Found an interesting report on the Knight Foundation website about an initiative they funded trying to provide a central arts marketing support system for communities.
What is nice is that the case studies of the communities they worked with really run the gamut so they have lessons for everyone, including funders looking to replicate the effort in the future. One project was anchored in a new performing arts center, another was a stand alone with hopes of getting for and non-profit business, some were cooperative efforts with media companies and convention and visitor bureaus, others were focussed on arts districts.
In some cases, communities received money for planning, but either got turned down for implementation funding or decided not to apply and went forward with the plan without Knight Foundation funding.
Ambitions also differed. In some places, the funded programs tried to be the marketing resource that the small arts organizations couldn’t afford. In other places, there were too many organizations with too varied priorities and interests to serve and so the program opted to create a centralized resource for information dissemination instead.
The results were also varied. In some cases things fell apart when the grant funding stopped. In another case, it didn’t even come together but inspired organizations to explore cooperation in a new direction. In still other cases organizations continue to receive their grant funding so, while the future looks promising, it is too soon to know how they will fare when it stops.
Among the lessons the Knight Foundation learned for those of you who might be seeking to participate in a replication of their efforts on a smaller scale:
-Cooperative marketing programs may work best when they focus mainly on producing collective benefits for the local arts and culture community as whole, rather than on trying to build marketing capacity of individual organizations.
-Cooperation may be easier when local arts groups can be united around a common external challenge that can reduce their inclination to compete with one another.
-Marketing cooperation may also be easier in larger markets because of the greater potential for economies of scale, which can reduce the cost of cooperation to individual organizations and third party funders.
-Intentional efforts to be inclusive when planning a cooperative marketing venture may buy goodwill that can provide legitimacy for later decisions.
The one thing about the study results that was dispiriting was that fact that creating a central entity that functions as an arts marketing agency for those without the resources for their own staff didn’t work.
This sort of set up has always been a minor dream of community arts organizations. If it were easy to accomplish, people would have done it already all over the place to be certain. It is great that the Knight Foundation took this on because it reveals pitfalls that subsequent attempts can address in planning similar projects. It would just be nice if success were a little easier to realize, especially in smaller communities and organizations that would benefit most.