october2008

Announcing the Second International
Support Women Artists Now Day!

The second international Support Women Artists Now Day/SWAN Day will be held on Saturday, March 28, 2009 and the surrounding weeks. We invite you to help us celebrate this new holiday by creating SWAN Day events in your community. Your event can be a party, performance, exhibit, rally, parade, auction, or any other activity that draws attention to women artists or raises money for women artists in your community.

If you are interested in hosting a SWAN Day event this year, please send an email to info@WomenArts.org with the words "SWAN Day Event" in the subject line, and we will send you information about posting your event or finding collaborators.

We are thrilled that this new holiday for women artists has captured the imaginations of artists and audience members around the world. The first international SWAN Day was celebrated in March 2008 with 160 events across the U.S. and in 10 other countries on 4 continents. The holiday was officially recognized by the mayors of New York, Boston, San Francisco, Washington, DC, and several other cities.

SWAN Day is a volunteer effort that grew out of a collaboration between the founders of two grassroots arts organizations – Martha Richards, Executive Director of The Fund for Women Artists/WomenArts.org in San Francisco, and Jan Lisa Huttner, the moving force behind Chicago’s Women in the Audience Supporting Women Artists Now (For more on WITASWAN, please visit: www.films42.com/witaswan.asp)

SWAN Day Fundraising Success Stories

SWAN Day events can help you raise more money for your creative work. Several artists wrote to us over the summer to say that their SWAN Day fundraising efforts had been very successful. One filmmaker raised over $10,000 through a gala screening of her film and silent auction. We heard from several other artists who raised over $1,000 each. They all said it was easier to ask people for money because they could tell them that their SWAN Day event was part of an international celebration.

There is no requirement to do fundraising at your SWAN Day event, but
if you are interested in raising money for your own creative work or for other women artists, we would like to help you raise as much as possible. We don't have the funds to provide cash grants to you, but we are posting materials to help you with your fundraising efforts at: www.SwanDay.org/fundraising.

We have already posted an essay about fundraising from individual donors (www.womenarts.org/swan/fundraising/fundraising.htm) , and a sample SWAN Day fundraising letter that you can use to request funds for your event (www.womenarts.org/swan/fundraising/proposal.htm).

Share Your Success Stories & Fundraising Questions

In the coming months, we will be doing newsletters that feature artists with innovative fundraising strategies. If you have a success story that you would like to share, please write to us at info@WomenArts.org and put "Success Story" in the subject line. If we think your story will be helpful to others, we will feature you in an upcoming newsletter.

Also, if you are working on a SWAN Day event and have questions about how to make it an effective fundraiser, please send those questions to us at info@WomenArts.org and put "Fundraising Question" in the subject line. We are starting a web page next month where we will post answers to frequently asked questions about fundraising.