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Month: September 2011

Better ROI Than Thou

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The Los Angeles Times has a video of the change over process between the LA Opera productions of Cosi fan Tutte and Eugene Onegin.

My first reaction was how cool the magic of theatre is that such transformations can take place in a short time to generate the illusion of two different places.

Then I started to think about the cost and whether it was all sustainable. They only repeat the same production once so this change over requiring 45 stage hands happens about 4 times a week- Onegin on Saturday, Cosi on Sunday, Cosi on Wednesday, Onegin on Thursday, Cosi on Saturday, Onegin on Sunday. Then I look at the design elements and wonder if they really need to have 800 gallons of water on stage for one act only to drain it and expose the Plexiglas for the second act.

Next I looked at the prices, $270 for orchestra down to $40 for an unobstructed view in the back of the balcony ($20 for an obstructed view). If they cut back on some of the design elements and changed the production schedule, they could charge less and be more accessible, right?

But you know, while I was thinking all this, I was also feeling a little torn. I felt like my grandmother who, having grown up during the Depression, would scowl at us for not washing aluminum foil and Ziploc bags so they could be used again. Was the only reason I was having critical thoughts like this because that is how those of we in the non-profit arts are brought up to think?

Opera is all about spectacle and that is what people expect from the experience. People complain about the high cost of rock concerts and Broadway shows, but there are few people arguing they have to lower the prices to make the shows more accessible. Usually the accessibility argument for rock concerts is about keeping companies from buying up huge blocks of tickets, not that the original price was too much. People complained that the Broadway previews of Spiderman were so expensive, but people kept buying and buying.

So if the demand is there, what business is it of mine whether the LA Opera is operating in a way that requires them to charge so much? The rotating schedule might actually make better financial sense for them after all. I worked at a theatre in a community with a high tourist rate where the rotating repertory schedule actually helped increase their audiences.

Yet, while it does have significant private support, Broadway shows and rock concerts don’t depend on public support the way non-profits like the LA Opera does. So the question is, do we in the arts mount bold productions that employ technology cleverly to bring our audiences delight. Or do we worry that people wanting to reduce the funding the arts receive will use groups like the LA Opera as an example of why the arts don’t need funding since they can afford to operate at such high standards.

Some of this fear comes from the hostile reception the idea of public funding for the arts receives. It is also reinforced by the practice of private funding sources. The big measure of not for profit effectiveness right now is low overhead. I can’t recall where, but I recently read a quote from an influential politician/business person who said if anything could be funded, it should be the arts because they generate such a great return on the investment.

While I am glad to hear this message repeated by people not working in the arts, the pressure to have low overhead and great results for the investment tends to create a mindset where an organization views themselves as more virtuous than a better funded one because they bring the arts to under served populations and children on a shoe string budget. Who needs hostile politicians when we are all too willing to cast a “better-ROI-than-thou” disapproving eye on each other?

That’s all well and good, but this attitude is what also contributes to few people taking an arts career seriously because no one gets well paid.

Is In-n-Out Burger more virtuous than Wendy’s because they have a smaller, leaner operation? Sure, for profits and non profits have different reasons for operating, but few people praise a commercial enterprise as being virtuous because their cost controls have kept them small.

So does it matter how much the LA Opera is spending?

Info You Can Use: Does Friending A Candidate Endanger Your Non-Profit Status

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The Non Profit Law blog linked to a really great publication put out by the Alliance for Justice that explains whether your online activity might run afoul prohibitions in your 501 (c) 3 status. This is the clearest explanation of these issues I have read.

“This guide aims to answer the questions nonprofit managers most frequently face regarding the Internet and social media.”

The document covers situations that don’t involve online activity, but really it is the social media element that comprises the uncharted territory that people aren’t clear about. The document makes a distinction between lobbying, which a 501 c 3 non-profit can do and supporting a candidate, which they can’t.

Though sometimes the distinction is very subtle. For example, you can make a post on Representative X’s Facebook account, “Rep X, support the arts by voting Yes on Bill 123.”and that is direct lobbying. If you post a slightly different message, “People of My State, tell Rep X, to support the arts by voting Yes on Bill 123, ” and that is considered grassroots lobbying because it is a general call to others to take some action. If you post, “We love Rep X because she supports the arts and voted Yes on Bill 123,” that is promoting a specific candidate.

Except in some very specific circumstances, you can’t link to a candidate’s website. In fact, you can’t link to any website that promotes a candidate and you are responsible for making sure the content of the site doesn’t change since you first linked to it.

For example, you are doing a renovation and link to the website of the company that is providing you with sustainable wood as a way of proving to your constituency that you are acting responsibly. If the supplier changes their website to criticize a candidate’s stance on logging, your organization might be in trouble.

There are also restrictions on allowing employees to use company equipment, even on their time off, to express support for a candidate.

In answer the question posed by the title of this entry, no, you can’t friend a candidate on Facebook or follow them on Twitter. They are free to friend and follow your organization. Even though etiquette suggests you follow them in return, the IRS suggests you don’t.

About the only time you are safe to have a promotion of a candidate on your website is if you allow Google to place ads on your website and have no control over what they are placing.

There are a lot of other questions answered in the document as well. Since a lot of 501 (c) 3 organizations are associated with 501 (c) 4s which have looser restrictions, they provide some detailed guidance about how closely connected their activities can be. The guide also deals with setting policies for renting your mailing lists, guest bloggers, moderating blog commenters, using photos, hosting videos.

It is clear that there are going to be a lot of nuances specific to the activities of different organizations. However, if you have had questions about what is permissible as lobbying and prohibited as campaign support, and don’t have a tax lawyer immediately available, this is a good place to start to find your answers.

Can Devotion To The Arts Be Considered An Addiction?

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Since I tend to travel to China every other year or so, I have started taking a class in Chinese.

The class has taken over my life.

It used to be that the rule of thumb for college classes was 3 hours of home work for every hour in class. In recent times, it has been scaled back to 1-2 hours per hour in class. My Chinese class seems to be old school because I spend about 10-12 hours a week doing the homework. I usually finish home work for Tuesday on the Saturday before and then start the homework for two Tuesdays hence on Sunday morning. Every morning, I wake up and do 1-1.5 hours of homework before heading off to work for the day. Saturdays I usually do several hours of work.

I figure I have to keep this schedule because our production season is starting very soon and will keep me from completing the homework before Monday or Tuesday unless I start 8 days early. What is slowing me down is writing everything in Chinese characters. It is like reproducing pictures rather than writing letters. If you write the letter J and don’t dot the lower case or cross it as an uppercase, no one will care. You leave a dot or line out on a Chinese character and it is a different word.

The thing is, I love it and anticipate taking the more advanced class next semester. While my pronunciation of the tones is probably off, I can grasp the vocabulary and grammar rules pretty well.

But it has gotten me to wondering– can I afford another time and energy consuming obsession alongside my career in the arts? I also wonder if my enthusiasm for learning the language comes from a similar place as my enthusiasm for the arts. While I was a good student when I was younger, I was never as diligent as I am with this class.

I have written a number of times on the idea that people in the arts are sustained by the emotional satisfaction they get from their jobs. This can lead to decision making which values devotion to the arts to detriment of their professional and personal development, financial situation, relationships and health.

Now given I actually have time to have something non-arts related monopolize my time is probably a sign that the amount of time I devote to my arts career may be at a healthy level. Or that I have merely displaced other portions of my life to accommodate both activities. (The pile of dirty laundry and unwashed dishes does seem higher lately…)

My brain may be releasing chemicals into my pleasure centers in relation to both arts and Chinese class, but I don’t think it comprises some sort of addiction. Still, I wonder if there is a tendency among arts people to exhibit personality traits common to those prone to addictions. If anyone has seen any studies, about arts people having addictive personalities, I would be interested to learn more.

In any case, it is something to which I will have to give more thought.

After I finish my Chinese homework.

Info You Can Use: Emergency Planning Tools For The Arts

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Two entries today you lucky readers. My list of things to blog on is getting longer than I handle and still have the subjects remain relevant.

Technology in the Arts blog had a very cool tool for the arts featured this week- Arts Ready, an online tool to help arts organizations create a plan for any emergency, including “incapacitation of a key staff member, a financial crisis, and of course a natural disaster.”

The tool helps you create a readiness assessment which generates a to do list of changes to be made and sends you periodic reminders about deadlines or to re-evaluate the plan. It also offers the ability to store critical documents at a cloud computing site in case the physical documents get damaged. They also have a “battle buddy” tool used to develop relationships with area organizations.

“…so that you can build a relationship and eventually become Battle Buddies- pledging to lend a hand if the other needs help. If you do need to declare a crisis, you can choose how much information to share with whom, and you can track your progress towards gathering the needed resources online.”

It would be great if organizations developed partnerships and alliances constructive to their daily operations in the course of seeking allies to assist in the event of an emergency.

There is a cost to the service, but because this sort of thing is only really effective if a lot of organizations are involved, the developer, SouthArts, is seeking support from state arts agencies to help offer discounted memberships.

Info You Can Use: Board Action In The Age of Technology

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Hat tip to the Non-Profit Law Blog for providing a link to a piece on the Charity Lawyer blog about board votes by unanimous written consent.

An organization upon whose board I sit was recently revising its bylaws and the subject of voting on courses of action between meetings arose. We were especially interested in the legality of voting by email.

I can’t imagine we are the only ones having this conversation and fortunately, Ellis M. Carter at Charity Lawyer provides some answers.

“Unlike directors voting at a meeting which may require only a majority of the directors to approve any board action, most states that permit action by written consent require unanimous approval. Once an action by written consent is signed by all of the directors, the written consent resolution will have the same effect as a unanimous vote of the Board.

In such cases, a consent resolution will be sent to each individual director by mail, email or fax for his or her signature. To streamline the signature gathering process, the written consent document can permit counterpart signatures. This means that each director can sign the signature page of his or her copy and the signed signature pages, when taken together, are considered a validly executed document.

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Generally, the action is considered to be taken on the date the last director signs the consent. For recordkeeping purposes, the signed consents must be kept by the secretary in the corporate minute book. Additionally, the resolution should be entered into the minutes of the next board meeting and made part of the official record of the corporation.”

In respect to emails, in order to remove any question of legality or whether an emailed response may have been made by an unauthorized person who gained access to an unattended computer, it is best to use a password protected electronic signature such as is available in Adobe documents. If that is too difficult, Carter suggests just printing the email, physically signing it and send it back by fax, regular mail or a scanned attachment to an email.

I Liked Your Ideas Better When We Were Being Repressed

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A recent book review gave a fascinating look at how the value of ideas has declined in post-communist Czechoslovakia. In the wake of the Velvet Revolution, playwright Václav Havel became President of Czechoslovakia. He, along with other intellectuals and artists in Eastern Europe found themselves in governing roles as their countries transitioned away from communism.

And then they found themselves unwanted.

“The artistic and literary scene that flourished paradoxically under censorship and repression has died off. The public intellectual is, for the most part, no longer invited to the most important parties. Anna Porter writes, “Now that everyone can publish what they want, what is the role of the intellectuals?” and she can’t find an answer. It’s no longer the police state that’s attacking the intelligentsia — it’s disinterest and boredom. It’s distraction. It’s a trade off. And it’s one that we should be able to acknowledge and be allowed to mourn. When the historian Timothy Garton Ash visited Poland in the 1980s, he admitted to an envy for the environment there. “Here is a place where people care, passionately, about ideas.” The people of Central Europe traded in ideas for groceries and for not being beaten to death by the police. No one could possibly blame them, but at the same time, Havel and the other leaders had no sense of the true cost of democracy.”

There have been many books written about the decline of the public intellectual in the United States so it is pretty futile for me to attempt to address the causes here. It bears noting that the decline in the U.S. didn’t proceed from a point of censorship and repression. Back in the 1950s, artists like Salvador Dali and Random House publisher Bennett Cerf appeared on television game shows like “What’s My Line?” Now you would be hard pressed to name a visual artist or publisher with the same wide spread name recognition.

It clearly isn’t a matter of ideas are only important and valued when you are told you can’t have them. I do think there may be some truth in the question of the value of the value of intellectuals and artists in a time when anyone can publish or create. At one time people had many demands on their attention with farming and family but big ideas were still valued. Now while people have many draws on their attention, less of it is as compelling as seeing to your daily survival (or avoiding censorship/dealing with repression). With the leisure to decide what to focus on, you have the option to ignore big ideas that may take 30 minutes to process in favor of 30 different ideas that you can process in a minute each.

While the arts can have a role in emphasizing that big ideas matter and that we should invest the time to consider them, this isn’t a problem the arts community is going to be able to solve itself because the decline is a result of greater societal practice. The arts can deliver the message, but every strata of society has to value it– which may require valuing the arts as a valid messenger.

I don’t have any ready answers. I just offer this as something to think about– if you can allow it the time for proper consideration.

Criticizing The Performance, Not The Audience That Enjoyed It

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This weekend I went to see a show with some friends. I enjoyed most of it, except for the lead actor. It was clear to me that while the rest of the actors were invested in the reality of the play, his character knew he was the hero. Where everyone else had to react to the unexpected changes in the universe, he anticipated what was coming and manipulated the universe. Some of it may have been the director’s choice, but given the other actors were invested and he wasn’t, I believed most of it was the actor’s choices.

As the show ended, it was clear my friends enjoyed every moment of the show and didn’t perceive the things I did. I knew they were going to ask me what I thought. My immediate worry was, how am I going to talk about this show which they clearly enjoyed without implying they shouldn’t have. And how can I explain what I thought was wrong without suggesting that they lacked the intelligence or perception to notice it.

Basically, how can I talk about my experience without sounding like the stereotypical intellectual snob associated with the arts. My friends won’t take much offense, but whatever approach I used would essentially be practice for dealing with the general public. If I was talking about a show in my theatre, I am really never going to have this sort of conversation because few people would ask what I thought about my own show. (I also realized how many arts experiences I have by myself or with other arts people where conversations can be a little more frank.)

One of those who accompanied me is a landscape architect so I decided to use his profession to provide context for my comments. I would explain my problems with the lead actor as I did in the first paragraph expounding on what I mean by investment in reality and why that is important. Since the show was a comedy, I used the example of the candy wrapping episode in I Love Lucy, where regardless of how bizarre a situation got, we were rooting for Lucy and Ethel because they believed in the reality of the run away assembly line and their need to succeed.

I explained that because I had experience in the performing arts, the problems were apparent to me where it might not be to them. If they enjoyed the show, that is great. Being able to recognize these thing is a mixed blessing- It is helpful if you are in a position to fix the problem, but a hinders one’s enjoyment of many performances where one isn’t in control.

I mentioned how it was possible for me to walk through a garden and admire the flowers while my landscape architect friend noticed all the problems with drainage and general appropriateness with the design. None of this means the flowers are any less attractive just as nothing I perceived invalidates the experience they had at the show.

Now yes, among ourselves as arts people we can, and do, have long discussions about how audiences attribute more value to their experience than is warranted and give standing ovations to barely mediocre work. But that isn’t a conversation we can have with the general public without causing a lot of resentment.

Given that I was dealing with my friends who had the capacity to forgive any offense I might offer, I can’t say the general approach I used in this situation will work in most cases. I have to imagine though that it can be effective to offer an honest, snark free, appraisal of your own experience which acknowledges that one’s insight and perception, while highly informed, isn’t necessary for others to share.

I felt my explanation was successful because I was able to be honest and provide some education about acting and directing choices without coming across as if I were lecturing the ignorant. It was helpful to be able to be able to draw a parallel between the abilities we both developed as a result of our professions to illustrate how artistic criticism is no more intellectually inaccessible than any other form of discernment that is cultivated over time.

The same parallels can be drawn for pretty much any profession or avocation that a person has been involved for many years to create a common frame of reference. No one gets overly concerned that their accountant feels superior to them because they can’t spot mistakes on a balance sheet with a glance. They can be worried about how it might look if they don’t understand a performance or painting, though.

As I write this, I recall my post from Friday in which I quote Stephen Tepper and George Kuh talking about the training creatives receive. I occurs to me that while anyone may develop a discernment related to their profession and avocation, the resulting abilities are not necessarily equal. Those in the arts are specifically trained to look at things with a critical and deliver and receive critiques. Those seeking accounting degrees aren’t regularly asked to look at their classmates’ work and discuss whether it adheres to the generally accepted accounting practices. In that respect, it is understandable that people may experience a little anxiety at the ease with which creatives (which includes landscape architects) can and will discuss perceived problems.

Creativity To The Left Of Me, Creativity To The Right

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I am just getting around to reading a piece in the Chronicle of Higher Education by Stephen Tepper and George Kuh (subscription required) about the need to get serious about teaching creativity. By coincidence or design, Americans for the Arts is holding a blog salon on arts in education that also focuses heavily on creativity. Clearly this is becoming a prime topic of discussion.

Tepper and Kuh argue against a prevailing image that creativity stems from environmental conditions rather than being developed through hard work and practice.

“First, we must move beyond the naïvely egalitarian, almost mystical view of creativity advanced by many creativity enthusiasts. This view suggests that to unleash creative capacity, we have only to set up conditions in which creativity will naturally blossom—informal workspaces, nonhierarchical organizations, flexible jobs, opportunities for cross-fertilization, and diverse and hip urban spaces. Such conditions are thought to encourage lateral thinking, brainstorming, and risk taking, all of which set the stage for innovation and entrepreneurship. No wonder creativity is an irresistible solution to our nation’s most pressing challenges! It appears to flow like tap water, requiring no significant investment in research or training. To transform our economy, we just have to get out of the way and let creativity grow free, like kudzu.

Existing research suggests otherwise. Creativity is not a mysterious quality, nor can one simply try on one of Edward de Bono’s six thinking hats to start the creative juices flowing. Rather, creativity is cultivated through rigorous training and by deliberately practicing certain core abilities and skills over an extended period of time. These include:

1. the ability to approach problems in nonroutine ways using analogy and metaphor;

2. conditional or abductive reasoning (posing “what if” propositions and reframing problems);

3. keen observation and the ability to see new and unexpected patterns;

4. the ability to risk failure by taking initiative in the face of ambiguity and uncertainty;

5. the ability to heed critical feedback to revise and improve an idea;

6. a capacity to bring people, power, and resources together to implement novel ideas; and

7. the expressive agility required to draw on multiple means (visual, oral, written, media-related) to communicate novel ideas to others.”

They admit that not all university arts programs are designed to engender these qualities, nor are the arts the sole discipline that engenders these abilities, but by and large arts students are challenged in these ways.

In the last few years I have frequently talked about how businesses are saying there is a need for creativity in leaders and employees. Other than citing other people who have said it, I haven’t had any solid evidence to back the claim up. However, thanks to a post by Emily Peck on the AftA blog salon, now I do. She links to an IBM survey of 1500 executive directors, Capitalizing on Complexity, where their top insight is that CEO’s need to:

Embody creative leadership.
CEOs now realize that creativity trumps other leadership characteristics. Creative leaders are comfortable with ambiguity and experimentation. To connect with and inspire a new generation, they lead and interact in entirely new ways.

Notice the words ambiguity and experimentation also listed by Tepper and Kuh.

Another salon blogger, Sarah Murr who works as an arts and culture subject matter expert for Boeing, cites Seven Survival Skills created by researcher and author Tony Wagner that …”people need in order to discuss, understand, and offer leadership to solve some of the most pressing issues we face as a democracy in the 21st century”

These too look very much like those listed by Tepper and Kuh which provides me some confidence that the thinking in the arts and business worlds are resonating to some degree. But there is still some work to be done in communicating these commonalities. Another arts in education salon blogger, Eric Booth, reported the general message he came away with from a National Arts Policy Roundtable retreat.

“The key message I took away from them could be stated like this:

Most people in business think “creativity” is a fluffy indefinite word, yet more hokum from the touchy-feely-artsy set. Indeed most business people do not want new employees arriving with the expectation that they can be creative all over the place. What we want are innovations, and hard-working employees who can recognize and deliver on the unusual occasion in which their creative input is valuable. If you can identify for me the key skills within creativity that produce successful employees in my real setting, and produce innovations that work for my company, and can show me the data that affirms you can reliably develop those key skills, I will become your biggest supporter. Til then, it sounds like fluff to me.

We can’t even name the key skills of creativity that we train, no less demonstrate that we reliably develop such skills.

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I do meet a lot of creativity in good students of all interest areas, which makes me wonder if the arts really are delivering something distinctively potent. I even find research that affirms parts of this assertion that the arts are unusually powerful in developing creative capacity. But even if we are succeeding in developing creative capacity effectively, few can articulate what it is we are doing, or what those skills are.

How can we change the status quo if we can’t make a clear, well-founded statement about a core claim?

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Identify the top three skills of creativity that matter to you in your work with career-track students. Not 10 or 23 skills, but the most essential two or three skills…

And one year from now, add a very simple and non-intrusive documentation-and-assessment practice that illuminates the ways in which your students are getting better at those skills over time. That’s it. That simple.

This may sound like a lot of work, but if you are in education you know that everything is moving toward evidence based whether it is K-12 No Child Left Behind or to meet accreditation standards in higher education. Measuring what Booth suggests should at least be marginally more interesting than performing most evaluations because you are establishing your own criteria.

Info You Can Use: Dynamic Pricing That Doesn’t Alienate

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Last week I was reading about some interesting ticketing structures being used by theatre groups in Chicago. Theatre Wit offers what is described as a Netflix subscription model where they provide unlimited admission to their shows for a monthly fee of $36. They also employ dynamic pricing with their single ticket sales and increase the cost based on demand.

What really intrigued me was the model being used by Filament Theatre Ensemble. Instead of selling tickets, they ask people to sponsor an element of the production as the price of their admission.

“In lieu of tickets, customers can sponsor costumes, props, and set pieces, finance two hours of rehearsal space, or pay for the production’s licensing fees. Big-ticket items such as the rent for the performance venue are broken into small portions and spread over the entire run of the show, so that all of items on the website are priced between 10 and 35 dollars. “

What I really loved about this system is that there is dynamic pricing by default but it is presented in a very positive and constructive way. It also provides a degree of transparency about the costs of mounting a production to audiences and gets them invested.

“Seeing as there is a limited number of items available in each pricing category, dynamic pricing is built into the system: once all of the 10–15-dollar items have been sold, patrons have to purchase something in the 15–20-dollar range if they want to see the show. However, contrary to Filament’s expectations, the lowest priced items aren’t the ones that sell first. Patrons are willing to spend a few extra dollars to sponsor something they can identify with—a cool prop, or a distinctive costume—rather than paying a smaller amount that will go towards office supplies…

However, from the company’s perspective it is more important that sponsoring a particular item, instead of purchasing a ticket, increases the audience’s emotional connection with the performance and with the company. Ritchey recounts, “A lot of times people would come up to us after the show and say I got you guys an hour of rehearsal space or I got that costume.” People get excited about what they have contributed to the evening’s performance. In addition to that, viewing all of the elements that go into a production online gives the audience a sneak preview of the show. Having seen all of the costumes and props in advance, the audience immediately feels connected to the production when they recognize those items on stage.”

According to the article, there are still a few issues to work out. Specifically, arranging for admission of people who come to the door to “purchase tickets.” I am guessing given this unorthodox approach, it may be difficult to explain the remaining sponsorship opportunities to those who show up at 5 minutes to curtain and just want to get in rather than choose between a ream of paper and audition space.

I find stories about alternative approaches like these and the one Andrew McIntyre related about Toronto’s Passe Muraille’s Buzz Festival very encouraging. Slowly arts organizations are beginning to discover valid approaches to audience engagement and keeping themselves viable through experimentation.

Will Buffet Family Foundation Influence Other Funders?

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Non-Profit Quarterly linked to an interview in Fast Company in which Warren Buffet’s grandson talks about his approach to philanthropy as he takes up the reins of the family foundation.

As I read the interview, I vacillated between mild dread where I hoped no one else decided to adopt the approach and feeling that his approach was sensible and might provide leadership that would strengthen the general non-profit infrastructure in the United States.

What made me most uneasy was his focus on quantity over quality.

“The first question, for instance, is “Assuming we are successful, how many people would we reach directly with the funding of this gift?” Proposals gets 3 points for affecting +1 million people, 2 for greater than 100,000, and 1 for less than 100,000. Those proposals with a less ambitious scope can secure a coveted spot on the portfolio team by being particularly unique or cost-efficient.”

While he does allow for funding of smaller efficient and effective organizations, I just wonder if that will get lost in the desire to report numbers served and therefore reinforce the idea that you have fudge numbers and always report success or lose funding.

Where this is coming from for him is wanting to get away from non-profits making emotional appeals and move toward discussing the complex factors which contribute to the problems the non-profit is trying to address.

“In the philanthropic world, the problem is the product, in the business world, the product is the solution.” says Buffett, who argues that NGOs are forced to “sell suffering.” The needless focus on sappy narratives often overlooks sophisticated solutions that can’t be easily marketed with a T-shirt-clad celebrity holding a small child.”

This is where I feel he is most sensible because he is determined to fund every step in the chain to addressing a problem, including the unsexy areas. But to do that, he wants the redundant organizations to either get out of the business, partner with other groups or refocus themselves.

“…rather than dolling out cash to independent, uncoordinated actors with the most heart-string-tugging story, they could take on an entire social problems (like food security or breast cancer) by systematically lining up nonprofits to tackle each part of the causal chain, from federal policy to victim resources.

“If you are an NGO, doing the exact same thing as another NGO, and that other NGO is doing better than you’re doing it, then you are in business for the wrong reason,” Buffett says in an exasperated rant against the individualist nature of charities. Overlapping operations, he says, not only waste money through redundant overhead, but keep brilliant minds occupied with logistical distractions that sap their potential impact.

“We will give you money to execute your mission,” Buffett says, “if you work together and identify the most cost-effective and successful ways to achieve that.”

Meanwhile, looking at the entire causal chain of a crisis is key to revealing missing links in the solution, such as political or logistical hurdles that are essential to success, but not appealing enough to raise dollars.”

Granted, the focus of the foundation he is leading is on agriculture, water and feeding school children rather than arts and culture. However, the practices of a Buffet family foundation is bound to have widespread influence with funders in other areas. It is possible that other foundations may use the same criteria.

Given that the question about whether there are too many arts organizations in existence has been a hot topic of late, it is conceivable that funders are already thinking along these lines.

So let me ask-

-how many arts organizations would seriously discuss merging or refocusing if a major funder told them they were redunant and less effective than another organization?

-how many might consider abandoning major activities that were redundant if the funder offered major support to expand in their areas of strength?

-would the arts in your community be more vibrant if there were groups that focused specifically on different niches within the chain? Such as:

-organization that handed advocacy for the arts with local government
-organization that focused on advocacy for the arts in education in conjunction with other advocacy groups
-organizations that purely perform
-organization that coordinates outreaches to schools by designing programs that emphasize the strengths of the performance and presenting groups

There are more functions that different groups might handle, of course, but this serves as a good example. You might look at this and think about how difficult it would be with all these tasks so decentralized, but think about how more schools would benefit if there was an organization that was making an effort to provide uniform coverage of your entire city/county. How much easier would it be for artists to make a living in the community if there was an organization that was hiring them to do outreaches in schools or connecting artists with students seeking instruction.

All this in an environment made conducive for these activities by groups who solely focused on influencing law and policy in government and school boards. Their advocacy is made credible by the existence of organizations who attract and employ strong performers and other organizations who develop exemplary education/outreach programs and train the artists to execute them effectively.

This approach may decentralize efforts and require a lot of cooperation between different groups, but does improve on the current situation where everyone does a little of everything with different degrees of success provided they have the funding and personnel.  As Howard Buffet acknowledges, there is a lot of unsexy infrastructure that no one really wants to fund that is crucial to the success of non-profit efforts. What a boon it would be if someone would fund all those places at a level smart people would be willing to engage in the work.

Info You Can Use: Talk About Someone Else

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One of the biggest dating no-nos is monopolizing the conversation and talking only about yourself. Most of us are probably pretty good at recognizing when we are personally committing this faux pas. How about organizationally? How about on social media?

In some respects, non-profit organizations are like awkward teenagers when it comes to social media. Lacking experience in talking to new people, they tend to stick to the topic of themselves. However, the same rules by and large apply. There ain’t nothing social about social media if you aren’t including other people in the conversation.

A tip of the hat to Technology in the Arts for calling attention to the post on Social Strand Media, 7 Things Nonprofits Can Talk About on Facebook Besides Themselves.

Author Tracy Sestili suggests the following topics that one might use (which I edited down a bit so read the original.)

1. Industry news on your topic – Don’t just regurgitate the news for them, they can set up a Google e-alert for that, but rather, aggregate the news in a way that is engaging by asking them what they think. Don’t just post a link to a news article, read it and ask a question about their opinion.

2. Newsletters – almost all e-newsletters have an option where you can view the newsletter online in a browser….

3. Share pictures – Facebook folks love pictures and it’s the perfect place to showcase the people who make the organization run or people that you impact…

4. Comment on current news – even if it’s not completely related to your organization, showing that there is a human behind the Facebook wall goes a long way with your constituents….

5. Re-purpose content (photos/videos – not text)…

6. Public opinion – ask your fans what they think about decisions you are struggling with internally…

7. Be shameless – Facebook fans of nonprofit organizations like to help out online. They like to be given calls-to-action where they can make immediate impact. So, ask them to help spread the word to 2 or 3 people in their network…

While I have been doing a number of these things for my theatre already, I don’t employ these techniques as frequently as I should. My problem is trying to decide on a voice for the organization on social media. I want to make people aware of challenges facing the arts, but not beat them over the head. Be whimsical, but not too silly. I want our audiences to become bigger consumers of arts experiences which may mean pointing them to events other people are sponsoring. Of course, in the process of becoming a credible source of this information, I don’t want my own performances to suffer.

Brains, Rather Than Butts, In The Seats

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Ever since it was announced back in July, I have been waiting for Arts MidWest to post their video from the talk given by Andrew McIntyre provocatively titled, Arts Marketing is Dead: Long Live The Audience. The video was posted last week (or at least they tweeted that it was posted then) so I got right to watching.

McIntyre is a founder of Morris Hargreaves McIntyre which has developed a system of audience segmentation being used in Europe and a number of the British Commonwealth nations. The talk, while an hour long, is broken up into segments itself so you can view parts of it and then easily return to it and continue if you can’t view it all in one sitting.

What McIntyre says is dead, or rather needs to be dead, is the underlying idea espoused by Danny Newman in Subscribe Now that vilified the single ticket buyer for not allowing the arts organization to illuminate their life. McIntyre says that while ticketing philosophy has changed, the underlying philosophy underpinning that idea remains. Most arts organizations view those who are not attending as having a deficiency in their cultural diet that their product can fulfill.

McIntyre says that the focus of most marketing is on people who are immediately loyal, not on those who haven’t been to a show in a number of years. The practice of cleaning a database doesn’t recognize that the cycle of attendance for most people is actually one that skips a couple years. He speaks of conducting focus groups with audience members who speak enthusiastically about the arts organization but whose previous attendance was four years prior. These people have a long history of being associated with the organization, it is just at 2-3 year intervals. According to McIntyre, these people are apparently just as likely to support an organization over the course of decades as someone who attends annually.

McIntyre doesn’t mention what an ideal period for retaining contact information with what appears to be former supporters might be. I suspect that it may be specific to each community based on various factors including the transient nature of the population. As he was talking about this, my first thought was that you should be clearing your mailing list of people who didn’t seem to want a relationship with you so you weren’t sending them unwanted mail.

That said, I basically use attendees from the previous 5 seasons as the basis of my annual mailing list. I occasionally get a call from people who are concerned that they didn’t know about a show because they know they are on our mailing list and have always gotten our brochure. But if we haven’t captured their name in the last five years either because they haven’t attended or made a purchase at the door when it wasn’t practical to collect their contact information, they eventually get excluded from our list.

McIntyre cautions against relying too much on technology noting that Facebook didn’t invent community and Twitter didn’t invent word of mouth. The arts are about connecting people with people so more direct and personal contact is needed to maintain your relationship. The typical practice has been push marketing where you push empty seats on the community rather than pull marketing where you try to engage people to become involved with you.

He makes some rather humorous observations about why audience development as a concept is on the way out. He says audience development has never been clearly defined as an organizational activity. For marketing it is a euphemism for marketing staff, for education people it is euphemism for outreach, for finance it is a euphemism for box office development and for artistic directors, it is a less objectionable term than marketing.

It has been about how many people you can get involved rather than how deeply you can get them involved. McIntyre says in the UK until recently audience development has been out going out to get people who don’t want to come. The task, however, is not to rescue stranded audiences. They are quite happy with the cultural experiences they have, thank you very much. It is the arts organizations who are stranded and so audience development is really about making the organizations relevant to audiences.

He is clear to point out that audience focus doesn’t mean audience led. Everything is still artistically lead. He gives the example of a theatre in Toronto, Pass Muraille, that has a program called the Buzz Festival where they have audiences view 10 minute segments of shows in development and then pass out surveys asking people to answer specific questions about whether the choices were working – “Did you believe the motivation/relationships of X characters in this moment?” By the time the full show reaches the stage, there is such a buzz and audiences have such an investment in the show, that they sell very well.

The playwrights and directors are still making the decisions, but they are getting the feedback they need to inform these decisions. McIntyre says that in the past this sort of engagement with the audience was viewed as dumbing down the product and so maintaining a high degree of isolation was sought. Audiences are more intelligent and creative than they are given credit for and don’t deserve this level of disdain.

McIntyre says we need to treat people as brains in seats, not butts in seats. (Erk, maybe I need to change the name of this blog. I can see how it is complicit in this mindset.)

It is a little too long to cover here, but in the 6th segment of the video, McIntyre covers the Seven Pillars of Audience Focus that they feel are embodied by those most successful at engaging with their audiences.

Among the changes McIntyre says that need to be made: An organization must be vision lead. It can’t exist only to make enough money to continue to exist. Organizations need to stop fearing audiences and feel the need for peer approval because it holds them back. Stop trying to build brand loyalty in favor of building brand equity where people feel they have a stake in the organization. Need to know more about our audiences than the average income people in their zip code. Everyone in the organization must be involved in the marketing. What each person does needs to grow the organization and its brand.

McIntyre talks about a self evaluation tool they developed so you can arrive at a score for your organization and then use it again multiple times to chart your progress. He says he is less interested in the score than in the discussion the score and test generate. I thought maybe it was online, but I couldn’t seem to find it on their website.

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Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
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