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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.

Info You Can Use: Board Minutes

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Emily Chan over at Non-Profit Law Blog has written a two part series on board minutes. Both entries comprise a fantastic resource for anyone who has questions about the format and content of board minutes and the laws surrounding them. I was fortunate enough to be working on my most recent board minutes when part 1 was published and made some changes in response to the suggestions she makes. I am also a big arts administration geek and excitedly awaited the second installation of the series so I could post about it.

Part One is mostly about the format and content of the minutes. In it, she enumerates some common mistakes that are made.

* Failing to document a quorum was present;
* Failing to document or provide a clear description about a board action taken;
* Drafting a transcript of everything said at the meeting, including information that might be harmful to the organization if read by someone with access to the minutes (e.g., employees or members) or by a court reviewing a board action;
* Drafting and distributing minutes to directors after a lengthy period of time has passed;
* Waiting to approve minutes from past meetings until a substantial period of time has passed, decreasing the likelihood that mistakes will be caught and corrected; and
* Failing to maintain a reasonable document management system, resulting in the loss of minutes from past meetings.

The format of the minutes can vary, but a person unfamiliar with the organization and the issues it faces should be able to easily understand what happened in a meeting and what decisions were reached. Chan outlines what specific information that should appear in the minutes. She also discusses what information should be kept confidential, how a board should proceed into executive session to keep that information confidential, how the minutes should reference the executive session and how the minutes of the executive session should be kept.

The format should be standard from meeting to meeting, including the detail in which decisions are recorded. Minutes should be issued before the next meeting or within 60 days of the last meeting and kept forever. I always wondered about that last part. Minutes are among the items the IRS advises a non-profit keep for ever.

Which provides a segue to Part 2 of the series which deals with the legal aspect of board minutes. Directors and members both have a right to access the board minutes. The rules relating to access vary from state to state, Chan deals with California’ laws.

The IRS also has an interest in seeing the minutes. The bulk of the entry is devoted to discussing what practices are important to stay in compliance with rules and regulations for non-profits related to governance, tax code and audits.

Different agencies of your local and state government may also want access to minutes, especially if the organization is involved with legal actions associated with decisions made by the board. In the course of the merger my presenters consortium is seeking to pursue with a sister organization, the secretary of state requires copies of board minutes where different decisions and resolutions were discussed and passed.

Info You Can Use: Rebutt This!

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This first one is more of a project to contribute to than use, but ultimately useful just the same. Via the Americans for the Arts blog, an artist in Pennsylvania, Amy Scheidegger, got a little steamed when she overheard two teenagers dismissing the arts as a valid pursuit. “Art is, like, the most worthless degree anyone can get. Like, haha, they have a degree in making shit with popsicle sticks.” Scheidegger decided she was going to put together a book of responses to the idea that art is worthless, an Artistic Rebuttal Book.

She has put out a call for entries to be included in the book.

“For anybody who wants to contribute to the book with their own statement on the importance of art, or where art is hiding that the normal non-artist doesn’t see, or statistics about how much money is spent in any art-related field, whatever you want really, that cites the importance and everywhere-ness of the art we live and breath, now’s your chance to voice your love of art!

YOU don’t even have to be an artist, maybe you just know one (married one, birthed one or just appreciate their hard work, etc) And the statement can be about any kind of art as well: theater, dance, music, visual, the written word, movies, you name it,”

March 12 is her deadline so she can take an abridged version to law makers on Arts Advocacy Day. May 15 is her hard print deadline.

Second tip of the day:

You may or may not know that Facebook has changed their Pages layout. Those are the non-personal pages that businesses can make for themselves. Thanks to the Technology in the Arts Twitter feed, an article about how to best use the new features came to my attention. You should read the tips if you have a Facebook Page account because the changes become permanent whether you opt-in or not on March 1 and some settings you may have turned off will get turned back on by default.

One thing they don’t talk about that I have finally gotten to work with the upgrade is the Username function. I could never get a short, easy to remember username to register so I could actually post a Facebook address that wasn’t 60 characters long and full of arcane symbols. (e.g. www.Facebook.com/mytheatre) I was always told the name was available, but when I confirmed I wanted it, the webpage just hung. Today, first try I finally won the battle and have a nice brief address. If you too have had this problem, the solution may be at hand!

Info You Can Use: Free Speech and Copyright Law Resource

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There is a handy online guide about free speech and copyright and the arts, appropriately named Online Arts Rights, created by the Center for Democracy and Technology. While you ultimately want to consult a lawyer about such things, the site provides a good resource if you have questions on a variety of subjects.

They tackle issues related to “Sexual Content, Violence, Political Speech, Hate Speech, Depictions of Real People and Sampling and Appropriation.” Another area looks at the role of an artist and an online content provider and issues they should take into consideration. A third area deals with the penalties under U.S. criminal and civil law as well as how the government can and can not apply regulations.

Because so much content is being delivered over the internet, they also touch briefly upon how one might run afoul international law. As you might imagine, there is very little concrete to tell because it is often unclear what laws apply. Those where the content was created, those where the servers and routers are located or those where the recipient is located. On a related note, the site also addresses violations of an internet provider or content host’s terms of service and how material protected by the First Amendment won’t protect you from having your account shut down.

Interconnected Fates

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You may have heard that the police in Madison, WI are in sympathy with many of the union members who have gathered to protest their governor’s push to end collective bargaining rights for state workers. Over the weekend I heard an interview on NPR that mentioned both police and firefighters were turning out in support of the protest even though the governor wasn’t proposing to take away their right to collective bargaining because they figured it was only a matter of time. The fire fighter interviewed said they viewed it as an effort to divide and conquer.

Earlier this month Louise K. Stevens who writes the “Arts Market On..” blog made a similar observation regarding the need for the arts to advocate in areas outside of their immediate concern. (my emphasis)

No doubt that you have and will be getting emails and calls to action about this. But probably those calls are piecemeal, asking you for you to advocate for one or another of these line items while ignoring the whole, and that’s the problem. We a splintered sector that has never to date united around the concept of our culture, and now each splinter may be too small and too isolated from its compatriots to build a coalition to save federal support for any of the splinters.

We have a few weeks to save the half century-plus of infrastructure that modest as it may be demonstrates our public commitment to the breadth and majesty of our American culture, our shared story. If we stand splintered now, we may never get a chance to regroup. If we think that saving orchestras or contemporary dance is more important or that saving library funding and museum funding matters more than poetry, or that history and heritage and historic architecture should out trump theatre…well, how will it end?

Around the same time, Arlene Goldbard (h/t to Ian David Moss) wrote a three part series titled “Life Implicates Art” which while long, I think does the best job in summing up the challenges facing the arts and the wrong turns that have been made. Other bloggers, myself included, have touched upon these issues at times but her entries are timely in the context of all the movement nationally in Congress and state legislatures in regard to arts funding. (Also, every entry she makes has an embedded music video which is kind of a cool little hook.) Her ultimate conclusion, much like that of the firefighters in Wisconsin is that there is a high degree of interconnected interests among seemingly disparate groups.

In the first entry, she addresses the problem which is mostly that arts people think that the failure to secure funding is directly related to a failure to make a strong enough case for the arts when it is often more about politics rather than money. In some respect there is actually a weakness in the way a case for the arts is made. She notes, as I have pointed out a few times, that pretty much every industry can make a claim about the economic benefits of their activity. She notes, as most of us know, that with all the money spent on combat troops in the Mid-East, maintaining a nuclear arsenal and imprisoning a large portion of the population, the expenditures on the arts is pretty minuscule but there is not enough support for the arts nationally to make it politically difficult to make cuts there first.

In the second entry, she expounds upon the forces at work that determine politician priorities. She labels the arguments suggested by Americans for the Arts recent mail-in campaign to Congress as “so bloodless and soporific that I can’t imagine anyone actually reading all the way to the end of an op-ed based on them. Yet these have been the talking points for more than three decades. The result? The real value of the NEA budget has fallen by more than half. But hey, it’s all we’ve got, right?”

Instead she suggests a more strongly worded, speaking truth to power letter to all those who voted to support the recent extension of tax cuts to millionaires the revenue of which could cover the budgets of the NEA and NEH twice over.

Here’s an open letter along the lines I’d like to see circulating in every district represented by someone who voted for the recent extension of the Bush tax cuts:

Dear Senator/Representative:

Less than two months ago, you voted for tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans. They reduce tax revenues by an amount equivalent to paying out twice the combined budgets of the National Endowments for The Arts and Humanities, every single day of the year. At a time when our nation’s polarization of wealth is extreme—the top 10% own 80% of all financial assets; and the top 1% own more than the bottom 90%—I am shocked to think you care more about the wealthiest political donors than the well-being of the rest of us.

By cutting arts funding and other social goods, you are making the rest of us pay for millionaire tax cuts. It is wrong to sacrifice our children’s access to music and art classes to save millionaires from paying their fair share. It is wrong to abandon artists who have dedicated their lives to working in schools, hospitals, senior centers, and other places where their skills of imagination, beauty, and meaning lift spirits, build community, and help people find resilience. It is wrong to defund creativity at a time when we it is precisely what we need to excel in science and business, to align our spirits with hope and recovery.

It is embarrassing to be the richest nation on earth with the highest incarceration rate, prison population, and expenditure on war, and the lowest public investment in creativity. You want us to believe that you’re concerned about the economy and taxpayers, but really? Tote up the tax breaks included for millionaires: you just put $225 billion of taxpayers’ well-being into the pockets of people who already have more money than they know how to spend.

This is a shame and a scandal, and I’m going to do everything I can to let my fellow voters know about it. Restoring arts funding would be a tiny gesture to show you actually care about what the rest of us want: it’s literally the least you can do. You were elected to serve everyone, not just big donors. Here’s your chance to prove it. Don’t let America down!

Sincerely,

John/Jane Q. Public

In the third entry, she talks about reframing the arts. As you might imagine, the burden lays upon the arts community, especially in terms of expanding the definition of art beyond what is produced by non-profit arts organizations. There is an image of the arts as elitist that people who want to cut funding have evoked that many people in the arts chafe against because we know there aren’t people in black ties sipping champagne and making obscure literary references at our performances and exhibits. Except that there are some aspects of the elitist imagery we are responsible for perpetuating.

“It’s abstract, one step removed from things people really care about: many people who happily embrace words like music or movies, who sing or draw or love to dance, will respond negatively to the idea of “the arts”—Oh no, not me, you hear them say, I’m not into the arts. Ask that same person, “Do you like to dance?” or “Do you play an instrument?” and the answer will be “Yes,” with no evident awareness of contradiction.

That’s because they pick up on the exclusionary subtext. Many people who consider themselves part of “the arts” use that label to distinguish the work of subsidized organizations from commercial cultural industries and entertainments. An enormous industry generates multibillions each year from sales of music, movie tickets, video rentals, concert tickets, and the like; and enormous numbers take pleasure from making music, taking photographs, writing poems and songs, taking part in dance competitions and poetry slams, and so on.

Yet, except when they want to summon impressive figures about the scope of the cultural economy, mainstream arts advocates don’t mention any of this. There’s an embedded snobbery that presumes the superiority of nonprofit arts organizations and the work they support, a kneejerk dismissal of the rest. This discourse often has an air of unreality: I hear advocates saying that “the arts” are in decline, yet—to pick just one example—almost everyone I encounter integrates music into daily life, almost as a kind of medicine, self-prescribing the sounds and feelings that will support them through the day.”

Goldbard feels this can be reversed, of course, if efforts are made to change practice and national cultural policy. She derives hope from the fact that people are realizing that assessing value based on numbers doesn’t work in healthcare or education and that short term savings results in a long term cost. Care and education of the whole person today prevents more expensive problems down the road. Her suggested approach to employing the intrinsic value of the arts is no less holistic and intertwines with education, healthcare and commerce to bolster all these areas.

In an homage to Goldbard’s posting style, I embed the following video. It isn’t explicitly about art and many wouldn’t consider the singing to be art because it employs autotune, but that’s sort of Goldbard’s point.

If Everyone Is Gathered In The Middle of The Road, You’re A Freak On The Sidewalk

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I was catching up on some of the TED Talks I had marked on the old Google reader today when I came across a fun, short talk dissecting what makes a TED talk work vs. what elements people don’t respond as positively. The speaker, Sebastian Wernicke, even created a web site with a TED talk generator utilizing the best (and worst) words according to his statistical analysis.

It’s all tongue-in-cheek, but it also sort of falls into the category of “its funny, because its true” which in some respects isn’t so funny. A similar analysis is used to determine television and radio programming. The algorithms Pandora.com uses to suggest songs you may like based on songs you already like isn’t much different from the analysis many corporate owned radio stations use to determine whether to add a song to their play list. Even in a niche area like Hawaiian music, corporate has to evaluate and approve what gets played locally. I know because I tried.

I know it is not news that people gravitate toward the middle of the road stuff that challenges and excites just enough to keep people engaged but goes no further. Anyone who finds a new format to present this in gets copied. It strikes me that this may be part of the problem the arts face. The definition of the middle of the road has become concentrated around such a narrow point by analysis and replication that areas of the arts which used to be considered more mainstream suddenly find themselves of fringe interest.

I’ll grant that the arts suffer from a certain lack of nimbleness and we are seeing the result of that. I wonder though if the view of the arts as an interest of a fringe population is what has helped to lead to calls for defunding time and time again or for Rocco Landesman’s claim that there are too many arts organizations. There aren’t calls to evaluate organizational effectiveness and allocation of resources. The assumption seems to be that the nation is ill-served by the arts as a whole. Borders bookstores announced they were closing down stores last week. Starbucks did a similar thing a year or so ago and closed many of its stores. People may have said there were too many Starbucks around, but no has said we needed to have fewer coffee shops or book stores. The respective companies evaluated which areas were under performing and made a decision.

I will concede that governments aren’t currently in the business of evaluating arts organizations and so don’t have the data the head office a private sector company would have so they can create the criteria for cutting funding. I am certain most of us would be a little nervous about what sort of criteria might be set. Our return on investment in some areas is likely stronger in some areas than in others and it would be easy for someone who wanted to defund us to focus on our deficiencies. Or worse yet, compare us to the big impressive organization over yonder.

What I have noticed though is that no one who wants to reduce or remove funding has really made it an issue of quality. No one has even decided to call the arts on all the things arts leaders claim their disciplines provide at budget hearings. Which makes me think it isn’t a matter of the arts doing valuable work, it is matter of the arts no longer really being a mainstream concern. There are certainly other factors and it isn’t really a revelation that the arts aren’t as mainstream as they once were. It is a little depressing to recognize that no one is out there saying if we want their money, we need to do a better job at providing a benefit. Andrew Taylor noted this in an entry last week.

In terms of what the answer might be. It could lay in the direction of the random acts of culture program I wrote about the Knight Foundation sponsoring. I followed a trackback to that entry from The Waltzing Porcupine blog and discovered a link to an entry on the Asking Audiences blog that reinforced the idea that flash performances may be part of a strategy for arts organizations to become more nimble and find increased relevancy in audience’s lives. (emphasis from the original)

“What struck me most forcefully, watching videos of Random Acts of dance, poetry, classical music, and opera from around the country, was that the bystanders (well, they start as bystanders but soon become an audience) are obviously experiencing a range of real, pleasurable human emotions. That’s something you can’t usually see on the faces of arts audiences sitting in concert halls and auditoriums.

Why is that? Not just because they’re not expecting an arts attack and are thrown off balance, although clearly that’s part of the fun. I think it has to do with the fact that, in these Random Acts, the performers and the audience are in every sense on the same level. The performers are dressed like you and me. They’re in our midst, not on a stage. We’re together in this crazy business (opera, life).

[…]

But the Random Acts program is more ambitious and, from the looks of it, more dramatically subversive. It almost makes you think the arts have been in hiding all these years, playing it safe in their own cultural caves instead of venturing out to where life is really going on. Hence the feeling of celebration surrounding these performances: the arts are coming out of the closet, redefining themselves as things regular people do, in regular places — no longer “hallowed” experiences set apart from daily life.

[…]

But there is a subtle chipping-away effect. You can see the bystanders’ identities being challenged by their own reactions to the performance: “I’m not a dance (or classical music, or poetry, or opera) person. But wait a second. This is fun!”…

Making ‘Em Want To Sing, One Seventh Grader At A Time

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I spent the morning talking to 7th and 8th graders about careers in the arts. The assistant theatre manager (ATM) and I sort of tag-teamed the presentation which included slides on some of shows to help communicate the need for good skills in research, reading, writing, communication, collaboration, math, technology and dedication alongside the specific skills you need for each discipline. Since the ATM and I had different career paths that brought us to our current jobs, we talked a little bit about that while quizzing the students on their knowledge and involvement in the arts.

On the drive over today, I couldn’t help feeling I might be selling the students a flawed bill of goods. The radio was full of stories about proposals to liquidate the National Endowments and the bankruptcy of Borders bookstores. Against a backdrop of news that arts and literature were not valued in the country, are students going to believe that the arts have something to offer them? Now granted, many 7th and 8th graders don’t listen to NPR every morning, but the message is still out there, each story contributing to students’ general outlooks and attitudes.

The only bit of sunshine was a story about Portland, OR which discussed that people keep moving to Portland even though there aren’t enough jobs. What keeps drawing them there? The overall culture and atmosphere of the city, including a mention of the music scene. I knew I had heard this sentiment before so I did a Google search before sitting down to write and sure enough, I found stories from 2010, 2009 and even earlier where people talked about the lack of jobs, the cool vibe and the music scene. You can find plenty of blog entries on the subject as well. I was pleased to continually hear a story where the arts were mentioned as an attractive element of a city.

When I got to the school, we discovered we were assigned to choral room. That seemed like a good environment in which to talk about the performing arts. We spoke to the music teacher there and he told us because of the high stakes testing, they no longer had a drama program in the school. This was rather disappointing to us, of course. However, we also discovered that he has over 200 students auditioning for 65 slots in his choral classes. He said it used to be 100 students until American Idol first aired and he got a surge of interest. Then when Glee started airing, he got another surge. Now he has to turn away twice as many students as he can accept. The choral director actually used to teach band at the high school down the street from me, but moved when he started a family because he wasn’t getting home until 10:00 pm and then had to get back up at 5:00 to return to work.

Next door was the band room where the son of one of our college’s retired music professors teaches music. According to the principal, both the professor and his wife come in pretty much daily to help their son teach the class. If music gets cut in their school, (and the choral teacher is getting a masters in another subject area to hedge against that), not only will the school lose its music teachers, but the efforts of two parents as well. If the arts programs get cut from these schools, it won’t be because of lack of interest from students or lack of dedication from teachers.

This school does not serve zip codes where the education reflects the values of an affluent community either. This isn’t to suggest that the parents aren’t pushing their students to do well, merely that the school isn’t in a place where people automatically assume the students will excel and succeed based wholly on the neighborhood. I was pleased to see that the arts didn’t face an entirely uphill battle in relation to communicating the value of the arts in one’s life to their students. There were some good role models and practices in front of the students.

Americans for the Arts has set up an easy way for you to write your representatives in Congress about continuing to fund the NEA and arts education. I like the format because it is much more flexible about allowing you to mix your own thoughts with pre-written text than most email campaigns allow. I have had it bookmarked for a couple days because I didn’t really want to go with a lot of the pre-generated text, but hadn’t quite thought of a way to make what I had to say personal for my representatives. Thinking about what I saw today, I think I finally have something that will create the connection I want them to make.

Star of Your Yearbook

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I was reading on Fast Company about a company, TreeRing that makes custom yearbooks for people. Ninety percent of the yearbook is the same as the one everyone else in your school gets, but the other 10% you can customize with your own material. As the story notes, most of the time only seniors get more than just a head shot in the year book and this allows underclassmen the opportunity to add their own pictures to remember their school experience for that particular year.

It got me to thinking that this sort of service might be of value for recognizing donors in program books. There would be a common recognition in all the program books, but an organization could have some custom printed for a donor or a company that had provided support with a specific letter of thanks to them plus a listing of all the benefits they will receive in return for their support. It would likely be too costly to do for every show, but for a season opening event or a fund raiser, an organization might get them printed up.

Something similar might be done in the program books of the average attendee. Again, the cost would probably be prohibitive for most arts organizations and people would probably prefer to receive enhanced material through their mobile devices rather than in print. But, if one was planning to see an opera at a high end venue like the Metropolitan Opera and they were going to keep the program as a remembrance of the occasion, they might order up a program book customized with information they may need to understand the show and their first encounter with opera. It would definitely be a boutique service and the printing and delivery would have to be accomplished on a just-in-time basis, but it could have an appeal.

Info You Can Use: Helping Your Publicist Help You

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Last week Ciara Pressler had an entry on Fractured Atlas with tips about increasing your chances of getting press coverage. Her number one tip struck a chord with me.

The #1 way to maximize your chances for coverage? Trust your press reps to do their job. The time to hash out goals, strategy, and timeline is at the beginning of the promotional period, not on Draft 7 of the press release or in the middle of the night on email a week before opening.

The collaborative nature of the arts can work for us, but at times, against us. A creative environment inspires us to have ideas about more than just our own role, and some of the best results come from the synergy of a group. But the bottom line is that we all have a specific job to do,…

I have been in a position where others, whether they were actually in a position to direct my activities or not, micromanaged promotional efforts. Glad to have put those days long behind me. Now I get to micromanage and make people miserable! Seriously though, regardless of my position, I like to have a general plan in place well before an event is upon me and not make any major alterations. I am sure that is true for most people. You don’t want to be in a situation where you have to invest a large number of resources, be it financial or your own brain power and physical energy, to accommodate a drastic change of direction.

Some brief excerpts of other tips that I particularly liked:

Respond quickly.
As in minutes, not hours, and never days. Landing a placement can literally be a matter of being first to respond. …

[…}
Be brief & buzzy.

When a reporter asks you a question, whether by email, phone, or in person, it is not a cue to launch into your 20-minute (or even 5-minute) philosophy of the state of the arts in America….

Know what you’re there to promote.

If you’re being interviewed, stay focused on the topic of the article or segment….

Let the photographer do her job too.

It’s the publicist’s job to know which photos will work for a particular publication…

[One of my particular pet peeves. I have waged constant battles with people who are fine directing a show, but awful at getting people to look natural in a photo shoot and won’t cede control. -Joe]

Understand that media is a business.

A reporter is subject to an editor is subject to an editorial calendar is subject to the publication as a whole is subject to advertisers. If there are four major shows opening in a given weekend, there may not be room for a review of a new company’s first production. If an outlet’s primary audience is musical theatre lovers, they will likely pass on covering a Shakespeare play. Especially in the age of search engines, priority will be given to topics that will draw the most – or most desirable – audience to a publication.

I didn’t edit down this last one because this sort of response is common to those outside an arts organization as well as within. I got a call last week from a person telling me it wasn’t very helpful that they learn about the show from a feature story in the weekend entertainment section of the paper on the same day as the event. We had the event on websites, including those focused toward local families, newspaper and radio spots and had been listed in calendar sections repeatedly for a couple weeks. (Not to mention the brochure and email blasts we had been sending.) Fortunately, people who had been purchasing tickets identified each of those places as a source of information or I might despair at having paid for all that advertising. I explained to him that I had no control over what the newspaper printed and when. I noted that papers usually waited to print a story with big headlines and eye catching images until a time when the information was immediate and relevant because that is what people valued. I added that we were very pleased that they had chosen to cover our event amid all the rest of the things going on.

You Have Just Walked In To A Random Act of Culture

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Well, Opera Company of Philadelphia is at it again. Back in June I did an entry on their flash mob performance of La Traviata at Reading Terminal Marketplace. In January, they were back in Reading Terminal Marketplace with a flash mob performance of “Toreador” However, this time it was under the auspices of the Knight Foundation’s Random Acts of Culture program according to a New York Times piece. The program is centered mostly in those communities with a Knight Foundation presence, but they are looking to expand after using these communities as pilot programs. The website has video from other communities and includes opera, dance, brass and string performances in public gathering places.

“Everything we do revolves around the idea of weaving the arts into the fabric of the community,” said Dennis Scholl, the arts program’s director, who aims to produce 1,000 Random Acts by the end of 2013. “Our hypothesis is that people care about the arts, and if you analyze where they are and bring art to them, they will be passionate about it.”

One of the things I like about the Knight Foundation effort, other than the basic fact that they are supporting and promoting arts organizations, is that the program is pulling many groups together to work collaboratively. Opera Company of Philadelphia organized another event to perform Handel’s “Hallelujah” chorus at a Macy’s that involved 650 people. According to the Times article this meant the inclusion of “…28 groups — ‘everything from the Presbyterian church choir to the Gay Men’s Chorus,…’ ” If they can work together on this project, perhaps whatever conditions separate their organizations can be diminished or removed for future partnerships. I am not equating the abilities of church choirs with opera singers, I am just suggesting there might be other situations where they can generate more excitement together.

As I was thinking about this program as a possible template for connecting the arts with audiences, some questions occurred to me. If malls are viewed as appropriate places for performances, what is the fate of our acoustically refined performance halls? Will people recognize their experience in the food court is far from the ideal? Will they care?

If people can see a high quality performance for free, not realizing it took $30,000 to put the Macy’s performance together, will people balk at paying $50+ for a ticket because it seems so far out of proportion? They got 650 people at Macy’s for free, after all.

The Times article mentions that when the Opera Company of Philadelphia did their flashmob La Traviata last year, there was a groundswell of support that followed and hopefully such benefits might follow those that participate in the Random Acts of Cultural Program. It might be good though to also take the opportunity to educate people about what was invested to make it all happen. A little hand out that says, “We are glad you enjoyed this so much. This was a fantastic experience for us too, involving 650 people from 28 groups, 500 rehearsal hours and $30,000 generously supported by the Knight Foundation that allowed us to provide this 10 minutes random act of culture for free. If you thought we were great here, please consider coming to see us at our best when we perform throughout the year at Lovely Venue.”

Hey, Weren’t You In That Play With The Naked People?

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“Does Your Body Turn Heads Like Those On This Poster?” the poster on our bulletin board read. Upon looking closer, I learned that one of the directors participating in our 10 minute play festival was looking for people to appear nude in the appropriately named, “The Naked People Play.” Even though the 10 minute play festival is curated by the director of the drama department in the blackbox classroom/performance space and it is understood that mature themes and content are involved both implicitly and through explicit statements, I was the one people were going to call to complain. Yes, this is why I get paid the big bucks.

I had some discussions with those involved and read the script before I was convinced this show had something interesting to say. I was also sitting in the front row on the first performance where I could watch people’s reactions. The naked actors were positioned in a way that covered their genitalia with other body parts, but were otherwise naked. Other than a brief gasp and uneasy laughter at being confronted by two people sitting naked on stage when the lights came up, the audience of mostly college students and parents didn’t really have any strong discernible reactions, to my relief.

My take on the play was that it was about the nature of pop celebrity. The two naked people sit unmoving and without reaction while a woman discusses her failing relationship with the soon to be ex-boyfriend who has come to try to salvage it. There is a lot of 4th wall breaking while the guy, who can’t keep from reorienting his attention on the naked people, protests that the audience isn’t paying attention to his erstwhile girlfriend either. While she says the naked people, whose presence she really can’t explain, are a metaphor for their vulnerability in the relationship, I took something she said just before leaving to be the real message of the play. She notes that she and the other actor have done all the work and have the most at stake in play, but it is the naked people who are making no effort at all who are garnering all the attention and will be all that people remember when they talk about to show to other people. In fact, she says, not only will people not remember their names, they won’t remember the name of the play and only refer to it as “The Naked People Play.” (Which fortunately is the name of the play.)

I took that as a commentary on the current situation where people who put in the effort to develop solid skills, create well reasoned arguments or conduct stringent research are often disregarded in favor of someone who presents themselves and their views in a form that is the easiest to digest. In the end, I was just pleased that the show was generally well acted, well directed, the nudity well executed and not wholly gratuitous since it was used to illustrate a valid point. (Though they could have faded the spotlights out on the naked people a bit earlier at the end of the show.)

Wish They Had Given Me These Skills In High School

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Before I get into today’s post, I wanted to direct readers to an interview on an education related topic. Tim Mikulski, the arts education person at Americans for the Arts spoke to Wolf Trap Foundation Senior Director of Education Mimi Flaherty Willis about their program which brings the arts to STEM education in early childhood education. Might be of interest to those seeking to create a program to turn STEM to STEAM.

Last Tuesday I participated in a mock interview day a local high school was conducting. (Actually, it ran two days. The assistant theatre manager did the second day.) I think it was the high school’s ninth year doing this and it was very well organized. I received the resumes of the students I would be interviewing and some supporting information about two weeks prior to the day. The room had 30 tables with two interviewers scheduled at each so it was no small undertaking. (And remember, this was a two day affair!) We were given 25 minutes to interview the students, evaluate them and then call them back to provide feedback. In all we had five students to interview in these 25 minute blocks.

Let me tell you, these kids were better prepared than most of the interviewers. We were told that we didn’t have to research the companies to which the students were applying, but in a proper interview setting you ask “Do you have any questions for us?” This means that you need to know a little something in case the students ask what you like about the company or what expectations the company has for their employees. Of course, with my background in theatre, I was able to improvise inspired answers! Well…mostly, I was generally reinforcing the need for ambition, responsibility, education and good customer service.

When I say the students were better prepared than us, I am not as much diminishing the abilities of the industry people at interviewing as emphasizing just how impressive these 15 year olds were. Of the five, only one was clearly unprepared, a fact she admitted herself. The other four were very well prepared and reasonably poised. Of those, the two who most convinced us of their potential as an employee told us they shopped at our stores (an international surf chain and music store, respectively) and what they liked about it. I got up at the group debrief at the end and told the students that research and a personal connection created a strong case for employment. Most employment guides will tell you to do your research, of course, but few tend to do it.

The experience reminded me that I infrequently have someone come into my office looking for a job who says they have attended shows and really want to work here or have done much in the way of research about our programming. Most of those with arts backgrounds who come in want to act rather do administrative or technical work, alas.

I wanted to post about this experience to recommend taking the opportunity to participate in mock interview sessions like this if you have the chance. It gets your face out in the community as a representative of your organization and can help hone your interviewing skills. All the pressure is really on the interviewees. Since you don’t have to evaluate if the person would work out well in your organization, you can relax and use the experience as an opportunity to shift your perspective about how you hire and run your business a little. You can also see, as I did, what excites people about the companies to which they have chosen to apply. There might be a way to bring that same element to your organization or emphasize it more to the general public as a way to attract employees and interns.

In my situation, I was also able to listen in on the interviewing techniques of people at adjacent tables. The guy behind me didn’t have a partner and had a style that would have intimidated me a little even today. I don’t know what I would have felt like when I was 15. I spoke to him afterward and discovered he does high level interviews and gets job candidates in his office after 5 other people have vetted them. What he looks for from an interview is very different than what a 15 year old might encounter in one of their first jobs. He wasn’t mean by any account, but he was thorough and at the end told each student what his impression was when they sat down versus how they changed that when they started speaking. He pointed out the value of each of the activities and experiences listed on their resumes, which tend to be sparse at this time in their lives, and how they could turn those things to their benefit in an interview. I think it was more information than some of the students expected to receive because a few looked a little stricken as they departed. I was a little awed by the quality of his technique and took some mental notes. If I had thought otherwise, he reminded me that it was important for the students that I be serious and treat them like adults during this process.

Certainly, you may not always have a group that had been as well prepared as I encountered. If we had more than just the one unprepared student, it might have been a dismal experience. Even in cases like that, while you are making suggestions for improvements, you can always advocate for the arts and suggest the students might get involved in some performance classes to raise their confidence level, poise and speaking skills. (I was happy to see two of our students were involved in the performance classes.)

The Importance of Asking Why

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Daniel Pink had a piece in The Telegraph last week discussing the importance of everyone in your organization being on the same page about why you are in business. He cites a study performed by a professor from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School where telemarketers were split into three groups, one that was given reading materials before making calls that discussed personal benefits to working as a telemarketer, another group read stories from those who have benefited from the funds raised by the telemarketing and the third group who were given no reading materials at all. After a month those who read the articles extolling the benefits to the telemarketer were no more productive in their fund raising than those who received no reading materials at all.

“People in the second group – who took a moment to consider the significance of their work and its effect on others’ lives – raised more than twice as much money, in twice as many pledges, as they had in previous weeks and significantly more than their counterparts in the other two groups…

Grant and some colleagues uncovered similar results in another call centre study. There, when employees spent just five minutes talking to the recipients of the funds they were raising, those employees spent twice as much time on the phone with prospective donors and raised nearly three times as much money as they had in the past. And Grant found the same phenomenon in a study of lifeguards at a community aquatics centre. A group of lifeguards read stories from previous lifeguards about rescuing swimmers. Then, a month later, those lifeguards worked more hours, and received higher ratings from their bosses, than a similar group that wasn’t reminded of its purpose. “

People in the arts tend to be so passionate about what they do, they probably don’t have as far to go as those in other industries when it comes to knowing why itis what they do. But is everyone in the company basically united behind the same purpose? We are often told that everyone in an organization should be able to recite the mission statement. But failing that, they should at least all be able to voice the same basic organizational purpose. There is a tendency to groan and perhaps roll ones eyes at the thought of being tested on the mission statement. In many cases, it can be indicative of a poorly written mission statement that it doesn’t roll easily off the tongue. Reading how effective people who are mindful of the organization’s purpose can be, spending a little more time committing the mission statement to memory doesn’t seem like such an onerous task.

Granted, it doesn’t have to be the mission statement that has to serve as the purpose. It could be something on a more granular level like the front of house staff and volunteers deciding that over the next year they are going to help reduce any intimidating elements in the attendance experience and get people excited about the shows.

As Pink’s article draws to the end, he offers an activity to put into practice. “Once a week, at that staff meeting, spend a few minutes revisiting the question. Talk about the purpose of the week’s activities. Discuss your efforts’ effect on other people’s lives. Remind each other why you’re doing what you’re doing in the first place. “

Thank You, Volunteers

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Tech Soup had a tweet linking to a post on HandsOn blog post containing tips for writing thank you notes to volunteers. One of my initial reactions to some of the suggestions like writing the notes out by hand and writing drafts first, made me think that if we had time to do that, we wouldn’t need the volunteers in the first place. We actually do hand write our Christmas cards to volunteers and follow HandsOn’s tips about personalizing the message by acknowledging things they have done or contribute to our efforts. But that is a really long undertaking.

While thinking about adding writing a first draft to the process for every person makes me groan, they are correct that the more you write, the better you get and the easier it is. Also, thanking everyone by hand once a year like we do at Christmas does make the process onerous. Acknowledging people throughout the year as they provide great service breaks the effort up a bit more. It is probably more impressive to the volunteer when they receive a note out of the blue in the middle of April than at a traditional time like Thanksgiving or Christmas.

I have read many of the tips they offer before, though it is always helpful to be reminded. A tip they give that I have never really considered is the first one.

1) Focus on the volunteer.
Before you write the thank you note, try writing the volunteer’s address on the envelope and write it out by hand. As you’re writing their address, think about your relationship to the volunteer; think about where they’re living and how they’re serving. It will help you to write an individual message for that volunteer.

I think that addressing the envelop first and thinking about the volunteer is a good exercise for focusing your mind on what you want to say in the message. Often I will come to a person’s name on our list and my pen will sit poised over the paper as I try to recall all the contributions they have made. Addressing the envelop fills that time and can help you generate some thoughtful remarks as you think about them. The suggestion of thinking about where people are living intrigued me a little. I never really focused too much on that, but just thinking about the process of thinking of where my volunteers live reminded me that those who volunteered for the various organizations for which I have worked have been retirees living on fixed incomes and have invested a fair portion of their limited resources in travel and preparation for volunteering. Some of the best volunteers I have had were families in the lower income range where the parents were trying to instill the values one derives from volunteering.

As something of a corollary to this subject, the blog has a link in the right column to an Acrobat document, “The Nine Basic Rules for Volunteer Recognition.” It reiterates some of the same things about timing and degree of recognition.

1. Recognize . . . or else — The need for recognition is very important to most people. If volunteers do not get recognition for productive participation, it is likely that they will feel unappreciated and may stop volunteering with your program.

2. Give it frequently — Recognition has a short shelf life. Its effects start to wear off after a few days, and after several weeks of not hearing anything positive, volunteers start to wonder if they are appreciated. Giving recognition once a year at a recognition banquet is not enough.

3. Give it via a variety of methods — One of the implications of the previous rule is that you need a variety of methods of showing appreciation to volunteers.

4. Give it honestly — Don’t give praise unless you mean it. If you praise substandard performance, the praise you give to others for good work will not be valued. If a volunteer is performing poorly, you might be able to give him honest recognition for his effort or for some personality trait.

5. Recognize the person, not just the work — This is a subtle but important distinction. If volunteers organize a fund-raising event, for example, and you praise the event without mentioning who organized it, the volunteers may feel some resentment. Make sure you connect the volunteer’s name to it.

You will have to follow the link if you want the other 4 tips. The last tip reminded me of an embarrassing incident over 15 years ago when I was misquoted in a story about volunteers that made it sound like we used volunteers as cheap labor rather than that volunteers often provide a service which will often command a respectable wage. Thinking back on the incident and groaning a few years later, I realized it might have been better to focus more on what volunteers bring as individuals– mothering artists in the hospitality room, being as organized and motivational as a drill sergeant with a pleasant demeanor that made people forget how tired they were–rather than discussing them as a labor force. In many cases they are bringing the same passion for our cause as our employees are.

Fractured Atlas Has Found Me!

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Fractured Atlas has my home address. I am not sure how they got it, but I have my suspicions. (I’m looking at you Western Arts Federation and Americans for the Arts.) The reason I know this is I received a small pamphlet in the mail this weekend letting me know about Fractured Atlas’ services to artists. My assumption is that this is part of Fractured Atlas’ effort to have a more nationwide reach. While they do have membership across the U.S., the vast majority of their members are on the East Coast, especially around New York City.

As I am wont to do when I see them offering something I like, I am encouraging people to check out their services. The pamphlet says their goal is to support artists, arts groups, arts administrators and other creative types “in the business aspects of your work–through access to insurance, funding, education, technology, and more.”

They have designed the pamphlet like one of those choose your own adventure books to direct you through a survey of their services. The first page directs you either to a page on fiscal sponsorship and insurance, two of the basic services Fractured Atlas has offered since they formed. Here is a look at the center pages of the pamphlet.

Click Image to Enlarge

Fractured Atlas has been demonstrating this sense of fun a fair bit lately. Take for example their espionage themed blog posts about two of their research fellows working on their open source arts administration software ATHENA. It’s a little strange, but a far more interesting read than posts discussing how they analyzed the current market needs and their methodology.

Wait a minute, maybe I am not taking their spy stories seriously enough! Maybe their research fellows are much better than I anticipated and that is who found out where I live! If I turn up missing in the near future, start the questioning with Adam “the Hutt” Huttler.

Info You Can Use: Microvolunteering

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This information has been out since this summer and I have this sense of being vaguely aware of the company being mentioned in tweets, but there was no mention of its significance or I would have covered this at the time. I figured this was reason enough to mention it here and spread the word. (Or I was just living under a rock, but I couldn’t have been the only one.)

A company called The Extraordinaries has essentially shrunk Amazon’s Mechanical Turk service down to the cell phone level with a service called Sparked. I should clarify that this isn’t Amazon’s service offered through cell phones and the service rendered is voluntary rather than the paid work Amazon offers. The similarity is that it connects the needs of companies, in this case non-profits, with volunteers willing to do the work.

According to a piece on Springwise.com,

“…it enlists both individuals and groups of company employees to contribute their expertise to a nonprofit in even the smallest chunks of time. Nonprofits begin by posting requests to the site; those, in turn, are routed to would-be volunteers based on their skills and interests. Examples might include translating a page of a document into Spanish, for instance, or helping to choose a new logo; The Extraordinaries even has pre-built “kits” that turn a series of best practices into tasks for volunteers. Willing volunteers then complete the requests during a spare moment via iPhone (through a dedicated app) or web browser—or they can share it with their colleagues.”

Sparked uses the term micro-volunteering because the tasks are broken down into whatever segments of time you have available. You could conceivably perform tasks on the train commute into work or in a taxi on the way to a party. There are some examples of work that has been completed on their blog, including a recent story about a logo that one volunteer reworked.

I am probably not the first to say it, but given the way today’s digital culture is shaping interactions, I have to think this mode of activity mediated through technology is going to begin to figure largely in organizations’ volunteer programs. It doesn’t help with ushering and important face to face interactions, but it could help with promotional efforts, research, evaluation and maybe even editing program books and designing the covers.

Though I can see it now, people are so impressed with our organization when they attend a show, the decide to start microvolunteering on their iPhones during a performance leaving the staff in a quandary about asking them to stop.

Info You Can Use: More Foreign Artist Withholding

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The issue of the 30% with holding the United States levies against foreign artists doesn’t seem to be going away. Last year I wrote about my victory, with some help from the IRS, in educating my disbursement office about reading tax treaties with other countries. I thought between this new found knowledge and preparing the paperwork well in advance of a performance, most of the problems would be behind us.

Boy was I wrong.

When I returned from the Christmas holidays about two weeks ago, I had a letter from the IRS specifically directing us to withhold 30% from the payment we were making to an artist and then send them proof of having done so. You would think from such a letter that the performers were absconding from the country with huge amounts of cash, but we really aren’t relatively paying them all that much. Especially when you consider their agent gets a cut too. I don’t want to imply that the laws should be applied inconsistently, but it seems like the IRS is either focusing undue attention on small potatoes or they have shifted resources to scrutinize all foreigner artists’ activities. (I still say they would get more bang for their buck going after everyone sheltering money overseas.)

This story has a happy ending, at least for my organization. We received a letter from the IRS today saying the group has entered into an agreement with the IRS and we were specifically directed by name not to withhold the money. Still, the whole incident shows that the IRS is apparently stepping up their activities in this area and you need to be more aware of the laws surrounding withholdings. Artists from Abroad is a good place to start.

Info You Can Use: B Corporations

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Daniel Pink had a tweet today to a Washington Post story about Maryland companies signing up to be classified as a “B” corporation in that state. The B for Benefit Corporation will allow for-profit companies to operate to pursue social ideals.

You may ask what is to keep any company from operating in socially responsible ways? Many companies align themselves with causes to burnish their image, after all. It is actually the stockholders which may pose a problem apparently. According to the newspaper:

“These hybrid entities pay taxes and can have shareholders, without the risk of being sued for not maximizing profits. Companies can consider the needs of customers, workers, the community or environment and be well within their legal right.

A benefit corporation, for instance, could choose to buy from local vendors at a higher cost to reduce its carbon footprint, much as the Big Bad Woof does. The company, as a part of the incorporation, is required to file an annual report on contributions to the goals set forth in the charter and submit to an audit by an independent third party. “

This is different from the L3C structure I have mentioned before. Like the L3C, this structure is not recognized by the IRS. Though I am not sure if it is in the same nebulous area the L3C because it doesn’t seem like B companies are meant ever qualify as a program related investment for foundations. Though there is probably a lot about the structure not covered in the news article.

More information about B corporations may be found online at a site created to advance these type of organizations. I didn’t find any discussion about how the IRS views these organizations and if there are significant restrictions to investing. According to the site the need for a B corporation are: (my emphasis)

“B Corporations address two critical problems:

* Current corporate law makes it difficult for businesses to take employee, community, and environmental interests into consideration when making decisions; and
* The lack of transparent standards makes it difficult for all of us to tell the difference between a ‘good company’ and just good marketing.”

This is an effort they are trying to take nationwide so if you are interested, don’t think it isn’t applicable to you just because you don’t live in Maryland. This could be a viable structure for an arts related organization. While the status doesn’t provide any tax breaks, doing well on the required audit can be a positive signal to interested investors.

Next Season Is So Great, It Has A Codename!

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If you use the Firefox web browser as I do, you may have noticed links on the Google search page that take you to the community they have built around the “fire foxes” (red pandas) they adopted at the Knoxville Zoo. Or a link informing you that the next version of their web browser is code named Tumucumaque after the Brazilian national park that Mozilla is supporting in partnership with the World Wildlife Federation.

My initial, and admittedly, cynical reaction is that this smells a little bit like greenwashing. Though as an open source and non-profit project, Mozilla can weather the suspicions and pessimism a little easier than most.

Since people do respond to these efforts if they feel they are sincerely done, it occurred to me that connections like this on the local level might be a win-win for non-profit arts organizations and those with whom they partner. Such an effort could bring positive attention to both organizations. Partner with an observatory to dedicate your season to a newly discovered star or planetary body. Adopt students at schools/boys and girls club/future farmers of America chapter you already work with to present a “Student of the Month” where the student’s art work is on display on your website or in your lobby.

You could even duplicate the code name route and turn the T.B.A. listing in your season brochure into the focus of intrigue and speculation. Having it connected with a partner organization may help you avoid spending more time thinking up clever code names than you did in season selection.

If you start a partnership with a local science museum, just be sure to vet any suggestions they may make thoroughly. You don’t want to end up advertising Project Nematode just because one of the scientists thinks they are the coolest critters around. Theatres have enough parasitic worms associated with them already!

Grouse: What You Do When Your Salary Is Too Meager To Afford It

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It looks like it was a weekend for griping about performing arts. Ken Davenport at Producer’s Perspective opened the floor on an atypical Saturday post asking people to share their gripes. He promised to make it a monthly ritual if he got more than 10 responses and he easily passed that mark. A summary of the comments in one sentence would be – “How can they charge such high prices for tickets, yet pay me so little if I can shoehorn my way into a position at all.” There are a few complaints about audiences thrown in for good measure. The general source of the comments seem to be people living in and around New York City with a few people coming form other places. The tenor of most of the comments will be familiar to you if you work in the arts at all and are familiar with the New York City scene. Those aspiring to careers are following the same path those before them followed. This includes tales of people both inside and outside the business wanting them to work for fun or for experience.

My initial thought was that Broadway won’t change because it doesn’t have to and that people need to look elsewhere for their experience. While a similar situation is just about as institutionalized outside of New York City, those organizations are at least marginally aware that they need to find a better way to run their business and interact with their employees.

Which brings us to the second post I came across. Barry Hessenius posted an entry on his blog noting that essentially every job description for an executive director and senior management of an arts organization seems to be taken from the same template without any effort to acknowledge the actual specific needs of their organization.

He provides a tongue in cheek translation of this:

“The successful candidate will be a strong leader with excellent management and interpersonal skills. S/he will have the proven ability to build productive relationships with a broad range of internal and external constituencies, and have the demonstrated ability to work collaboratively with the various segments of the community. S/he will be an experienced supervisor with the ability and willingness to mentor staff and encourage staff development. S/he will foster an atmosphere of teamwork and collaboration among staff and volunteers throughout the organization. S/he will have a strong working knowledge of programs, production, board relations and operations. S/he will have excellent financial management skills and a track record for achieving budget goals…”

Into this:

“We want someone smart enough to help us figure out a cool vision for our future (that one is stumping us); someone who will attract great talent to the staff (though we can’t pay the staff very much) and whom the staff (despite working conditions that are hardly ideal) will love and follow anyway (someone who will hopefully get them to perform above their potential, because actually we’re understaffed by all reasonable criteria). We want someone who can make various factions of the board (currently somewhat dysfunctional and at each other’s throats) work harmoniously together and take on an ever greater workload (or in the alternative someone who will assume the board’s workload for them because it’s highly unlikely they will do much more than they are doing right now – which isn’t that much). We try not to micromanage, but we still do. We’re looking for someone who can get the best out of us, but someone enough like us so we are comfortable with them; someone who will push themselves, but not necessarily push us too hard. Did we mention that we want someone who can raise a lot of money? “

I have only excerpted a small portion of his translation so you will want to visit the entry to read the whole thing. I have also excerpted a portion of his sample job description. Trust me when I say you don’t need to go to the entry to read that. You have seen it many times before. I did a verbatim Google search on a couple phrases from Barry’s sample and found a number of job listings using them. I understand a desire not to reinvent the wheel, but if you are looking for the same person as everyone else, most organizations are bound to be disappointed. There are only so many of those paradigms to go around. The truth is, most organizations are indeed looking for someone a little different from the rest.

Bidding to Be Bumped

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You may or may not have heard that Delta Airlines has a new process by which the airline allows passengers to bid how much they would be willing to accept to be bumped off an over sold airplane. While I suppose this is an improvement over the old process by which they factored in when a person bought their ticket and how much they paid for their ticket when the airline decided who to bump in the absence of volutneers, the move seems to announce they are giving up any pretense at offering customer service. It seems like they are announcing their intent to overbook and that if you fly with them, you take your chances. Granted, every other airline may hold to the same philosophy and Delta is just being honest and open. I am just saying that it is bad customer service and public relations.

I can’t find who said it, I believe it might be Malcolm Gladwell or Daniel Pink, but I have seen someone cited a number of times in recent months that any policy decision which is made to benefit employees/your company is not a customer service decision. This seems especially the case here as it appears Delta is counting on a little game theory to reduce the amount in travel vouchers they give out by having people bid secretly against each other.

The basic thing I think they need to ask is- does anyone really come to the airport and go through full body scan/pat down at security with the intention of not flying? The fact that there have to be compulsory bumps can attest to the fact people generally don’t. I am sure someone will do an analysis of the most overbooked flights and the best bidding strategies and then go on the Today Show to talk about how someone can fly around the country virtually free if their travel plans are flexible enough. Most of us will be arriving at the airport with the specific intent to fly that day. Offering money doesn’t build a relationship with a customer, even when it is done openly and voluntarily at the gate.

Heck, do people show up to a performance willing to be turned away or have a disappointing experience even though they don’t have to arrive an hour early to get through security? Does getting your money back improve your relationship with a performing arts organization even if the parking was free and easy to find and the cost of dinner and a babysitter weren’t factors in the evening?

Perhaps other performing arts venues have changed their approaches, but even though I know not everyone will show up to a sold out show, I don’t oversell the house. Regardless of whether it is a reserved seating or general admission event, I always have a few seats held back to use at my discretion to resolve problems. I suspect there aren’t many places that would regularly oversell their houses. This is not just because of fire regulations, but because unlike the airlines, many places view performance tickets as a contract to provide a service. You can refuse people entry, but selling tickets you have no intention of honoring can be considered fraud. It is also pretty bad public relations so most of us avoid it even if we have no idea if the state would consider overbooking to be fraud.

My point isn’t so much to pillory the airlines. You could read enough of that over the last 10 years to have gotten your fill of it. I just wanted to provide a reminder about customer service being about relationships. Something that can’t be improved by providing an easier way to inconvenience people. Voicemail putting people on hold did not improve the experience over having a live person doing the same. This is something to remember when you consider emulating the airlines and their fluctuating pricing schemes. Yes, it may provide an improved yield per seat, but if your organization has been working to improve its relationship with the community, a more opaque pricing system is not going to accomplish that.

Cheating For Literacy

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Hat tip to Philanthropy 2173 for calling attention to a wild fund raising event being sponsored by the San Francisco literacy organization, 826 Valencia, called A Spelling Bee for Cheaters. Essentially, you join or form a spelling bee team which raises money for an entrance fee and then uses additional money to do everything from getting hints, getting a do over, using a dictionary, skipping a round or skipping straight to the finals round. They are doing this in conjunction with the creators of the musical, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee.

Though, alas, it doesn’t appear that they are performing the show, too. That would be a real event! Still, this sounds like a great idea for a fund raising event.
One can buy tickets to watch the fun. They are having some cool celebrities at their pre-event VIP reception it might be worth the price to attend.

One of the things I liked about the event set up is that they have a page which allows you to form your own team, join another team or sponsor a specific competitor after searching for them and viewing their personal fund raising page. (Actually, until I copied the link for the previous sentence, I didn’t realize I left their webpage and was on a page hosted by their donation processor, Gifttool.com.) Though not a lot of people availed themselves of the personal pages, yet.

Get Your Cheat On!

Stuff To Ponder: Volunteer Bill of Rights

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One of the many items I bookmarked to write on when I returned from my holiday break was an entry Robert Eggers did on the Volunteer Bill of Rights he helped institute at DC Central Kitchen. He said he took his inspiration from a concept championed by restaurant reviewers in the 1960s and 70s that diners had rights and didn’t have to take what was set before them if it was sub-par. (Hard to imagine there was a time when you didn’t send cold food back to the kitchen.) Eggers says this is what drove restaurants to offer better service and improved and expanded diners’ culinary knowledge to the point where we are now focused on the provenience of our food. One result he says is that every city now has great dining establishments rather than just a few cities.

In the same way the Internet provides a channel for customer driven feedback, Eggers feels that encouraging volunteer feedback and involvement will drive innovation faster than hiring expensive consultants. (DC Central Kitchen has 14,000 people volunteer every year which certainly does represent a lot of brain power.)

DC Central Kitchen’s bill of volunteer rights is:

ALL volunteers have the right to:
* Work in a safe environment.
* Be treated with respect by all staff members.
* Be engaged in meaningful work and be actively included regardless of any physical limitations.
* Be told what impact your work made in the community.
* Ask any staff member questions about our work.
* Provide feedback about your experience.
* Receive a copy of our financial information or annual report upon request.

They want their volunteers to ask the tough questions that will help them operate better, but Eggers says the middle right is the most important.

“….but the most purposeful of these is the one right in the middle—the right to “be told what impact your work made in the community”. THAT’S the kicker. We want, and think it’s critical, that every nonprofit in America be prepared to answer that question, in detail. No more fuzzy, feel good platitudes. No more bromides, brothers and sisters—it’s about facts and figures. Verifiable, Hard Core, Detailed Deeds.”

And following his philosophy of using the feedback of volunteers to make DC Central Kitchen run better, he solicits the assistance of the reader and offers some himself.

“We are an open source organization, so feel free to use this Bill of Rights in your shop. Add more rights if you see fit. If they rock, let us know so we can adapt our version. Call if you want and we’ll talk about how we trained our staff to translate talking to volunteers about these rights into opportunities to elevate the idea of what we are doing, together, so that folks can’t wait to come back—with friends, time and wallets in tow.”

Stuff To Ponder: Alternatives To Forming A Non Profit Org

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If your new year’s resolution is to do good this year, go for it! But if you are thinking of starting up a non-profit, you should be aware of the challenges you face. Both the normal processes to follow when starting a new organization as well as emerging scrutiny by the federal government. The Non-Profit Law blog has been packing a lot of informational goodness in their posts over the end of last year and the transition in to this one. Among their tweets of the week for last week was news of extra scrutiny of non-profits by the IRS.

The Gene Takagi and Emily Chan who write Non-Profit Law Blog also linked to a piece they wrote for the American Bar Association outlining the considerations a lawyer and their clients should use to evaluate whether they should actually form a non-profit organization. Many of the suggestions made are just good sense for forming any business including evaluating the need, whether it duplicates the efforts of another group, if there is sufficient clientele and a support base present in the community. They make suggestions of alternatives to consider.

But another person they link to in their tweets of the week really does a great job of providing these alternatives. Allison Jones makes suggestions for 6 alternatives with links to more information about pursuing these options.
 I had never heard of an intrapenuership myself.

* Free agent: More and more people are affecting social change outside of an organization. Harnessing social media, you can mobilize your network to take action or support a cause without the hassle of incorporating….

* Informal group/club: If the issue you are addressing is small or very specific (cleaning up a local park or stacking shelves in a local food pantry) you may just be able to round up a group of friends and get to work….

* Giving circle: … In giving circles you pool money and resources together to support an organization you all select. The focus is usually on a local organization, often extends beyond giving financial support, and the circles can be formal or informal….

* Local chapter of a national organization: … You can build on existing resources, support, and guidance to make a difference. Organizations that focus on professions, such as Young Nonprofit Professionals Network, Grant Managers Network, or Emerging Leaders in the Arts, tend to have chapters across the country. However other organizations in different causes, like the Reeve Foundation are open to supporters launching local chapters as well….

* Intrapreneurship: Do you work or volunteer for an awesome organization? Maybe you noticed a need because of the work you do? This can be tricky as many organizations are pressed for resources and time. However, you can harness your organization’s infrastructure to make small steps in addressing the need you have identified. Organizations are more willing to support innovation if there is someone (i.e. YOU!) willing to take the lead. Start by collecting information on the need and presenting it to your organization….

* Fiscal sponsorship: In fiscal sponsorship a nonprofit will allow you to operate under their 501c3 status….You should find an organization whose mission and work align with what you want to do and reach out to them directly….

Hey Joe, Where You Goin’ With That Ticket In Your Hand?

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My mother lives very close to Bethel, NY where the original Woodstock Festival was held. I had written about the plans to develop the grounds of the festival with a performing arts center and museum about six years ago. Both structures have now been constructed as part of the Bethel Wood Center for the Arts so I stopped by to see them during my visit.

Because of the cold and snow, we weren’t allowed out on the festival grounds when I was there last week. I could see a little bit of the pavilion from the top of the hill near the memorial, but because of the way the hill folded down, it was difficult to see it clearly. In that respect, the building isn’t a massive intrusion on the beauty of the surrounding countryside. While the current lay out is quite a change since my last visit, my festival coordinator eye was wondering if it was developed enough. The road looked too narrow to accommodate the capacity of the performance space and I wondered if there were enough lights in the parking fields.

The museum was very interesting. It occurred to me that it may be the only museum devoted to a performing arts event. The only other place that might come close is the restoration of the Globe Theatre in London and that isn’t really about a specific event. There was a simplicity to the museum design that I appreciated. Most of the exhibits were multi-media as you might imagine. Even though the festival has been documentaried to death at every significant anniversary, I still found myself learning quite a number of new things about the festival (like the fact there was actually a security plan). In fact, when we went in to see the once-every-30-minutes film in the movie theatre, I wondered aloud if there was anything new to mention given all the other video exhibitions. It turned out there was.

There is a fair size events room in the museum that allows them to host performances even when the outdoor stage is gripped with ice and buffeted by winds. Apparently there was a history conference there a week or two before and one of my mother’s friends who attended commented on how wonderful the grand fireplace was.

As I am wont to do, I paid close attention to all the customer service interactions we encountered. The volunteer docent was very welcoming and informative and pointed out that they had brought coat racks out into the lobby so that we didn’t have to go downstairs to the coat check. One guard tended to hover outside the psychedelic bus while I was inside watching a short movie. I was half expecting him to poke his head inside and scowl disapprovingly and grumble something about damn hippies. Maybe that was calculated to give you a feel for the whole experience.

One of the things I appreciated the most about the museum was the sense that the experience was still in process even though the event it recalls is over 40 years in the past. There was a booth for people to record their memories of the event for inclusion in the museum. There was also a special exhibition of recently acquired pieces. What was interesting about this was that while some of the pieces were really great, there were some flawed pieces as well. One film they had running had poor video and some times audio quality. At certain points it is entirely black and all you can hear is some music. I was impressed that they choose to include some less than perfect footage of less than notable parts of the festival when they clearly had no lack of good material to utilize.

I guess in an age where people are posting poorly made videos on YouTube, this practice becomes less remarkable than it might have been. When I saw it though it reminded me of blog posts and articles I have read urging arts organizations to discuss their failures along with their successes in a public way.

You Talk Funny

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Okay, admittedly this doesn’t have a lot to do with management, arts or otherwise, but as a person who started out in theatre, I am always interested in dialects of different places. Linguist Rick Aschmann has created an interactive map of all the North American English dialects. It is really a fascinating project in terms of being able to look at the dialect boundaries for different dialects.

One of my original intentions was to point out just how small a geographic area the Greater New York City accent actually covers. I grew up just an hour north of NYC but constantly have people express amazement that I don’t have an accent. New York State isn’t New York City, kids, no matter what you see on television. But my intent was circumvented by the revelation that Downtown New Orleans is a sub-dialect of Greater New York City. Will wonders never cease!

Aschmann also has audio samples of different dialects and is grateful for suggestions and samples to add. I noticed that a lot of the samples were politicians. I figured this was because politicians posted a lot of their campaign ads on YouTube which made them good sources. Aschmann addresses this noting the different sources for dialect samples and why they tended to be reliable.

“DISCLAIMER: I do not necessarily agree with all of the people speaking here: I have simply selected them as good examples of their dialect! Nor does the fact that many of them are politicians indicate that I particularly like politicians: The fact is that politicians tend to retain their local dialect more than other public professions (actors, artists), to maintain their identity with the locals. Also, they talk in public a lot, so the data is readily available. Country singers and southern gospel singers also tend to be reliable, and I like them better than politicians. Somewhat surprisingly to me, NASCAR racers seem to be very reliable, also: even though they travel a lot for the races, they tend to raise their families in their old home town, from generation to generation, and don’t care in the least how they talk!”

We speak about the arts as a medium of expression that we don’t want to see disappear. The same can be said of many regional dialects. So take a look at the map and take pride in your dialect! (Even though you talk funny).

New Year’s Not To Do List

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So I am back and raring to go. This is the first Christmas holiday season I have been away from my bed in about 10 years. I went back to visit places I used to work and gained some insights and ideas. I bookmarked things to write about when I returned, but it will take a little bit for me to sort and process some of these things in my brain. One bit of wisdom to start off the new year I came across was linked to by Daniel Pink. It was an entry on the Drucker Exchange, a blog maintained by the late management guru Peter Drucker’s Drucker Institute.

The entry titled, Your Not-To-Do-List, essentially advises organizations and individuals to examine themselves and decide what efforts they are no longer going to pursue. It sort of follows the idea that if you bring something new into your house, you get rid of something old. In this case, you are encouraged to get rid of something old to leave room for the arrival of future innovations. The Drucker Exchange cites a 2004 interview in Forbes where Drucker says:

“A critical question for leaders is, “When do you stop pouring resources into things that have achieved their purpose?” The most dangerous traps for a leader are those near-successes where everybody says that if you just give it another big push it will go over the top. One tries it once. One tries it twice. One tries it a third time. But, by then it should be obvious this will be very hard to do. So, I always advise my friend Rick Warren, “Don’t tell me what you’re doing, Rick. Tell me what you stopped doing.”

The only hitch I think arts organizations might have with this is that waning audiences can make many programs look like they should be put on the not-to-do-list when some just need the attention being spent elsewhere to succeed. I think it is telling that Drucker focuses on the almost successes and achieved goals for elimination rather than targeting poor performers. While the latter should certainly be examined for elimination, Drucker reminds us not to become too invested in the moderate successes just because they provide a degree of satisfaction.

I just read the article this morning and spent most of the day catching up with a backlog of emails so I haven’t really had time to ponder what I might want to eliminate both personally and organizationally. However, over the holidays I had been thinking of discussing with the staff a new approach to one of our events with an eye to more closely connect with the local arts community. The old approach to the event might be the perfect thing to put on the top of our not-to-do-list.

Holiday Power Down

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I am away from home for the holidays this year so my mind will be turning to thoughts other than arts management until after the new year. A couple of time sensitive links before I sign off until then, both from the Non-Profit Law Blog.

First is a piece in the Wall Street Journal about mistakes people make when donating to charity. Important things to think about if you haven’t given yet, but definitely intend to. One nuance that I wasn’t aware of-

“When you’re donating tangible physical property, you can only deduct its fair market value if the charity’s mission directly relates to the property. So, if you give your picture to a museum, whose mission is to display art to the public, you can donate the full appraised value. But if you give it to a school or other charity that doesn’t showcase art as its primary mission, the deduction is based on what you actually paid for the piece”

On the other side of the equation, a quick primer from Pro Bono Partnership on what sort of acknowledgment is required of a charitable organization when donations are made. They include some examples of ways to structure an acknowledgment letter. They also remind you about what portion of a donation is and is not deductible.

That is about it from me for the year. Best wishes to you, your families and your arts orgs for joyous holidays and a prosperous new year.

Importance of Being Involved With/From The Ground Floor

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Christopher Blair’s guest post on Adaptistration today on the subject of concert hall design is particularly relevant to me because we have been reviewing architects for a pretty major renovation of our facility. Unfortunately, my staff and I weren’t invited to the meeting where the architects were interviewed, nor did we have much opportunity to interact with them as they toured the facility so all we have to go by are the presentation packets they submitted during the interview. The presentation packets are heavy on why the architects and their team are so great and light on what their vision for the facility is. My technical director has been making inquiries about their work on some of the local projects they have listed to find out what the consensus on their work might be. (By the way, I am not using this blog as my outlet to complain. I have had conversations expressing these frustrations to the vice chancellor of operations. He is not entirely in control of what meetings we are included in and is having us participate as much as he is able. It is characteristic of a government bureaucracy that it tends to focus on its needs over that of the users.)

What I do know of the proposals is that all the candidates unanimously join us in our desire to raze our box office, a monolithic column which obstructs views of our gorgeous lobby mural, has no shelter from the rain for ticket buyers, is cramped and has poor lighting. Of course, we have our own requirements for the renovation which include improved restroom facilities, better drainage and lighting system. Though the details are scant, some of the architects are take a more utilitarian approach than others who are focused on the experience of the patron as they arrive in the parking lot until they get to their seat. Right now, that is the quality that is elevating some over others. Of course, there is also the matter of whether we can afford that vision or not.

One interesting thing that emerged from each of the proposals was that many of the same companies the lead architects were proposing to handle some of the specialty areas like environmental engineering keep appearing again and again. I don’t think I have it in me to pursue a degree in engineering as a second career, but if I were to do so, I saw some areas of low competition.

Coincidentally enough, I initially had one of the same concerns about the renovation to the stage floor that Christopher Blair had. Our current floor is pretty old larch. So many people were coming away with splinters that we covered it with a temporary masonite/plywood layer. One of the solutions proposed by an architect would be to replace it with a composite that wouldn’t splinter but would have enough spring to accommodate our frequent dance performances. While our stage is not laid over concrete as in one of the examples Blair cited, but one of my first concerns was how it might change the acoustics of the room. Even though we don’t really operate as the concert halls Blair designs for, there were some issues with the temporary flooring muting the sound someone wanted to produce almost immediately after we laid it down. My suspicion though is that it won’t adversely impact the sound in the room in any significant way. Still, it was satisfying to have confirmation from Blair that the relationship between the floor and the sound of a room are important consideration.

Speaking Art to Power

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Tonight we hosted a retirement party for one of the art professors on our stage. We were sort of the victims of past success. About 7-8 years ago, a professor had her retirement party on stage and it fired the imagination of the art professor. But this woman has had a 40 year history with the school which is no insignificant thing so when she asked us to host it back in August, we found a date we were dark for Nutcracker and penciled her in.

There were a lot of other art professors and some of her former students getting up to talk about how she impacted their lives and what the experience of taking her class meant to them. One woman had sustained an injury that prevented her from continuing her work in healthcare and she went back to school to study art and ended up winning some awards thanks to what she learned.

And the best part of it all was that the governor was sitting there the whole time. The retiring professor (who is not at all retiring personality-wise) was a long time friend and supporter of the governor since before either of them moved here. She supported him when he started running for office nearly 45 years ago and stood behind him on his first run at governor this past year. I knew he was coming, but I expected him to be in and off to another event. Instead, he stayed the entire night, got up, spoke about the value of the artist in society, signed his first proclamation as governor commending her and sat right back down.

The night unfolded essentially just as I had it should in my post yesterday when I advised talking about the value of the arts over and over again in front of decision makers or get them to talk about you. I have never had something I suggested in a post manifest itself so quickly and without so little effort on my part. Though it will likely still be hard going from this point forward, I will take the gift.

Talk About Your Org Before Someone Else Does

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Last week Americans for the Arts held a Private Sector salon on ARTSblog where they discussed where the interests of the arts and business intersected. Much of the discussion was very interesting, but one entry by Margy Waller stuck with me for a few days. Part of it was the timeliness of her subject. She cited the recent controversy at the National Portrait Gallery (NPG) about a video that included ants crawling on a crucifix. She quoted a commenter on the NPR story about the controversy calling art the leisure pursuit of the elite.

It immediately made me wonder if the commenter was aware that admission at the NPG, like most of the Smithsonian museums, is free and that the gallery contains very accessible works of historical significance from portraits of Presidents, First Ladies, Founding Fathers and Cornwallis’ surrender to Washington at the end of the Revolutionary War to Stephen Colbert. I am not sure what more someone needs to feel that museum has something to offer them rather than deciding it is only in the purview of others. Even with the exposure provided by people like Stephen Colbert and millions of people wandering through the NPG for free every year, people are unaware of the experience the museum offers. The museums really only get national attention when there is controversy and at that point, no one is interviewing the person talking about the benefits of the arts or the thousands of other works hanging in the galleries.

This weekend when the Honolulu Symphony decided to ask a judge to allow them to dissolve rather than undergo Chapter 11 reorganization, (a request which as of this writing, the judge has granted), the 140+ comments people made on the initial newspaper article revealed just how uninformed and unaware about the symphony’s operations people were. I am not referring to people making spiteful comments about how elitist classical music is who weren’t making any effort to learn. There were plenty of them. But there were others conducting conversations in which people were learning about the business aspects of the symphony for the first time.

A commenter with the handle 1SWBP wrote:

“Shamonu–mahalo for the explanation. That makes more sense now. I appreciate your taking the time. My empathy now runs much more deeper and the union stuff makes perfect sense. I guess I never realized how ‘large’ our symphony was. I do regret not being able to get out more and enjoy them more often.”

What made Margy Waller’s post most inspiring however was a video of Cincinnati mayor Mark Mallory talking about the economic benefits the arts have brought to his city in his State of the City address last year. It reinforces the idea that you have to talk about what you bring to the table, and talk about it, talk about it some more and then get others to talk about it when people get sick of hearing you. A little depressing though that there are only 113 views so pass it on if you like it.

I Write For Creative People Only

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Last month Ciara Pressler had a great post on the Fractured Atlas blog about changing the way you talk about what your offering so the focus is on the potential audience and not the art organization.

Your marketing is not a mirror, it’s a window. Rather than reflecting on you, any pitching of your product or production must explain to the potential patron why their hard-earned money or precious time should be spent here when there are so many other options out there.

We have heard this sort of thing before, but Pressler offers some fun examples of how you shift the focus to audiences without constantly saying, “You will love this” or “audiences love this.” (I apologize in advance for the amount I include here, I just like so many of her examples.)

“We’re #1! (reference unavailable)

It’s about you: Amazing Jewelry is the most amazing jewelry.

(PASS: At that price, it better be amazing. Know what I think is amazing? That jewelry I saw at the mall the other day on sale. At least I’ve heard of that brand before.)

It’s about them: Amazing Jewelry is dedicated to creative design for creative people.

(MASS: Dedication, how admirable! I am pretty creative… I’ll click on this link and check out their designs, which I will find creative because a creative person like me recognizes creativity, and will value it accordingly.)

Non-Editorial Process Disclosure, aka, Oz Was Behind a Curtain for a Reason

It’s about you: After one year of development, we present: Our Show.

(PASS: Why did it take so long? How long is it supposed to take? Man, if I took a year to do something at my job, I wouldn’t have a job. Just sayin’.)

It’s about them: Be the first to see Our Show in its limited Our City engagement.

(MASS: Oh yeah, I’m an early adopter. Just check out my iPad! I can’t wait to tweet this to all my followers while I check in on Foursquare. I hope I can still get tickets.)

No One Puts Baby in a Corner

It’s about you: Unsigned Indie Band is completely original, no-genre music!

(PASS: Eh, this clip sounds like something else I heard once but I don’t have the available brain space to connect it to anything I already like. Next.)

It’s about them: The progressive orchestration of Arcade Fire meets the ethereal vocals of Florence and the Machine – with a beat you can dance to.

(MASS: Who are these guys, my perfect Pandora station? It’s about time someone mashed up two bands I’ve heard of with an activity I’d like the option to take part in.)

While Ciara is right in noting that people do need a reference point when evaluating something new, I am a little wary about making comparisons to other people/groups because so many people are promoted as the (different age/gender/generation) version of a person or as the next (insert popular entity here.) You can suffer when fans of the existing entity don’t feel the new version measures up. People who read fantasy novels roll their eyes at claims that a writer is the next J.R.R. Tolkien because it happen so often. I once read a book review where the writer proclaimed his joy that there was finally another writer in the genre good enough that comparing people to Tolkien was no longer necessary.

A number of years ago I linked to a series of posts by Greg Sandow who gave examples of poorly written press releases that cited musicians winning awards and competitions that might as well been made up for all the significance it had to most audience members. Ciara Pressler’s post reminded me of that because that sort of approach focuses so heavily on the artist and doesn’t provide as much time letting the audience know what they will receive from the experience that they wouldn’t with some other soloist. If there is no significant difference, then best not spend so much focus on that person when you could be focusing on the value to the potential audience.

The first reaction I had to Ciara’s “audience comment” that “Man, if I took a year to do something at my job, I wouldn’t have a job,” was that it took a lot longer than that to get Spiderman up on Broadway and people still want to see it despite all the weak reports. But then again, most of us ain’t putting up something with the cachet and hype to endure development delays and technical difficulties.

By the way, did this post title make you want to read it?

You Need To Make An App For That

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In the last couple weeks I have come across two stories about iPads being used as part of art exhibits. Museum Marketing had a few examples of iPads being used to provide more information about an artist; an app that lets people use various features of the iPad to “Shake, touch, tilt your way through 10 different science and social history themes; and a game another museum is using to “convey the difficult of managing an urban water system – dams, water towers, water filtration, sewage treatment, and storm water – with a growing population.” A second piece I came across on The Telegraph website covered an effort by a Buddhist temple to display 3D images “restoring” now faded and semi-inaccessible statues.

Using handheld devices to deliver information about arts is nothing new. Concert Companion aimed to do just that for classic music concerts. With these devices and the wireless networks necessary to serve them becoming more prevalent, the opportunity to offer interactive support for performances presents itself. And it occurs to me, so does the anxiety of being able to meet people’s expectations of available cool apps on a non-profit budget. Makes me wonder if every production of Hamlet will be accompanied by a mini-game where you have to try to pour poison into a sleeping king’s ear.

Best scenario, such interactive tools break down barriers by helping people understand performances that intimidate them and a whole industry emerges to create apps to support making the arts accessible. Right now not only are there more people with handheld devices to deliver the content to, the ability of amateurs to develop these apps has increased since Concert Companion was first envisioned.

Info You Can Use: Google URL Builder

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Technology in the Arts recently had a tip about Google’s URL Builder. Designed to work with Google Analytics, the URL builder helps you track targeted campaigns by putting identifying words or phrases into your links. For example, you can post a link to an upcoming show and mention it on your Twitter feed and Facebook. Analytics will tell you that visits were referred by Facebook and Twitter, but if you inserted a link into posts across the course of a week from different accounts, you don’t know which post or account may have been effective or if the referrals actually come from your posts or someone entirely unrelated to your organization. Creating URLs with identifying information can help you determine how effective different efforts may be.

These links can also be used in emails and newsletters to accomplish the same thing. Tara George who wrote the Technology in the Arts entry notes, “For smaller organizations or independent artists who do not utilize broadcast email service providers (like Constant Contact), Google URL builder could prove to be a viable alternative for tracking traffic deriving from e-mail communication.” I am currently using a email service without these tracking abilities so I thought our “Give The Gift of Live Performance” holiday email campaign might be a good opportunity to use the URL Builder. I inserted a couple different tracking words into my emails to help differentiate between the lists and sat back to see what happened.

Well, there were fewer click throughs than I expected given the low number of opt-out requests we received. On the other hand, the number of ticket orders we received in the week after sending the email closely matched the number of referrals from the email. People who were interested enough to follow a link seemed to follow through with an order. One thing Analytics and URL builder can’t track is number of emails that were opened. There may have been a lot of people who opened the email but just weren’t ready to buy tickets for shows after the Christmas holidays or already knew enough about our performances from our brochure, website and previous emails that they didn’t need to click on any of the informational links in the email.

The tool can also only track when people follow links to URL addresses that you own/control enough to have placed the tracking script in webpages. So you can track visits to www.acmetheatre.org/ElvisShow.html, but not necessarily to the YouTube video the performer posted of Elvis Show. This didn’t immediately occur to me, though it should have, and I placed my tracking words in links to YouTube I included in my email because I wanted to track how many people were interested enough to watch the videos. Now the folks at YouTube will have my “ChristmasNews” pop up as a campaign word if they care to look at their Analytics report.

Tara George suggests asking others to create custom URLs for you or create these URLs for them so that all parties can track responses to interviews, stories, events and other collaborative endeavors that may drive traffic to each respective site.

Silent Evangalization For The Arts

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For years now I have been getting emails from Arts Job Listing Project alerting me to job openings. I don’t quite remember how I got on the list, but I know I have been getting the emails for about 7-8 years now. Until today, I didn’t even know they had a webpage. What I also didn’t know was that the emails came to me as a service of Revelation Spiritual Church in Cincinnati. According to the pastor, Brian Eastman, the “project is a function of my church’s belief in the value of arts.” Among their other projects are apparently http://booksfortheneedy.com/ and an insulation/corn furnace project, http://cutheatingcosts.com/

I learned all this for the first time in nearly a decade because the listing project has run short of funds and Eastman sent out a plea for donations. While they will send the listings for free they apparently normally hold listings until they get a couple together. If someone wants a listing sent out quickly, they would be charged a fee and that kept the project funded for about 8 years without much problem. The last two years have been a little tougher, unfortunately. While you can send in a donation or contact them directly, their primary suggestion is to order books through their Biblio site.

Honestly, the thing that struck me most about the email was learning that there was a church that had a program initiative to support secular arts organizations. I had not ever heard of any program like that. Sure there are plenty of churches that provide support to arts organizations, mine included, but Eastman lists this effort among his church’s specific ministries. The other thing is, in 8 years of getting emails, there was never any indication of it being associated with the church. No tag at the bottom saying “Revelation Spiritual Church” or scripture passages.

You could argue this is a genuine manifestation of a religious principle of letting your actions do all the speaking. But just as a matter of practice, how many of us could go 10 years without trying to garner a little recognition for the work our organization is doing. Though there may be a difference in degree, arts organizations and churches both engage in some evangelizing to garner support.

I am not going to necessarily suggest everyone donate to them. But if you are going to buy a book, may be think about doing it through their Bibilo account.

Given that paying for rush listings supported the service for a good number of years, maybe the best thing to do is think about paying a little bit for a the service they are willing to offer completely free. Most of us do this sort of thing already by dropping some money in the “Donations Welcome” box at museums with free admission.

Political Philanthropy

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Via the ever interesting Non Profit Law Blog and apropos to the portion of Barry Hessenius’ interview with Fractured Atlas’ Adam Huttler I recently focused on, is a piece by Ezra Klein in the Washington Post about politicizing your giving to non-profits.

In a piece titled “Giving is personal. Make it political,” Klein paraphrases Shakespeare, “I come not to praise charity. I come to politicize it. Or at least make it more aware of the political world around it.” He essentially takes the “give a man to fish…teach a man to fish” approach by suggesting while giving to a organization focused on helping the community assists them in their immediate purpose, giving to a non-profit that does policy advocacy helps change the operating environment for all the non-profits pursuing that goal.

He ends the piece saying,

“The point of this isn’t to polarize philanthropy or to warn anyone away from traditional charities. There’s room – and need – for an array of approaches. But at the end of the day, the government is the central player in many of these spheres, with the scale and power to make changes that other actors simply can’t contemplate. Charities that work to make the government’s policies better have a unique ability to take small investments and turn them into tremendous outcomes. If you’re looking for bang for your philanthropic buck, they’re the place to start.”

I have to admit a fair bit of skepticism when I read this. Klein writes for a paper in a town where lobbying makes the world go round so his view about effective use of money is necessarily tainted by that.

On the other hand, he writes for a paper in a town where lobbying makes things happen so he has first hand expertise on the subject.

And as I noted as I began this post, there is a lot of discussion these days that the arts need to assert themselves in the political arena. It is a sentiment being repeated so often of late that I wonder if this has become the equivalent of the stereotyped artist who doesn’t want to be bothered with the dreary details of handling the business side of their career and gets cheated. Politics can be a dirty, intimidating business that most right minded folks don’t want to get involved with. You need only read a little further in Mark Antony’s speech where he keeps referring to Brutus and those who stabbed Caesar as honorable men to recognize this is a situation which has endured in politics for a very long time.

Many lobbyists tend to be a little unsavory too. It is enough to make you wonder if the lesser evil might be to give to a local charity who may have high overhead costs versus paying large amounts to a lobbyist and getting little in return. Is it better to be cheated locally? Granted, the arts have a number of national and regional groups who perform various advocacy functions and the arts world is small enough that we can interact with the leadership and gauge their trustworthiness.

But would you encourage your supporters to donate to them rather than to you? Would you try to convince them to support the national group so that things would be better for your organization five or ten years down the road? People give to people, not organizations so your local supporters would likely prefer to give to you. Do you then pass some of their support on to an advocacy group? Even if their gifts are not designated to a particular use, most donors likely give because they believe the donation will have a direct benefit in their community. Do you tell them your plan is to create a better environment for all the arts in your state/city/county through political activity of some sort when you solicit their donation?

Perhaps these are conversations people will start to have with those that provide support. Some may have a sophisticated understanding of the process already and can provide assistance. A minimal benefit of such effort may serve to raise the profile of many advocacy groups in the public’s mind in the process shifting them from a logo in the “We Thank Our Supporters” section to the guys fighting for policy decisions. Granted, it might be difficult to explain why the local arts organization wants to give funds to the regional organization which gives the local guys funds for the summer concert series. It can be tough to understand why the regional organization can’t use NEA grants dedicated to free public programming for advocacy efforts.

Info You Can Use: Viral Media and Intellectual Property Guide

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The people over at the Technology in the Arts have been offering some nifty guides and podcasts for performing arts folks. Those I have looked at are fairly concise and easy to consume in a short period in your busy day. One of the more timely guides I have recently seen is about the legal considerations associated with posting video online that you hope will go viral.

As the guide author Amelia Northrup notes, technology has been moving faster than union agreements have been made so it can be difficult to know what is allowed and what is forbidden. Yet there is a fair bit of pressure to have a more extensive multi-media representation on the internet.

“Many of us have received well-intentioned comments from a friend or board member about posting performance footage online. However, there are not a lot of people giving practical advice on how to avoid an ugly legal run-in with your dancers over streaming video or negotiate with a union to ensure you are able to post the video of the third movement of a string quartet to your Facebook page. Building audiences with performance footage is wonderful, of course, but the benefit is nullified when your efforts cause a lawsuit from the composer!”

The guide has some case studies comparing the experiences of different arts organizations, both union and non-, who have worked to broadcast their works over the internet with varying results. Northrup also provides a brief guide to copyright law with a graphic that does a pretty good job at helping you get a general sense of which of the myriad copyright laws may apply to your production. (Though no guarantees you will be completely sure after looking at the graph.)

Northrup also discusses the fair use doctrine and address an assumption I never considered people might make. She points out that since using materials for educational purposes is permitted under fair use and non-profits are classified as educational entities, non-profits may assume there is nothing forbidding their use of protected materials. In short, it just ain’t so. On the other hand, some unions have rules that define use within certain parameters – “Actors’ Equity contracts have allowances for “b-roll,” which is approximately three minutes of footage that can be made publicly available, usually without royalties being paid to the performers.”

The guide also points out that more than just the work of the performers is covered by copyright and union protections and may involve payment of royalties and residuals.

“Artists contribute to the production by creating intellectual property, and therefore essentially become authors themselves. Any art used in the show, such as set, costumes, and lighting design are the intellectual property of these additional artist/authors (lighting designers, technical directors, etc.). This is also often a problem in the entertainment industry. In his book The Future of Ideas, Lawrence Lessig describes the difficulties that movie producers have clearing rights for logos, artwork, even furniture.”

And don’t forget that a video you post online highlighting interesting sections of a performance will also involve the intellectual property work of the video editors and related production crew as well.

The guide includes a list of Dos and Don’ts which reiterates knowing what the rules are, negotiating for the widest latitude of use from the outset and sticking to the agreement. One of the case studies reinforces the “don’t” of assuming the two related unions you are making arrangements with talking to each other, even if they say they are. There was one “don’t” that wasn’t really discussed in the rest of the guide- “Don’t assume that designers, actors, or any other artist or author will automatically equate your organization’s promotions with publicity for them.”

I have never run into an instance where this became a problem between an organization and artists, but I have had encounters where people at arts organizations assumed that an artist or designer wouldn’t mind if they used the artist’s work because it would promote them. I think that could potentially be the biggest area of contention in the future since technology seems to be fostering this attitude. That was the basis for a big discussion debate on composer Jason Robert Brown’s blog this summer. Brown is a big defender of sheet music royalties and had that view challenged by a young woman who felt she was helping promote him by trading his sheet music over the internet. Brown found 4,000 instances of people offering his work for free and was a little concerned about the loss of royalties that might represent. One of the points the young woman used as a counter during their lengthy debate was that he might stand to make money if someone used the free sheet music in a talent show which lead someone else to download Brown’s music from iTunes.

This is a topic that has no quick or easy answers. There are hundreds of comments on Brown’s post debating this topic and from what I heard, visits to his site rocketed into the hundreds of thousands. I daresay the basic conversation about intellectual property and the best intentions of fans when they use it hasn’t exhausted itself yet. You can sue those with malicious intent with a clear conscience. Responding to exploitation by those who adore you is another matter entirely.

Adjust Your Back For Bach

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Via The Art Law Blog, is a story about physicians in upstate New York who have come together to barter health care for art and artists’ services. This is a topic I wrote on in the early days of this blog. In fact the program at Woodhull Medical Center which I discussed in that early post is cited in this article. It would depress me somewhat if I were to learn that Woodhull was included in the piece because it has been the only successful program of this type started in the last five years.

But that may not be the case to much longer, according to the story, the organizers of the O+ Festival (O positive) in upstate New York are looking to incorporate as a non-profit to continue these activities. “Chandler and other organizers are incorporating O+ as a nonprofit and want to put on art-for-health-care festivals in other cities next year. Like-minded artists, musicians, and physicians from Philadelphia, Minneapolis, Nashville, Berkeley, and Lowell, Mass., have contacted O+ looking to replicate the organization.”

People interviewed for the story concede this is only a stop gap solution that won’t solve the larger problem of artists not having access to affordable health care. Still the “232 hours of service, valued at more than $38,000” the health care professionals donated is nothing to scoff at. Though as The Art Law Blog reminds us, you have to declare bartered goods and services on your tax return.

**By the way, if anyone has any clever suggestions for this program a la my title, I would enjoy hearing them. Especially bad puns are welcome. Among the others I had thought of were Tosca to Set A Tibia and Cesareans for Cezzanes. There were some unformed idea about scapula and sculpture as well as some icky thoughts about colonoscopies and hernias I would prefer not to mention.

Innovation In Practice

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A colleague recommended a piece on innovation that appeared in the Fall issue of Grantmakers in the Arts by Richard Evans called, Entering upon Novelty. Evans starts by talking about how the current state of things is based on the expectations created by the Ford Foundation when it was the preeminent arts granter starting in the later 1950s. He quickly moves to his vision of an alternative approach that he feels is more appropriate to the new environment within which arts organizations must operate. He presents a chart comparing the two which I have recreated here- Old Structure on the Left,  Emerging Structure on the Right

His commentary on the chart had some resonance with me.

“The emerging features are clearly those of a very different kind of organization, built on different assumptions. For example, in the third comparison, there is an underlying shift in assumptions about the nature of the artistic experience. From ”The quality of the artistic experience we can offer is dependent upon high levels of technical execution that are otherwise rarely experienced” to “The quality of the artistic experience we can offer is dependent upon the connection we make between our own and our participants’ creative aspirations.”

And, in the last comparison, there is a shift in assumptions about financial management. From “Permanent capital funds and buildings will stabilize our organization and protect us from annual upsets” to “Liquidity and fungible assets will support our ability to adapt rapidly to meet new conditions.”

Evans goes on to talk about how the arts have hobbled themselves by not engaging in a “genuine integration of artists into our organizations — not to represent a programmatic perspective, but as full members of the team, divergent thinkers and creative strategists.” It occurred to me that this approach helped to institutionalize the idea that artists must focus on their Art and can’t be distracted with the picayune details of business. Now we are engaged in attempt to get artists to think about the practical details of their careers and perhaps it is time to examine if the businesses have the artist’s creativity to be nimble and innovative in their operations.

Evans discusses how changes might manifest and the need for business models to change–and foundations’ funding criteria to make a corresponding shift in acknowledgment. What really interested me was his assertion that innovation could be institutionalized. He mentions a year long process that EmcArts, of which he is president, conducts to facilitate the move toward an institutional practice of innovation.

“The work is structured in three facilitated phases. The first phase concentrates on building an innovation team (not from the usual suspects!), researching possible new strategies, and focusing the team’s efforts on its most promising discoveries. The second phase is a midproject intensive retreat — five solid days locked away in the woods that telescope months of meetings and increase project momentum — serving as an Innovation Accelerator as decisions begin to be made. The third phase focuses on trying out the innovation through repeated prototyping and evaluation, in relatively low-stakes environments, as each organization decides whether, and how, to move forward with fuller implementation.”

It is the last stage that interested me most because as Evans says, arts organizations don’t have the resources in time/money/personnel, etc to test out new things. According to Evans, those who have participated in learning the process find that failure of an implemented plan has been productive for them and they are eager to try again.

As you know, we here at Butts in the Seats are interested in practical solutions.The desire to try again was the part that convinced me this approach might be worth serious consideration. There are a plethora of management and leadership techniques and theories that emerge all the time, many of which get discarded after a short time or when the next fad emerges. Just as when a business is recommended by a friend who says they will patronize it again, the fact someone is eager to employ an approach again says a lot for it.

Must Read: For-Profit Arm No Panacea For Non-Profit Funding Woes

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If you have ever thought that starting a for-profit arm for your non-profit to help support the latter’s mission, you must read The Nonprofiteer’s post on the subject. I have been hearing it suggested that non-profits embrace these types of arrangements as grants and donations have become increasingly difficult to secure. A study linked to by The Nonprofiteer requires one to pause in such considerations.

Writes the Nonprofiteer of the study:

“nonprofit agencies which choose to support themselves with for-profit businesses end up serving their clients less and worse. Moreover, when the businesses thrive the profits go back into the business, while when the businesses falter the losses are taken out of the hide of the agencies. “

I took a look at the study, “Social Enterprise: Innovation or Mission Distraction,” in which author Rebecca Tekula analyzes the 990 filings of Human Service organizations in New York County from 2000 to 2005. The number of organizations this encompasses is not cited though Tekula writes that the data “represents 700 organizational years” which averages to 116.67 organizations for each of those six years.

What Tekula says she found is that enterprises that yield non-business related income undermine the value provided through the non-profit program-

“As hypothesized, the internal capital markets of nonprofit firms seem to follow that of for-profit firms in that diversification leads to value loss as proxied by programmatic expenditure. What can be inferred from my findings is that this particular type of external enterprising behavior is associated with less value in the programmatic output of human service nonprofits.”

And, no surprise, ineffective programs can be a drain on the resources that should be directed to the effective ones-

“My findings are in accordance with cross-subsidy theories of diversification in which internal budgeting allocates funds to divisions with few investment opportunities (ailing enterprises of nonprofits) while failing to channel funds to those with ample investment opportunities (effective, efficient programs). While this research is a first step toward identifying the factors associated with earned income behavior in nonprofit organizations, there is much work to be done in this area.”

Tekula is careful not to say this will be true for all sectors of the non-profit world and encourages similar study of the arts, healthcare and education. But does caution, (my emphasis)

“Clearly more thought and research must be invested in this area and caution must be given in popularizing and glorifying the unproven benefits of unrelated or external enterprising activities on the very organizations that have become important service providers for society’s neediest individuals.”

Little More About Politics and Art

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I finally got around to reading an interview I bookmarked where Barry Hessenius conducted with Adam Huttler, Executive Director of Fractured Atlas. There was a lot of interesting things said, but I thought I would focus in on some sections related to some recent posts I made.

At one point Huttler touches on the topic I discussed yesterday. The NEA doesn’t get much funding and what it does get is subject to contentious scrutiny. Huttler points out however there are other areas in which people can advocate which can greatly impact the arts.

“Meanwhile, policymakers – on both a local and national level – have countless other levers for impacting cultural vitality. Zoning laws can determine whether urban cultural enclaves remain dynamic hubs of creativity or gentrify into sterile swaths of Starbucks and bank branches. Immigration rules can facilitate or inhibit international cultural exchange…We need to take a more holistic view in which the arts play a role in projects funded by the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Transportation, or the Department of Homeland Security.”

Hessenius points out that the NEA is not the only source of funding for the arts and in addition to those departments Huttler mentioned, there is also the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Smithsonian. The conversation moves toward the idea that the arts need to exercise their political clout a lot more if they expect better results. There is a discussion of 501 (c) (4)s and political action committees as a tool and some of the complications relative to those structures.

As conversation in this area continues, Hessnius talks about an option I had mentioned as a possible consequence of people turning their back on NEA funding and perhaps 501 c 3 status–performance to benefit political ends. I actually didn’t know that it was permitted under current status as apparently many don’t.

“Some have argued (me included) that the nonprofit arts sector (by taking advantage of its ability to do performance benefits to fund its political activities) ought to be one of the most powerful special interest groups on the playing field – with real political clout that might not only help us to obtain more funding, but pass diverse legislation on all the levels as you suggest – from tax laws to zoning regulations. Yet we do not.”

Huttler notes that laws governing political lobbying and activity make things a little more involved than that, but still an under utilized option that Fractured Atlas will be exploring.

Where Your Duty As A Non-Profit Lies

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I had to wonder if people were intentionally misreading the post I made about the Arts Council of England requiring applications for funding. My declaration that “Once again, Europe proves their arts policy is superior to that of the U.S.!” was meant to be read a little tongue in cheek lampooning the constant refrain that the arts policy and audiences in Europe are better than in the U.S. And even if that tone didn’t come across, I would have thought that when I wrote sentence or two later that the reality was that the policy is exclusionary and then spend 500 or so words talking about how it will be improved, it would be clear that I wasn’t seriously supporting the old way of doing things.

But I wasn’t really put off by the comments on the entry or by Leonard Jacobs post criticizing this view on The Clyde Fitch Report. In my mind, I was guilty of the age old failing – If you have to explain the joke, you didn’t deliver it correctly. Besides, I figured my blog would get some traffic from the Clyde Fitch Report post.

But then I got to thinking about it. No arts organization ever forms for the purpose of filling out grant applications. Yes, you know when you form your non-profit, it is something of a necessity for doing business. It isn’t a surprise that filling them out does indeed divert energy from the core purpose of the organization. So yes, on second thought, I do think it is pretty much the duty of every non-profit organization to gain funding with the least effort possible so they can get on with their core purpose. It isn’t just me saying this. The biggest measure of non-profit effectiveness is the ratio of how much raised goes toward programs vs how much goes toward overhead and expenses. This is the measure Charity Navigator used to rate my local United Way dead last among local non-profits.

Charity Navigator admits their evaluation doesn’t look at the quality of programs non-profits offer, a fact those at the bottom of the list are quick to cite when they decry the legitimacy of the rankings. But this is a measure that is gaining more and more traction, especially among politicians who are questioning the salaries of those few non-profit executives who actually make enough worth noting.

No surprise politics plays a big part in who gets government funding and who doesn’t. In that context it is get tougher to say that the old policy for funding by the Arts Council of England is really worse than that of the NEA. There are categories of people who were once eligible for funding by the NEA who no longer are due to changes in laws and policies made in reaction to political pressure. We have had mayors of New York City who have unilaterally declared that arts organizations will not receive funding because of program content. Are situations where individuals have the power to rescind funding awarded by a small group of people based on an application any more egalitarian than a situation where a small group of people are empowered to decide who will receive funding based on their own judgments (as well informed as they may be by the vastly superior arts environment which exists in Europe)?

Actually, on the face of it, I would say yes since the criteria being used by the NEA to award grants are clear from the outset, regardless of the pressures exerted to shape those criteria. As I mentioned in my original post, the process and criteria by which the Arts Council decided which organizations to fund and how an organization might even enter the council’s consideration was murky at best. Politics are going to tinge any decision making process where judgments are present. Lets not pretend though that the lengthy application process, be it an electronic or paper submission process, is the best and only way for governments to disburse funds.

When my consortium met last week, one of the aspirations we had for our fledgling merger was right in line with the regional partner initiatives the Arts Council of England hopes to implement. We are looking to become organized enough to propose becoming a partner organization to the state arts foundation and receive annual funding for our activities outside of the normal granting process. To my mind 10-15 performing arts entities coming together to work in partnership is an approach worth funding in an alternative manner. I believe it would be counterproductive to require each of us to submit a separate applications because it would perpetuate the idea that we needed to compete as individuals for funding rather than to collaborate.

Let’s be honest, there is a lot of self-interest when non-profits are seeking funding. As Leonard Jacobs notes, many funders have restrictive criteria about what they will fund based on interests, geography and shifting priorities. Our interests in the criteria for government funding is based immediately on whether we and perhaps our close partners qualify. A desire for an egalitarian arts policy that benefits everyone else is more philosophically abstract, based generally on creating an environment in which our potential audience base comes to appreciate the arts. If our perceived rivals gain significantly more largesse, our attitudes can become less charitable.

I am all for any system that encourages a shift toward group interest and responsibility–especially if the group shares in the paperwork rather than just me. But more importantly if you haven’t guessed, I would welcome a shift away from the damn paperwork. Leonard Jacobs says to stop whining about the paperwork and do some work for it. Well, it is the art that is the work you are doing for the grant, not the paperwork. Nobody is interested in funding paperwork. Though reviewing written applications may be efficient in terms of cost, the paperwork is really about the least effective way to measure the worth of a project. It is just a measure of good writing ability, which granted is an art itself and deserving of support. But that is just the genteel way of saying that someone knows how to bullshit well and use all the correct phrases and keywords. Many of the online application forms don’t let you submit them if your costs exceed your income and therefore require that you lie to complete them even if the truth is that you spent $50 more than you made. The whole process is dishonest before anyone even looks at the application.

The arts by their very nature are meant to be seen and experienced. Yes, sending people out to visit grantees is expensive, but perhaps it would be done if there was better funding. Yes, the visiting team might make subjective judgments about the worthiness of your organization, but they are doing that already when they read your grant application.

Colleges and universities are accredited by regional bodies who send people to evaluate them on a regular basis to bring them into compliance with current standards. Now I will readily admit that compliance translates into paperwork. I will also concede that the schools probably pay quite a lot to be part of this process. And even though they aren’t part of the government, members of Congress have been criticizing the accrediting bodies. So I won’t even pretend this idea would satisfy the NEA’s biggest critics.

But if arts groups were organized under regional bodies, then the cost could be borne by many just as it is with the schools. The experience of those participating as visiting evaluators would be much more valuable than sitting on a grant review committee. Instead of learning what committees were looking for in a grant application, the committee member could actually learn about the best practices by groups in their region and share that information with their home organization. Not to mention they would be sharing information and developing deeper relationships with other arts professionals beyond what can be accomplished at conferences.

Granted so much of this is pie in the sky idealism currently, but that doesn’t mean we have to complacently accept the current way of doing things. Really, it may not be that the written application is a bad format, but rather the criteria it looks to evaluate is flawed. The visitation process I am suggesting would change the evaluation criteria out of necessity. But as an alternative, as our ability to record and share our accomplishments on media improves, it can be just as valid a tool in shifting what criteria is emphasized too.

Though I really think that that an extensive program of visits by well trained teams would go an incredibly long way in improving arts leadership and management. While I think the sites that hosts the visits might receive some excellent guidance, were I designing the program, my focus would be on cultivating the abilities of the visiting team over telling the host what they are doing wrong.

Consortium Merger Update

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This week the state booking consortium of which I am a member met to start planning our upcoming seasons and also move forward toward our plan to merge with our sister organization. The governance committee upon which I sit had met about three weeks ago to discuss the steps we would have to take to accomplish the merger and work on rewriting our bylaws to come into compliance with practice. The committee spent about an hour discussing the relevant rules and laws the state attorney general’s office has for dissolutions and asset transfers of non-profit organizations and physically rewriting the bylaws.

Another three hours were devoted to discussing the implications of the changes we were proposing. Our consortium had already agreed we should shift from a membership to a board organization. What we ended up proposing this week was to shift from having organizations as board members to having individuals as board members. This was a rather significant move so discussing how it might manifest and what the impacts might be required some serious conversation. We felt this would provide much more flexibility and open up possibilities. For example, instead of focusing on writing grants to support the tours member organizations had arranged, the consortium would seek funding for touring or educational outreach and then decide how to apply it. The difference may be hard to discern, but it is possibly a significant change in the way the consortium operates and has the potential to position us as a partner to some granting organizations and foundations.

The biggest advantage is that the board would be free to choose its members rather than depend on specific organizations to send a representative. This would provide opportunities to bring people on based on their knowledge rather than affiliation. It could also allow the consortium to decide as an entity that it wanted to initiate a statewide arts in healthcare program where artists could barter their services working with hospitals, hospices, retirement homes, etc in return for low to no cost health coverage. The consortium’s direct involvement might be arranging outreach activities to these institutions by touring artists, but the benefit would be to all artists across the state, some of which may not be members of the consortium. Yet some of the board members may represent arts organizations that frequently employ these artists and find it in their best interest that the artists not have to worry about health care as they practice their craft. In this case, the board might seek to add a member from the healthcare field to advise and perhaps rally industry support for grants.

As the governance committee meeting was drawing to a close a few weeks ago, I mentioned that what we were proposing might cause a lot of debate at the full meeting because it was such a departure from the way business had been conducted. I noted that a shift in thinking away from the way we currently did business would be required. In fact, there was a lot of discussion about the proposal. There were a lot of “what ifs” asked based on the way we engaged in our activities. Some of the questions we had already considered and had responses to, but others illuminated the need for the creation of policy and procedures. Ultimately, I was happy to hear a board member who had not been part of the governance committee pointed out that we couldn’t think about the changes in bylaws completely in the context of how we currently operated and that it would require shifting our thinking.

There is still a lot of work to be done on the bylaws and one of the members of my committee uncovered more regulations governing dissolution and mergers with which we need to comply. I feel very optimistic about the work being done and the potential of the reorganization. Of course, it helps that the local community foundation received a large amount of money from the founder of eBay and they are directing some of it toward encouraging innovation in non-profits. It makes what we are doing seem relevant and timely.

Gentrifying Both Space And Time

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So apparently arts activity can not only gentrify neighborhoods, it can gentrify time as well. I was attending some First Friday performances on the lawn of the state arts museum this past Friday and got to talking with the guy who organizes the activities. He is a prime mover in the arts scene involved with boards of a couple organizations, presenter of performances and a key figure in the arts district revitalization.

He told me that the downtown arts community was thinking about moving the gallery walk activities to another Friday. What had begun many years back as an attempt to bring activity to downtown at night by having galleries open succeeded a little too well. The First Friday activities made the district such a cool place to be that eventually the older mature crowd ended up supplanted by a younger, rowdy bar crawling crowd. Actually, this probably qualifies as a de-gentrification, doesn’t it?

Now no one is visiting the galleries and buying on First Fridays, but the bars are making their monthly payroll in one night. Things have gotten a little rowdy to the point where the police department is requiring that the downtown merchants association bring 14 more special duty officers on. The bars are being levied for the extra cost.

About a year ago, I started hearing about “slow art Fridays” on the 3rd Friday. From my discussion Friday night, I understand that this was laying the groundwork for the shift. Galleries and fashion houses are open on the 3rd Friday for this event and apparently the older, art buying demographic is showing up.

In the meantime, less effort is being put into the programming and promotion of arts events on First Fridays. There are still things going on and the doors are open, but the resources are being redirected. I was speaking with a ticket office clerk yesterday and he confirmed that things were dead in one of the cornerstone venues this past Friday.

So you are probably wondering, what keeps people from going down every Friday night and getting drunk in the streets? Nothing. There is nothing stopping people from doing the same thing on third Fridays, but they aren’t doing it yet. Since people aren’t really patronizing the galleries, that isn’t a motivating factor for coming downtown. Perhaps I am not listening to the right radio stations or reading the right newspapers or Twitter feeds, but I haven’t really seen bars pushing drink specials on First Fridays. They don’t have to. Probably the energy of being part of a big crowd is what is most attractive to people.

Perhaps it is the perception that they are engaging in a cultural activity that motivates people to attend even though they make a beeline for the bars. If the galleries and related businesses start closing up at 5 pm on the first Friday, then maybe the crowds will start to dissipate or end up migrating to the third Friday. If the galleries have the resources to open on First Fridays, it might be good in the long run training people to appreciate art through the continual exposure. Even if they aren’t buying now, they may be more open to doing so in the future. There is a proverb that one generation plants the tree and the next enjoys the shade. That is a tough thing to endure though if you have to pay your bills today.

The thing I think will keep third Fridays from being overrun is that it takes more effort to ascertain if the current Friday is the third one in the month than it does to recognize it is the first one. That may be the saving grace of the slow art theme of third Friday.

It is rather frustrating to keep hearing stories of artists becoming victims of their own success. You eke out an existence in squalid setting. Gradually things get better to the point where you are recognizing some success. But that means you have a handful of successful years before you are either priced out of your location or the aura of success attracts people who aren’t interested in your products driving away those who are. Is there any place that has been able to strike a balance and maintain the long term success and affordability environment for an arts community that was responsible for sparking a neighborhood revitalization?

Death To Funding Arts Related Acromyns!

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There are a lot of people calling for the end of federal funding of the arts this past week. Only it isn’t coming from politicians or groups opposed to having tax dollars devoted to the arts. It is coming from people within arts disciplines. Last week fellow Inside the Arts blogger Bill Eddins posted an entry calling for the end of the National Endowment of the Arts. Leonard Jacobs at the Clyde Fitch Report expanded on Eddins’ theme. On Friday the NPR show On The Media had an interview with the editor of Reason.com, Nick Gillespie, who suggested ending funding to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) as a means of denying politicians a perennial bugbear needing to be slain.

Gillespie’s interview was in reaction to an editorial, Steve Coll wrote in the Washington Post suggesting the big networks like Fox News should be charged more to broadcast and the proceeds directed to the support of the CPB. Coll’s editorial was in response to one that South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint wrote calling for NPR to support itself.

Common to both Eddins and Gillespie was the idea that the funding support to individual arts organizations and broadcasters that trickled down from the NEA and CPB was such a small portion of the total funding, it might be better to lose the money altogether and be free of the recriminations and accusations about how poorly the money was being used. Nevermind that it is only about 42 cents per taxpayer, the perceived rate is so much greater and so ingrained in people consciousness that contradictory evidence finds no purchase.

Some who commented on Eddins’ post point out that the indirect impact of NEA funding actually provides more support than is immediately perceived. State art foundations pass along funding and may actually owe some of their continued existence to NEA funds as states cut back funding in that area more and more. I know that many in my state wonder if our foundation would still be in operation if not for administration of stimulus funding that necessitates it existence.

Gillespie felt that the cut in funding to radio stations wouldn’t impact them that much and they could either thrive without it or might find an increase in funding from other sources. I was a little skeptical at that since I wondered what sources have been holding their dollars back in reaction to federal funding.

For all the resistance part of me feels toward the idea of spurning federal funding, there is another part of me that wonders if the current situation isn’t a little like that faced by 20somethings living with their parents after graduating college. The support the parents provide isn’t a whole lot, but they keep complaining about the resources being diverted toward supporting their generally responsible adult children (as opposed to those slacker kids). Most of those bills they would have to pay even if you weren’t living in the house but they keep talk as if it is all due to you! At the same time, moving out and giving up that little support is pretty scary first step to take.

For some arts organizations, not receiving federal monies may actually open their programming up and embolden them. All that money flying around during political campaigns may end up directed their way as political action groups hire groups to paint murals and organize flash mobs to either support their view or embarrass the opposition. Though most arts groups’ aversion to being perceived as selling out might preclude that sort of thing. And of course this is based on the assumption that the dearth of funding from both public and private sources will make non profit status and the attendant restrictions on political activities less desirable to have.

Even if they aren’t engaged in politicking, knowing that they won’t have to rein in controversy could result in more experimental fare once people move past the “we can’t do that” mindset that the culture wars surrounding NEA funding has created. As the song says, “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” That might result in the creation of things that will really scandalize politicians, only they won’t have a carrot or stick to wield any longer.

While money does equal access and control in the world of politics, it tends to be a little divisive in the arts scene -> who has it – who doesn’t = who has sold out – who does “pure art.” Maybe if there was more money available on a dependable basis this wouldn’t be the view. But right now the best thing to do to keep the arts community divided may be to give out a lot of money. Because in an environment where there is no money, the seeds of a unified vision seem to be sprouting.

End of No Application Required Funding In England

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So learn something new every day. I discovered that until recently an arts group did not have to fill out an application to receive funding from the Arts Council of England. Once again, Europe proves their arts policy is superior to that of the U.S.!

I say this having just spent a lot of time filling out applications for funding. In actuality, the old policy was pretty exclusive. According to BBC arts editor Will Gompertz,“If you were in the club, you tended to stay in the club; if you weren’t, there was no obvious way of joining.” Apparently this was the way the Council was set up when it was established during the Second World War. Funding was solely based on the council members’ judgment that an art organization had a reasonable chance of success.

Now the process will be opened up to any who want to apply. Partnerships and collaborations are being encouraged. According to one report by the BBC, “Some successful applicants will also be asked support smaller companies by providing facilities and expertise. ” The Guardian quoted Arts Council executive director Alan Davey, “A few will have a “strategic relationship” with ACE, meaning they will be expected to deliver for the wider good. Davey said: “We might ask them to take responsibility for talent spotting or helping smaller organisations with fundraising expertise or offering back office services.”

I will fully admit these are the type of relationships that should be encouraged in the U.S. I have referenced the duplication of effort I see in many communities. I do want to point out that the United States is a whole lot bigger than England though so this can’t be applied uniformly across the country. While Davey does talk about potential strategic partners as those having valuable skills, he also mentions relationships based on geographic proximity a couple times. If arts funding policy in the US was going to look to leverage strategic hubs, it would have to acknowledge that this is easier to accomplish on the coasts than in other places.

This change in funding policy by the Arts Council of England was precipitated by a deep cut to the Council’s budget. Even though the process is more accessible to a greater number of organizations, it is anticipated that about 100 organizations would lose their funding. In that environment, you would expect that people would want to work to make sure that they weren’t one of those hundred. A different article quotes Alan Davey. “Davey also said that organisations should not be looking to change their remit in order to secure funding, but should build on their existing strengths and character. He said: “‘I would hope that they would see things within the goals that we’ve got that they would be able to latch on to.'”

Shifting priorities or creating programs that don’t quite fit the organization for the purpose of getting funding has long been a problem in the U.S. It is a pity to see the possibility that arts organizations may be driven to that practice in the hopes of competing for support.

Be True To Your Arts Council*

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Yesterday was the deadline for grant proposals for to our state arts and culture foundation for the next biennium. Due to budget cuts by the current governor, we don’t know if we will be getting any money from the foundation this year which possibility makes applying for funding in the next two years an time consuming exercise in futility.

On the other hand, today is election day so we will have a new governor very soon. I wondered if that had any bearing on the grant deadline being the before the election. Actually, it occurs to me that it did in a way. The grant deadline is usually on a Friday but with budget cuts, the foundation staff is furloughed on many Fridays. The staff probably felt it was better to move the deadline to Monday rather than deprive applicants of a day to prepare by making it Thursday.

There wasn’t much talk by either of the candidates about restoration of arts funding that I read or heard about this campaign season. I know at least one of the candidates is an avid arts attendee because I have seen him in my venues as well as others around town. I am hoping he wins, but we shall see.

Despite not knowing if we will get any funding this year, we are crediting the foundation for funding both in our print and web materials and thanking them from the stage in the curtain speech. They have provided support for us in the past and it doesn’t take much effort on our part to tell people that they are benefiting from the funding when they attend our performances. Besides, if we do get funding at some point this year, the foundation requires the credit so it is better to have it from the start.

And as I said, politicians attend performances so it is useful to have them sit in a crowded theatre and be reminded that funding the arts does a lot of good for their constituencies. In turn, they can tell the public that they work to provide those sort of experiences.

*Apologies to the Beach Boys

Don’t Believe Everything You Read On The Internet

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Bit of a cautionary tale about how we process and evaluate the deluge of information we receive these days thanks to microblogging sites like Twitter. I follow a number of people via Twitter and I think it has helped the quality of my blog posts because it is easier for me to get information on a wider variety of topics than I can often get reading other people’s blogs. (Though there are a lot of blog I follow faithfully as well.) I have been considering starting a Twitter account associated with my blog because there are so many tidbits I come across that aren’t necessarily worth a blog post, but interesting and worthy of some consideration just the same.

I imagine that is the situation David Dombrosky is in. He probably follows more people than I do and passes along anything that sounds a little interesting as he did last week when he retweeted Jeese Newhart’s tweet “Seth Godin: Why Artists Think It’s Safer To Fail Small” David probably didn’t get a chance to watch the video in the blog post using that exact phrase as a title which Jesse linked to. Judging by the number of tweets Jesse has, he may not have had time to watch it either.

I bookmarked it to watch this weekend with the intention of doing an entry expanding on Seth Godin’s thoughts.

Problem is, Seth Godin doesn’t say this at all about artists. He doesn’t mention artists at all. His talk is about entrepreneurs who heed their lizard brains and never fully commit to taking risks. Granted, these statements can apply to artists, but the title and in fact the text of the entry claim Godin addresses a problem specific to artists and music when he references neither.

“Seth Godin gives a speech on how artists sabotage their work. They follow the pattern and attempt to fail small…. At the last minute, most artists will take a half step back and take that compelling elements out of their music because it’s safer to fail small. The resistance causes them to compromise truly great music and settle for an album that’s good enough.”

Commenters on the post criticize all these misleading elements but I didn’t even look at those until I started wondering when Godin was going to talk about artists. I lay the blame for laziness and poor quality on the shoulders of Kyle Bylin who authored the post. Given the text of the post I can’t blame those who saw something of potential interest to the arts crowd and passed the link onward.

But now thanks to the speed at which information can be passed along using texts and tweets and status updates, when arts people gather to discuss the trials and tribulations of working in the field as they are wont to do, there is the potential that thousands may utter something akin to “Did you see that Seth Godin says artists are too meek and only produce commercially viable products?”

While there is a good chance that he might say that, he didn’t.

I am sure it doesn’t come as news in times such as the current political campaigns that it is easy to spread misinformation to a great number of people. We have to remind ourselves that it can happen in areas we don’t perceive as political.

Spend More To Make Your Donation Really Worth It

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For the last couple weeks I have been attending films at the Hawaii International Film Festival. I actually don’t go to the movies all that often so seeing a series of movies over 11 days got to be a strain at times, but the opportunity to see a number of quality films is too good to pass up. Of course, I paid attention to the way the festival interacted with their audience.

I became a member at the $100 level this year and received an allotment of free tickets in exchange. Membership also allowed me to enter the theatres first before those who had purchased their tickets singly. This is an option for providing a perk in a general admission setting. Though it required that I queue up about a half hour in advance. They did a good job assigning their movies to appropriate sized theatres in the complex. My friends were in the non-member line and handed me their coats to put on the seats next to me. The theaters never got so full before they were able to gain admission that I had to contend with the no saving seats policy.

There was one house manager that was excellent. I encountered her in a number of films. She had control of the audience of 200-300 people all by herself. She filled the space with her voice and promised ludicrous things to anyone who identified an open seat. It got people laughing and on her side.

Getting back to the membership structure again. Intentional or not, the way the festival structured the membership benefits, it had my friends talking themselves into buying more tickets. In addition to free tickets and getting in first, membership also allowed you to purchase the $12 tickets for $8. The way my friends figured it, if I paid $100 for my membership and got 6 tickets free ($72 value) the membership would be worth it if I purchased an additional 7 tickets (four dollars savings on each one equaling $28, thus saving me my $100 membership.) Of course, by that point I would have spent $156 which I am sure the film festival would have appreciated. That convoluted attempt at reasoning made me reflect on the psychology of pricing and the way people make decisions. I have been reading bits and pieces about the field of behavioral economics as discussed by people like Dan Ariely. Episodes like this make me think I should be paying better attention.

The one other lesson I took from the festival is that even though technology seems to be a threat to the performing arts, it can’t be a substitute for a story. Though it often seems that way.

Julie Taymor’s The Tempest had some great acting, an interesting location (filmed on the lava fields of the Big Island of Hawaii and island of Lana‘i), and an intriguing dynamic created by casting Helen Mirren as Prospero, a role Shakespeare wrote as a male. But the movie had a such a large amount of CGI, some of which seemed to be left over from the psychedelic parts of Taymor’s Across the Universe, it made the movie disappointing for me.

Zhang Yimou’s Under the Hawthorn Tree depended entirely on the story of two people falling in love during China’s Cultural Revolution to make its impact. The movie is based on a true story and was so heart breaking, I was hoping some of the chaste lovers’ interactions had been exaggerated for dramatic effect because it the reality of it would have been too hard to bear. (I am sure the reality was indeed much worse.) I was so anxious that they were going to be found out and their lives ruined for mundane things like the guy buying the girl boots so her feet would be protected against lime burns, I was a little relieved by the sorrowful ending that left the audience in tears because it didn’t involve prison or re-education camps.

There is great importance to a good story told well. This isn’t a matter of comparing an American director to a Chinese director. People are hailing Zhang Yimou for returning to this type of storytelling after big garish extravaganzas like Curse of the Golden Flower which relied so heavily on spectacle.

The Scandal!

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Tyler Cowen of Mariginal Revolution is reporting that the iTunes version of John Cage’s 4’33” is actually only 4’31”. Just another example of how the fidelity of classic works of art are being abridged and destroyed by technology.

The comments on the entry are pretty amusing and bear a look. My favorite –

“I saw the sheet music recently, cleverly priced at $4.33.

I memorized it on the spot rather than buying it.”

Info You Can Use: More Cell Phone Donations

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Back in February I wrote about using texting to donate to charities the way people were doing immediately after the Haiti earthquake. I had noted the high cost of setting something like this up was probably cost prohibitive for most. I also suggested that the costs would likely come down as its use became more prevalent or someone figured out a more efficient way to process the payment.

According to Fast Company , it looks like someone has done the latter. Mobile companies Obopay and Benevity have created a way in which you can text a word, choose your cause and have the money and acknowledgment issued immediately. Not only does everything get processed faster, but there is flexibility in the amount you can donate. According to a press release issued by the company:

“The new mobile giving solution enables charities to collect much higher amounts – up to hundreds of dollars – and provides the non-profit with much faster access to the funds, compared to other text-to-donate offerings that have been limited to $5 and $10 amounts and have taken over 90 days to get funds to the cause.

[…]

…said Bryan de Lottinville, CEO of Benevity. “As personal and corporate philanthropy recovers following the recession, mobile donations and campaigns will have increasing importance. We’re delighted to be part of a new solution that will provide companies and consumers with an easier way to give to causes that resonate with them. We’re also thrilled about making this functionality accessible to all charities and consumers, regardless of their size or the amount they can donate.”

No mention of the costs which I will grant, could be just as high as with the text giving I reported back in February. With faster receipt of funds and increased amount people can give, the costs can start to look more reasonable. Again, as people use it, the costs may come down. This partnership may or may not become the dominant player, but what the CEO says about donating by phone becoming more prevalent is likely true.

Since people tend to act on impulse with their phones, texting and calling their friends as soon as something happens, non-profits may benefit and receive more donations than they normally might if people had to pull their check books or credit cards out. I think it also likely non profits will face donors remorse in the wake of such giving and will need to formulate policies to address it.

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