In developing this website dedicated to my life and work, I created a timeline which initially focuses and documents the most recent five decades. (My history till then is presented separately.)
I continually had to refine the parameters of what would be included in this website and have used a self-imposed guideline to steer a clear course through a vast array of documentation starting with the early ’60s… the background, concept development and history of the organization I created. I discuss only those services and programs which 1) I conceived, created, and managed until delegated and, also include 2) those services/programs which were conceived elsewhere, and asked of me to develop (examples include The New York Community Trust and Princeton University), OR were conceived/initiated by organization staff who had a particular personal concern/commitment to a challenge, such as prisons, HIV/AIDS and I subsequently took the lead to help develop, manage, delegate, and institutionalize them into the organization’s structure.
The reason for this criteria is that while I might have had a desire “to do the history” of the conception and the first four decades of the organization it became clear this is NOT what I want to do at this time. Rather, it is to trace the development of programs…existing, existed, or attempted to develop, that if I hadn’t been there personally and directly, they wouldn’t be either. These parameters do not acknowledge the hundreds of people who work or have worked at the organization, some for decades, nor are they meant to “slight” their dedication and accomplishments. Rather, it is to give a picture of that which only I can present as I describe my history and “inner workings” so as to understand how things got the way they are today. Those familiar with the organization might say… “but you didn’t mention this person …or didn’t discuss XYZ.” This is a website of me, Michael Jon Spencer, the other is a task for another time.
Values
In reviewing me and my lifetime of work I became aware of several personality attributes that contributed to the organizational outcome. I was both the “battery and gyroscope”…i.e. the source of the seemingly endless energy that spurred the perpetual growth… always keeping focused on the core principles. Thus opportunities arose that could have “brought in lots of money” but I considered them “inappropriate” detours. A second attribute (that I became aware of) was a mental construct that imagined a “taxpayer looking over one shoulder and an auditor looking over the other.” This resulted in decades of impeccable audits as to the economic and effective use of the other viewer’s, the “taxpayer’s” money. The third one was the “periscope” searching the horizon for unmet needs to which the organization was uniquely qualified to respond. One final attribute, though there might be others that a reader could identify, was the ability to “spin-off” or delegate responsibilities of a new program to a person somewhat “mystically” found and chosen through an exhaustive interview process. ( I once took four candidates to Willowbrook State School to watch a performance we brought in. Three of the candidates “blanched” at the experience; the fourth (an Episcopal priest by training) “blossomed” and was hired. The proof of the validity of the selection was the subsequent growth of the program in terms of its scope and depth.
In the fourth decade in addition to being the “battery and gyroscope” I also became the “glue that held it together” so that the increasing array of services and their staffing could be shared… fitting into a particular source of government funding. This was possible by the incredible skills and dedication of people who believed sufficiently in the mission and dedicated their lives for decades. Presented in chronological order of their arrival; Ruth di Roma, who joined in the very early ‘70’s and became a corner stone of its growth; Jane Kleinsinger, a “lifetime employee” who had been hired to bring the organization’s services to prisons and who subsequently became the Director of Operations, responsible for programmatic record-keeping and reporting to sponsors; Pati Reitkopf, another lifetime and current employee continually created and ran an ever increasing number of on-site artistic and educational services; Max Daniels who transformed the “ticket program”, (the Community Events Program) from relying on “hand-outs” of “comps” into a primarily self-funded program enabling people and agencies to purchase tickets at heavily discounted prices; and Elizabeth (Betty) Marks who put the organization “on the map” of the “Outsider Arts Field.”
My personality created a style and culture that permeated the organization at several levels.
Accountability
From the very outset I had a keen intellect that would ask the basic question “ What impact was my work having? This need for affirmation of the value of my efforts first arose with the concert-lectures. Performing primarily for audiences whose members were essentially medicated and non-verbal, I wanted to know what were they feeling and thinking.
So I turned to my long time dear friend and colleague Dr. Robert Shomer, a social psychologist/brilliant fellow who devised a simple questionnaire that would be distributed at the outset of programs. Each questionnaire asked the patient to mark off on a 1-10 scale their feelings, from “worst” to “best,” with space for comment. A similar scale would be presented at the end of the performance to help us better understand the program’s benefits. Hundreds of questionnaires were secured from all the participating audiences.
The results were then processed by my dear friend, Dr. Alan Title, at his vast computer system at Harvard’s Astrophysics Lab. It had a gigantic board keeping track of the thousand or so satellites and their remains. This computer spit out reams of my data in a matter of seconds.
When my work became that of an organization, I continued to ask questions and made decisions that would create the framework for my operations. The first was a dedication to the principle of “feedback” to the theaters/concert halls that donated tickets. To do this we created a volunteer program, ensuring there were always someone to keep track of event attendees and their reactions to the performances. After all, we were sending mental patients to mix with the general public. The need for volunteer observers expanded exponentially as we secured more events. Eventually, this led to our creation of the volunteer program, run initially by Elizabeth Mallory Hite.
All this documentation was then “keypunched” (as a donation) by Union Carbide, with the dedication of another friend. Dr. Bill Rosenberg. He created a computer program to track attendees, venues, ticket donors, and periodically delivered the keypunched data and computer program to a major bank’s credit card division which volunteered the processing in its off hours. The result was hundreds of pages each year of data, tracking usage of ticket and their sources.
This strict accountability lead to the donation of over one million tickets in the first decade; not all were scheduled, not all were used, but there was strict record keeping. A similar spirit for accuracy was the bedrock of the fiscal counterpart, whose precision and transparency led to the award, with confidence, of millions of dollars in contracts with city, state, and federal agencies. Whereas the organization was created with private dollars, within a few years, it was 80% governmentally funded, and for decades.
Deliverables
While the organization was created by private seed grants, primarily of two year duration, an on-going funding mechanism was needed. It became increasingly clear to me that the government had a vested interest in this because 1) no other agency or organization was providing these needed services 2) of value in and of itself, and 3) it was “good p.r” for the government to show something positive about its treatment of the chronically mentally ill. In fact, one commissioner said that the services were like a “speck of gold,” like a trace element to the system’s diet and the well-being of that organism.
When it came to writing some of the initial government contracts the question arose as to what was the “deliverable” and how would it be measured? When it came to presenting the performing arts in institutions one could specify the number of performances presented.
I balked at this ostensibly simple answer because it meant that IF a performance was attended by only a handful of patients, then the unit cost, (performance cost divided by the number attending) though easy to calculate, could get quite high if only a handful were in attendance. So I suggested the more demanding standard of counting audience “heads.” In later years, when we could send people to monitor some of these on-site performances, we would sometimes find discrepancies between their “counts” and the subsequent “padded” later letter from the institution. So I had the program “stretch” the dollars, provide more performances than the contractual level as a cushion to potential audit disallowances. (Rarely did this happen, if at all.)
Counting the number of people attending theaters and concert halls was simply counting the number of people who showed up; a task done by our volunteers. Over one million tickets were offered as donations in the first decade, about 90% accepted by the organization, and of those, a relatively high percentage scheduled actually showed up. Those who didn’t…well they were ‘free tickets.’ However by the second decade moneys were now built into contracts to purchase tickets at steeply discounted rates. The purchases enabled greater institutional logistical planning than with last minute (usually the case) donation of comps. ( A notable exception to “advance planning” was when the show “Hair” was appearing on Broadway, I would get a call for hundreds of donated tickets for that afternoon, sometimes, evening performances, and we made them available to residential drug treatment programs each of which had dozens of eager-to attend young adults on-site.) Because we had to charge the contracts for actual tickets bought, the “no-shows” would drive the unit cost up. So we secured from many theaters/concert halls the practice of “past dating tickets,” i.e., rescheduling them at future dates, at no additional cost.
Diversity and informality.
Within a few years of the organization’s inception, full time staff were assisted by part-time employees who were 1) college work study students, 2) participants commuting daily from drug treatment programs and probation/parole/aftercare programs 3) senior citizens, and in one instance, from Sing Sing prison itself. This led to a vibrant, casual, frenetic atmosphere founded on strict program/financial accountability…the imprint of the “Founder.”
Founder AND Executive Director
During the third decade I began indicating my title as Founder & Executive Director, formally recognizing my status as “the driver”… the battery and the “gyroscope”: the Board of Directors were there to assist and provide validation and accountability of my work.
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