Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management
NewsRoom Contact Us

Joe Patti

I have been writing Butts in the Seats (BitS) on topics of arts and cultural administration since 2004 (yikes!). Given the ever evolving concerns facing the sector, I have yet to exhaust the available subject matter. In addition to BitS, I am a founding contributor to the ArtsHacker (artshacker.com) website where I focus on topics related to boards, law, governance, policy and practice. I am also an evangelist for the effort to Build Public Will For Arts and Culture being helmed by Arts Midwest and the Metropolitan Group. (http://www.creatingconnection.org/about/) My most recent role is as Theater Manager at the Rialto in Loveland, CO Among the things I am most proud are having produced an opera in the Hawaiian language and a dance drama about Hawaii's snow goddess Poli'ahu while working as a Theater Manager in Hawaii. Though there are many more highlights than there is space here to list.

Baby Boomers Secretly Yearn To Play With Us

by

ArtsFwd has an audio interview related to the audience engagement posts I made yesterday and about two weeks ago.

Richard Evans of EMCArts interviews Charles Fee of Great Lakes Theater Company and David Shimotakahara, Artistic Director of GroundWorks DanceTheater about their thoughts and practices related to audience engagement.

I was particularly interested in listening to the interview because after writing about Great Lakes’ practice of opening the theatre early, staying open late and having a bar in the seating area, I wanted to learn a little more.

I didn’t find out if anyone complains about noise coming from the bar area during the show, but I did learn that they conduct their fight and dance calls in full view of the audience during that 90 minute period before the show. (which often confuses audiences who feel they are intruding upon something) After the show, they don’t have a formal talk back but rather have the actors go out for a glass of wine and chat with whomever might be interested.

At one point in the interview, Fee mentions they don’t have a post-show talk back because he feels it is unfair to turn to the audience immediately after the show and ask them what they think. I can personally empathize with this sentiment because it often takes me quite some time to process what my feelings about a performance are.

GroundWorks DanceTheater offers a similar pre-show experience of necessity because they are often in non-traditional spaces where there isn’t a curtain to mask their activity or a separate studio to warm up in. Preparations are often done in full view of the arriving audience.

I was particularly interested in the comments made about audience participation in events. Fee mentions he has no problem with including those experiences in the show, but that the nature of the show changes to that of a circus. “It is no longer an aesthetic experience because the aesthetic distance has been shattered.”

There is discussion about conflicting feelings about audience participation. Fee mentions that when performers are audience members, they cringe when there is audience participation because they feel threatened by it, but acknowledges one of the things every performer talks about striving for is breaking down the 4th wall.

Fee mentions that in the continuum of participation, the fact a laugh landed and everyone held their breath as one, are valid measures of audience participation and engagement.

When he said that, I wondered if that is enough. There is frequent discussion about how passively sitting in a theatre is no longer viewed as interesting and that in the old days, audiences used to be far more vocal in their reactions until they were stifled by societal expectations.

I occurred to me that as people with training in the arts, we know about the history. But do our audiences in general know? Do they yearn to shout praise or insults and stay away because they can’t? Is the ability to do so something people would value so much they would start attending if they could?

As I was thinking perhaps we were projecting our assumptions on our audiences, Fee mentioned that he actually didn’t think young people really craved audience participation but rather it is the baby boomers. He said in his experience working regularly with young people, “the environment [of group participation] for them is fraught with danger, social danger…”

I wanted to hear more about what he was basing this theory that it was the baby boomers that were interested in participation, but the interview moved on. I was left wondering if it might be a case of older people projecting their desires on younger audiences, perhaps wishfully thinking about how they would love to get up there if only they were a little younger.

Indeed, the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak. When the flesh was a little stronger years ago, the confidence was lacking.

Shimotakahara opines that young audience are eager to create and want access to ways to create themselves, they may just not be interested in creating with you. Still, they may crave training and guidance to help them express their personal visions in a way that is participatory for them.

So some interesting views on the subject I hadn’t considered before. It’s only about 24 minutes so it is easy to give a listen as you wash the dishes or clean your rooms. (Which is exactly what I was doing when I decided to write about the podcast.)

They Are Just Not That Into Us

by

I recently read an article that criticized the current thinking about an arts organization’s relationship with its audiences.

Except, that it wasn’t directed at arts organizations at all, but rather at general marketing concepts.

Yet it seemed to reflect upon the current conservations in the arts so closely, I was 2/3 of the way through before I realized it wasn’t really focused on arts organizations at all.

The article, 3 Ways You’re Wrong About What Your Customers Want, appeared on the website of Australian business magazine, BRW.

The first two myths they address is:

MYTH #1: MOST CONSUMERS WANT TO HAVE RELATIONSHIPS WITH YOUR BRAND.

Actually, they don’t. Only 23 per cent of the consumers in our study said they have a relationship with a brand. In the typical consumer’s view of the world, relationships are reserved for friends, family and colleagues…

How should you market differently?

First, understand which of your consumers are in the 23 per cent and which are in the 77 per cent. Who wants a relationship and who doesn’t? Then, apply different expectations to those two groups and market differently to them…

MYTH #2: INTERACTIONS BUILD RELATIONSHIPS.

No, they don’t. Shared values build relationships. A shared value is a belief that both the brand and consumer have about a brand’s higher purpose or broad philosophy…

Of the consumers in our study who said they have a brand relationship, 64 per cent cited shared values as the primary reason. That’s far and away the largest driver…

How should you market differently?

Many brands have a demonstrable higher purpose baked into their missions, whether it’s Patagonia’s commitment to the environment or Harley Davidson’s goal “to fulfill dreams through the experience of motorcycling.” These feel authentic to consumers, and so provide a credible basis for shared values and relationship-building. To build relationships, start by clearly communicating your brand’s philosophy or higher purpose.

The third myth is – THE MORE INTERACTION THE BETTER. and their suggestion is to stop bombarding your customers with emails.

Because so much of the conversation in the arts these days is oriented on engagement and relationship building, you can probably see why I initially thought it was about the arts. Actually, after reading the article and understanding its target audience, I started to wonder if maybe the ideas of engagement and relationship building might have migrated over from the for-profit business world and was embraced in an effort to “run things more like a business.”

I am not suggesting that arts organizations shouldn’t work on relationships with their community, only that in this context it might be wise to evaluate if every practice and assumption is appropriate for arts and cultural organizations.

I think most arts and cultural institutions realize not everyone is going to want to have a relationship with them. It is helpful to have an idea of what the percentages might actually be so we can better direct resources toward cultivating closer relationships with those who seek them.

One advantage arts and cultural organizations might have over businesses at large is that they are more likely to embody values with which people can identify and share. So there is a greater possibility for an arts organization to build a relationship with a customer.

The Return Of The Gentleman Caller

by

A few months ago I saw an article by Peter Ling on History Today about how automobiles enabled a greater degree of sexual and social freedom in the 1920s.

I, of course, read it for the details of the social freedom cars afforded.

Ling talks about how there wasn’t really such a thing as dating before the 1900s. Arrangements would be made for a gentleman to call upon a young lady at her home where he would be entertained in the family parlor, speaking with the girl and her mother and perhaps witnessing the young lady’s skill at the piano.

With an increase in automobile ownership, the gentleman might show up to find the young lady waiting at the door, eager to go out somewhere. People were able to have new experience and interact across social classes.

“Money gave access to theatres, restaurants, galleries and clubs. By 1900, the traditional events of the season, such as the opera, began to be deemed passe by a growing number of privileged youths. These ‘bohemians’ began to perceive the possibility of a new freedom arising from the anonymity of crowded city streets…Thus, affluent youth figuratively ‘crossed the tracks’ to enjoy a surer privacy amidst working-class crowds than they experienced in their parents’ homes…

Women who regularly read the Ladies Home Journal, who could recall being warned in 1907 that it was scandalous to be seen dining alone with a man, even a relative, learnt from a debutante of 1914 that it was ‘now considered smart to go to the low order of dance halls, and not only be a looker-on, but also to dance among all sorts and conditions of men and women…’ Thus leisure-class and working-class youth began to date and sometimes to frequent the same venues

I have recently been wondering if we are seeing a reversal of this trend. With the poor economy, children are moving back in with their parents. People are staying at home to experience their entertainment from the internet and Netflix videos. And, young people today apparently aren’t interested in driving cars.

I don’t think we will see a return to courting and a rush to buy pianos for the parlor. Which is too bad because it would be nice for people to value musical skills more and most of Tennessee Williams’ plays, which often referenced courting practices, would gain renewed relevance.

If people are eschewing cars and staying closer to home, there are some possible benefits for the arts and culture. Back in June I wrote about how young people returning home from the big cities were bringing expectations and vitality back with them.

There may be a shift in importance for neighborhood arts and cultural spaces as people seek things to do closer to home. And if they don’t own cars, lack of convenient parking may vastly diminish as a consideration for attending or participating in a cultural experience which in turn provides more flexibility for establishing spaces.

These spaces may be smaller with versatile use so that they serve the varied interests of the more immediate community. Though I wouldn’t discount the possibility of larger facilities gaining renewed investment from the neighborhood and gladly renovating to accommodate more bikes and pedestrians.

Perhaps they can serve as latter day parlor for young people to call upon each other. Apparently Gen Y isn’t very good at dating and in fact can be very anxious about the whole process. There may be a very real need for a safe, chaperoned environment designed to facilitate interactions.

I make no claims at being a proficient trend spotter so who knows if any of this will really manifest. Still in some places around the country, there is probably some worth in looking around to see if former empty nesters in a short radius are seeing their chicks return and figuring out if there is something of value you can offer them.

Passion About Your Work Is Hard Work

by

Apropos of my post a few weeks back about people thinking creativity as a lightning strike gift rather than a process of work over time is a piece on Harvard Business Review blog site in which the author, Cal Newport, makes a similar observation about the idea one should follow their passion when looking for a job.

Newport notes that following ones passion has become common career advice and includes a Google N-Gram charting the explosive rise of the phrase in print use during the 2000s.

“Why is this a problem? This simple phrase, “follow your passion,” turns out to be surprisingly pernicious…The verb “follow” implies that you start by identifying a passion and then match this preexisting calling to a job. Because the passion precedes the job, it stands to reason that you should love your work from the very first day.

It’s this final implication that causes damage. When I studied people who love what they do for a living, I found that in most cases their passion developed slowly, often over unexpected and complicated paths. It’s rare, for example, to find someone who loves their career before they’ve become very good at it — expertise generates many different engaging traits, such as respect, impact, autonomy — and the process of becoming good can be frustrating and take years.

The early stages of a fantastic career might not feel fantastic at all, a reality that clashes with the fantasy world implied by the advice to “follow your passion” — an alternate universe where there’s a perfect job waiting for you, one that you’ll love right away once you discover it. It shouldn’t be surprising that members of Generation Y demand a lot from their working life right away and are frequently disappointed about what they experience instead.”

The arts career path has long had a “paying your dues” period of near slavery labor for low or no pay internship followed by successfully transitioning to a near poverty level pay. I joke, but only because I don’t want to confuse the poor treatment many entry level people are subject to with the genuine need to actually go through an unsatisfying process of improving your abilities.

The dream of being discovered and making it big is what causes many to pursue a career in the arts. The fact that there are some who can make it big with no apparent effort is something of a plague on the arts industry.

Still for many people, this dues paying process gives people a realistic view of what is expected in the arts career path and they choose to leave it.

Pursuing an arts career with its abysmal pay can be something of a blessing in disguise as part of the dues paying process. The fact we have the stereotype of the actor who waits tables shows that many creative types are picking up other skills in the process of pursuing the dream.

Of course, the benefit of this all hinges on heeding the advice of our grandparents to do everything we do well. It is easy to fall into the practice of not taking a job seriously figuring your effort doesn’t matter since you will be gone soon enough. Then when you revise your career plans, you may suddenly find that as a result of your inattentiveness no one will credit you as having paid some dues.

One of my first jobs was doing yard work which involved everything from mowing and weeding to mucking out horse stalls and polishing brass and bronze pots. I don’t think it directly prepared me for a job in the arts, (though I did end up driving a farm tractor a lot the rural arts center I worked at), it probably instilled a work ethic, taught me about a lot uncommon practices like beekeeping and gave me many problem solving abilities. (Like the time I set fire to the…erm, well I have said too much already.)

Cal Newport calls for career advice to reference the inevitable sour period before you feel inspired by your work.

In some respects, I think the arts are blessed with the stereotype of the wait staff who wants to act. Even though no one believes they will ever have to work in a restaurant to support themselves, that waiter is in our collective unconscious and can’t be exorcised. Part of us always knows that possibility exists. Some may even be motivated to pursue excellence to ensure it doesn’t happen to them.

Still more discussion of that metaphorical waiter needs to happen to make people aware that the pursuit of their passion may not come easily or as directly as they imagine.

Many performing artists would acknowledge their awareness that the pursuit doesn’t come easily since many of them start working hard at eight or nine years old. The problem is that “practice hard to be a success” has been used to motivate them for all those years and it is not a foregone conclusion, especially in relation to orchestras these days.

Arts and culture industries needs to emphasize the fact that the path to success may not be as direct as it has been represented to encourage people to think about and be open to alternative routes.

What Pricing Is Right?

by

Back in June the MIT Sloan Management Review had an article in pricing strategies. The bulk of the article discusses research on practices of companies that have sales forces that goes out to solicit business and has some degree of control over the pricing.

However, the research found some basic elements of price setting that are common regardless of industry and geography. (my emphasis)

1. Cost-based pricing. Here, pricing decisions are influenced primarily by accounting data, with the objective of getting a certain return on investment or a certain markup on costs. Typical examples of cost-based pricing approaches are cost-plus pricing, target return pricing, markup pricing or break-even pricing. The main weakness of cost-based pricing is that aspects related to demand (willingness to pay, price elasticity) and competition (competitive price levels) are ignored. The main advantage of this approach is that the data you need to set prices are usually easy to find.

To a certain extent, this is the pricing strategy used by many non-profit organizations–and their critics. I say it is used by critics of non-profits because one of the common refrains one hears is that if non-profits can’t make enough to support themselves, they should be left to fail rather than supported by government funding.

Non profits use this approach to determine what level of revenue they need to cover their costs in the context whatever other funding sources (donations/sponsors) exist. But as the authors say, it can ignore the level of demand that may exist potentially increasing the revenue stream if the price were set higher (or perhaps ignoring the lack of demand and setting the price too high.)

2. Competition-based pricing. This approach uses data on competitive price levels or on anticipated or observed actions of actual or potential competitors as a primary source to determine appropriate price levels. The main advantage of this approach is that the competitive situation is taken into account, and the main disadvantage is that aspects related to the demand function are again ignored. In addition, a strong competitive focus in setting prices can exacerbate the risk of a price war.

I am not aware of too many price wars among arts organizations, but it can be a mistake to taking your pricing cues from competitors. For one thing, just because you perceive your product to be of equal value to your competitor’s doesn’t mean your customers necessarily do.

3. Customer value-based pricing. This approach, which is also often called “value-based pricing,” uses data on the perceived customer value of the product as the main factor for determining the final selling price. Instead of asking, “How can we realize higher prices despite intense competition?” customer value-based pricing asks, “How can we create additional customer value and increase customer willingness to pay, despite intense competition?” The subjective and quantified value of a purchase offering to actual and potential customers is the primary driver in setting prices. Customer value-based pricing approaches are driven by a deep understanding of customer needs, of customer perceptions of value, of price elasticity and of customers’ willingness to pay.

The advantage of customer value-driven pricing approaches is their direct link to the needs of the one constituency paying for the respective goods or services: the customer. The big disadvantage of such approaches is that data on customer preferences, willingness to pay, price elasticity and size of different market segments are usually hard to find and interpret. Furthermore, customer value-based pricing approaches may lead to relatively high prices, especially for unique products. Though that may seem optimal in the short run, these pricing approaches may spur market entry by new entrants or create a risk-free zone for competitors offering comparable products at slightly lower prices. Finally, it is important to note that it is an error to assume that customers will immediately recognize and pay for a truly innovative and superior product. Marketers must educate customers and communicate superior value to customers before linking price to value. Customers must first recognize value in order to be willing to pay for value rather than base their purchase decision solely on price.

Despite these shortcomings, many pricing scholars consider customer value-based pricing to often be the most preferable way to set new product prices or to adjust prices for existing products

Now I don’t have any real evidence that non-profit arts organizations use customer values as the basis of their pricing decisions, but damned if the language the authors use doesn’t match the language being used in discussions of arts management issues: increasing value and customer willingness to pay for it; the necessity of understanding needs of customers/community; high prices for unique products (unique at least from the NP org point of view); audiences not recognizing truly innovative and superior product; need to educate customers/community about the superior value of the artistic product.

Factor in movies/internet/video games as competitors offering what is perceived to be comparable product with lower monetary/social/time, etc. costs and it sounds like they are describing a the situation facing the non-profit arts and culture industries.

Except that these factors are rarely connected with discussions of pricing for non profit arts organizations. While creating the perception of value in audiences does often enter the discussion, I don’t know that it is necessarily accompanied with a “deep understanding of the customer needs, of customer perceptions of value, of price elasticity and of customers’ willingness to pay,” but rather with hopes and assumptions. How many pricing decisions arts and cultural organizations make every year are based on this understanding?

This may be due to lack of will as much as lack of funds to conduct the research necessary to achieve the deep understanding. Since customer value-based pricing seems to be recognized as the best approach, perhaps research into the intrinsic value of the arts should include a greater focus on pricing to see how value and pricing are connected.

Though I am not sure if the knowledge will be of practical use to a significant number of organizations. The authors point out the information is difficult to gather and interpret. I imagine the results will probably be specific to an organization or geographic region.

Info You Can Use: Playing With Your Volunteers

by

About a month ago I wrote about how our accreditation team used games to get the leadership ready for the accreditation process coming up this year. I had noted that while accreditation is a pretty oppressive and mind numbing subject, the games made learning about it easier. I had suggested that this was a good approach for tackling administrative and governance processes.

This weekend, we actually used a similar approach during the much more pleasant process of volunteer training so I thought I would share what we did.

We held a brunch in our lobby. My assistant theatre manager and I made Belgian waffles and pancakes to order for our volunteers (we also had eggs, breakfast meats and a pretty good toppings bar.) After eating our fill, we talked about the upcoming season of shows and why each was so interesting.

Then we had a scavenger hunt which actually proved to be a good tool for making people more aware of many aspects of their jobs and the theatre building. Some of the questions were just fun and silly like getting a picture of a prop backstage and some information from a set model. Others were more directly related to things we wanted our volunteers to know.

For example we asked how many theatre seats were in a row that had empty spots for wheelchairs so they were aware that the number on the right most seat wasn’t actually the seat count for the row.

Because there is construction next to the theatre we had them take a picture of one of the large signs directing people along the detour from the disabilities parking to the lobby which forced the volunteers to walk the path a wheelchair would have to follow.

We asked for the name of the person who sponsored the Green Room so that the volunteers knew where the green room was and were familiar with the name of one of our important donors.

And of course, we made sure they knew that most crucial of all information–where the bathrooms are–by making them count all the stalls available for use by audience members. (Which also helped them know which restrooms had the most capacity.)

I think this was a much more effective technique to simply giving a tour and pointing things out because it forced the volunteers to pay closer attention to the surroundings as they sought out our grand piano and the 2005-2006 season brochures hidden around the building. It also promoted team work and helped the volunteers bond over activities other than ripping tickets and stuffing program books.

Though to be clear, this doesn’t replace our orientation tours. Every volunteer is given a tour of the facility which points out the location of emergency exits and life safety equipment along with instruction about the procedures.

Nearly all of the volunteers are interested in going around the building again if provided the opportunity. Opening all the doors and turning on all the lights to let them scurry around looking for things changes their relationship with the facility and infuses the experience with a bit of the playfulness and fun that characterize the arts.

Go To The Theatre, Smell Like A Man!

by

A little fun speculative post today.

It has been widely recognized that women generally initiate the decision to attend an arts and cultural event. Now given that the vast majority of playwrights, composers, visual artists, choreographers, etc have been Caucasian males and most audiences are comprised of Caucasians, I wonder what it is in their work that seems to speak to Caucasian women more than any other group.

As much as you can point out that it is no longer true that Caucasian male creative artists are  responsible for as large a percentage of creative output as they once were, I can link to tons of blog posts and articles that note that the ratio is still too large. I am sure there will be many who will suggest that an even larger number of women would attend if the creative content was actually geared to them.

So I ask, albeit with a little tongue in cheek, how have Caucasian male artists failed Caucasian male audiences and how can we get those men back?

This is where I want to play my speculative little game. I am not going to advocate for more White male centric art. I think its good that what is out there appeals to a wider spectrum of the community. Given that people have shown the capacity to identify with art created by those who are unlike them and that doesn’t speak directly to their experiences, I think there is room for more to be created by artists of diverse backgrounds.

But in fact, I am not going to really argue directly for artistic content at all but rather suggest maybe we need to think about how the experience is positioned.

Earlier this month, Smithsonian.com had a piece about how the United States was sold on using deodorant. It an interesting story about how deodorants and antiperspirants were formulated and ultimately advertised to the American people by playing on their insecurities about smelling bad.

However, the earliest efforts were aimed at women which resulted in deodorant use being regarded as feminine. A man was supposed to possess a manly odor!

But with half the population not buying the toiletries, manufacturers felt they were missing out on untapped potential. Early attempts were made to get women to buy deodorant for their husbands but it was still largely seen as a female product.

Comments in a 1928 survey read:

““I consider a body deodorant for masculine use to be sissified,” notes one responder. “I like to rub my body in pure grain alcohol after a bath but do not do so regularly,” asserts another.”

Now if rubbing your whole body with pure grain alcohol isn’t manly, I don’t know what is. I feel less of a man for only splashing it on my face after shaving.

Later attempts were aimed at male insecurity as well.

In the Great Depression of the 1930s men were worried about losing their job. Advertisements focused on the embarrassment of being stinky in the office, and how unprofessional grooming could foil your career, she says.

“The Depression shifted the roles of men,” Casteel says. “Men who had been farmers or laborers had lost their masculinity by losing their jobs. Top Flite offered a way to become masculine instantly—or so the advertisement said.” To do so, the products had to distance themselves from their origins as a female toiletry.

For example, Sea-Forth, a deodorant sold in ceramic whiskey jugs starting in the 1940s, “because the company owner Alfred McKelvy said he ‘couldn’t think of anything more manly than whiskey,’” Casteel says.

At this juncture, I think it is pretty much a moral imperative that I insert the following:

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=owGykVbfgUE&w=560&h=315]

 

I think if the arts and culture industry is going to take its cues from deodorant advertisers, (and why wouldn’t you?), it is going to need to move beyond depending on women buying tickets for husbands and boyfriends and reframe the experience in some way.

While I am not necessarily above using someone’s insecurities to motivate them into action, I think I would rather take a more constructive approach to making men believe initiating a trip to an arts and cultural event is socially acceptable and perhaps even expected.

Obviously, the arts and culture industry needs to replace the word “men” in the previous sentence with other segments of their community in an effort to serve a greater portion of their potential audience.

And while we no longer get our deodorant packaged in whiskey jugs, (pity), reformulating and packaging the product for wider audience segments is still going to be required. Can’t get away selling the same old stuff.

While it is a lot of fun equating theatre and deodorant, I have to confess I don’t really have a lot of ideas in regard to what an effective approach might be. Anyone have any thoughts?

Info You Can Use: Various Things Arts Orgs Are Doing To Connect

by

This past weekend the students held their annual fund raiser for the Fall Mainstage production in our Lab Theatre. The event is entirely student generated and produced. Basically my only involvement over the summer is to unlock the door for them. Our technical director ensures nothing will burst into flames and everything is generally safe, but the work is largely done by the students.

I am very proud of the student who has essentially acted as the producer for the last 4 years because he keeps upping his game every year. Last Spring a new instructor introduced him to a different approach to developing a show and to the credit of all the students, they dedicated themselves to following the approach even though it meant a longer, more involved rehearsal process.

A fair segment of the audience tends to be students and for many of them, this is their first experience in a theatre of any kind. In some respects, it is a great introduction for them because it provides a less orthodox attendance experience and reveals the potential inherent in live performance. (Speaking of which, check out this baby by Great Canadian Theatre Company) On the other hand, it can make a more orthodox attendance experience seem all the more boring and disappointing by comparison.

Typically the entrance, stairway and hall to the lab theatre are heavily decorated. A woman in front of me on the ticket line who takes dance classes across the hall from theatre wondered aloud where the dance studios went. The performers also do a pre-show where they move about interacting with other performers and the audience members according to the backstory of their particular character.

My aim is to try to infuse a little more interesting and interactive experience to our mainstage space. There the expectations and context of the space creates a wholly different environment. We have added some new experiences and are continuing to think of others.

So in that vein, I wanted to point out some interesting programs I have been reading about lately that aim to change the experiences people have at arts and cultural events.

A Wall Street Journal this week had a story about silent disco parties that are being held at zoos in England and the US. It is something of an after hours party at the zoo where people are given headphone receivers. Attendees can dance to the same music without actually disturbing the animals with loud noise (though since many dress up as animals, it may make some of the predators hungry for a midnight snack as they flail silently about).

Nina Simon, Executive Director of the Santa Cruz Museum of Art and History seems to be so dedicated to providing participatory experiences in her museum, she even has opportunities in her restrooms. Reading her blog, Museum 2.0 provides a trove of great ideas and reflections on how they worked.

Back in May, ArtsFwd featured a number of audio postcards from arts organizations around Cleveland. I confess I only recently got around to listening to them after having bookmarked it all those months ago but I am glad I did. There are some great stories being told by the arts leaders in Cleveland. One related to this topic that caught my attention was told about the Great Lakes Theater.

The artistic and executive directors talks about how they designed the Hanna Theater to facilitate social interaction between the audience and performers. The bar is in the seating area and they have different seating areas- traditional seating along with loose club chairs and lounge and bar seating.

The theatre is open 90 minutes before the show and stays open until up to 90 minutes after to provide a place for people to gather and interact rather than simply showing up a half hour in advance, watching and leaving.

A few years ago, I wrote about Alan Brown talking about Gen Y’s vision of an ideal performance venue:

He said he asked them to describe what they would envision as a perfect jazz club. They said it would be a coffee house during the day but a bar at night with a separate room where those who wanted to be full immersed in the music could go. However, there would also be an anteroom where people could talk with friends and still listen to the music and still another anteroom where people could interact with friends more and listen less.

Though this sort of arrangement is highly unlikely, Great Lakes Theater seems to get pretty close. I am curious to know if anyone has attended at the Hanna Theater and what the experience is like. There aren’t a lot of review on Yelp that I have seen. My biggest fear is that someone would knock over their glass at the bar during a highly dramatic scene or there would be some other disturbing occurrence.

Tweet Me Your Gift Now

by

Non-Profit Quarterly (NPQ) had a piece today encouraging people to pay attention to the fact that Chinese are using social media service Weibo to give directly to the needy. The NPQ piece is in reaction to a Washington Post article about how recent charity scandals had turned a lot of Chinese off from giving to the state approved charities. Now people are using services like Weibo (China’s Twitter/Facebook hybrid social media service) to give to people directly, even though it is illegal to do so.

The scandals have shaken public confidence so badly that the Chronicle of Philanthropy reported in June that giving in 2011 was down to $7.9 billion from $9.5 billion in 2010. The Chronicle’s numbers come from a story on the state run China Daily which attributed the drop to a number of factors in addition to the scandals, including the economic downturn and general giving practices in China.

“In China, people’s willingness to give is ‘disaster-driven’ while in the US, donating is a habit.”

He added that the Chinese philanthropic sector’s over dependency on corporations could be another possible explanation to understand the dramatic changes in donations.

“Our research shows that companies, especially private companies, are dominant contributors. Last year, many export companies suffered from the global economic downturn, so they didn’t have much money to donate,” said Deng.”

What interested most about these stories wasn’t so much that people are using social media to give. We already know that is becoming a bigger factor in giving in the U.S. and recent laws are making it easier to crowd fund projects.

What I was paying attention to was that people were giving via social media even though they acknowledged that it is no more transparent and just as ripe for exploitation as giving to an official charity. In fact, some Chinese observed that personality and good looks seemed to motivate giving more than need in a few cases.

There seemed to be a psychological factor inherent to giving to someone directly that gave people a higher degree of confidence in the act of donating.

The US doesn’t have scandals the size of those in China, but there is still a lot of conversation about administrative overhead and Non Profit CEO salaries. Even though these criteria are generally unfair, they can still motivate giving decisions.

There is an old adage that people don’t give to organizations, they give to people. Based on these stories about China and some general observations I have had about the way people generally behave in the US, non profit arts organizations may find they need to provide giving mechanisms that give people a much more immediate sense of connection and response than in the past.

In addition to the ability to give online, an arts organization may need to allow people to give via their smartphones so that patrons can donate during a performance and immediately gain the sense that they are supporting that actor/singer/dancer that just came onstage. If the person walks off stage before they can give, it may be too late.

Two years ago during a public radio fund drive I was so moved by the quality of the show I was listening to, I pulled over into a parking lot to make my pledge because the show was almost over and I felt like I needed to make my pledge before it ended. There wasn’t really any reason not to wait until I got home because the money was going to the station and not the show directly and I already knew I was going to give again that year—But I just had to show my support for that show!

As people become accustomed to giving to things like Kickstarter projects, non profit arts organizations may find themselves having to solicit donations specifically for each project they plan to do rather than based on a general promise to do quality work as has been typical.

Arts organizations may be faced with the dilemma of positioning their programs this way. Restricted donations have always been a problem for non-profits. Do you want to be faced with having every $25 donation restricted to a specific project because people are more motivated to give to something to which they feel a direct connection?

You might as well have a for-profit structure if you are going to have market demand dictate what is funded, eh?

How Do You Take Your Compliments?

by

A woman who was our assistant theatre manager is now pursuing her doctorate in Thailand and recently sent us a questionnaire. She is surveying the difference between the way Americans and Thai respond to compliments based on the relative age and social standing of the person delivering the compliment. All my answers were pretty much the same but from what I know about Thai culture, your status relative to the person giving the compliment dictates how humbly you might respond.

I got to thinking a little about how we handle compliments in the arts. A few years ago, Holly Mulcahy had talked about how difficult it is for an artist to accept a compliment graciously rather than offer apologies for the performance. I remember doing something similar when I was acting, barely being able to mumble out a thanks.

It is easier now that I am in administration. I get to stand in the lobby during intermission and the end of the performance accepting compliments about the show without reservation because I am generally as unaware of the flaws the performers may perceive about their performance as the audience is. Though there have been a few rare times when I have been witness to some very tense moments backstage when artistic directors and stage managers voiced their disapproval of a performance.

As I think about the value and significance of those compliments, one thing I don’t feel I do enough of is solicit feedback beyond, “Thanks, that was a great show.” from a wider variety of people. I have advocated having conversations about the arts where ever you find the opportunity whether it is at a wedding reception or on the checkout at the grocery store in order to get people to voice what they do or don’t like about the arts experience. You can often get people who say they aren’t arts people to recognize they are actually more involved and invested than they realized. Having them reflect on that is good for the arts in the long run.

Starting and sustaining those conversations in the grocery store can be a challenge, but it is easy as falling down in a theatre lobby or gallery. I certainly do talk to a lot of people throughout an evening but it is often the same familiar faces who are knowledgeable about the arts and know they have access to me.

With them it is easier than falling down. What I need to remind myself to do is take “Thank you, that was a great show,” from “strangers” and extend my response to something beyond “Well thank you, thanks for coming out this evening.” Last year I had the presence of mind to do that with a couple and suddenly their high school aged daughter piped in with observations that were so insightful, I was about to beg her to come to college here when she graduated.

My intuition tells me making time to encourage other than the usual suspects to expound a little more on their experience is probably the doorway to better fund raising opportunities. Making the connection with new people may certainly inspire a personal donation from those who find themselves becoming more invested in the organization, but it may also indirectly lead to identifying and connecting with companies/organizations interested in providing support who were never even on your radar.

I am not suggesting that you should be in the process of always closing a fund raising pitch. Rather I am pointing out that relationships are the real basis of enduring support. It is easy to fall into the trap of always speaking with the same familiar people at every performance. It is another thing that solicit additional feedback from an unfamiliar person. Even if their first words are compliments, the next words might not be. But doing so can go a long way toward not only securing their loyalty, but alleviating the impression of elitism in the arts.

Arts & Job Crafting

by

Apropos to yesterday’s Labor Day holiday there was a blog post on the Harvard Business Review site back in June about job crafting, basically changing aspects of your daily activity to make your job more enjoyable.

I thought many of the suggestions cited by the author, Amy Gallo, were particularly applicable to arts organizations. Arts employees are apt to feeling burned out and unfulfilled due to wearing many hats and having a large workload.

But compared to many other types of businesses, employees of arts organizations generally have a fair bit of freedom about how they accomplish tasks. Employing a little creativity in the process isn’t likely to be viewed as disruptive and might even be applauded.

One of the first suggestions Gallo mentions is examining oneself to assess whether the problem might be that you are simply prone to being dissatisfied all the time. Another is to think about ways to change your outlook about your job and perhaps form emotional connections with colleagues and co-workers.

Next is to look at restructuring the job itself:

“Spreitzer and Wrzesniewski suggest using a job crafting exercise to redesign your job to better fit your motives, strengths, and passions. “Some people make radical moves; others make small changes” in how they delegate or schedule their day,…For example, if your most enjoyable task is talking with clients, but you feel buried in paperwork, you might decide to always speak with clients in the morning, so you’re energized to get through the drudge work for the rest of the day. Or you might save talking with your clients until the end of the day as a reward.

If it’s not the work you dislike but the people you work with, you may be able to change that too. Wrzesniewski says she has seen people successfully alter who they interact with on a daily basis to increase job satisfaction. Focus on forging relationships that give you energy, rather than sapping it. Seek out people who can help you do your job better”

In some respects, the fact that just about everyone performs multiple functions in an arts organization can be an asset to job crafting efforts. Lacking concrete job boundaries, people can swap some of their duties a little bit. What is mind numbing to one might provide a refreshing respite to someone else. One thing I have appreciated about the arts jobs I have had has been the ability to get up and away from one task to do essentially all of the things Gallo mentions.

I have been able to attend artist outreaches to see the impact of our work on people in the community. I can talk with colleagues and patrons and develop connections with them. I have been able to get up from my desk to stick my nose in on rehearsals and classes to get some inspiration. Walking around to inspect facilities and equipment or setting my hand to some physical task often provides the distraction my mind needs to find a solution that wasn’t coming sitting in front of my computer.

If You Meet Mozart On The Road, Kill Mozart

by

Back in June there was an interesting piece on The Creativity Post about the Mozart Myth.

The Mozart myth goes something like this. Some people are born with talent so tremendous that music and other cultural products spring from their minds fully-fledged, as if by magic. Mozart, so the myth goes, would compose his symphonies in one sitting with nary a revision through a single act of inspiration. The more generalized myth, popularized by writers such as Arthur Koestler, is that all creative people work this way.

The authors, Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein, recount a story about a student they had who had made it big with a rock song in his first year of college, but when it came time to do a follow up, he felt his creativity was blocked. He took their class in the hope they could unlock his creativity again.

They had this student examine his creative process and he eventually came to realize he had actually worked on his first big hit over the course of 6 months. Finally, he had a eureka moment where everything gelled. The reason he felt like he was blocked was because he was waiting for another eureka moment to drop the next masterpiece in his lap, not recognizing the first hadn’t done so.

This story is a good reminder not to mistake the frisson experienced during that eureka moment as the whole creative process. How many times have we heard that genius is 90% perspiration and 10% inspiration but continue to value only the inspiration part?

We may be able to dash off some inspired prose or music in a few moments forgetting that there were years of reading, writing, listening, watching, thinking and practicing that have brought us to that moment. More to the point, there were probably long periods of mistakes, lack of comprehension and frustration involved along the road.

Having a solution come to mind so quickly can provide such a sense of relief and joy that it is easy to forget incidents like the anxiety of having to write a book report each week in third grade and the effort involved in that college paper that you still got an F on.

Yes, talent is still distinctly important and can significantly shorten the supposed 10,000 hours of practice to achieve mastery, but the effort and process is still required.

What is actually probably more damaging than self-recognized creatives buying into the Mozart Myth is everyone else believing it. Believing there is a hard and fast line between those who are blessed with the ability to create and those who are cursed with a lack, is what contributes and reinforces the perception of the arts as elitist.

There is not only the concept that an elite few are granted the talent and inspiration to create, frequently there is a message that there is only a select group that can understand it all, too. It can be difficult to understand that the ability to create and to appreciate are both cultivated over time.

As Michele and Robert Root-Bernstein note, we really only ever focus on the results rather than the process. Bands tell stories in interviews about how they completely wrote a song on the tour bus between Indianapolis and Cincinnati, but no one credits the 15 years spent in 4 different bands no one ever heard of as the incubator in which the requisite abilities were developed.

For the most part, however, our educational institutions tend to do just the opposite: we hold up for scrutiny only finished products, strip them of the processes, tools, skills, histories and personal stories that gave them birth and, intentionally or not, discard and erase creative know-how.

Info You Can Use: Telling Your Boss What You Really Think

by

One of the challenges non-profit organizations often face is in relation to personnel evaluation. Many organizations don’t have a formal human resources department and don’t often engage in a constructive evaluation process. Even if they did, so many companies are so small it may be a little difficult to speak candidly without fear for repercussions.

I became aware of a website, Tell Your Boss Anything, which provides a tool that can help with this process a little. The site allows employees to submit feedback anonymously. This can be used by employees who want to tell their bosses something, but also by bosses who want to solicit feedback from their employees/team about programs and situations.

The service can be set up so that upper management in the organization can monitor what people are saying about a manager, though the anonymity of the commenter is preserved and the lower/middle manager apparently doesn’t receive direct access to the feedback.

There is a cost involved with the service but it seems pretty reasonable. A manager can solicit unlimited feedback for $20/month. Larger companies can get plans to solicit feedback for multiple managers.

There doesn’t seem to be a cost involved for an individual providing feedback to their boss. I suspect there is probably some mechanism which monitors and limits how much feedback is going to a particular email address in a given period to thwart an attempt to avoid paying for an account.

There will still be challenges using this tool in smaller organizations since it can be difficult to avoid providing information that makes one identifiable. Unless everyone in the office is openly disgusted with the boss, it may be easy to deduce who is complaining about lack of opportunities, the sick leave policy, or that big project with which only three people were involved.

Whatever feedback is submitted goes through a moderation process. I initially assumed it was to prevent people from using anonymity to issue a stream of explicative laden invective, but perhaps they would also suggest changing elements that might make it easy to identify an individual.

If nothing else, the tool can be useful to solicit feedback from employees on many topics where perceived expectations and peer pressure might keep them from more publicly voicing their true thoughts: the board’s proposed capital campaign plan; health insurance and retirement plans; reflections on how a controversial decision might have been better handled.

When Good Ideas Occur To Lazy Readers

by

Occasionally I get a sense that I have a bunch of interesting ideas percolating in my subconscious because I will occasionally misread the title of an article and have a whole slew of assumptions about the article which don’t bear out. It makes me think my subconscious has these ideas but is just waiting for someone else to do all the hard work of proving they are viable.

This occurred with an piece in Fast Company about how Minnesota based Artspace (not to be confused with ArtPlace) prevents artists from being displaced from communities due to the gentrification they helped encourage.

Artspace has done this by building all types of artist housing/work spaces in the Twin Cities (as well as 21 other cities in the US). Because Artspace controls the housing, the artists aren’t as apt to be priced out of the neighborhood as they have been in so many other place.

But the article title which included the words “artists revived an old warehouse district–and got to stick around to reap the benefits of what they helped create” and “Give Artists Their Own Real Estate Developers,” made me think someone came up with a plan where the artists received some increasing financial benefit as the neighborhood improved.

I imagined there might be some sort of version of the 1% for art for the neighborhood where artists received a share of every real estate transaction that occurred–every time a construction project began; every time a property was sold or leased to a new business; every time an apartment was rented and re-rented–artists actually benefited financially from the improving fortunes of the neighborhood.

Since all this came flooding into my mind when I caught sight of the titles, I am not quite sure how it would work. But I wonder if a city would be willing to license an organization like Artspace or create a sort of investment fund which would receive a cut of all transactions for 25-30 years. I am not sure at what stage this might happen. Gentrification of a neighborhood often starts when artists move into spaces they aren’t really supposed to be inhabiting so they wouldn’t want to call attention to themselves too soon.

All charter artist members of the organization/fund would get a payout every so often which would help diminish the impact of the gentrification and benefit those responsible for inspiring the improving conditions. If the money was going to a non-profit like Artspace, perhaps they would use a portion of the funds to develop low cost artist accommodations and seed similar artist beneficial gentrification efforts in other cities.

Imagine artists having a piece of every Starbucks lease, every high rise luxury apartment construction project, every boutique shop renovation, every bar and restaurant opening, every skyrocketing apartment rental or sale.

And if having to pay that percentage inhibits this sort of development–well that is all the longer that artists can actually afford to live there. It would actually be good if companies started moaning publicly about paying a percentage because it would start to illustrate the real economic impact of the arts.

Just think if rather than just real estate, every transaction, from cups of coffee and shoes sold to parking fees and haircuts, within a district was charged even a quarter of a percent in support of the artists there. At the end of every year you would have some real hard data about the economic growth the presence of artists initiated in that neighborhood.

Teach First, Ask Questions Later

by

Along the theme of my post yesterday about good ideas, I wanted to point out some interesting ideas about higher education for arts majors suggested by David Cutler on The Savvy Musician blog.

I won’t say all the ideas are completely viable, Cutler doesn’t make that claim either, but some implementation of the basic intent might be practical enough to break up the status quo a little.

One of the common themes of Cutler’s suggestions is predicated on the fact students looking for a career in the arts need to be more than just talented artists. They need to be good collaborators and have some basic entrepreneurial ambitions. He proposes evaluating those factors right from the time of auditions.

He also suggests multidisciplinary approaches including more allowances for electives, having at least two areas of specialty and working with different specialists.

“Encourage or require students to select at least two areas of specialty throughout their single degree program. This priority reflects the real world, where artists must possess multiple skill sets to survive and thrive.

[…]

“For at least one semester, each student studies with someone from another artistic specialty. Imagine the lessons a violinist might learn from a cellist, trombonist, dancer, or painter.”

This idea appealed to me because one of my former employers ran a residential arts and music camp where students had one major (an area they were already good at) and two minors (areas the want to explore.) The focus there was more about letting kids explore disciplines they had no experience in but were curious about. They might learn they were really awful at it or might gain a new interest.

A more rigorous approach in higher education could give students cross-training they may need in their careers but also provide the basis of increased avenues for creative expression.

What really interested me were some of Cutler’s ideas about what the educational experience might look like:

Paradigm 4: CLASSES & ASSIGNMENTS

Traditional model. Classes are typically built around a lecture. Students are assigned homework or projects to complete on their own time.
An alternative. On their own time, students watch lectures online. During class, the teacher works interactively with them on homework, projects, and other experiential endeavors.

If this alternative model sounds like wishful thinking, let me assure you what he suggests is very close to how some math classes are being taught on my campus right now. The approach has been very successful in terms of improved grades and student persistence.

Paradigm 5: PRIVATE LESSONS

Traditional model. Music students typically take a one hour lesson with a specialist in their area each week (i.e. violinist study with violin professors).
[…]

Alternative C. Teachers are in their office for certain hours each week. Students are free to show up as often as they want, and stay as long as they desire. If unprepared one week, perhaps they shouldn’t waste the teacher’s time with a meeting. On the other hand, maybe someone could benefit from 3 lessons a week leading to an audition. This open structure also allows students to observe their teacher interacting with others who face similar/different challenges, teaching valuable lessons in pedagogy and beyond. (This is the model I experienced when studying composition at the Hochschule für Musik in Vienna, Austria).

Cutler also proposes flipping the timing on education students’ teaching semesters and doctoral candidates’ orals from the last semester to the first.

The benefit for student teachers is, “This shows them what needs to be learned early on, and frames their entire college experience.”

For graduate students, “Begin the degree with some version of orals. Get people excited about researching and learning on their own before choosing classes.”

Now granted, I wonder how valuable having a completely inexperienced student teacher would be to the school in which they were placed. That whole experience would probably have to be redesigned.

I do think he is spot on saying that it would show arts ed. students what needed to be learned. I think I have mentioned before that when I was pursuing certification in secondary ed, everyone in my cohort agreed that it would have been helpful to have had a refresher course in grammar rules before we had done our student teaching. We would have paid more attention to that throughout our college careers had we known just how terrifying it would be being uncertain.

In terms of career preparation, he suggests students having a career mentor rather than (or in addition to) an artistic mentor for at least one semester. Instead of doing a summer or semester long internship, “Partner students with an external organization throughout their studies, so they are constantly challenged by real-world, practical concerns and trends.”

I have only covered some of his proposals and I quoted some of his ideas out of their original context (though I feel I accurately represent his overall argument) so you should check out his blog if any of this sounds intriguing.

If you are like me, when you read it you will wonder where in a student’s studies would there be time to implement many of these ideas. But I think his whole point is that the entire approach and prioritization of art student learning needs to be examined and revamped in order to make the experience and the degree granted more relevant.

Info You Can Use: If You Missed Your Chance To Steal It Before

by

While Oscar Wilde may have said, “Good writers borrow, great writers steal,” and blogging by its nature does involve citing others quite a bit, I generally try to avoid having my blog entries involve someone else’s work entirely.

However, occasionally someone provides information that can prove so valuable, it pretty much bears repeating entirely. Last month Thomas Cott assembled a series of links in his daily email which he titled, Steal This Idea.

Many of those he linked to posted entries urging people to steal their ideas, including Trisha Mead on 2AMt , the Association of College Unions International’s Steal This Idea contest and the Please Steal This Idea blog.

After reading this series of articles, you could almost forget that companies are actually concerned about preserving their Intellectual Property rights.

There are a lot of great ideas for the arts in these links. I must confess however that one which resonated very closely with me was an article from the Library Journal (also titled Steal This Idea) which talked about how the Hartford Public Library solicited ideas from their patrons and created a series of library cards people could pick and choose from.

This is a great idea for cultivating a sense of ownership among arts patrons and subscribers. However, the reason it resonated so closely with me is because I actually have kept every library card I have owned since I was a kid. And since I have moved around a fair bit in my career, my collection is between 10-15. Had those libraries offered a choice of more personalized cards, I would have probably “lost” my card frequently so I could add to my collection.

One interesting idea that Cott hadn’t included was covered by Sarah Lutman of the Speaker blog. She discussed the Great River Shakespeare Festival’s (GRSF) decision to sell 10 year bonds to fund their organization. The board of directors authorized the sale of 100 bonds at $5000 each. As of a month ago, they had sold 39.

Though there is some hope that at the end of the 10 year period, people will roll over or donate the proceeds of the bond to the organization rather than calling it due, GRSF is prepared to pay 4% annually on the bond. And they may choose to repay the bond at the end of the term rather than having it roll over. Ownership of the bond can be transferred.

The legal and filing fees for Minnesota were under $2000. It may be more in your state. It is an interesting idea to get people literally invested in your organization. There is some precedent for this sort of thing. The Green Bay Packers football team is a non-profit corporation and has famously offered stock to support their operations.

Fans grab shares when they are made available mostly for the pride of claiming ownership because the team doesn’t pay dividends. How much better is it then to be able to proudly invest in your favorite arts organization and actually be promised a financial return on top of whatever benefit the organization has to the community.

Info You Can Use: Like This Post And You Could Win….

by

..Well Actually I Can’t Promise You Will Win Anything.

That was one subject tackled in a slideshow/PDF Venable LLP posted from a talk they did in early August, How Nonprofits Can Raise Money and Awareness through Promotional Campaigns without Raising Legal Risk. The slideshow proper is followed by resource documents that delve a little deeper into many of the topics.

The collected information is a great basic resource on many of the legal questions you may have about different sorts of promotional and fundraising techniques like raffles, games of skill and chance. The laws of many states make it necessary to have the “No Purchase Necessary” option and the ease (or lack thereof) of taking advantage of that option is frequently a subject of legal action.

While every state has different laws, the slideshow helps to clarify the general distinguishing characteristics of these activities. For example, I wasn’t aware of some of the following:

Some less obvious examples that may satisfy the “chance” criterion include those in which: a prize is awarded to the “100th” store (or Web site) visitor on a particular day; the amount of the prize depends on the number of people who decide to participate; the prizes are of unequal value; or, a drawing is used to break a tie, or a single prize is divided between tied winners.

The document addresses some of the issues use of the Internet to solicit contributes raises in relation to social media and rules dealing with being registered as a charity in other states if a significant amount of contributions is originating from there.

One of the biggest legal situations they discuss is the commercial co-venture (CCV) where a business might promote that a portion of a purchase will go to benefit a charity. NY State launched an investigation regarding companies that did that in relation to breast cancer and turned up a great deal of fraud. Apparently half the states have laws regulating CCVs in terms of disclosure and the manner in which the relationship is promoted.

Use of social media for solicitations is apparently a gray area legally so the suggestion is to proceed with the same care you would if you were making the same appeals face to face or in print. There are also concerns that you respect privacy when collecting user data, especially from children, and protect the data from theft. Geolocating and behavioral advertising and tracking are identified as hot button issues.

However each social media service has a number of their own rules of which you need to be aware.

For example with Facebook:

-Promotion may not be administered directly on the site, must be administered through a third-party Facebook Platform application
– Cannot use Facebook functionality or feature as an entry mechanism; e.g., “Liking” a profile page or posting a comment on a wall. Also cannot condition entry into the promotion upon taking any other action on Facebook; e.g., liking a status update or uploading a photo.

• However, can condition entry on a user “liking” a Facebook page, checking in to a “Place”, or connecting to the Facebook platform based promotion application as part of the entry process. E.g, can require that users “like” a Facebook page and then submit a completed entry form to enter.

This was something of a surprise because it seems like I get requests to like things all the time and have seen it tied to a chance to win something. I have been trying to remember about how they have been structured.

Facebook is also pretty strict about requiring groups to provide notice that Facebook is not associated with the promotion really in any way.

Another area of concern is intellectual property rights. If you are encouraging people to submit some sort of creative project you can run into a number of issues,

“Incorporating user-generated content in a marketing campaign could expose the sponsor to liability for libel, copyright infringement, violation of one’s right of privacy/publicity, deceptive advertising, trademark infringement, or other violations.”

While social media sites and marketers are protected from liability for what people submit or post on their sites, if you turn around and use the submitted content to promote your organization or product thinking it is entirely original, you could be in quite a bit of trouble.

If you look at the slide show but have more questions, it is really worth looking at the additional resource documents at the end. There are some good short articles that deal with the Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media promotion and

Oh What A Tangled Web…

by

Today at lunch a musician friend was picking our brains about a fund raiser he wants to do for a cause he really believes in. He outlined his vision and then asked for ideas of places he could hold it. There were a couple assumptions he made about his budget that were unrealistic which we helped him to re-evaluate.

The discussion made me think of an article someone I follow on Twitter recently linked to by Nell Edgington, “5 Lies to Stop Telling Donors.”

Edgington lists the lies as:

1. X percent of your donation goes to the program
The distinction between “program expenses” and “overhead” is, at best, meaningless and, at worst, destructive… It is magical thinking to say that you can separate money spent on programs from money spent on the support of programs…“overhead” is not a dirty word…

2. We can do the same program with less money
No you can’t. You know you can’t. You are already scraping by…Politely, but firmly, explain to the donor that an inferior investment will yield an inferior result…

3. We can start a new program that doesn’t fit with our mission or strategy
Yes, that big, fat check a donor is holding in front of you looks very appealing. But if it takes your organization in a different direction than your strategy or your core competencies require, accepting it is a huge mistake…Don’t let a donor take you down that road.

4. We can grow without additional staff or other resources
Nonprofit staffers truly excel at working endless hours with very few resources…But someday that road must end…

5. 100 percent of our board is committed to our organization
If that’s true, then you are a true minority in the nonprofit sector. Every nonprofit board I know has some dead wood…It’s a fact that funders want to see every board member contributing. But instead of perpetuating the myth that 100 percent is an achievable reality, be honest with funders…It is far better to demonstrate that you are tirelessly working toward 90 percent.

I have frequently linked back to a post Andrew Taylor made about 6 years ago where he suggests non-profit organizations aren’t doing themselves any favors by keeping funders expectations high when they report everything went as good, if not better, than planned every single time.

In recent years “overhead” has come to the fore as a problematic measure of effectiveness. I think the whole idea about low overhead being a measure of effectiveness is the root of the other evils Edgington mentions in her article, in the pursuit of portraying themselves as having low overhead non-profits will say they can do more with less money, do more with same/fewer staff and the organization has a super efficient board.

An April article in the LA Times talks about why overhead is such a poor measure of a charity. In that column, Jack Shakely, president emeritus of the California Community Foundation, cites the example of a group that was buying its medicine in Canada but was using the cost of the medicine in the U.S. as a basis to report the difference in price as an in-kind donation in order to make their administrative costs appear to be a smaller portion of their budget.

Writes Shakely (with my emphasis added),

Don’t get me wrong. Low administrative costs could indicate prudence and sound judgment at a charity, but they could just as easily indicate inadequate staffing, insufficient salaries or, shall we say, fudging. Moreover, administrative costs aren’t the primary measurement of for-profit excellence. Are McDonald’s admin costs lower than Wendy’s? Apple’s lower than Microsoft’s?

[…}

But our intuitive thinking system wants an answer now, and because we are intuitively inclined to believe that the nonprofit sector is filled with soft, amateurish executives, we latch on to the pseudo-science of administrative costs as a measure of excellence. It’s hogwash; there is absolutely no way of telling that an organization with 5% administrative costs is superior to one with 20% costs based on that criterion alone. In fact, the exact opposite may be true.

As Shakely notes, it will be hard to get donors and funders to shift to better criteria when the overhead ratio appears to be so clean and rational a measure. But as both he and Edgington comment, no funder is going to use any other measure of evaluation if they aren’t told the criteria is unfair and unrealistic.

Think about what you can do to change assumptions as you make your next pitch or write your next grant proposal.

Do The Arts And Millennials Share The Same Core Values?

by

Last month there was an article on Fast Company, Why Millennials Don’t Want To Buy Stuff, that claims the focus is moving away from acquisition of things toward access to ideas and relationships.

Though the article also admits it might be because they can’t afford stuff either.

They also point out many “goods” we consume are actually rented or licensed from services like Netflix, iTunes or Amazon’s Kindle. Exchanging money for a transient product is the norm for Millennials in a way it isn’t for previous generations.

According to the article, when Millennials do buy things it is motivated by one of three things. Either the item provides access to other experiences in the manner of most Apple products; the item can be used to develop a relationship or sense of community; or the item makes a statement about themselves to others.

Of course, there tends to be a lot of overlap between these motivators since sharing experiences enabled by a product can make a statement about yourself which can be shared with like-minded people.

If the article is correct, arts and cultural experiences are pretty well suited to Millenials. The experience is transient and can’t be possessed as a concrete object. It can provide a sense of community and opportunity for relationship building and can make a statement about the person to others.

Of course, as has oft been discussed, what Millennial wants the statement they are making to be that they like hanging out at a performance hall cultivating a relationship with old people.

The fact that this article just provides a slightly different perspective that brings us back to the conclusion that if you want to attract Millennials, you have to provide an experience they find attractive should be comforting. It means that the answer is so simple and evident that we keep reaching the same conclusion.

Or I suppose that we are so fixated on the idea of attracting Millenials, we lack the imagination to interpret it in any other manner.

There is something to be said for the research that shows people tend to orient toward arts and cultural experiences at a certain age range when they have reached a level of personal and economic maturity. In that respect, there is perhaps too much expectation placed on the Y generation to start attending now.

At the same time, I think that: 1- It never hurts in the cause of creating general awareness to let Millennials know now that the opportunities are available when they are of a mind to attend.

2-The product and approach you used to attract their grandparents and parents isn’t going to work on them so you might as well make your mistakes now while they aren’t really paying attention than trying to refine your approach later when they are.

I am encouraged by the thought that the Fast Company article might reflect the values being embraced by Millennials because I think it plays to the real core strengths of arts and culture. The message that the arts are what you get involved with to exhibit you are mature, cultured and refined is an ill-fitting suit in comparison. We have just been wearing it so long we have mistaken it for our identity rather than garb donned when an opportunity presented itself.

Put Your Board On A Diet

by

The Chronicle of Higher Education had a piece about the problems inherent to large board size on their website today (subscription required). While the article is about large boards in higher education, there are lessons to be learned.

Governance experts say such large boards dilute accountability and invariably allow a small group to seize control of an institution, leaving the remaining trustees on board merely to cut ribbons and big checks.

But it is easy to see why a college might want a big board. It is simpler to add trustees than to remove members who are no longer pulling their weight, and growth can be justified as an effort to broaden the diversity of opinions in a group. It is also true that there may be no better way to cultivate donors than to give them active policy-making roles at a college.

These two paragraphs appear to outline all the major problems faced by boards-lack of accountability, small number of people really in control, some members not engaged in the board functions and valuing board members pretty much solely for their fund raising capacity.

Obviously, these problems can plague boards of any size. In fact some of you may privately be wishing you were “cursed” by a larger board figuring if the ratio of valuable to problematic members stayed true, you would have enough useful people to accomplish something. But the problems and dysfunction can become more pronounced and harder to avoid as the group grows larger.

The article provides a number of examples where weak controls and oversight brought on by large board numbers were the source of financial and sports related scandals. While the article doesn’t draw a direct link, it occurred to me that having large numbers at a meeting means that certain people never get a chance to talk and therefore are never invested or feel responsible for the decisions being made.

Perhaps a small group of people on the executive board make the decisions or perhaps the feeling of personal accountability is diluted across numbers. As they say, no raindrop feels they are responsible for the flood. Either way, the environment can contribute to bad decisions being made.

Another contributing factor seemed to be a lack of board education. The article spent some time on anecdotes from various university presidents who discovered their boards really didn’t have a sense of the business of higher education. The schools embarked on efforts to make their boards more knowledgeable.

Recently when I read about board relations, the importance of educating boards about their governance and oversight responsibilities seems to be discussed with greater frequency. In fact, the idea that board members are fund raisers and need to “give, get or go” seems to have taken a back seat to the importance of boards contributing to good governance and planning.

Perhaps the conversation has turned in this direction as reaction to Sarbanes-Oxley or perhaps the non-profit sector has started to recognize the importance of the board to organizational leadership.

It Is All In How You Play The Game

by

Today faculty and staff on my campus met to discuss what to expect when the accreditation team visits our campus for a week in October. If you aren’t familiar with higher education accreditation, basically it is an evaluation of how everything an institution of higher education does contributes to student learning and success. It looks at everything from curriculum development, grading standards and financial aid practices to the budgeting process and grounds/building maintenance.

The accreditation visits happen every six years but basically you spend the intervening time improving your practices, collecting data to evaluate if you are improving and generating interim progress reports.

If that sound incredibly mind numbing to you, it really is. Just about everyone in the organization is involved in contributing to the report, but only a few people handle all the information. God bless them for it.

That was what the meeting today was pretty much all about–making the whole organization generally aware of the report’s content. After my post yesterday about communicating organizational values, I wanted to share a little bit about how they did it because I really appreciated how they took a 500+ page behemoth and made us all a little more knowledgeable about it.

A lot of what transpired today could be used for board meetings/retreats where vision and strategy is discussed. It could just as well be used for volunteer and employee training to make people aware of values, procedures or even the upcoming season of shows.

Basically we played games. You may groan and I don’t blame you. I have been to meetings where the game playing seemed forced and awkward. I think the problem is that those games were aimed at breaking the ice or team building while these games were focused more on increasing familiarity with issues and content. I thought they were well designed in that they moved quickly and weren’t interspersed with heavy fact laden lectures.

Before we played games, we were told what the purpose and value of accreditation was and what the possible outcomes might be (including sanctions) so we had a sense of why it was important to be familiar with this information.

First played a type of BINGO game where questions were asked and then you got to mark off the answer–if it was on your card. The questions were a mix of statistics, history and information about where resources could be found.

Next we played a MAD-LIBs type game where we had to fill in the blanks in the text of recommendations that had been made at the last accreditation visit and the strategic goals we had developed to answer them.

Now if you think that sounds really boring, you will know how effective the game playing was when I tell you we were up on our feet trying to beat the other teams and resorting to strategic research (cheating).

Later we did a speed dating style game where we had to ask each other likely questions the accreditation team might ask of us, then shift seats and ask the next person.

The goal of this wasn’t to achieve a perfect answer, but give people a greater awareness of the many factors being evaluated. The question I was assigned to ask was about the 95.1% of classes currently involved in an ongoing evaluation process and what could be done to improve the process and percentage. I ended up talking to the head of Human Resources, Campus Fiscal Officer and a member of the business faculty.

The first two really had no idea how to answer the question because the don’t directly deal with academic concerns, the faculty member did provide a more cogent answer. But now we are all a little more aware of the criteria upon which the campus is being judged and know that a self-evaluative procedure is in place for a large number of our courses.

What appealed to me most about my experience today was that this type of approach really plays to the strength of the performing and visual arts. We do similar things in rehearsals when we are developing performances and when we try to communicate information in education and outreach programs. Even if you aren’t doing these exact things, the potential is present in your associated artists and staff. With a little work, these techniques can be applied to administrative and governance purposes.

Now as I said from the outset, there was a lot of time consuming and mind numbing work that got us to this point. There is no avoiding that or making too much more enjoyable (though certainly, any fun is an improvement). In terms of getting investment from the group and communicating information and values, games are a good tool.

Would You Know If Your Candy Machine Was Broken?

by

As you might imagine, there are a few vending machines scattered around our campus. The one behind our building get cleaned out regularly when we have rental groups with large numbers of kids or our own shows are in tech week.

A number of months ago, whenever I would try to get a granola bar from one end of a row, I got a message to make another selection. A little experimenting showed this was the case for a few of its neighbors. Across campus near the administration building there is a machine in which a whole row returns the make another selection message.

I usually don’t see the guy refilling the machines or when I do, I am generally in a rush. But I finally said something to the guy about a month ago. He thanked me for the report and said he would tell the technician to take a look at it. Then he commented that he had noticed on his computer inventory that those items weren’t selling.

It is people like him that make me really nervous.

Part of the reason I finally said something to him was because I started to realize he had no real investment in his job. The situation had existed for about 6-9 months.

Even if he wasn’t the same person who was tending to the machines when the problem started, there were many signs one existed. Not only was the fact that part of the machine broken conspicuous when they were the only things ever left when students and kids literally emptied the rest of the machine, but the items that weren’t selling were actually noticeably sun-bleached. And of course, he admitted his inventory was telling him that items in both machines never sold.

Wouldn’t you suspect a problem if an entire row of candy bars in a machine never sold, yet the Snickers were moving well in the sites around the campus?

The reason people like him make me nervous is that I start to wonder what problems I am not being told about. The vending machine guy may not be paid well and doesn’t feel like he has any incentive to make sure the machine is producing revenue efficiently. I begin to wonder if people working for me might feel something similar. My concern isn’t so much about revenue maximization as ensuring patrons, renters and others who use the facility don’t have a negative experience.

One of the most difficult tasks businesses offering services seem to have these days is training people to be aware of problems and be proactive about either attending to them or reporting it for further action.

I generally feel like I have a good staff that pays attention to these things. This afternoon my technical director noted that the dust from nearby construction had infiltrated our ticket office and the room needed to be cleaned. But there have been times when I have noticed a glaring problem and wondered why none of those who pass that way regularly, including cleaning staff, students and faculty, attended to it in some manner.

Of course, a lot of the responsibility resides with those who train and supervise. It is incumbent upon them to discuss the values of the organization, mention the types of behavior that is expected and outline the available courses of action.

It is also important that those courses of action be viable and legitimate. If a problem is reported and results are not forthcoming, there is less incentive to report problems in the future. The same if the resources to effect the solution are rarely available or there is a perception that making the extra effort on behalf of the organization is not valued.

If a solution can’t be effected immediately, the timeline for the response should be communicated clearly–e.g., “The leaky toilet will be replaced when the building is closed for the summer, in the mean time, this is the temporary stopgap solution we suggest.”

In the non-profit arts, frequent communication about what sort of environment and experience the organization wishes to provide is important given the large number of volunteers that assist with so many tasks. Even long time volunteers may forget the overall vision because they are not exposed to it as consistently as regular staff and they may volunteer at a number of other places, each with its own vision of things.

Most of all, supervisors and other leadership need to emulate the values they espouse with their own actions. If they aren’t excusing themselves to assist someone who looks lost or bending over to grab a candy wrapper blowing by, it is more difficult to get others to do the same.

Misunderstanding Your Competition

by

To pick up from my last post about the Set In Stone report, the one aspect of the research I was intrigued by was their survey of people’s perceptions of the impacts (or lack thereof) of a new construction project.

As you might imagine, those who perceived themselves to be direct competitors were the least enthusiastic about a new building project. However, the groups who were most enthusiastic were those who were in the same district as the project, but didn’t view themselves as competitors.

Nope, No Impact Here

The report writers note both the positive and negative impacts of a new project- It might compete for audiences and revenues on one hand, but could also bring additional vibrancy to the area attracting businesses and traffic. Interestingly, the perceived impacts of a new project were pretty low.

• No higher than 28 percent of organizations in any subsample believed any change in their attendance was due to the new project opening; that subsample was the most closely linked to the project (competitors in the same district). The full sample result was only 12 percent believing the project opening affected their attendance.

• While 40 percent of competitors in the same district believed the project opening had an effect on new businesses opening in the area…Only 23 percent of the full sample believed the project opening was the key cause of new businesses in the area.

However, in terms of general impact, people were quite positive in their outlook about the project.

• When the question about community impact is posed in general terms, dramatically positive views are expressed. The question “Do you think the project makes the city a more attractive place to live?” generated a uniformly enthusiastic response, with the full sample generating 88 percent positive responses, and competitors within the same district reporting a 96 percent positive response.

There was also a lot of enthusiasm about the impact the new project would have in the community in advance and immediately upon the completion. However, according to the report, after the completion, enthusiasm dropped about 8% for the overall sample. However, for the group that was most enthusiastic–those in the same district who didn’t view themselves as competitors that I mentioned earlier–their optimism about the impact on economic development dropped 16 points.

I should note that the report writers emphasize that it is difficult to separate general economic conditions from project specific conditions as factors in the decline in optimism. They don’t know if the decline is due to problems with the greater economy or specific to the projects.

Foes Are Just Friends Who Compete With You

What was also interesting to me was the perception of competition versus collaboration people had in relation to projects. Those who viewed themselves as direct competitors were most likely to view the project as creating a more competitive environment while those who were located in the same district but did not view themselves as competitors felt the project created a more collaborative environment.

And yet,

Ironically, the group with the highest percentage of organizations believing that cultural organizations feel more competitive (competitors in the same district, also had the most optimistic view about increased tourism (52 percent believed it had increased). Thus, there is no evidence that community organizations link their views about changes in tourism to their views about the effect of the project on the competitive/collaborative climate.

The section of the study about competitiveness was very intriguing to me because so much of it was based on perception rather than reality. Just because people didn’t identify themselves as competitors, doesn’t mean that is really the case. The study found proximity was often a factor in identifying a project as a competitor, even if the cultural discipline didn’t match. You might expect that a museum might view a nearby performing arts center as a competitor.

Yet the study found (and I paraphrase for clarity) that a slightly higher percentage of those who identify themselves as non-competitors were located in the same district and were a cultural discipline match for the expansion project. The report authors state this “is inconsistent with expectations and inconsistent with the results observed for the “competitor” subsamples.”

You Can Have My Audience, Performers and Employees, Just Leave The Money

It made me wonder if there was a degree of wishful thinking/willful blindness among other cultural organizations that the expansion project represented a threat to them. These results left me wondering and wishing the survey had included data on whether local conditions improved or not in the wake of a project. I suspect given the scope of the study, they were unable to assemble a dependable data set to make this comparison.

Still it raises a lot of questions about how accurately cultural organizations, and I daresay businesses as a whole, assess the impact of developments on the economic conditions of their communities. I suspect the assumptions arts and cultural organizations make are little different from those other businesses make about the impact that will result upon the arrival of a big box retailer like WalMart, Best Buy or Home Depot.

Not surprisingly, money seems to be the dominant factor. The study found that the greater the funding for the expansion project came from non-local sources, the less people expressed concern that the environment had become more competitive. The perception of the economic climate seemed to be based mostly on whether the expansion project was making it more difficult to fund raise rather than whether the project was competing for audiences or talented artists and employees.

I wonder if this is something of a statement on the relative importance/availability of funding versus audiences and talent for cultural organizations: People are more easily replaced than money.

Stuff To Ponder: Process and Pitfalls Of Cultural Facility Construction

by

If you are planning new building construction or a significant renovation, you would do well to check out the Set in Stone research project performed by the University of Chicago. When I first heard about the site and the research which looks at the construction of cultural arts facilities from 1994-2008, I thought it might be a thinly veiled indictment of overly-ambitious construction of arts centers.

But in fact there is far less failure reported than I expected, (though plenty of struggle), and the site is designed to be a resource for both research on the topic as well as guidance about the whole process. Prominently placed on the page is a six minute video that provides some quick advice about under taking a construction campaign.

Basically, it says people underestimate the project costs and over-estimate their ability to generate the revenue to operate the building upon completion. The video also notes that there are a lot of factors and constituencies with expectations contributing pressure to the project and suggests four questions to continually ask at all stages to keep things on track–or help ultimately decide to terminate the effort.

Four case studies illustrate the impact of these pressures on new facility construction. My favorite is the case study for the Art Institute of Chicago. It really provides some detailed insights into how the ambitions of the board, fundraisers and architect interacted to shape the construction of their new Modern Wing.

There is a quick overview of the study available but you may eventually want to take the time to read the full report. The full paper discusses construction and funding trends around the country and explores the impact of population shift and GDP on some of these trends.

There were some surprising and interesting situations they uncovered like the Pittsfield, MA metropolitan statistical area has the highest per capita spending on construction projects in the country, trailed by San Francisco; Appleton, WI; Madison, WI and Lawrence, KS. Who knew?

Interestingly, the construction during the boom period they researched didn’t seem to be in response to demand from the cultural sector.

This suggests that, in the boom period, increases in the supply of cultural facilities may not have responded to demand increases in the cultural sector. In fact, the evidence suggests that the relationships were negative during the boom period; either there was overinvestment in the supply of facilities relative to cultural sector demand for facilities, or facilities investment may have been responding to something else altogether.

What I also found interesting was that population size didn’t impact how much a city invested in the cultural infrastructure but rather how fast the population was increasing or decreasing. If the population started increasing, so did the investment in infrastructure.

What I found most informative was a comparison of the construction processes of different types of cultural organizations. There were assets and liabilities generally common to each type of cultural organization: producing theatres, museums, non-resident performing arts centers and resident performing arts centers.

Producing theatres seemed to have the easiest time with the process going from conception to completion in a relatively short time (7 years). Producing theatres were motivated to advance their mission and were able to keep that front and center throughout the process. They had the biggest cost overruns at 92% higher than the initial budget, (my emphasis)

“However, the starting budget was usually an internal figure and these projects’ managers were clever about when to announce their budgets publicly so that the escalations did not appear outrageous to the community. Interestingly, the publicly perceived escalations were often much lower—an average of about 19 percent. More importantly, the escalations that did occur often had a clear connection to organizational needs and were seen as helping the organization pursue its artistic mission.”

Museums also had a relatively short conception to completion time (about 9 years). One of the biggest challenges the report says they face is strong boards who often meddle with the plans often blurring a clear sense of leadership and leading to a fairly high rate of turnover on project boards. Cost overruns were only about 46% but were due to non-mission critical additions. Also museums were not able to be as flexible about generating revenue and often had to cut staffing and programming to deal with budget shortfalls.

The construction of Non-resident performing art centers were often strongly motivated by service to the community. (my emphasis)

“However, more often than not, community need for the nonresident PAC was not accurately determined. For example, a large majority of these projects used economic impact arguments as rationales for building. Included in these arguments was the implicit assumption that by building a cultural facility in a blighted area, it would automatically attract and sustain a substantial audience who would not otherwise have ventured there. Nine times out of ten, these assumptions were not accurately tested, and when the facility project was completed, the desired swarm of activity never materialized…Since the motivation for the project was so strongly centered in the desire to culturally enrich the broader community in a necessarily general way, a specific organizational artistic mission (if there was one) was often swept aside or obscured by a general enthusiasm for the idea of building a new arts facility for local residents.”

This situation resulted partially because these projects were organized by groups operating from a shared leadership model which meant there is often no clear stated central vision. Cost overruns of 62% were attributed to delays and lack of organization in the decision making process. Non-resident performing arts centers were generally flexible in their ability to absorb the overruns thanks to their low operating costs. Unfortunately, because most of the costs came from presenting performances, the preferred option to reducing expenses is usually to reduce programming.

Resident Performing Arts Centers have the hardest time getting started, mostly due to the need to serve the disparate requirements of multiple resident companies which often represent different arts disciplines. Because the founding organizations are often well-established, each with their own board of directors, a single clear, consistent leader is often difficult to identify.

These projects averaged 12 years from conception to completion, which doesn’t include the feasibility study period preceding the project proposal. Influence of the various groups can wax and wane quite a bit in that time. The constituent groups may be unwilling to cede authority even to the performing arts center executive once the facility begins operations. Changes in plans and leadership often means opening dates are frequently rescheduled.

“First, resident PACs were the costliest among all the different categories of projects. On average, they cost approximately $109 million to build and went about 64 percent over their initial proposed budgets. On a per seat basis, the median dollar per seat for resident PACs was $37,527, compared to $12,155 for nonresident PACs.”

The need to serve many resident organizations means that the resident PAC has less flexibility to use its spaces to generate additional revenue for the facility. Also, all the organizations are in the same boat together. If one organization faces a distressing situation, it impacts the future of all.

There were some other interesting observations that resulted from the study that I will address in a later entry. As I said, the Set In Stone site provides some pretty good resources and information to help you recognize and perhaps avoid problems others have faced with their major construction projects.

Info You Can Use: Outside Audits And You

by

During the summer many non profit boards of directors suspend their meetings due to the difficulty of scheduling meetings around members’ vacations. When meetings start up again in the fall, it may be a good time to think about revisiting organizational policies.

Using the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which currently only applies to publicly traded companies, as a guide Independent Sector (IS) and BoardSource have drawn up a checklist of good governance practices to implement.

There is also a link to a more expansive discussion of the topics in the checklist you may wish to read.

While the act currently only applies to public companies, financial impropriety in the non-profit sector has lead many to explore how sections of the law might be applied to non-profits or to suggest the creations of similar rules for non-profits.

The bulk of the rules apply to auditing and financial disclosures though some deal with conflict of interest, record retention policies and whistler blower protections.

One of the biggest challenges in applying the recommendations from the law is that while publicly traded companies have to pass certain milestones in terms of size and assets before going public, non-profits come in all shapes and sizes. An outside audit is really only practical for some large non-profits (and required for those receiving more than $500,000 in federal funds.)

Most non-profits should at least have an independent audit committee, but as the article notes, many smaller non-profits will have difficulty finding a qualified people to be treasurer, finance committee and audit committee and good governance requires there not be significant overlap.

For those who do use an outside auditor, though the Act only requires the lead partner of the auditing company change every 5 years, IS suggests the company be changed every 5 years and that the company not provide any other services, except tax return preparation as pre-approved by the board, to minimize conflict of interest.

For those organizations using an audit committee, it is suggested none of the members of the committee have any financial/business interest with the non-profit.

The very bare bones, basic criteria for a board that IS suggests is that they all receive training to become literate enough to understand the organization’s financial documents. IS says it is important that when the organization signs off on their 990 that: 1- the 990 is actually completed comprehensively and accurately, something that is infrequently done; 2- that the signature actually reflects an understanding of the organization’s financial condition.

I have talked about conflicts of interest policies in the past and the IS document doesn’t really discuss this in as much detail as the financial disclosure.

One thing I was not aware of and wanted to share is the whistler blower protections. You may be aware that it is illegal to take any retributive actions against those who report misconduct: firing, demotion, harassment, passing them over for promotion. What you may not know is:

“Even if the claims are unfounded, the organization may not reprimand the employee. The law does not force the employee to demonstrate misconduct; a reasonable belief or suspicion that a fraud exists is enough to create a protected status for the employee.”

I wasn’t aware that the criteria to achieve whistle blower protection was based on a reasonable belief rather than requiring some sort of evidence. Perhaps I have been watching too many crime dramas–or perhaps not enough of the right types.

In any case, it is important to have good clear policies about employee conduct, financial and accounting practices, conflicts of interest, records retention (which includes email and voicemail) in place long before any of these things become issues.

When Guilt Is Good

by

Research by the Stanford Graduate School of Business had some surprising results suggesting that even more than extroversion, a sense of guilt may be a strong indicator of leadership potential.

Although “guilt” and “shame” may seem quite similar to most people…psychologists recognize a crucial distinction between the two: Whereas someone who feels guilty feels bad about a specific mistake and wants to make amends, a person who’s ashamed of a mistake feels bad about himself or herself and shrinks away from the error. Everyone tends to respond to mistakes according to one or the other pattern…

The researchers administered a test to measure how guilt prone people were and then put these people into a variety of situations. When they asked the participants to rate each other’s leadership qualities, those who scored higher for guilt were ranked highest for leadership.

According to the research article, participants weren’t picking up on people’s guilt but rather the behaviors that manifested from those feelings “making more of an effort than others to ensure everyone’s voice was being heard, to lead the discussion, and generally to take charge.” Similar research was conducted outside the lab at businesses surveying employees, clients and coworkers and produced similar results.

The key thing to understand is that guilt prone people feel responsible for the group at their own expense in contrast with shame prone people who tend to feel responsible for protecting themselves.

It should be noted, however, that guilt prone people are also most likely to support layoffs. While they feel bad about firing people, their sense of responsibility for the company as a whole will lead them to seek ways to fix the problems the organization faces. And good leadership abilities doesn’t guarantee good decision making abilities.

These results made me wonder about the qualities of non-profit leaders. A streak of martyrdom always seemed to be a prerequisite to work long hours for little pay. I don’t think it takes any great leap in logic to think it is motivated by a sense of guilt and responsibility to insure the organization is successful in providing its services to the detriment of oneself.

If this is actually a good thing according to the Stanford research, do people drawn to non-profit service actually have the best leadership potential and simply lack the training and resources to more effectively fulfill this potential?

No Simple Solutions

by

While I was out in the middle of the Mongolian steppes gazing out from my yurt, I happened upon a copy of the Oxford Business Group’s report on Mongolia in the dining hall. I put aside the novel I was reading and devoured the report. It was intensely interesting to me to read about all the factors that contribute to the emergence of a developing nation. In many respects, I saw some parallels to the arts and culture sector.

As I mentioned yesterday, one of Mongolia’s greatest assets is its land. The people are largely nomadic and their large herds of horses, sheep, goats and cows benefit from the grazing land. Tourists such as my friends and I come for the natural beauty. And the country has large mineral wealth.

There are many factors that must align for the country to be economically successful in each of these areas. The banks must have enough capital to support investment; insurance companies must have the resources to insure the industry; the government must be stable and generally unified in its vision; people must be confident that laws will be fairly applied and agreements honored; work force must be well trained and industrious; a quality transportation infrastructure must be in place.

This is no small task for a country that moved from Soviet style communism to a parliamentary republic in the early 1990s. The report mentioned that even countries like Canada which has a more mature and practiced economy and political system were challenged in trying to exploit their mineral wealth.

One of the things the report made clear is all these elements are interrelated. Success depends on addressing deficiencies in all theses areas and that balance is necessary. For example, there is a growing concern that the rise of the mining industry with its good salaries not develop to the detriment of other industries like manufacturing and tourism leaving the economy too dependent one segment. The impact of copper prices falling sharply a couple years ago is still fresh in people’s minds.

In the same respect, problems faced by the arts and culture sector in the U.S. and elsewhere won’t be simply fixed solely by achieving one of the following: more government funding, better cultural policy, more corporate donations, better board governance, changes in foundation policy, arts education in schools, new business model or marketing to younger audiences.

Its all of these and no one thing. We all generally know there are no simple answers, but it is difficult to remember when we are told the solutions to our problems can be achieved with a simple pill; in as little as 30 minutes a week; or just cutting/raising taxes.

Certainly when you are operating in perpetual crisis mode, or at least a low grade state of emergency as seems to be the case in the arts and culture sector, thinking the solution lies in achieving progress in one fairly significant goal provides the hope you need to carry on.

While it shows the reality of the situation to perhaps be more overwhelmingly complex, in the context of the factors necessary for developing the Mongolian economy, it is obvious that a more holistic and balanced approach to improving the operating environment is necessary.

It only makes sense that financing, infrastructure, law, education, etc are all important to a developing country. Progress won’t be made if one area is deficient. Trying to convince others to stop trying to advance conditions and policies in other areas and devote their time to what you think is important may ultimately be counter-productive.

Something to remember if you are making the rounds of conferences and such this summer and you are getting a lot of messages about what is absolutely the most important thing to do.

Summer Vacation, Asia Edition, Part II

by

Okay, as promised a little bit on my view on the Mongolian stage of my vacation. Mongolia’s biggest asset is its wide open spaces of natural beauty. Only reason I can figure Genghis Khan  even thought about leaving is because winters get down to -40 degrees (it is same on Celsius and Fahrenheit).  My friends and I had the pleasure of sleeping in ger (yurts) and had a great time.

 

Our Humble Ger
Inside the Ger–Note Candles Are Only Light Source

 

A view from the Ger

Mongolians take great pride in the accomplishments of Genghis Khan and his progeny. The Khan’s figure appears in many places. The statue below just appeared out of nowhere about an hour or so from the capital, Ulan Bator. Apparently it was the site of one of his great camps.

Suddenly Genghis Khan

In the plaza across from our hotel was a government building with three different statues of the seated Khan. Below is the largest.

Middle Khan

We were somewhat fortunate to be in Ulan Bator during the national holidays for the Nadaam Festival, the athletic event showcasing the three great Mongolian pursuits-wrestling, archery and horse back riding. I say somewhat because traffic in the captial increases greatly during this time and many shops were closed for the week. We didn’t go to the stadium, but everywhere you went a television was tuned into the festival.

While I am not really into sports, I have come to recognize the importance of communal bonding around cultural events. We left Mongolia the day after the athletic competitions concluded, but the festival continued with a huge gathering of people in traditional costume in the square across from our hotel. From what we understood, it was something of a fashion show/contest.

Finally, since a country’s money often provides insight into the things the country values, I thought I would show off some of the pocket change I had left over. As you might imagine, Genghis Kahn appears on many of the higher value tugriks.  Many others have portraits of Damdin Sükhbaatar who was instrumental in gaining Mongolian independence from China in the 1920s. The backs have images of ger/yurts being moved or pictures of horses with various backgrounds.

Because of its close association with the Soviet Union after their independence, Mongolia has its own version of Cyrillic as well as an older script related to Uighur. Both types of text appear on the money.

Front of Mongolian tugriks
Back of Mongolian tugrik

While I am on the subject, the current series of the Chinese currency (ren min bi) almost exclusively features Mao Zedong. There is still some older currency  in circulation like the half yuan notes below which feature pictures of the Miao and Zhuang ethnic minorities.  Other notes had other minorities or the classic communist figures of an intellectual, a worker and a farmer.

In addition to Chinese characters and pinyin, since 1955 in something of an acknowledgement to the 50+ ethnic minorities in China each note includes the denomination written  in Mongolian, Tibetan, Uyghur and Zhuang on the back. Newer notes (circa 1987) also have this information in Chinese Braille. Even though English isn’t the national language, just imagine trying to get addition languages written on currency in the United States.

RMB front
RMB Back

Summer Vacation 2012, Asia Edition

by

So I am back from my vacation (my thanks to Drew McManus who kept an eye on the blog).  This trip took me to China and Mongolia, both of which will provide content for a few days of discussion. Both countries have long and interesting cultures.

However, the most immediate and visible celebration of national culture I saw was in Korea’s Incheon Airport. Not only did they showcase the talent of their classical musicians as is common in many airports. (click on any image to get an expanded view)

Music Program, Seoul Incheon Airport

 

Vibrato Ensemble

They also had people wandering the terminals in traditional costume. I had seen people in costume coming out of a back room when we transited to China and assumed perhaps it was a special occasion. It wasn’t until I returned that I realized this was a regular event. There are a number of Korea Traditional Cultural Experience Centers throughout the terminal and the costumed people move between each one, gathering a fairly large following as you might imagine. They perform a short program and then pose for pictures.

Between these performances and the multiple cultural experience centers, it appeared to me that the Korean government is pretty invested in promoting its cultural assets. They are letting people who visit know what cultural resources are available and giving people like myself who are transiting reason to think about visiting in the future.

Korean Traditional Cultural Experience

 

Taking Pictures With Visitors

One thing I have enjoyed in China are some of their large, beautiful public parks. They also have some beautiful historic gardens wedged into  the middle of their cities like Yuyuan Gardens in Shanghai and Prince Gong Mansion in Beijing, both of which I visited this trip.

Yuyuan Garden Shanghai
Prince Gong Mansion, Beijing

Beijing is also the home of the 798 Art District, the site of former military factories which artists gentrified into Beijing’s version of Greenwich Village. The district has been frequently under threat of being closed down and redeveloped thanks to its geography but its prominence as a tourist attraction seems to be staving that off for the present.

An arts administrator I met while in Beijing complained that the district was becoming too commercial and the artists could no longer afford to live there. Welcome to the negative side of the market driven economy I told him.

I experienced a little of the commercialization myself during my visit. The last time I was in China, I learned about the 798 Arts District and a sculpture, The Wolf Is Coming. I was really interested in seeing the sculpture and asked my friend who had been to the district a few times before to take me.

However, this was what was in its place-

This Is Not A Wolf

Now I wonder if she was mistaken about the location because this courtyard doesn’t look like the one in the picture of The Wolf Is Coming I linked to above. That said, there were a number of Transformers robots in this courtyard and in the windows of stores and galleries around the district.

I couldn’t take pictures in the galleries but here are a few other pictures from around the district.

798 Art District Sculpture
Getting Out of A Cage
Cage You Can Get Into

 

This trip afforded us the opportunity to walk over to Macau which was generally a little too cheek to jowl living for my taste, but did have some wider, attractive plazas.

Street in Macau

We just happened on the start of a parade that included all sorts of musicians, lion dancers, people bearing a long dragon on poles, characters from Journey to the West and other mythical figures I couldn’t identify. They also had hand drawn carts with little girls perched so precariously at top a small platform that the girls had to be supported by pole bearers walking alongside.

Please Don’t Fall

This entry is getting a little long so I think I will continue tomorrow with Mongolia and some reflections on the whole trip tomorrow.

However, while I am on the topic of precarious situations, I wanted to comment on an amusing, but seemingly ill advised hotel design trend. One of the hotels we stayed at in China offered an unlooked for artistic display of a sort–windows in the shower.

A view from the bed
View from the “throne”

Yes, you are seeing correctly, the rooms offer some interesting view even with the shades closed. I thought maybe this was a trend in China but our hotel in Mongolia had the same features. I could understand if these were a romantic hotel, but both hotels were very much aimed at business travelers.  Both hotels had blinds you could close, but the ones in Mongolia were inexplicably perforated which meant you could still see someone in shower unless the lights were off. (My room mate on I opted to warn each other when we going into the bathroom.)

 

Is Art Still Good For Us?

by

A few years back, I wrote some reflections on Joli Jensen’s, Is Art Good For Us? I had taken the book out of the library but have since bought a copy of that book as well as John Dewey’s Art As Experience.

The book is a very interesting look at the many definitions of the purpose of art throughout the history of the U.S. as well as the ideas about how art and democracy are related.

Reading Jensen’s work helped me flesh out my thoughts about the prescriptive model of the arts.

One aspect plays into the medicine metaphor quite well in the form of the old adage that it has to taste bad to be good for you. The value of avant garde art has always been in its power to shock and challenge. Just as consumers are always looking for a more pleasant tasting cough formula, a good portion of the public doesn’t want to pay for art that is foul to their senses. Nor do they want to be told that they will be better for it. In a way, like Mother trying to force big spoon of cod liver oil into the mouth, it treats people like children.

There will always be an audience for avant garde art. Like the pain of tattoos and piercings, its benefit is best realized by those who come to it willingly.

And as Jensen writes:

“If we gave up notions of art as social medicine, the logic of American cultural and social criticism would become unraveled. The arts must maintain their conceptual distinctiveness so that they can still be invoked as a fudge factor in criticism…”

“Invoking the arts as a fudge factor also allows us to avoid the hard work of directly defining what we value and what should be done…Current arts discourse allows us to be for all good things, and against all bad things by invoking the presumed good of the arts in opposition to the presumed bad of media, commerce and the marketplace.”

“Such a discourse has significant costs. It guarantees that our social criticism is vague, overblown, insulting and impotent. When we discuss our common life, what is wrong with it and what can be done to improve it, we need all the directness, specificity, clarity and compassion we can muster.”

There have been a lot of years of blogging since I first read Jensen’s work. I am interested in reading it again to see what new insights and understanding I may have developed since that time. I suspect (and even hope) that I may disagree with some of what I wrote in my original post.

Stuff To Ponder: Snobby Opera Lovers Aren’t The Problem

by

A few years back I reported on an article by Bill Ivey and Steven Tepper in which they reported that surveys show classical music lovers are more likely to have omnivorous tastes and consume a wide range of non-elite forms of music than a lover of rock music.

But I don’t cite the article to make classical music lovers feel good about themselves, but rather to highlight their suggestion that it is technology which is creating a cultural divide between the haves and the have nots.

“A few decades ago, cultural consumption required a small number of pieces of equipment – a television set and antenna, an AM/FM radio, and a record turntable. Now cable television, high-speed Internet connections, DVD-rental services, satellite radio, and streaming-audio services all require hefty monthly fees. Even consumption that feels like a purchase, like an iTune download, is often really a rental…”

According to the authors the new cultural divide will be comprised of those who have the time, resources and knowledge to “navigate the sea of cultural choice” to inform, cultivate and share their cultural lives on one side. Those who lack these things will obviously be on the other side of the divide receiving their culture via tightly controlled media channels.

This was about six years ago and at the time I didn’t see that this divide would be any more or less destructive than the cultural divide out of which we might be transitioning, even though it may involve different segments of the population.

Looking back, I don’t know that a new cultural divide has manifested yet. I don’t doubt that the potential of a technology based divide exists, I just think that there is still a good mix of options for people. Once certain channels of delivery disappear because there is no longer a critical mass of support for them and choices are more limited, then I think we will see what the basis of the divide is.

On a related subject, I am also not quite sure if technology is segmenting or broadening audiences. While people have much greater control to choose only what they want to consume, it is also much easier to immediately explore new artists when your favorite performer says they were inspired by Etta James.

Thoughts on these ideas? Do you see a new cultural divide emerging? People’s tastes becoming more or less segmented?

Be Perfect

by

One of the ideas I have occasionally touched upon here is the idea that perfection is expected in the arts. That line of thought really started for me with an entry I did in 2006.

Audiences expect a sublime experience for what they paid. Funders expect that everything met or exceeded expectations, a mindset Andrew Taylor suggests arts organizations created and reinforce regularly.

Artists are expected to be exceptional always, yet musician openings at orchestras still frequently go unfilled despite many highly qualified people auditioning.

Come to think of it, that sounds similar in many senses to the current situation where we currently have thousands of jobs going unfilled in manufacturing because employers expect the perfect worker and are generally unwilling to provide training to close the perceived gap.

Last Of The Great Pretenders

by

Last month when I heard that Herb Reed of the Platters had died and was reminded that he had waged a fairly protracted legal battle over the use of the Platters name, I thought back to an entry I did about the question of who owns a band’s name.

At the time, there were over 80 groups listed performing under the Platters name and a number of people, including Reed claiming ownership. There was a push for truth in music laws to keep imposter bands but as noted in my entry and the NPR story I link to, it isn’t always very easy to determine who has the most valid ownership claim.

As something of a postscript to my original entry, Reed was ultimately successful in exerting his claim as the sole original member.

Do U2 Fans Like Ballet?

by

Back in 2006 U2 was supposed to play here in town but had to postpone because of an illness in the Edge’s family. We had a dance performance schedule for that day and I got it into my head to target U2 fans to attend the show with a “Does Bono Like Ballet?” ad campaign.

You can read about my rationale for attempting this and what the results of my little experiment were.

It was difficult to actually identify how many U2 fans came, though we had a good number of people buy tickets using the discount phrase according to the sales records.

Just for the record, the band did reschedule to just before Christmas. I went to the concert and had a great time.

Still Cool As Hell After All These Years

by

Today I am going to point you back to an interview Michael Rice of Cool As Hell Theatre Podcast did with playwright Paula Vogel.

Michael stopped doing his podcast a few years back but keeps the site working because, you know, he is cool as hell.

It is worth listening just to hear his customary lead in, but as I observed when I first wrote about the interview, Vogel has some interesting things to say:

“She does say some interesting things about the messages artists are getting these days. Among them are her feelings that “Darwin and captialism are very bad models for art” (3:15) and art begets art.

I was also intrigued by her idea that even though she was a klutz, she had to learn to play sports and as a result, all athletes today, artists of the flesh she calls them, speak for her inner athlete. She hopes for the day that every creative artist speaks for the inner artist housed in everyone.

[…]

She does present some quotable moments like “art is a dog that you feed that bites you” (7:05) when arguing that art should challenge society but the agenda of arts funders is to make art palatable and devoid of challenge.

Thomas Jefferson, Artist

by

On this lovely 4th of July, I point you to the Founding Father’s Musical, 1776. While there are some songs I like a little better, this one appeals to me because:

1- As John Adams and Ben Franklin press Martha Jefferson about what attracted her to Thomas Jefferson, she lists many of his impressive accomplishments as a landowner and statesman. But as to what really smote her, she says it is because he plays the violin. What arts person doesn’t like it when the art gets the girl?

2- I like the concept that playing the violin makes Thomas Jefferson a complete person.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_T23elli1Vc

Still Asking Why The Show Was Not Advertised

by

Back in 2006 I was pondering the situation where people came up to me at a performance and asked, “Why Didn’t You Advertise This?”

Now given I get this comment most from people who have attended the event for which they are bemoaning the lack of advertising, obviously something worked to get them in the door.

Often they did see/hear an ad or a story or heard about the show from a friend. The problem they have is that they learned about the show close to performance time and had such a great experience, they are concerned that having almost missed it, they will lose out on something equally great in the future.

I made this post 6 years ago so my marketing mix has changed a bit from the one I describe, but many aspects still remain the same, including the fact I get the same question.

What is interesting to me as I think about this phenomenon is that while something we did was clearly effective at getting them into the theatre, some people have an expectation that they will hear about performances from a very specific source, often print media.

I would be curious to know what others do when faced with this situation.

Brisket Will Keep Us Together

by

So I am off on vacation for a couple weeks. But not to worry, I have plumbed the depths of my archives in order to provide you something to think about while I am gone.

While I am taking a vacation to relax, I have made some arts related plans and appointments and hope to have some interesting things to report when I return.

Since I am going on vacation, I thought I would start out linking back to a light hearted remembrance of rituals some of the theatres I worked out enacted to keep the weary team bonded together.

Check it out, share some of your favorite arts related bonding rituals.

Who Owns The Meaning Of Art, Revisited

by

Ray Bradbury’s recent death has had me revisiting some thoughts about the issue of who owns the meaning of art. In all the retrospectives on his life, you may have heard he intended his novel Fahrenheit 451 to be about how television would erode literature and that he never intended the book to be about censorship.

Yet pretty much every high school English class teaches that it is about censorship despite his protestations to the contrary. In fact, there is a move to designate Error 451 as a response to any content removed from the web for legal reasons.

I wrote an entry tackling this situation about 5 years ago and cited an article about Bradbury which mentions he apparently walked out of a class at UCLA where a student wouldn’t stop insisting he meant the book to be about censorship.

In that entry I pondered how much license a person has to definitively state what an artist really meant.

As we write program notes, conduct Q&As or talk to ushers and patrons in the lobby, how much are we getting wrong? Maybe the idea that Hamlet was motivated by an Oedipal complex never crossed Shakespeare’s mind. (Especially since the concept is never considered until after Freud coined the term.)

Second is the matter of balance. Where does the balance fall between telling people what is meant and telling people there is no single correct interpretation? People come to educators and arts professionals for the tools to process unfamiliar material. We try to give them language and lenses to assist in this endeavor but part of the joy of encountering art is to see something no one told you was there.

The problem is that sometimes these realizations are tainted by the context we bring to the work and don’t reflect the intentions or reality of the artist. Now granted, personal context is the basis of some works of art like Impressionist paintings. But you are also in the position of not being able to tell people they are wrong about Hamlet since you subscribe to and encourage the “No wrong answer” school of thought.

I don’t want to necessarily paint Bradbury as an obstinate curmudgeon in respect to Fahrenheit 451. It isn’t clear from his interviews if he was annoyed at people for having a different interpretation about the book or because they insisted his interpretation was invalid and ignored it.

Many creators openly welcome and celebrate the variety of experiences people have interacting with their work. Poet Denise Levertov explicitly states this in her poem, The Secret.

As I wrote in a blog post about 5 years ago, I think her poem should be required reading for fine art and literature classes at handed out at arts events to reassure people they aren’t stupid of they don’t “get it.” Your perception of a work doesn’t need to be in synch with that of the creator for you to have an authentic experience.

And because the personal context you bring shapes your perceptions, it is worth re-visiting a book, recording, performance, painting, etc many times over the course of your life in order to experience it anew.

Still we come back to the original question. Who owns the meaning of art? Who has that last word? When a creator sets it free into the wilderness, do they relinquish all claim to it?

I Don’t Remember The Nest Being So Nice

by

There is potential that cities across the country can ultimately benefit from this economic downturn if they play their cards right and tap into those returning home to help contribute to raising the quality of life. This at least, according to a piece by Will Doig on Salon.com.

According to Doig, young people who have moved to the big cities around the country like NYC, LA and Chicago, find the cost of living to be too high and returning to the places they left, often to start their own businesses.

“Or as urban analyst Aaron Renn puts it: “New York City is like a giant refinery for human capital … Taking in people, adding value, then exporting them is one of New York’s core competencies.”

And it exports them in droves. People associate brain drain with the agricultural and industrial Midwest. But most years, when foreign immigration is excluded, it’s places like New York and Chicago that lose the most residents. Chicago loses nearly 81 people a day to out-migration, more than any other metro area in America. Between mid-2010 and mid-2011, nearly 100,000 people left the New York area. Los Angeles lost almost 50,000.”

Of course, this doesn’t diminish the fact that a whole lot of people are returning home to live a fairly depressing unemployed existence. But according to Doig, in returning home, these people bring expectations of products and services they experienced in the big cities, paving the way for these same products and creating demand for business and government services. They also tell their friends about the great environment in the “nests” to which they have returned attracting more people there.

The reason why I mention cities need to play their cards right is because they have a role in perpetuating an image of their cities as vibrant, interesting places to live. According to Doig’s piece, the reputation perpetuated about cities belie the actual conditions in those cities. (My emphasis)

“The mesofacts say that Charlotte [North Carolina] is a boom town and Portland [Oregon] is cool.” In reality, the economies of both Charlotte and Portland have been struggling for a while now. Yet new residents still flock to these places because the mesofacts tell them they’re hot, when it’s actually Pittsburgh they should be looking to, where per capita income has risen faster than any other major Midwestern city’s, and the unemployment rate has been lower than the national average since 2006.

“I’ve been saying to people in Pittsburgh for years, ‘What Seattle was in the ’90s, you’re going to be that big.’ And they’d laugh. But the data show it,” says Russell. “The editor of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette keeps saying the biggest problem in Pittsburgh is brain drain. And I’m like, you’re 20 years too late. Why are you torpedoing your own in-migration? When you’re running around saying you have a brain drain problem, what you’re saying to the world is, ‘We’re a loser.’ But if you can convince people the data are true as opposed to the mesofacts, then you open the sluicegates.”

If Doig is correct about all this, it could be the time for arts organizations to step up and take advantage of their trend. As Scott Walters and many other have noted, artists flock to cities like NYC, Chicago and LA convinced they can make their careers there. This is due not only to the alluring glow of the lights of Broadway, but to the practices of many regional theatres that often do their casting in major cities forcing actors to move there if they want to work back home.

This isn’t just the case for theatre either, Trey McIntyre confounded everyone when he chose to base his dance company in Boise, ID rather than one of the major cities. Artists aren’t just seduced away from home by the mythology of these cities, there are very practical reasons to move there if you want an opportunity to practice.

But as I said, arts organizations have an opportunity to reverse this trend by focusing on hiring locally and then getting the local arts community to tell their friends in the big cities why they should move back. For many of those who left, artistic spaces that seemed provincial and under equipped when they left may suddenly seem luxurious after working and living in dingy, holes in the wall in the big city. Yet they have also probably seen and done some pretty artistically interesting things.

As people move back, the arts organizations can tap into the returnees’ experiences interacting with the current thought and aesthetics churning in the big cities and adapt them as their own. You are never going to overcome the allure of going off to the golden cities, but by providing a reason to return, many places across the country can embrace the situation and leverage it to their own advantage.

Info You Can Use: Be Careful of Social Couponing

by

If you have been considering using social coupons to increase attendance at your events and attract new customers, you may want to read a study covered last month in MIT Sloan Management Review (h/t Drucker Exchange) that noted the repercussions of a badly designed deal could last for months.

The authors, V. Kumar and Bharath Rajan tracked three businesses for a year after they started their social coupon campaigns. The three businesses did attract large numbers of new customers with the campaigns, but experienced significant losses during the month they offered their deal, in some cases two or three times their normal net monthly profits.

“Such losses would not have been so serious if the businesses were able to achieve higher revenues and increased profits in future months. However, this was not the case. Despite their best marketing efforts, the three businesses had difficulty retaining most of the new customers who were attracted to the coupon offers. Based on our analysis, it will take the car wash service and ethnic restaurant 15 and 18 months, respectively, to recover from the profit shortfall following the coupon launch; for the beauty salon and spa, the recovery period for the coupon campaign at current business levels was projected at more than 98 months, or eight years.”

Now granted, given that most non-profit arts organizations lose money on many of their events, these facts may hardly be a deterrent to using social coupons. However, arts organizations do seek new audiences. The authors state that basic design of social coupons aren’t really conducive to new customer acquisition, but steps can be take to mitigate the losses of a campaign.

One approach may be to upselling or cross-selling products and services. Many theatres have tiered pricing on their seating so being able to upgrade to center orchestra may seem like a good deal to some attendees. If theatres are trying to attract a younger audience, they may want to cross sell tickets to their edgier space whose ticket prices are comparable to the discount the person is paying.

In other words, a person comes in with a 50% coupon for a $30 ticket and the theatre asks if they would like a ticket for a later date at the other space where the top price is $20 for the same $15 price. This approach helps to retain the person for another performance for what is probably the average ticket revenue at the other space.

Another approach the article suggests is limiting the size of the discount and the conditions under which it may be redeemed. They mention that the restaurant in their study later offered 30% discount on two days a week and reduced their losses to close to zero.

They also suggest only offering the coupon to new customers, but I am personally ambivalent about that. I think that sours your relationship with existing customers. If you have ever seen those cable commercials that offer tons of great channels at a low price –but only to new customers–like me you may have been a little annoyed wondering what benefit you will ever derive for having paid your bill on time for 5 years. To my mind, even if it isn’t the same benefit, existing customers should feel like they are rewarded for loyalty if the new kids are getting some sort of incentive to participate.

Shorter Board Meetings? You Have My Consent!

by

Last week a very interesting article came down my Twitter feed, (I apologize for not noting the source), written by Les Wallace about the best board meeting he ever attended.

What made it the best meeting he ever attended was a very effective use of the time, revolving around the use of a consent agenda. I had not really heard of a consent agenda before, but fortunately the folks over at Board Source wrote up a handy guide explaining:

A consent agenda is a bundle of items that is voted on, without discussion, as a package. It differentiates between routine matters not needing explanation and more complex issues needing examination.

[…]

With a consent agenda, what might have taken an hour for the board to review, takes only five minutes. Because it promotes good time management, a consent agenda leaves room for the board to focus on issues of real importance to the organization and its future, such as the organization’s image and brand, changing demographics of its constituents, or program opportunities created by new technology.

According to Board Source the types of things typically found in a consent agenda are the minutes of the previous meeting, confirmation of decisions, the CEO and committee reports, informational materials and routine correspondence. You don’t want to have financial documents and anything potentially controversial or requiring substantive discussion and decision making as part of the consent agenda.

It takes a fair amount of work to compile all this information. The organization has to be disciplined all the way through. Wallace mentions the work the CEO, staff and other board members did in advance to prepare the materials and have it placed it in the board section of the website for review two weeks prior to the meeting.

Wallace also mentions the board meeting moved from important to trivial matters rather than following Robert’s Rules of Order. The financial statements provided were color coded dashboard summaries of the organization’s financial position provided by the finance committee. An executive summary of staff and committee reports were provided at the meeting with more detailed information available online.

According to Wallace, this cut about 40 minutes out of the meeting and the board used that time to address strategic issues for the organization, attend to some board development and other governance issues.

The Board Source article has more information about how to use a consent agenda and exercises to use to help transition boards to this practice. It’s worth a look if this sounds the least bit intriguing to you.

One of my initial concerns was that the consent agenda could be used to hide problems amid minutiae or circumvent board members, but according to the Board Source guidance (my emphasis):

“If a board member has a question, wants to discuss an item, or disagrees with a recommendation, he or she should request that the item be removed from the consent agenda. Without question or argument, the board chair should remove the item from the consent agenda and add it to the meeting agenda for discussion.”

Using a consent agenda requires a great deal of discipline on the board if it is going to be effective-

“Just a quick question” is not an option when using a consent agenda. Either an item is removed and discussed or it stays put. This places the burden of facilitation on the board chair to be disciplined about stopping discussion and removing items from the consent agenda.”

Embracing The (Cost) Disease

by

Hat tip to Thomas Cott for bringing Jon Silpayamanant’s intriguing refutation of the idea of Baumol’s Cost Disease being the doom of arts organizations.

Silpayamanant correctly notes that sports teams have the same challenges as arts organizations. Just as it still takes just as many people to perform Hamlet as it did 100 years ago, improvements in technology haven’t brought efficiencies to baseball allowing them to play the game with only 6 people on the field. I was flabbergasted to learn just how small a percentage ticket sales comprise sports’ teams total revenues.

“The NFL, the most profitable of the Leagues, takes in 20% of its total revenue through Gate revenue while the MLB, the next in line in profitability, took in 35% in 2006 (down from 40% in 2001). The NBA gets roughly 33% of its total revenue from the gate.

[…]

So we have a performance income gap in the Sports Industry which is practically no different than the “structural deficits” found in Classical Music. But the former is considered “profitable” while the latter is increasingly being referred to as being in crisis. What has made up the shortfall in performance revenue for sports then? The most obvious revenue sources are through corporate sponsorship, merchandizing, and most importantly for the purposes of this post–Broadcast licenses (i.e. Television).”

As Silpayamanant points out, only a few sports franchises are profitable but thanks to revenue sharing “(the highest earners will give a disproportionate amount of their gross to distribute amongst the lowest earners), the field as a whole remains profitable.”

Now given the whole “non profit” element, I am not sure a ticket revenue sharing arrangement among arts organizations is viable. Television as a medium looks to be on the wane, but content licensing through online and other media might be viable if anyone figures out a workable model.

Merchandising might hold promise if arts organizations in a community or across a discipline got together and created some interesting products or services to distribute/license and then had some revenue sharing related to it.

But will arts organizations have the discipline and will to bond together toward a common cause and then have the patience to let their plans come to fruition?

A commenter on Silpayamanant’s blog reminds us that professional athletes were not always well paid and often had to work in retail during the off-season. In one of my very first blog posts I linked to Chris Lavin’s 2002 speech, “Why Arts Coverage Should Be More Like Sports,” where Lavin recalls that Wellington Mara who owned the NY Giants football team would give Lavin’s father piles of tickets in the hope of getting people to actually attend the games.

Success didn’t happen in the course of a couple seasons for the sport leagues, nor would it come quickly for any cooperative effort between arts organizations. One of the first hurdles would be a change in operational culture. Lavin’s call for arts organizations to be more open and transparent to the media is echoed today by people calling for arts organizations to make themselves more open and accessible to audiences.

Given the frequent questioning of the validity of the non profit business model for arts organizations these days, perhaps a league of arts organizations focused on monetizing anything that isn’t nailed down can comprise a viable way forward. I mean, heck, many orchestras are already running parallel to sports leagues with the threats of lock outs and hiring non-union players.

Info You Can Use: Job Descriptions, Not Everything Is A Critical Duty

by

Not long ago I came across a job posting for a non-profit organization that listed over 25 duties and marked each one of them as a core responsibility.

Now, my first thought was, if every job responsibility is a core one, why did they go to the trouble of applying a special symbol to each one.

My second thought following soon after was that this is why there is so much burn out in the non-profit field.

Theoretically, a job should only have 4-5 core responsibilities. Every other responsibility should be subsets of the core responsibilities or be something you do occasionally. (Vendor coordinator for the annual street fair, for example.)

Core job responsibilities are ones to which you should expect to devote a large portion of your day/week. If you have 25 core duties and even assuming you work at 10 hour day, you will only be able to devote 24 minutes each day to a duty. If indeed they are all core responsibilities.

If you have a job as a marketing director, your core responsibility might broadly involve promotional efforts, external relations and sales. In pursuit of that your a subset of your responsibilities might be supervising writers, designers, front of house staff, relationships with the boards, vendors and various constituencies. You will have many responsibilities, for certain, but most will be aspects of the core duties and not equal to them.

The ticket office manager’s core responsibility is to supervise the ticket office. If your core responsibility is listed as supervising the ticket office, marketing and publicity people, house manager, then you need to have as much contact time with those people each day as the ticket office manager does with the ticketing staff. Presumably those managers are competent enough that they don’t require such close supervision.

Your job descriptions may be very long in order to clearly define what your duties are. I had an email exchange with Drew McManus regarding this topic and he mentioned he has a history of advocating for detailed job descriptions.

I would probably agree with him. The way some job descriptions are worded, it often isn’t clear what the duties are. There are times I read job postings for executive director positions and I don’t know if the person will be supervising a marketing department or actually writing/designing promotional pieces themselves. With non profit arts organizations, one can never assume…

Now I will confess I understand the impulse to make everything a core responsibility. When you have so few people working for your organization, it is crucial that so many things be accomplished and you want to underscore for the job applicant—-it is IMPORTANT to our operations that these duties are successfully implemented.

(I will also confess this topic is something of a sore point with me since 90% my own job description is boiler plate putting “performing arts management” in place of the “facilities operations and management” hire the week before.)

But some things are more important than others and people need to know what the overriding priorities of their position are. The resources and personnel of the marketing department may be necessary to support fund raising campaigns and outreach programs in addition to promoting events.

Determining which of these functions receives the most priority will depend on a number of factors, but the marketing director’s position description should provide a basis for that decision. If the reality does not match the position description, it may be worth examining that fact during a performance review.

But that is a different entry altogether.

Thus Rises The Individual Curator and Commissioner

by

There was an intriguing piece on Wired last week (h/t Thomas Cott) about an alternative approach to funding events via Kickstarter. Andy Baio talks about funding record projects, conferences and festivals by essentially lining up the speakers/performers/resources and then seeing if anyone is interested in buying tickets to the proposed events/project. If there isn’t enough interest, it doesn’t happen.

What was most interesting to me is how this type of approach really empowers an individual to curate a project. You may not be an artist yourself, but you have an idea of what combination of artists and concepts might be compelling and then can set out to bring it together.

While this is sort of my job already, there is something of an expectation that there will be balance in those I invite. I have a certain responsibility to make sure my facility and events are being run in a fiscally responsible manner. An individual isn’t necessarily saddled by those expectations. They can do a project as a one off and no one is concerned about whether their activities are serving the needs of the community.

Makes me wonder if this might be a potential mode of operation for the future. One of many that might replace the non-profit arts organization.

If taken at its face, this approach seems shift some burden to the artists/speakers being invited. If the event doesn’t happen, will they get paid? While Baio doesn’t explicitly mention it, I am guessing you would have to provide some sort of guarantee of payment to the artist/speaker regardless of whether the performance happened or not. Baio alluded to this in a couple places, including his requirements for these projects.

Projects like these have three big requirements.

Strong, achievable concept. Commissioned works should be scoped down to something realistic, because you’re paying for their time, but high-concept enough to capture the excitement of other fans.

Organizer. The funding may come from the crowd, but there needs to be a single person managing the project and handling all the logistics and small details.

Due diligence. The organizer will need a firm agreement from the artist, committing to a timeline, payment, and any other demands. Also, if the project results in a tangible work, determine who owns the rights to it before you start raising money.

While most artists and speakers like being paid, they like to be seen and heard even more so there is also some incentive for them to help promote the cause. It may not occur too frequently at present, but it could certainly become commonplace if the practice of running a project up the flag pole becomes more wide spread.

The other thing, of course, is that it turns your audience into much more active advocates for the work because there is a possibility it won’t happen. We know that many audiences today, especially among the younger generation, tend to wait to see if something more interesting might come along before buying a ticket. Since the performance will occur regardless of their commitment, there is no incentive to commit. The threat that the event might not happen can garner an increased investment in its success even if it is only that people continually check the progress of the funding to see if the event will happen.

A commenter to the piece pointed out a service in Brazil which rewards the early adopters. It sells refundable tickets to a show until the minimum is met. Once the event has secured its funding, it starts selling non-refundable tickets and apparently starts reimbursing the purchasers of the refundable tickets up to the their full purchase price.

Info You Can Use: Doing Business With Board Members

by

Since I am on the topic of board decisions this week, Non Profit Law blog recently listed a link about non profits doing business with their own board members.

While it is natural for non profits to seek out people from specific professions/skillsets to be on their boards in order to provide some expert guidance and advice, things get a little sticky when it becomes necessarily to contract professional services.

Since board members often have a personal investment in the organization, they may tend to charge extremely competitive fees for their services. As the article notes, it can also be a little awkward to be talking about paying someone else to do work that a board member in the room is perfectly capable of performing.

The article notes that not only is it difficult to avoid having some business dealings with your board members, it may be hard to actually get good people to serve on the board if they perceive there will be undue scrutiny of how their professional and volunteer activities overlap.

However, it is important to have a conflict of interest policy for board service. Failing to have one and follow it create potential problems for the organization, especially given the role non-profits serve in their communities.

Experts say one danger of so many veteran board members is that a nonprofit could lose touch with how a community perceives the awarding of contracts to members of its own board.

“Public legitimacy and support are very important, and a more isolated board may not be as aware of that,” said Francie Ostrower…

[…]

Board Source , an organization for nonprofit boards recommended by the National YMCA, suggests that board members who want to do work for the organization should donate their services. If they can’t, they should follow the board’s conflict policies.

Other critics of the practice such as Joshua Humphreys, a fellow at Tellus Institute, a Boston policy think tank, take a dimmer view.

“Best practice for nonprofits is to draw a bright line between board service and doing business with service providers,” said Humphreys. “It creates divided loyalties between the public purpose of the charity and the private gains someone is motivated by.”

Siegel (Jack Siegel, Charity Governance) said the practice chips away at the independent thinking of board members who are the recipients of contracts, as they tend to side with their supporters on the board in other matters.

“If you see conflict (of interest), you can almost bet there are other problems in the organization,” Siegel said.

The article goes on to quote Siegel pointing out that it is difficult to hold the work of board members to the standard you should because you have a relationship with them. This point struck a sympathetic chord with me as I remembered some occasions in my career where the quality of the work by a board member was never in question, but changes to elements no one really liked were never requested for fear of offending the board member by questioning their style/taste.

One of the suggestions for eliminating the conflict is that the person leave the board for the duration of their company’s contract under the assumption that if the person is really invested in the success of the organization, they will extend the same discounts as they would when they were serving.

What the article doesn’t mention is that if they don’t extend the same discount it may actually be better for your relationship with the person. If all those involved feel that a fair market price is being paid for the work, there is less potential for resentment on the part of the service provider over sacrificing time and income on a difficult project and less hesitation on the part of the non-profit to assert that their standards be met.

Still, this is all easy to say in theory. In practice, you run into the old question, “how do you fire a volunteer?” When people generously provide time, energy and expertise, they are investing a lot of themselves personally. It can be difficult to refuse their help without making it seem like you are refusing them as a person.

That is why it is good to have a well-constructed conflict of interest policy to which to point. When the situation arises where a board member will start to do business with the organization in a significant way, you can point to the policy and note that providing the service will, of necessity, change the board member’s relationship with the organization and as such the following actions must be taken per the conflict of interest policy.

Board Source has some general information on conflicts of interest on their website and some samples conflict of interest statements for purchase and download. (I have never read them so I can’t attest to their usefulness.)

To Close Or Not To Close, How Much Debt Is Too Much?

by

A little over a week ago I received the news that one of our partner theatres decided to close its doors. That sent the rest of us scrambling to contact artists to see if we could salvage the tours with which the organization was involved.

The board has said they want to revise their business plan and perhaps reopen in 2013. In the meantime, come this Friday, the entire staff is out of a job. I am wondering if they will be able to resolve all their grants and settle other business in that time.

A conversation I had about their closing has had me thinking over the last week. When I read the news about their closing, I was somewhat relieved to learn the organization was $200,000 in debt. Given the debt amounts you usually see associated with failing arts organizations, this is relatively small. Though it is also more significant for their $1 million annual budget than for those with $10 million budgets.

Referencing this debt, a colleague asked if they couldn’t have simply gotten a line of credit from a bank to enable them to stay open. This got me thinking about how you determine when it is time to cease operations.

Given that they intend to revise their business plan and hope to restart operations, would it have been better to attempt a reorganization through the next season rather than lose momentum with their community and funders by closing?

Or given that their debt is about 20% of their operating budget, did they do the responsible thing by deciding to close in the face of what I assume to be dwindling attendance and fundraising prospects? Why saddle your new business plan with the burden of another year’s accumulated debt?

In the last couple weeks I read an article/blog post that criticizes a non profit board of a YMCA for being oblivious to the state of their failing organization. The article suggested the board should have seen the warning signs had they been paying attention to the financials.

Our partners were clearly paying attention and decided to do what they felt was the responsible course of action. There isn’t really any clear cut formula which dictates that you should close your business when your debt reaches a certain ratio of your budget because there are so many situational variables each organization faces. What one company can recover from may mark the start of a downward spiral for another.

I am curious to know at what point people think organizations need to close. Does seeing other non-profits rack up huge debts before closing or declaring bankruptcy inure us and make organizations more apt to keep operating under the assumption they haven’t reached that point of no return yet?

Right People, Not Right Product Make A Great Company

by

So as something of a follow up to my post earlier this week asking if foundation boards embrace non-profit values, I wanted to point to an article about what private enterprises can learn from non-profits.

The five points the article emphasizes are connecting with the community, understanding what motivates your employees, creating long term value, valuing people over the program or product and improvising.

Many of these points are representative of what the arts can bring to private businesses. While I don’t think the arts are exemplary in the diversity of employees and audiences it serves, improving that situation is a major topic of conversation and can help lead others to the questions they should be asking about themselves.

Likewise, while it may seem that non-profits don’t have a sterling record in respect to overworking employees, they do understand what motivates people to dedicate themselves to a cause in return for little material reward.

Lately one subject that seems to come up frequently is the idea that private companies have an unhealthy focus on short term gains at the expense of creating long term value. Many companies are starting to see that focusing on corporate social responsibility (CSR) is crucial for doing business.

It almost seems that if the non-profit sector can come up with an effective program to engender even a partial shift toward a longer view, a great service will be rendered.

The one point I especially liked in the article was that great people have more value to a company than great products and services. I think it can be easy to forget that when you are being evaluated based on the numbers you achieve (which is especially the case for non-profits’ administrative cost ratios)

4. The right people (not the right product or program) make for a great organization (Chris Pullenayagem, Director, Christian Reformed Church)

Many private (for profit) organizations rely on products or processes or programs to be successful in their business. For those that do, this seems to be an inverted way of pursuing excellence. People bring vision, passion and creativity to their work as evidenced in non-profit organizations. If the right people are hired, every organization will move towards excellence in achieving its vision and what it was mandated to do. Any organization can show results, but only this type of organization will thrive with excellence.

Manholes As Destination Tourism (Seriously)

by

In answer to the perennial question about how the arts can show their value to the community, I came across an answer/inspiration in the form of the Flickr group, Japanese Manhole Covers. There are nearly 3000 pictures of some amazingly artistic manhole covers.

With NYC looking to ban big sugary drinks and Disney announcing that they will restrict junk food ads, it occurs to me that a constructive approach to fighting obesity would be to commission these artists to make manhole covers.

People would get out and start walking around in an attempt to see them all. Heck, people may even include a manhole tour as part of their tourism. I am sure someone will develop a social media app that maps out the locations and people would compete to check in at each of them on sites like Foursquare. (Actually, looks like there is an iphone app for Japan.) Just to keep things interesting, the public works department can switch them around every so often so that people would have to contribute to a remapping effort.

Check out the Japanese covers, some of them are pretty amazing and show a lot of investment and pride in culture and community.

(Clicking on image will take you to the specific photographer’s page rather than the larger pool of manhole photos)

Osaka Castle Artwork on Manhole cover - Osaka, Japan
Osaka Castle Artwork on Manhole cover photo credit: Neerav Blatt

Stuff To Ponder: Do Foundation Boards Value Non-Profit Values?

by

There was an article on the Center for Effective Philanthropy’s (CEP) website in April that I felt started to give me some insight into why it seems that foundations and non profits often aren’t in synch with each other’s needs.

CEP President Phil Buchanan writes about research he and research analyst An-Li Herring did on the backgrounds of the CEOs of the top 100 Foundations. I was actually surprised to find that 60 of 100 came from outside foundations. Of those that came from foundations, only 21 were promoted internally from the foundation ranks. Seven had come from another foundation, four of them were already CEOs of those foundations, three of those four had come from outside philanthropy.

That seems like an exceptionally small number of people with philanthropy experience leading foundations.

The profile of the 60 CEOs from outside foundations broke down like this:

Twenty-seven had experience in the nonprofit sector broadly defined:

Those who ran operating nonprofits (not including institutions of higher education) number 14.

Those whose experience was in higher education, typically as a college president or dean, number 13.

Seventeen came directly from a role in business.

The remaining 16 CEOs who came from outside the world of organized philanthropy had positions in government, law, or other domains.

Since boards and CEOs set the tone and operational philosophy of the foundation, this can have a lot of influence on the manner in which they interact with non profits and the criteria they set for funding. After reading the article, I started to wonder if foundations have contributed to the pressure for non-profits to run themselves more like a business. I have never argued that operational discipline isn’t important for non profits, but they are quite different from for-profit entities.

Some observations Buchanan makes:

Second, foundation boards don’t much value experience at other foundations. Again, perhaps a focus on leadership development within philanthropy will change that, but moving from being a Vice President at Foundation A to CEO of Foundation B happens only very rarely (at least at the largest 100).

Third, experience as a grantee, if you exclude colleges and universities (which I’d argue are a different animal) isn’t much valued by most foundation boards when they’re searching for a CEO. It’s striking that there are more foundation CEOs who came to the position from a job in the corporate world than a job running a nonprofit (again, excluding colleges and universities).
[..]
All that said, I’d still argue that boards might want to prize operating nonprofit experience more highly than they apparently do. Leaders who have experienced the pressure to meet payroll with no endowment to fall back on, and have felt what it’s like to be on the other side of the table from foundations, bring something important. They come to the role with a hard-earned understanding of the challenges of doing the on-the-ground work foundations fund – and of what nonprofits really need from their funders.

After reading these findings, I wondered what it is exactly foundations value in CEOs if it isn’t experience, empathy and knowledge about the sector the foundation serves. Buchanan also makes an “if it ain’t broke” argument in support of foundation boards looking to promote internally rather than introducing a potentially disruptive element.

Having read the piece I am really curious to know if external hires are generally more effective than internal hires or not.

It would also be interesting to learn if non-profits would give the highest marks to their relationships with organizations lead by CEOs with a long career in philanthropy. Likewise, it would be interesting to know if foundations would give the highest marks/most support to non-profits whose practices/values are similar to those of the CEO’s past industry.

Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

/ Find It!

/ Recent Comments

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