Michael Hickey

32 Posts

Michael Hickey serves as vice president of development for the Fund for Public Schools. He writes the Man-About-Town blog.
Arts & Culture

The (In)Efficiencies of Scale

ArtsBlog (the blog of Americans for the Arts) recently hosted a forum called:  “So, Does Size Matter?”  The short answer is hell yes it does, but I disagree with most […]

Community Development Field

Report Back: NY Grantmakers in the Arts “Creative Placemaking” Panel

Your Man About Town’s middle name is Moderation, Dear Reader; and although it is a somewhat awkward locution when making a full introduction, it nonetheless conveys the important fact that […]

Equity

Disaster and Recovery – Part II

Shortly after hurricanes Katrina and Rita in the Gulf Coast, I was dispatched to New Orleans by the corporate foundation that I worked for to figure out how to deploy […]

Communities

Disaster and Recovery

Dear Reader, I’m writing to you from Man About Town’s Brooklyn redoubt – where we have been spared from the very worst of hurricane Sandy. We never flooded, and we […]

Community Development Field

The Art$, Part III: Some Quick Fixes

In my earlier posts on this subject, dear reader, I first endeavored to put a finer point on the more than thousand-fold revenue variation between the largest cultural organizations in NYC, and […]

Community Development Field

The Art$, Part II

In my most recent post we started a conversation about some of the differences between very large cultural organizations and, well, everybody else. I pointed out that members of the Cultural […]

Community Development Field

The Art$

I was invited recently by the Municipal Art Society to do a research project called “Who Pays for the Arts.” The goal is to create a tool using data provided […]

Community Development Field

Blurring the Lines Between For-Profit and Nonprofit

In my last blog post I spent a good chunk of time talking about the trend toward “complexification” in the nonprofit sector. There are plenty of small, scrappy, neighborhood based […]

Community Development Field

The Complexification of the Nonprofit Sector

Nonprofit sector organizations are getting bigger, operations are getting more tentacled, financial tools are getting wonkier, and budgets keep growing. Don't just take my word for it: check out the […]

Community Development Field

It Came from Chicago!

Let's just come right out and say it: New York City is the best. At everything. We are the smartest, the hardest working, the most creative, and the best-looking. If […]

interior of a bar
Communities

In Praise of (Loud, Stinky) Bars

The vaunted “third space” isn’t home, and isn’t work—it’s more like the living room of society at large.  It’s a place where you are neither family nor co-worker, and yet […]

What’s Next in Arts & Economic Development

There’s something you should know about me:  I’m a professional amateur.  For the past seven years I’ve been co-writing and performing in original works of musical theater with my wife’s […]