Can you grow a garden in a toxic habitat? A case study for arts nonprofit growth.

In an economy that favors rapid, consistent, and expensive growth, arts organizations are pressured to either grow or fold. Simply maintaining annual programming year over year has become almost a death wish for arts projects because year over year services, products, and real estate are becoming increasingly more expensive. So growth, instead of being an intentional one-time endeavor, becomes an annual consideration. But how does an arts organization do so when it consistently operates on a “catch-up” structure rather than a generative one?