with whom we worked. SoEx keeps meticulous accounts and commissions annual audits to fully understand and effectively report our financial health.

MAKING A DIFFERENCE
The Bay Area is renowned for world-class art schools, museums and a burgeoning artist population but has only a handful of organizations that can nurture and support a healthy community of local artists. For nearly 35 years SoEx has provided a stable venue for art and earned international recognition. Our programs attract more than 25,000 visitors each year, engaging a diversity of audiences in contemporary art practices.

In addition, SoEx’s commitment to funding and employing artists helps artists remain focused on their practices in one of the most expensive cities in the United States. SoEx provides more direct funding to artists than any other Bay Area organization of its size. Recognizing the vital role that small, do-it-yourself, artist-run galleries and media ventures play in our famously vibrant city, SoEx also directly funds to individuals and collectives through our Alternative Exposure grant program, exponentially increasing our ability to support artists at all stages of their development.

While studies have shown that youth who have access to art are able to engage critical thinking skills that aid in all aspects of their lives, these skills are not taught in the core curriculum of most public schools in the Bay Area, including those that serve at-risk youth. More than 20 years ago SoEx pioneered a program for engaging young artists by partnering them with contemporary practicing artists. Since then, our nationally recognized programs have been in scores of schools and community-based organizations as well as our gallery. They also have employed hundreds of teaching artists and helped thousands of youth learn a variety of art skills, from screen-printing to movie-making.

Believing that a vital creative community extends beyond presenting and teaching art, SoEx is an incubator for the next generation of artists, curators, arts administrators and board members. We actively recruit people with passion and talent and teach them how to offer practical and economic support to artists and the communities they serve. Our former staff, curators, board members and volunteers are now leading organizations and serving artists throughout the Bay Area and beyond.

WHAT WE DO

EXHIBITIONS

• Solo, thematic and juried exhibitions allow emerging artists the opportunity to work in formats and contexts that extend and challenge their artistic development and come at critical junctures in their careers.
• SoEx Off-Site is an ongoing series of public art projects presented throughout the Bay Area that intervene and interact in the social and political spheres beyond the gallery.

• SoEx’s Artists in Education program provides intensive art education programs to more than 200 at-risk youth each year through in-school, after-school and summer arts programs.
• Our Youth Advisory Board is a diverse group of youth who work together with mentors to create youth-focused programming and learn how to conceptualize and create art projects and shows.
• Each year we provide training and professional teaching opportunities to more than 20 local artists, enabling them to become arts educators and extend their practices into the community.

• The Alternative Exposure grant program provides $50,000 in grants annually, with support from the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, to local artists and groups working in the visual arts.
• Every exhibiting artist receives a stipend that ranges from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars, depending upon the size and complexity of the project.
• Each year SoEx gives out more direct funding to artists—in the form of stipends and grants—than any organization of comparable size in the Bay Area. In 2007, 24 percent of our budget went directly to artists.

• Southern Exposure Publications encourages critical writing about the arts, publishing and distributing printed materials that stimulate dialogue and engagement with artwork.
• SoEx hosts public programs, events, workshops, artists' talks, screenings and symposia that generate a forum on contemporary aesthetic, sociopolitical and cultural issues.

• The Monster Drawing Rally and the Annual Spring Art Auction provide collectors with the opportunity to acquire great work at affordable prices, and to meet the artists they support.