What is this "eCeramica" I keep hearing about?

There is an emerging paradigm in the non-profit sector in Baltimore and nationally. The sector’s need is for not-for-profit organizations to become increasingly more self-sufficient whenever possible; no longer depending solely on foundation and corporate support for sustainability, not-for-profits must look internally to manage and direct their assets and knowledge bases toward their own sustainability. Agile, experienced, entrepreneurial not-for-profits across the sector are seeking ways to leverage their social capital while advancing their missions and creating new sources of earned revenue.

As arts support has decreased over the past few years, Baltimore Clayworks’ staff and board have spent time discussing revenue-generating opportunities that would expand our audience and provide new resources so we can meet the social mission of the organization. The leadership of Clayworks believed that there were untapped opportunities to actively promote and sell our artists’ work outside of the art gallery format in a way that supported our artists’ careers. Additionally, our goal included increasing the organization’s earned revenue and building the capacity of all of Clayworks’ program areas, including those that bring the arts to underserved communities.

So what was the most vast, well visited and possibly most obvious untapped opportunity to sell our ceramic art work? The internet of course.

While Baltimore Clayworks had an online presence for years with our organization's website, we did not sell artist work online. Call us old fashioned, behind the times, or just plain silly - up until 2008 we sold ceramic work on location at our gallery store.

An online store would allow us to bring our artists' ceramic artwork to those who could not come to us. Better yet, for those who typically ran out to commercial retail stores when they need a gift for a friend, colleague or family member - they could purchase something quickly on the internet that was handmade, original and thoughtful. Each purchase would include elegant gift wrapping with the option of including a personalized card. We could offer our customers something the average retailer could not: their purchase would make a social impact by providing artists with income and would help sustain educational programs at a non-profit ceramic arts organization.

From this, http://www.eceramica.org/ was born. October 21, 2008 to be exact.

We're still in infancy, learning along the way (and boy has it been tough). But we're hanging in there. I could say we're taking baby steps, but it's more like we're still in that transition between crawling and mastering balancing ourselves on two feet. With a few more changes, a few more trials and error, we'll be standing strong and proud.