Liz Cahill on Creating San Francisco Non-Profit Decentered Arts [INTERVIEW]

“We also are a small press now. We published our first anthology this year and we’re going to be publishing several solo books over the coming years. We have two lined up for this year, plus another anthology coming out. We also have started a record label to release poetry albums. We have our first out, and we are working on the logistics; music streaming is a whole can of worms that we’ll get into, but it gets very complicated. We are learning as we go, and that’s been an adventure.

“We also produce an event tracker which is on our website, decentered.org, which tracks events in the Bay Area. We are here to support not only the stuff we’re doing within our universe of programming, but we are here to support the whole Bay Area scene. We also have a forthcoming culture blog. So really doing the physical, in-person programming, and then we’re doing a lot of content as well. We have a YouTube channel where we have high-quality video of our open mics and a lot more coming soon there. We’re firing on all cylinders to help jump-start another world-changing art and cultural movement to come out of the Bay. We’re ready for a new big movement to rock the world.”

James: It is amazing what such a small team of people has enabled, and building a non-profit Arts organization in general requires such significant dedication. What have been some of the biggest challenges and most rewarding aspects of co-founding, running, and expanding Decentered Arts since its establishment as a non-profit?

Liz: “Some of the biggest challenges started before we were a non-profit because before the nonprofit happened, we were all doing this on top of full-time jobs, and it was a lot. We all loved it, and the level of complexity and workload slowly crept up on us over time. It’s like the frog slowly boiling; suddenly we went from kicking it running some poetry events and then some small fashion pop-ups, and then suddenly I’m spearheading a fashion show with an eight-thousand-dollar budget and I’m like, what the heck? This has gotten very big. Or when Open Mic started to get really big, you’re like, whoa, I have this thing on my hands that is a lot bigger, and I’m working a very demanding job. When the nonprofit was catalyzed, it really cemented what this thing was, because before, when it was not a non-profit, it was all these efforts swirling about my world and the world of this core group of collaborators, but we didn’t know where it was going. We were just doing it. The nonprofit really helped wrap it in a really good structure that we were then able to build infrastructure for: bank accounts, credit card systems, tools, software, website, all that stuff.

“A big challenge for us too is because we run so much programming, it’s a lot of gear shifting constantly. We have the admin work of building our website, grant applications, setting up different tools and software that we want to use, task tracking software. There’s accounting and bookkeeping that go into having a small press. We have an amazing bookkeeper who is such a superstar and helps us make sure we’re very by the books. We really want to run a well-organized nonprofit that can outlive us, so we’re doing everything we can to build a very strong foundation.

“And the rewards of it is seeing artists grow and progress. We have folks that come to us really fresh; they might be a musician and they may have never done poetry before, and then they join us for writers’ group and then they’re writing really amazing, impactful poetry. Or people start a band together. Or a visual artist has a solo show with us, and then they’re applying to a major fellowship and putting this on their resume. Or we have artists using documentation from our archive for their grant applications, and then they get that grant and they progress.

“Also all the friendships that we’ve had. My best friends are all in the Decentered extended universe, or Decentered family. It’s been an amazing way to find friends. Really nice people are attracted to Decentered Arts. I also, as a policy, only work with nice people, so it really has brought a great community about, and people feel welcome and included. It’s a very diverse community; we love diversity of all forms and we are a welcoming space. People feel welcome and included, and that is reflected in the diversity of the people that are in the Decentered Arts extended universe.”

James: You host a popular open mic night at The Center SF every Sunday. What have you learned organizing, running, and sustaining an effective open mic that attracts talent, keeps the audience engaged, and is a safe space for people taking the mic for the very first time?

Liz: “The open mic is now almost four years old. When Theory, my co-host, and I started it, we were very naive. Theory just texted me one night and was like, ‘You want to start a weekly Open Mic at The Center?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah, sure,’ not really knowing what type of commitment that was going to entail. At first, we thought it would be for our friends, people from our writers’ group, just coming to share. But we quickly realized that the general public had found us too; it was up on Eventbrite, so people look for open mics. There were people just coming in that were excited to go to an open mic and that we didn’t know. We realized, oh my goodness, the public is just coming to this! Then word-of-mouth got out, it grew very quickly, and we suddenly realized this is not just us kicking it with our friends every week.

“We deliberately started it out as an all-genres, a multimedia Open Mic; we welcome all forms of expression. I used to go to this incredible Open Mic called Saturday Night Special in the East Bay, which was an all-poetry Open Mic hosted by my friend Hollie Hardy. It was once a month, and it was three hours of poetry, and it was awesome, but it was very strictly poetry. So we wanted to welcome everything. Over time, our setup got more and more elaborate. Theory is the big equipment, gear guy, and I’ve followed him along down the tunnel of our pit of despair of having all this equipment, but it really enhances the show, and we can support so many types of performances. We have video art, we have a lot of different types of music going through all different outputs on our sound system. A lot of people bring music on their phone, a track that they want to sing over, so we can support that. We can support people AirDropping us stuff. We have had PowerPoints. We had our first Open Mic performance where an artist, Maya Tihtiyas, called in via FaceTime to us from her gallery install and showed the open mic her gallery. We’ve had dancers, we’ve had clowns, we’ve had all sorts of amazing things, and so it really evolved.

“We’ve learned things over time that I think make our setup a little bit different. We call people at random from the list. I always noticed the first spot on the list is often empty because nobody wants to go first, and I’m like, jokes on you, we call you at random, so the order doesn’t matter. We usually call our friend Rob up first because he’s such an amazing presence, and we’ve discovered he’s great at kicking off the mic and enjoys doing it. So he’s usually our first to set the tone. But everything we do has been refined over time. We used to go sequentially, but we realized this group of guys always came early and always signed up first. So, every single week, we kind of had to—no shade on these guys, they were nice guys, I enjoyed their work—but every single week we had to get through the same group of people before we could start to get some new people.

“Also, sometimes we have a few great people that would have to come later because of their work schedules, and they might not get to go if they were last on the list if we ran out of time. We really didn’t want to—we want to be inclusive of that. If somebody has to work on a Sunday night, they still are hauling butt to get to open mic. We want to make sure that they also have an equal chance of going. It also gives us control of the show flow. We alternate between music and non-music, and it keeps people paying attention, and it shifts the energy. So, you might go from a really sweet love song to a gnarly, ranty poem, and that contrast makes it very interesting and engaging. That gives Theory and I some dials that we can turn. Sometimes, if we know people, we know things that might pair well, or if it’s been a certain energy and we must shake it up, we’ll bring in a performer that we know will give us that energy shift. It’s usually about fifty percent regulars, fifty percent new people. So we have some idea of what we’re going to get, and then at times, we also have no idea what we’re going to get, which is fun for us as hosts and keeps us coming back every week.”

James: The random order, although it’s not really random from the perspective of the people on the list, is a brilliant idea. As a performer at a bunch of different open mics, the downside for the performer is when you know it is almost your turn, you’re not listening to the performers anymore; you’re thinking about your performance. And it’s a real negative for the performer. With your format, the only time you really think about your performance is in between performances. I wish I had known this when I was actively running an open mic last year – I would have definitely used a random order. It just changes the whole dynamic, and it removes an incentive to game the system.

Liz: “People trust us the whole time too because it’s very cozy there. It’s comfortable. A lot of open mics are in bars and they’re loud and rowdy. Ours is very cozy. A teahouse, it’s a sober space. People are sitting on cushions, people have their shoes off on a rug, it’s comfortable. People sink in and relax.”

James: With so many things that you’re working on, and with such limited resources, particularly in terms of people, what have you learned about what works and what doesn’t work in supporting emerging and underrepresented artists? And how do you decide where to invest and where to step back? How do you measure what’s working and what’s not working?

Liz: “Because we started this on top of full-time jobs, we had to be scrappy from the beginning. We had to figure out how to do the coolest events on the lowest budget in the least amount of time. That means we try to find shortcuts wherever we go. We try to use a lot of tech; we’re using social media for promotion. We don’t have time to go around town and put up flyers. I was very early to using AI-generated art to make graphics for flyers, and I look back at some of those early first-gen AI-generated flyers, and they are very weird looking. Now we have enough photography in our archive; we use that for a lot of our flyers, and we have Reed Joseph on board who makes amazing flyers, so it doesn’t have to be my janky flyer anymore. We use local art. Use a lot of different things for our flyers, but we use technology in creative ways.

“We also collaborate with people, and over time, we have found the best people, and we have folks we can rely on and trust. That’s also allowed us to do a lot with very little because the people we work with really knock it out of the park, go above and beyond, and bring their best energy. That is really great. We also love to under-promise and over-deliver. We want to give audiences and performers more than what they expected. Everybody at our events are VIPs; we want everybody to feel super, super welcome, whether they’re a first-time guest at one of our things, kind of sheepishly creeping in the back, or if they’re a prominent artist who we’re featuring. Everyone gets that warm hug.

“Something we’ve learned is to be selective about collaborations. At first, we were so eager; someone invites us to do something at a place or at an event, and we’re like, ‘Yeah, absolutely!’ And then we wound up at this one event where we were like, ‘What the hell are we doing here?’ I won’t go into specifics because we’re in a small town, but no shade on those folks, it just wasn’t something that was our vibe, and so we were in for a long night.

“Also, I’ve personally learned to be a little bit better with setting boundaries with people and protecting my privacy a little bit more. When this started out, it was just all friends, so we all knew each other. But as our audience has grown and the public profile of Decentered Arts has grown, I’ve become more mindful. I don’t give my phone number out to people. I don’t like it when people give my phone number out to people because unfortunately, I’ve faced some harassment from people who are going through certain mental health things, and they might behave in ways that most of us would not behave. I have faced a little bit of harassment from a few certain individuals. So, setting those boundaries, making sure people can’t contact me as easily. I’m still very easy to contact, but just not having my personal phone number float around—that’s been a problem.

“And just being mindful that more people know me than I know them. When Open Mic started to get big, I would walk into rooms and people would approach me and be like, ‘Oh Liz, so good to see you!’ And I was like, ‘Oh cool, hey, what’s up?’ And then I realized I don’t know these people. But they see me, as I’m meeting 60-plus new people every single week at Open Mic. New people are constantly coming to our programs and maybe seeing me hosting or performing. That was a big shift for me that freaked me out at first. I’m used to it now, but still, I’m a low-profile person in a public role. Personally, I am a low-key, low-profile person, but I have, over time, inadvertently crept into a public role. Some people just soak it up and lap up the attention or whatever, but I am a lot more just chilling. That’s been a personal thing I’ve had to overcome.”

James: San Francisco is such an interesting mix of the tech industry, which is infused with momentum and investment because of advancements in AI, and a vibrant art scene, known for its art scene for many decades. Every billboard coming across the Bay, coming across the Bay Bridge into San Francisco, has something to do with AI. On the other hand, you see art projects and artists from across the city. What is your view on how the two distinct worlds are coexisting?

Liz: “It’s really interesting because San Francisco definitely has both and has always been known for both. We’ve had this dynamic in the Bay Area, which is an externality of the tech industry as it got bigger: it made the Bay Area very expensive, and that pushed a lot of artists out. So there is this dynamic that tech and art are fighting each other at times. I’ve seen this shift where artists are really resilient, and we are creative and scrappy. There have been artists that have figured out how to survive in the Bay. We need more funding; we need more support, absolutely. And I want the tech industry to focus on that more and tech companies to focus more on funding grassroots arts in the Bay Area, which is beneficial for them attracting talent. They want people, top talent, to be coming to a vibrant, happening place.

“I used to work in tech-adjacent roles, I love tech. I’m not a coder, but I use a lot of great technology. I am wary and critical of the externalities of it; I’m not naive. But over time, I’ve gotten to know some incredible humans working in tech, and I myself used to work in private market research; I’ve worked in tech banking. My career was very intertwined with it. So I think tech needs to support the arts; we can work together, and I think that’s really important. We are not mortal enemies. We should be working together and building bridges, bringing resources from tech, whether it’s money or also just tools—tools that we can use.

“We promote all of our events and invite people via a tool called Partiful, which is a small startup. We use that technology for all our promotions, and it makes us a lot more efficient. I can blast out an invite to 900 people, and it’s fantastic. We use social media to get the word out. We use things like Google Meet and different task-tracking tools. All these things are startups. We have a donation platform that allows us to accept crypto donations, Every.org. We’re using every tool at our disposal to help Decentered thrive.

“So yeah, I think there’s a lot of tech workers that are talented artists and so creative as individuals. I’m really trying to lean into synergies and kind of building symbiotic relationships. Cities, they’re ecosystems. It’s kind of like a rainforest. How do you have healthy biodiversity, healthy equilibrium? I think the Bay, we got out of equilibrium, and at Decentered, we are working to bring that equilibrium back through friendships, community, people-to-people collaboration.”

James: To the tech companies that are listening to this: many of your employees are active artists outside of work, and it’s a critical part of their identity that complements what they do at work. And I don’t buy this right brain, left brain thing where people are one thing or the other thing; particularly the tech industry is a very creative industry at its core. There are tremendous benefits for bolstering the creative communities because that’s an attractor of top tech talent. That’s an attraction for me for the Bay Area, despite the tension and the cost of living that has made it harder for the art scene in San Francisco. The San Francisco Bay Area as a collective, as a whole, is a very rich art scene compared to other parts of the country.

Liz: “Because it attracts people from all over the world who are innovative, who are misfits. I am this ADHD kid that always felt incredibly out of place wherever I was, and then I came to the Bay Area, and I was like, wow, I fit in here. I’m normal. Or as normal as I can be, at least. I didn’t stick out as much. I’m pretty low-key, so I want to float by.”

James: What advice do you have for people considering a leap into the nonprofit world from a corporate role?

Liz: “I would say, do something for a while first. If it’s a project that you think you want to turn into a non-profit, do it for as long as you can without being a non-profit. You can always get fiscally sponsored by a non-profit. Decentered Arts, for projects we are comfortable with, artists we believe in, we will fiscally sponsor artists for grants. So you can still get grants without being a non-profit; just get a fiscal sponsor. There are also other organizations that will do this, like Fractured Atlas or Intersection for the Arts.

“Running a nonprofit is running a business. It’s a business that is taxed differently. You need to have compliance involved, there’s accounting and bookkeeping involved, you’re handling money, you may or may not want payroll—and that is a level of complexity. You really want to make sure that the nonprofit you want to build is something you’re really committed to, and you work out some of the kinks and build momentum before you switch, before you convert it into a structure that requires work, requires maintenance, requires admin.

“It’s not an insurmountable amount of work. People were telling me, ‘Oh, it’s so hard to have a nonprofit,’ but it’s not hard; it just takes commitment. You have to be committed to it. If you are committed to it, it’s very doable. I think people mess up by starting with a non-profit and then figuring it out from there. Start with an idea, start doing the thing.

“Jumping from the corporate world to nonprofit full-time, you really do need funding. So have that, have a source for that. If you want to work for a non-profit, nonprofits are pretty lean organizations usually, so every job needs to be fundraised for. If you want to work in fundraising, every nonprofit will hire you. Pro tip: every nonprofit is always posting jobs for a development officer. It’s very difficult work because a lot rests on your shoulders, so it has a lot of burnout.

“But also, there are other ways you can work with nonprofits. We have an amazing bookkeeper who works with a lot of nonprofits. So if you have a skill set, a professional skill that you want to apply to mission-oriented organizations—if you do bookkeeping and accounting, you can do that for nonprofits or even have some nonprofit clients. If you are a web developer, you could do that for some nonprofits; if you’re an attorney… We have a small army of volunteer folks that support us with tech development because we have so many friends in tech who are also artists, and they volunteer their time and energy to build some of our digital tools.

“That’s a great way for folks to get involved with nonprofits, maybe without shifting into it full-time, but it might be something that they start to get into, and then they creep into it more. I’d say move gradually. Don’t just go from zero to 100. Get your feet wet, build out your thing, and then the nonprofit will come if that is the destined path. It might not need to be a non-profit; it could just stay a collective. I’m also part of the Piles Collective, which is an arts collective. We are not a non-profit; we don’t plan to be. We are fiscally sponsored when we need to apply for a grant, and that’s okay.”

Listen to the full interview on the Viewless Wings Poetry Podcast.