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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.

What’s My Cue To Exit?

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David Dombrowsky, Executive Director of Center for Arts Management and Technology, retweeted an article from Inc magazine about exit strategies for non-profit entrepreneurs asking, “Can you think of arts examples?” Since the Inc piece is about entrepreneurs using their exits strategically to help their organizations grow/transition, my assumption is that Dombrowsky is asking if anyone can think of a person who has done so in the arts. I can’t.

I have covered the topic of succession planning or the lack thereof a number of times on this blog. Most arts organizations haven’t addressed the absence of a succession plan much less examined if that plan considers how to leverage the departure of the founder/executive director to their benefit. I will be honest and say that outside of signs of mental instability it never occurred to me that the departure of the founder could be cause of increased confidence. At best, a well executed transition could maintain existing confidence that might grow as a successor proved their mettle. At worst, a poorly handled transition (or complete absence of a plan) could be cause for alarm and unease.

Says Susi Soza in the Inc piece,

This leads up to the second reason why exits are so important: They signal to the market that an organization has reached a certain level of financial sustainability and scale. Exits are, by definition, big, and for a company founder to achieve an exit—whether by acquisition, a mezzanine round, or an IPO—that means it has achieved significant milestones in terms of revenue, profit, and market validation.

[…]

In the non-profit social entrepreneurship space the word exit appears like a misnomer. How can you have an exit for an organization with no owners?….

Non-profit social entrepreneurs would benefit from exits just as much as their for-profit peers. I believe more non-profit exits would actually attract additional capital to the non-profit space as it does in the for-profit space. Donors are persistently frustrated by fragmentation and duplication in the non-profit market, and I believe exits – whether by acquisition, merger, or even just closing down shop – would bring some welcome consolidation and efficiency that would provoke additional philanthropic investment.

Exits are also important for organizational realignment and revitalization. In the for-profit world, exits are often accompanied by changes in leadership team and business strategy. Unless businesses build exits into their lifecycles, non-profits rarely have catalytic events to spur these types of transitions. Furthermore, succession planning and transition beyond the founding social entrepreneur are often neglected because there are no unambiguous end points in sight. What if non-profit social entrepreneurs could aim toward an exit that came with a $50,000 bonus to do with what they wished?

While her observations are mainly directed at the social rather than arts sector, there is still a lot that is applicable. The comments about donors being frustrated by duplication of effort especially resonated with me. Partially because I am meeting this weekend to discuss governance of our booking consortium after we absorb our sister organization. But also because the idea that there are too many non-profit arts organizations conducting similar operations in the same geographic area is more frequently discussed these days.

I recognized her point that there are not too many widely recognized milestones against which non-profits and their supporters can measure organizational growth. With that in mind, a clear plan for recognizing transitional moments can be valuable. I also like the idea of working toward a $50,000 bonus. Something like putting $5,000 away annually for 10 years, but not adding to it if the leader stays past the agreed period might provide an incentive to move along.

Of course, that only works if everyone has been working toward grooming a successor. If they haven’t it becomes too easy to fall into the trap of deciding the current leader is the only one qualified to direct the course of the organization and extending their tenure and bonus.

But briefly back to Dombrowsky’s question. Are there any arts leaders who have done this? Even if it is only a handful, their example provides a template.

Alec Baldwin Hates NPR and Turning STEM into STEAM

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If you have been listening in on the public radio fund drives occurring the past couple weeks, you probably heard Alec Baldwin issuing various over the top threats about pledging to your public radio station. If you haven’t some of his greatest hits are collected on the KPLU website. In the first, he channels his character from 30 Rock and in a later one, reprises one of his speeches from the movie, Glengarry Glen Ross. Not included is an extremely frank, but very funny bit he did on This American Life this weekend. I have been trying to find it to no avail. If anyone has a link, send it my way.

Alec Baldwin has come a long way since his first appearance on NPR. (Warning, double entendres)

In other news, I got in to work just as the President’s Council on the Arts and Humanities started a live streaming chat this morning. Chuck Close, Margo Lion, George Stevens, Jr. and Damian Woetzel were talking about the place the arts have in the US and what can be done. You can watch the archived video here if you missed it. There was a simultaneous chat on the White House Facebook page so you could watch and discuss at the same time. (And let me just say, apropos to yesterday’s entry, as I listen to the archived video I realize how much I missed while trying to stay abreast of the comments.)

Chuck Close seemed to carry the day among commenters with his dismay/disgust with the lack of the arts in schools. He mentioned, as he often does, that the arts gave him hope in school and he credits the arts with keeping him out of jail. After the subject how the focus of education is on STEM courses, someone in the chat suggested it be changed to STEAM to include the arts.

It got me thinking that acronym would really lend itself to some good slogans. – STEAM drives America’s Productivity and Creativity; STEAM Powers The Economy. Not the most imaginative perhaps, but I am sure the products of STEAM education can generate some inspirational ones. It provides a good shorthand to use during advocacy because it binds the arts in with concepts in which many policy makers are already intellectually invested in advancing.

Twitter Thursdays

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So we have a production coming up that will have six performances. Because one performance is generally poorly attended, we generally offer some sort of last minute rush promotion requiring people to say a silly phrase to get their discount. Since the audience for this show tends to be younger, I thought I might also experiment and make that night a “social media performance.” Essentially, we would have a night where people would openly be invited to do text friends and update Twitter and Facebook status. The only thing we couldn’t let people do due to intellectual property concerns is record or take pictures.

If it was successful, I might consider expanding it to other performances as appropriate. We don’t get a more than 5-10 people commenting about our shows on social media sites so I wanted to see what would happen if we openly encouraged it. Because most classes were required to see the production the previous week, we wouldn’t see too many grouses about being forced to see the stupid show by a professor.

Knowing that a lot of people don’t like to have those around them leaning over a glowing cell phone, I thought having a specific performance dedicated to the practice might help draw those who liked the practice and allow those who disliked it to attend at other times. It wouldn’t guarantee a texting free environment at all shows, but might lead both groups to feel we recognized their needs.

When I brought the idea up at the weekly production meeting, I thought there might be some resistance. My biggest concern was for the actors who might not get the same audience reactions on that particular evening as they did in other performances due to divided attention. In fact, there might be more conversation at that performance as individuals whisper inquiries about what has transpired after everyone else laughs or gasps. I figured there would have to be some discussion of appropriateness and shifting expectations.

What I hadn’t expected was a vociferous and absolute refusal to perform that night from one of the creative team. The individual was wholly opposed to the practice which he felt was an awful trend and inappropriate at a live performance. He was under no illusion that it wouldn’t happen anyway regardless of what we did, and perhaps become more common and widespread, he just didn’t want to be party to an effort to encourage people to do it.

I think this is just part of a set of concerns that has existed for awhile and may become more prevalent soon enough. Do we diminish the performance by validating something outside of the usual practice? For orchestras, it has been projection of video images in support of the music in some way. In theatre it has been stunt casting of television/movie/pop music figures in stage performances. This isn’t just about Broadway casting choice. All across the country weather forecasters and football heroes get cast in the hope that their popularity will bring more butts to the seats. I am not sure what the characteristic corresponding situation would be in fine arts and dance.

In many ways this is different. Those elements, for better or for worse, are part of the artistic product. It may be cheapening the product to dilute it in this manner in the name of getting more attendance. It is another thing to encourage people to ignore the performance entirely to tell their friends to come to the show.

In one of my favorite Take A Friend To The Orchestra outings, Drew McManus takes a guy to a concert in Carnegie Hall. Drew tells him it is okay to be bored during some portions of the performance and I think brings binoculars so he can look more closely at the musicians during these times. Even though Drew says it is okay to be bored and not entirely engaged by the performance, his suggested alternatives encourage his companion to try to remain involved even if the music isn’t finding purchase in his ear.

Encouraging people to text sends the message that is okay to be bored, but encourages them to disengage themselves from the performance entirely without making the attempt to involve themselves in some other aspect of the experience and give the performance a chance to connect and draw them back.

I know I sound like I am siding with the objector against something I proposed doing. But this is really a matter of the two sides of my identity as an arts professional in conflict. From the marketing standpoint, allowing people to tell their friends about their experience can improve attendance. Not just as a matter of simple recommendation, but as a way for experimenters to lead their more wary friends to new experiences.

But it changes the way people are interacting with the arts in some undesirable ways. If people are viewing a performance in terms of what they can report on every few minutes, there isn’t any time given to digest the experience. There are many inveterate arts professionals who aren’t really sure what they thought about a show until the next morning. If you view a performance as a loaf of bread to comment on a slice at a time, you may never see the golden beauty of the loaf as a whole. You decide that Helen Mirren as Prospero is dumb when she first appears in The Tempest and then look for the next moment to comment on, and then the next and the next, you may miss what Julie Taymor was trying to do with the story.

Is this the way we want to encourage people to approach their experience with art? Mediated through the lens of whether what just happened was interesting enough to report to their friends at the expense of missing/incompletely comprehending what happens next? I remember reading about how certain actors in Shakespeare’s time were judged masterful when the girls wandering the aisles stopped hawking oranges. Will the power of a show be judged not by a standing ovation, the value of which seems to have degraded of late, but by the fact people were so entranced that they stopped texting?

Tip You Might Be Able To Use

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With all the discussion of using GroupOn to sell subscriptions and tickets that has been occurring of late, (neatly summarized by Drew McManus last week), my brain was receptive to the mention of a similar service which may be better for both the consumer and the business.

I was listening to the radio when I heard an interview with a representative of a company called Tippr that provides a similar service to GroupOn’s. The benefit for businesses is that they have representatives in every city in which they have a presence who can sit down and structure an offer specific to your company and needs rather than the same arrangement everyone else gets. This includes making sure responses don’t exceed your company’s resources and ability to service them. One of the biggest problems businesses have had with Groupon is being overwhelmed by the number of people seeking to redeem deals. Tippr seems to view themselves as a service that provides growth to businesses rather than a discount deal site.

Which is not to say the consumer doesn’t benefit. Tippr offers three deals a day rather than just one. But the real value comes in what Tippr calls an Accelerated Deal. The more people sign on to deal, the bigger the discount. It starts at 50% but can go up to 90%. Presumably, the business can set a cap on how large the discount grows to.

You won’t see the Accelerated Deal anywhere else. The process was patented by a company named Mercata in the 1990s which went belly up according to Gigaom because, “Online social networking didn’t exist back then, customers were much less likely to spend money online…” Tippr bought the patents on the process.

When I first heard the Accelerated Deal described, I thought it was a system that rewarded early adopters. In my post on GroupOn, I had suggested that with the correct timing, one could use that service to reward people who committed early.

When they first started talking about how Tippr worked, it almost sounded like you could pay $10 for $25 worth of merchandise and then as people joined in the next level of discount would have you pay $15 for the discount which might now be at $30. Except that since the discount was the same for everyone, the person who paid $10 now was getting $30 worth of merchandise. So as the discount increased, the late comers were getting a really great deal, but the early adopters who were driving the whole effort really made out well.

For the business, this could really work out well if you structured the curve of the discount well. Sure, you may end up giving $100 of merchandise for $10, but if the cost of the discount went up to $20 after the first 10 people bought, you limit that exposure. The same if you limit the number of $20 deals knowing the discount will top out at $100 merchandise for $60. If you have a couple hundred people buying at the $60 range when the average sale in your store is $15, it might be good planning. Especially if you know from more modest offers that a fair percentage will return to your store to buy at full price and since they have already paid $60 in your store once, they are inclined to spend more than the normal $15 average.

While that isn’t how Tippr actually works, if more companies enter this market niche, you may see companies using this type of model of obscene discounts for the first responders to differentiate themselves from the pack. Hmm, maybe I should download the patent paperwork….

I am not sure how well Tippr might work for arts organizations. It may make sense for subscriptions over single ticket sales. If earned income is 40% of your budget and you have the potential of discounting your tickets anywhere from 50%-75%, it could be a perilous situation. But it can be absolutely worth it if you decide rather than spend a couple thousand dollars on print and radio advertising, you will forgo a couple thousand dollars in ticket revenue knowing every few dollars lost is a guaranteed audience member. Since Tippr has a representative to sit down with you and listen to your concerns so you can develop a sane plan for how much to discount and limit the number offered, you can also be guaranteed not to incur any more expense than you intended.

Free Markets And The Artists Unappreciated In Their Own Country

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I was reading a piece by economist Tyler Cowen on how Milton Friedman’s views apply to the arts. According to Cowen, Friedman essentially felt that free market commerce creates diversity in the arts, in types, method of expression, funding and innovation. “Our most effective arts policy has been tax incentives for donations, which has kept choice and quality control in private hands,” writes Cowen.

Cowen acknowledges that we don’t always like the way this manifests itself.

“In other cases, many people, most of all intellectuals, object when apparently nonmeritorious individuals earn huge salaries. The same objections surface in the cultural realm. Madonna earns hundreds of millions, whereas a first rate opera singer might pull in only $50,000 a year or perhaps cannot earn a living from singing at all. The best response, well understood by Friedman, is the same. A system that permits such “inequities” will in fact generate the greatest number of opportunities for performers of virtually all kinds.”

I am sure I was being stubborn when I decided I wasn’t completely convinced by this assertion, though there were enough examples to support Cowen that kept creeping into my mind. It wasn’t until later in the piece when Cowen cited the example of Monet that I had to reluctantly fall more in agreement with him.

This story of free trade and creativity runs throughout the history of culture. Claude Monet had little success marketing his paintings to the government run Salon in Paris in the late nineteenth century. His style and colors were considered to be too radical and too unpleasant. Monet had greater success selling to wealthy North Americans, who were not bound by prevailing French artistic conventions. His haystack paintings proved particularly popular in this country, which is one reason why they appear so frequently in American art museums.

The Monet example illustrates a broader (but sometimes neglected) benefit of international trade. The common arguments for trade cite the benefits of drawing on producers from other countries. But trade also mobilizes the benefits of the consumers from other countries. Consumers hold embedded knowledge. Their purchases can induce suppliers to elevate quality, help suppliers pursue careers of greater pleasure (for example, art), and help generate the artistic heritage of mankind. The greater the diversity of consumers to draw on, the better markets will perform these tasks.

This past week we premiered an original work about the Hawaiian snow goddess, Poli‘ahu which pretty much illustrates his point. It employed hula, ballet and contemporary dance. The artistic director brought in dancers from Japan, a Yupik Eskimo from Alaska and an exchange student from Mongolia to work alongside local dancers to tell this story. While we hope to tour this throughout the rest of the state and take it to the continental United States, there were already plans forming to take it to Alaska and Japan as the show closed opening night. Colleagues at another performing arts center took a show about Kahekili, the chief who nearly united all the islands under one king to Germany a few years ago.

As Cowen’s talked about how international trade brings benefits to the arts, it struck me that without it, the performance we just had would not have developed as it did and the opportunities that may open up and indeed have opened up for colleagues doing similar works, would not be possible. Some of these developments are owed to technology and the internet which enables people to become aware of these shows and evaluate performance videos. But international trade and interactions make people more comfortable and curious about each other and willing to consume other artistic experiences.

The inspiration for our production of Poli‘ahu originated during a bush flight over the Anaktuvuk Pass when the artistic director we partnered with was invited to bring hula to the Arctic Circle a few years ago. Granted, trips to Alaska from Hawaii are not international and there are some areas where they share a certain kinship, but in many respects they are diametrical opposites.

The dancers from Japan didn’t bring anything overtly Japanese to the performance. The role they played could have been performed by any well trained dancers. But their presence was a product of the international commerce to which Cowen refers. The artistic director of the production had been visiting their dance school in Japan for over 10 years and had worked with these women since they were children. He arranged accommodations for them during the rehearsal period so that they could participate in his production as part of his company.

It has been awhile since I invoked the concept of the Creative Economy so let me do so here. This production probably won’t constitute a large enough segment of the emerging economy to pull us out of the recession, but the dynamics which made the production possible and the activity yet to result from it may play a tiny part in moving things toward such an economy.

Social Network Just For Non-Profits

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Via Non-Profit Law blog, Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes is launching a social network, JUMO, later this year to connect non-profits with supporters. If you watch the video accompanying the article, you will learn that while Hughes has left Facebook, he is still supports its use. Jumo users will be able to easily transfer their Facebook information over when he opens the service.

Hughes’ hope is to provide a way for organizations to develop relationships prior to requesting assistance. “Hughes thinks that the call for support should come only after people and organizations have built that connection with one another. All too often, said Hughes, the donate button on websites is big, flashy, and colorful, and email calls to action are usually in all caps, starting with the word “Urgent!” Hughes hopes that Jumo will move organizations toward a new era where relationships are forged and cultivated before calls to action.”

Earlier the article notes: “To do that, the platform will be broken up into three main components: Find, Follow and Support. First, Jumo will help you find non-profit organizations by learning the types of things that interest you and making suggestions. Second, the site will help you follow those organizations by receiving a stream of updates about the work they’re doing and how that work is affecting real people.”

In the comments section, some wonder if people will really join another social network. I don’t necessarily share that concern. I think people who are interested in causes will welcome a place that aggregates information and lets them connect with those causes. Non profit organizations should differentiate how they use the different technologies. You might encourage people who want information on ticket specials and the hot news about just signed artists to pay attention to your Twitter feed or Facebook account. Whereas you would provide information on outreach efforts and volunteering opportunities on the Jumo account.

Focusing on a few communication channels is about all most arts organizations have the staffing to handle in any case. Developing a separate flavor for each channel and leveraging it to serve the interests of different segments of your audience is probably better than replicating the same content verbatim on each is probably a better use of staff time in any case.

The real benefit to non-profits would be if people started using Jumo in ways not anticipated by the creators, spurring the development of features specific to the needs of non-profits.

Ticketmaster’s New Invisible Pricing Policy

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So I see on Fast Company that a class action suit brought against Ticketmaster has moved forward with everyone who purchased tickets between October 21, 1999 and before May 31, 2010 named as parties to the suit. The suit focuses on the order process and UPS delivery fees notes the Fast Company article:

Plaintiffs assert that Ticketmaster’s Order Processing Fee is deceptive and leads consumers to believe that it represents Ticketmaster’s costs to process their orders, and that the Order Processing Fee is just a profit component for Ticketmaster, unrelated to the costs of processing the orders. Ticketmaster disputes these allegations.

Plaintiffs allege that Ticketmaster’s UPS Delivery option is deceptive because it leads consumers to believe the price they are paying Ticketmaster is a pass-through of the fees that UPS charges to Ticketmaster and that Ticketmaster substantially marks-up the amount it actually pays to UPS. Ticketmaster disputes these allegations.

I had read a piece on the MSNBC website back in September saying that Ticketmaster had created a blog site and were acknowledging that people hated their fees and would offer more transparency about the charges. But that hasn’t been the experience of Herb Weisbaum who wrote the MSNBC piece. He didn’t find out the exact amount of the processing fee until he reached the point of reviewing his order.

And this was after CEO Nathan Hubbard admitted on the Ticketmaster blog, Ticketology (my emphasis),

The problem is that historically we haven’t told you how much you have to pay for a given seat until very late in the buying process. And our data tells us this angers many of you to the point that you abandon your purchase once you see the total cost, and that you don’t come back. The data also says (and this is the important piece) that if we had told you up front what the total cost was, you would have bought the ticket! So by perpetuating this antiquated fee presentation, fans are getting upset, while we and our clients are losing ticket sales.

This practice changes today.

Now with all the changes to programming that probably needed to occur to make good on his promise, perhaps it was too optimistic to expect that would be changed in the first couple days. Or three weeks later when Herb Weisbaum bought his tickets. Or you know, right now 6 weeks later when I tried to buy ticket, clicked on the price details and was told about a $9 convenience fee, but didn’t find out about the processing fee until I was ready to hit submit. True, when it said “The price displayed includes the ticket/item price plus, when applicable, convenience charges, facility charges and additional taxes. Click Price Details for more information.” And that doesn’t mention that there might be charges they may not be telling me about. Silly me for assuming there weren’t unstated charges after reading that there would be more transparency early in the purchasing process. Their new pricing policy is transparent all right, it still remains to be seen.

The other thing that makes me skeptical that Ticketmaster is sincere about changing their ways is that there have only been two entries on the Ticketology blog. The first was in August where the CEO made this promise along with stating Ticketmaster would be offering refunds at select venues. (Which admittedly is a step forward.) The second entry was in September where the CEO talks about how much everyone loves their refund policy.

That’s it.

With all the events for which they sell tickets, all the myriad venues they operate out of and serve, they can’t muster more than 2 entries in 6 weeks? They could have pictures of their employees in and around some of the most famous and attractive venues in the world making you dream of seeing whatever you could just to walk through the doors and sit in those seats.

But all they got is a post about policy changes and another that is sort of self congratulatory about one of those changes. It pretty much screams, “this is a corporate propaganda blog.” Nothing is going to be posted that isn’t vetted by marketing and maybe legal. Ticketmaster protests that they aren’t responsible for the high prices and varied add on charges, but they aren’t doing a very good job of making that case.

Five Rs of Success

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So I am beginning to think that adding the Non-Profit Law Blog to my Google reader was one of the best things I have done in terms of keeping myself informed on stuff to blog about. Not to send everyone abandoning my blog to hang out there, but they offer a lot of worthwhile information. (In case you haven’t been reading my blog for very long.) Last week Emily Chan did an entry on social media policy resources for non-profits.

Among the links she lists are pieces by Beth Kanter, one of which deals with the question of whether your organization needs a social media policy. Chan also links to a piece by Sharlyn Lauby on Mashable about 10 things that should appear in your social media policy. I found both of these helpful, but there are a number of other good links Emily Chan lists and then Beth Kanter has a slew of other related links in her article.

Kanter’s article has some good links for developing policy, case studies and cautionary tales about how posting the wrong sentiments and pictures can get you fired. The one that really caught my eye because of its constructive approach was a slide show by Sacha Chua, “The Gen Y Guide to Web 2.0 at Work” Chua created a hand drawn slide show aimed at Gen Yers which warns them about treating co-workers like college buddies and not applying themselves to their work.

Her tips for success at work are to Read, Write, Reach Out, Rock and Repeat: Read as much as you can; Write and Share What You Have Learned; Reach Out to others (help, get mentors, as questions); Rock at what you do and work at strengthening your weakness; and of course, repeat all those steps.

It’s more exciting and informative with her illustrations, trust me.

I don’t think it takes much effort to realize these are good guidelines for every worker, regardless of what generation they have been categorized in. I especially take it to heart because like Chua, my blog helped me get my job. While I do share links that are of interest, I don’t do it as often I want to because I don’t want to be that guy who sends a lot of links that have little relevance to the recipient. I am thinking maybe I don’t need to send more links as expand the list of those to whom I send really relevant ones.

Are You Getting Your 24 Cents Worth?

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Daniel Pink had an entry this weekend where he presents a taxpayer receipt created as part of a policy paper by some gentlemen at Third Way. David Kendall and Jim Kessler who wrote the piece for Third Way start their paper by pointing out that we know the breakdown in the nutritional value of the food we buy, but we haven’t the faintest idea what sort of value we are getting for our taxes.

Given that so many politicians promise to control spending without touching Social Security and Medicare, they wanted to create an easy to understand listing of where all that money was going and what would likely need to be cut to make good on those promises. Since the median taxpayer in the U.S. earns $34,140 and assuming all that income is taxable, they created a graphic breakdown of where the $5,400 in taxes paid in 2009 went.

Of course, I gravitated directly to arts spending – 24 cents. Now remember, this isn’t the amount spent on arts per person, just what the median tax payer’s share is. Those with higher incomes are paying more and those with lower incomes are paying less. The amount per person is probably closer to the usual rule of thumb of the cost of a postage stamp. I was a little surprised to see that benefits and salaries for Congress fell below the arts at 19 cents until I remembered there are only 535 of them compared to all the arts organizations that seek funding.

If you visit Pink’s site, you will see that Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid top the list at $1,040.70, $625.51 and $385.28, respectively. Next down on the list is interest on the national debt and military operations. Cutting spending on the arts isn’t going to vastly improve the lot of any other area. Above arts spending is the Smithsonian Museum at $1.12. Giving all the arts money to the museum doesn’t improve their budget by a quarter.

When people complain that they don’t want their tax dollars going to support degenerate art, the truth is more money was likely spent powering their computer while emailing those sentiments and then paying a Congressional staffer to read and perhaps print it out than is spent on the arts. If a person mails their complaint, well they have already spent more on the stamp than they probably paid in taxes to the arts.

Info You Can Use: So You Wanna Join A Board?

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I believe I have covered the subject of considerations to make when joining a non-profit board before, but Emily Chan did a terrific entry on the topic on Non-Profit Law Blog this week. She links to the BoardSource page on this topic at the end, but she reminds us of additional things to think about.

Among her suggestions are to research on the organization you have been asked to join by reviewing the financials, bylaws, ensuring they have board liability and evaluating the personality dynamics on the board and their work process. Chan also mentions one of the areas I think is often overlooked–education. People who are familiar with boards on a basic level will know there are fiduciary and legal responsibilities to attend but may not really push to receive a thorough education in these areas and about the organization in general.

Education: Will you have the tools necessary to succeed at this organization?

Incoming directors at an organization may have different educational needs for creating the right environment to thrive on the board. Factors such as past board experience or work experience in the nonprofit sector can be useful in quickly adapting to a director role and executing those responsibilities. Likewise, an organization’s investment in or opportunity for board development and mentorship may be an important factor of an ideal work environment for individuals who are first-time directors or new to the nonprofit sector. For those seeking board education, a few topics to consider are:

* Orientation: What information will be covered? What are you expected to take away? What type of resources will be provided? Will you need more help or information after this?
* Training programs: Are they offered? If so, do they address the skills and areas you need the most help with? Are they pre-scheduled or provided as needed? Will you need more training and education down the road?
* Job description: What is being asked of you? Are your responsibilities and duties understandable and realistic? Can you fulfill this role?

I also really like Chan’s comments on how to evaluate the personality dynamics of the board, but I didn’t feel I could copy that much of her entry and offer so little original insight of my own. Obviously, the article can also serve as a guide for the materials, information and education non profits should be prepared to present to a potential board member so that a well informed decision is made.

Prices So Low, It Might Be Insane!

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There was a fair bit of discussion on Adaptistration two weeks ago about the Joffrey Ballet’s success in gaining over 2000 subscribers in a single day using the GroupOn discounting site. As a theatre manager, I get caught in the debate between making 25% of my ticket price vs. having an empty seat against possibly training people to wait for the deep discount in the future.

One of the best points that I think is made in the comments on the Adaptistration entry is that while you may be making 25% of the ticket revenue, you don’t have the marketing costs usually associated with promoting the show when you work with GroupOn. My assumption is that most arts organizations marketing costs aren’t 75% of the ticket price so there is still a danger of not meeting the other overhead costs you have by using GroupOn, but if the discount is structured correctly, you could end up doing marginally better than you might have and have a fuller house. Looking like you are successful is half the battle in convincing donors and granting organizations to support you.

Still, I was pleased to see Chad Bauman, the Director of Communications at Arena Stage take the subject on. In addition to suggesting that you are rewarding the wrong kind of behavior with these discounts and risk alienating the person who paid full price months ago, he notes that paying less than full price seems to translate into less than full commitment in both renewing and attendance.

“We must always remember that discount buyers behave differently and you must budget for that. Full season subscribers at most organizations renew at a rate between 85% to 90%. However, I have found that full season subscribers that purchase their subscriptions at a drastic discount renew at a much lower rate (around 60%). Additionally, because they spent significantly less amount of money per ticket, the no show rates are also substantially higher, sometimes leaving large empty holes in your house.”

As an alternative, Bauman suggests a slightly more work intensive process of acquiring mailing lists, sorting out your current subscribers and ticket buyers and-

5. Using the exact same deep discount offer you were going to give to Groupon, develop a cheap, but effective mailer and send to your list. Make sure it is an offer that is impossible to pass up, and that the offer leads in design and has a deadline. (note: if you don’t have a large box office staff, then make sure the offer is online only, or you will be swamped). The key is to keep production and mailing costs low–send using non-profit postage and use a discount printer/mail house.

By doing this, you get to keep the entire purchase price of the discounted subscription, and you minimize the possibility that your dedicated and loyal patrons will see that you are heavily discounting late into your campaign after thousands have already purchased.

Taken together, the Adaptistration entry and comments and Chad Bauman’s take, give a pretty good picture of the factors to consider and some alternative approaches to take.

I haven’t used GroupOn yet for personal consumption. In fact, it appears it might not have a lot of traction locally because there is no listing of past deals for my city. Though that could just be a technical matter. I wonder if you can effect the timing of the offer. That way, you can use it in a manner closer to that used by airlines. Not everyone in the plane is paying the same for their seats, but generally it is recognized that those who purchased earlier got a better deal. If you can arrange things so that people need to commit to the performance a couple months out, then at least you emphasize the need to plan ahead. Only problem is that if people don’t show up because their investment is as low as the price they paid for the ticket, you may judge it something of a mixed blessing.

Entranced by Gorey’s Details

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This weekend I attended an opening of an exhibit of the works of Edward Gorey. I honestly had no idea he was as prolific an illustrator and writer as he was. I had grown up seeing the openings he created for PBS’ Mystery and a college roommate had a poster of his Gashleycrumb Tinies. I had nearly forgotten that he did the set and costume design (as well as playbill cover) for the Broadway performance of Dracula back in the 70s.

But there are scads more that he produced, so much of it so very wickedly clever. I loved his pop up books. There was this one book that expanded like an accordion. You peered into one end and apparently as you expanded and contracted the book, the different figures would emerge and retreat from your field of vision changing your perspective about the details of the scene. (I wish I could find a picture of it online to show you!)

As I looked around, it occurred to me that technology is no substitute for talent. Gorey used paper and ink of various qualities and grades to express himself in ways that can’t be replicated or remixed by someone on a computer who lacks Gorey’s vision. He had a series of story cards with images and short phrases that could be shuffled and laid out in myriad ways to create alternative stories. The ones on display in the case had a mystery theme and depending on the order you gazed upon them could have people sneaking around possible as a cause of what came later or as a reaction to what happened earlier. There were books with the pages sliced into about ten stacks of slips that could be used the same way. Flip to the 3rd slip of the top pile, the 8th slip of the fourth pile, the 3 slip of the 9th pile and you had a one variation of a thousand stories. I liked the cards a little better because I could see them being easier to use on a long car ride and the illustrations contributed to my imagination. In one variation, those on the card looked around furtively. In another, they just looked bored.

In most theatre classes, students are often reminded that the fancy lights and effects and detailed costumes are not the performance, but merely enhance the experience. All you need is a good performer with a good story. The rest is superfluous. Gorey brings a lot to his work. Even though you experience the art and text on a static medium, as the speaker said yesterday, you have to interact with his work to get something out of it. He requires imagination, intelligence and thought.

Arts, Feel The Burn. Love the Burn!

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Andrew Taylor has the video of Diane Ragsdale’s address on Arts Alliance Illinois 2010 Members’ Meeting on his blog today. Her speech was titled, “Surviving the Culture Change” and she tackled the general idea that expectations are changing and the arts need to change too. My favorite moment was when she likened the experience of attending the arts for someone who has never really done so to going to the gym. “You have to go on a regular basis before going feels better than not going.”

During her talk she references the fact that large churches often make sure newcomers are greeted and are integrated into a small group that becomes something of a social network for them so they don’t feel like a small fish in a really big pond. I made a similar observation in just the last month.

She also talked about attending performances and then wanting the arts organization to have posted some sort of downloadable material the next day that she could share with her friends. Perhaps she acknowledged the problem and I missed it, but the biggest difficulty with that is arranging for all the intellectual property clearances to pull that off. Doing what she suggests will either take a major shift in how protective IP holders are with their material..or the rise to prominence of people who don’t care to have it tightly guarded. Something that may just happen if people flock to them because they enable audiences to share clips the next day.

Ragsdale speaks on a number of topics over 45 minutes and there is a lot that is likely to interest you, so watch it below. The last thing that grabbed my attention was when she talked about saying you don’t have time to be involved with the arts is just an easy default answer. She points out that people devoted to the slow food movement/sustainable agriculture invest a great deal of time and money hunting down organic ingredients, learning to prepare meals and then engaging in the time consuming cooking process. There is a sense of satisfaction they get from this activity. Part of the trick then is to provide an opportunity to acquire a similar sense of satisfaction in the arts.

N.B. – For a shorter version of Diane’s comments and the text of the prepared remarks, see the links in Scarlett Swerdlow’s comments below. Thanks for the tip, Scarlett!

Diane Ragsdale on Surviving the Culture Change (Full Remarks) from Arts Alliance Illinois on Vimeo.

On Refunds and Exchanges

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So I made a big mistake this week with a reception invite. There was actually a letter missing from the title of the show on the cover of the invite. Now in my defense, about five other people missed it to. I had originally assumed that I messed it up by accidentally brushing the space bar when I was reviewing the work on my computer yesterday. Then I went back and looked at the versions I emailed out to the various parties involved, including the show creator, over the course of two weeks. It was missing all that time and no one caught it. I suspect part of the reason is that the cover of the invite was inverted so that it would fold into the correct orientation on the finished product. (Also, I think the show might be cursed. The show creator made a mistake on his first run of invitations a year ago when he was inviting his donors to a preview of part of the work.)

In any case, I sent the corrected version back to the printer and told them if they were having a sense of deja vu, it was because I had made a mistake on the first run. I got a call from the print shop and they said if I brought all the flawed pieces back, they would only charge me 50% of the original cost on the reprint. This was happy news to me since I resigned myself to putting the reprint on my credit card as it was my fault. I think it is a great policy on the part of the shop because they earn good will from the customer and they can be sure the paper is recycled rather than tossed in a dumpster.

As I usually do when I encounter an example of good customer service, I wondered how this policy might be applied to the arts. My first thought was in regard to exchange fees for tickets. Many organizations either do not exchange, have a $2-$5 fee for exchanges or only allow subscribers to exchange. I don’t have any data on how well any of these policies are received by audience members who want to change the performances. I suspect it is largely a function of the communities and the dynamics of the relationship each organization has with its audience base. While I think no exchanges or a fee provides an incentive to make a firm decision, it can be difficult to discern if the ticket office made a mistake or to demand people pay it when an accident/emergency is going to prevent their attendance. Deciding to do an exchange or refund is so often a subjective judgment call that having a fee can exacerbate the frustration of those who feel they were unjustly denied.

Part of the problem is an empty seat is not a ream of paper. Yes, an empty seat is lost revenue once the show has started but that is a more abstract concept for people than the ream of paper now spoiled by a mistake the consumer has made. The whole concept of a performance as a perishable commodity which you are exchanging money for can be tough to grasp if there are many opportunities. My dentist can fine me for breaking my appointment because he knows I will have to come back sooner or later when my teeth start to hurt. (Just for the record, I am faithful to my 6 month appointments.) Occupying his chair is something I feel I need to do. Not always the case with some performances.

In these days when people are making and changing their plans at the last minute, do no refund/exchange policies or fees make sense? Do they provide a disincentive to attendance in the first place? There are a number of organizations who experiment with flex passes, some of which allow you a set number of tickets to any performance you want to see. You can come once with 6 friends, come 6 times to the same show yourself or go to 6 different shows yourself. Seattle Rep has a package like this called Player Pass. They even have a Today’s Pass where you call the day of the show to get the best seats. Of course, if the show is sold out, you can’t get in.

If you only have one night performances and many of these shows don’t have similar ticket prices, then it can be difficult to institute a program like this. What I like about these flexible programs is that it puts a little more of the responsibility back on the ticket buyer. I am good at my job because I excel at advance planning. In the face of indecision and vacillation over weekend plans, I want to grumble, “geez, make a decision already!” With these flexible passes, if a person waits too long and the show they want to see is sold out and they don’t value the remaining shows in the season as much, then their subscriptions have lost a little of that intangible value I spoke of earlier.

Of course, the annoyance factor for me would be about the same whether they were wheedling and begging to get into a sold out show or vacillating about going to a show in advance. I may feel a little smug about having a sold out show, but I always hate having to turn people away from great shows for reasons that have nothing to do with ticket revenue. Flex passes don’t alleviate your worry on Wednesday about whether people will come to see the show on Friday because few have committed to any weekend plans yet. Well sure, with the flex passes you have already collected some money, and that is comforting. But performances were meant to be seen, the more the better.

Will Taxes Be Known As Manadatory Donations?

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While non-profit arts organizations are looking into alternative structures under which to organize themselves like the L3C, it seems at least one municipality is looking to the non-profit model for their government structure.

Back in July, I came across an article about how Hopewell Borough in NJ is considering the non-profit model as a way to avoid state mandates. Mayor Paul Anzano posted a letter on the borough website in December:

“This would not be about seceding from the state, abandoning our responsibilities or failing to maintain the highest goals,” he wrote. “But it would most certainly involve exploring new options for delivering services based on the unique character of our borough. … Let the discussion begin.”

He was motivated by frustration he felt when the state mandated services but forbade raising taxes.

According to the newspaper article, “Under Mayor Anzano’s plan, the community would be run on a corporate model, and a board of directors, rather than a borough council, would hold residents responsible for municipal fees much like those in a co-op.”

The government wouldn’t be organized under 501 c 3 like arts organizations are so there wouldn’t be an opportunity to write off your property taxes as a deductible donation. There are a few non-profit categories under which you can organize which supporting would not be tax deductible (neighborhood associations or condo co-opts, for example).

The mention of co-opt association raised a momentary red flag for me as I recalled a recent story about how Texas Homeowner Associations can foreclose on your property without a judicial proceeding. This is the case in 33 states. I wondered if NJ were one and if Hopewell Borough might end up structured in such a way that they were exempt from any eminent domain prohibitions that usually face governments.

I was waiting to see if there might be any more development on the story, but other than the borough meeting a few days later to discuss this, I haven’t been able to find much more news on the matter.

So at this point, there is no sign that this will ever come to fruition. But if a borough of 2000 people can get a discussion started on the topic among various state government units and the associations to which they belong, maybe the charitable non-profits should get together, the hospitals, social service agencies, arts organizations, etc, and push for an alternative structure–either a new one or a new hybrid non-profit category that provides more options for operation.

Be A Broadway Producer!

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Broadway Producer Ken Davenport is offering the first crowd funded investment opportunity in a Broadway show. For $100/unit, ten unit minimum, you can invest in Davenport’s Broadway revival of Godspell.

Davenport had to pass an exam to become a securities agent in order to offer this opportunity.

From Davenport’s blog-

“Each investor in Godspell shall receive a limited liability company interest in The Godspell, LLC, per our Offering Circular as qualified with the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States.*

In addition, every single investor, no matter how much he or she invests, will have his or her name listed on a poster outside of our Broadway theater.

Yep, you’re going to get billing.

And every single investor will also have their name listed on a new website created exclusively for this community, PeopleofGodspell.com, as well as his or her photo, hometown, a quote, and links to their Facebook and Twitter profiles.

What do you think? Fun, right?

There may even be opportunities for opening night performance and gala tickets, complimentary tickets to previews, invitations to private cast functions and more.”

Bad news for many of you, including me, you have to live in one of the following states to directly invest – CA, CT, GA, IL, MA, MI, MN, NJ and NY. If you really want to participate, maybe you can have friends/relatives who live there and are interested in investing themselves pool your money with theirs. Not sure if you can get credit on the poster though.

1099s For Everybody!

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I was idly skimming around Inc.com today when I came across a story which raised some concern for all the already overburdened arts organizations out there.

Apparently, a provision of the new health care law will require that any company making a purchase of more than $600 issue a 1099 form to the seller. Even for arts organizations who don’t generally have a lot of money, it is pretty easy to spend $600 with a single company in the course of a year. I can see a lot of arts organizations being driven to distraction trying to comply with this. Especially since arts organizations may also end up receiving as well as giving because of rentals or blocks of tickets people may have purchased for their business.

This law actually may provide a disincentive to shop around for the cheapest price. If it is easier to keep track of everything you spent on hardware at one store, you may avoid the other stores even though they often have good prices on certain items.

Non profits may be exempted for all I know, but there was no mention of that in the six different articles I read trying to get more information on the subject. There are a few amendments that have been proposed. One was voted down today because it tried to dismantle a couple other elements of the bill along the way.

This is supposed to go into effect in 2012 so more information may emerge as Congress tries to sort all the intended and unintended consequences out.

Gumbo With Your Show

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I have only written about performances we have presented that transcended my expectations artistically (or things that we self-produced). The performance we presented this past weekend was just as excellent as I expected so it doesn’t necessarily fall into that category. However, the ancillary activities we conducted garnered us a lot of audience goodwill.

We were having a Louisiana group, Red Stick Ramblers, perform for us and noticed they did cooking demonstrations. Since their performance would be the first event of the season, it seemed like a good opening event to have the group cook for a small number of people. Theatres often offer the opportunity to have dinner with performers, but having the performers cook the dinner is a little more novel. They would be performing the same night so we didn’t want them to keel over in exhaustion. The chef/fiddler confirmed that cooking for nearly 200 people and doing a show nearly wiped him out once so I was pleased we limited the tickets to 50 people. We still have nice weather so we held it outside and billed it as a picnic. In addition to cooking, the band jammed a little off to the side while the meal was being prepared.

The people who attended were quite verbal with their appreciation for hosting the dinner and concert. They kept telling my boss how wonderful I was and what a great job I was doing at the theatre. (I should add, we weren’t serving any alcohol.) People got to listen and chat with the musicians. Others crowded around the pot and helped stir. If you have ever made a brown roux, for gumbo you know there is a lot of stirring to be done. A good number who attended the picnic knew each other from attending various music festivals in Louisiana so I was pleased there was some word of mouth in operation. I know the event added a couple people to our mailing list.

Of course, we had to expend quite a bit of effort to make a picnic happen in addition to a concert. There was a lot of food to be purchased and prepped prior to their arrival. Potatoes don’t peel themselves, nor do shrimp de-vein and lose their tails on command. Tables and chairs to be set up and broken down. Dishes had to be washed. By the end of the night, you begin to see the wisdom of having things catered.

But as people poured out of the theatre at intermission and the end of the show, still heaping praise on the experience, I realized we had earned a lot of good will with a number of people that evening. Caterers may have done all the clean up, but sometimes that can’t compare to a good home cooked meal. (Letting them in to the seating area earlier than everyone else probably didn’t hurt either.) By the time I got to the pot, everyone had fished all the big pieces of shrimp and other seafood out, but the liquid itself was pretty great tasting.

I am not particularly pushing these guys, though they are pretty easy going and fun. I think there are a few Louisiana/Southern US groups that do this sort of thing. A guy calling himself the Sauce Boss makes gumbo on stage while he performs and then gives a little to the audience. This can be a fun activity for a performing arts center. One of our partner venues in the state is having their cooking demo on a separate day from the concert so they can serve a larger group than we did. I think their dinner event was more fund raising focused.

Cherry Orchard? Check The Freezer Section

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Given my brief foray into site specific theatre last Spring, I have been keeping my eyes open for other projects. Via the Fast Company website is a The Cherry Orchard inspired piece set in an empty department store in Brighton, England.

The Fast Company site has some images, but architectural photographer Jim Stephenson has an entire walk through of the building on his blog, talking about what an attendee experienced.

A lot of it sounds like fun–entering the freezer and finding yourself looking at a winter snowscape with a model of the Cherry Orchard house. You move to the next room and you find yourself in the house modeled in the snowscape. At other times you move from the 19th century Russian house to a more contemporary Russian department store.

Take a look. See if you are inspired.

Duelling Boards

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A nod to Non-Profit Law Blog for their link to a very extreme situation addressing the question of who owns a non-profit. In a story that appeared in the Star-Tribune (MN) and Non-Profit Quarterly. The founder of a non-profit that works with former inmates was frustrated with what he saw as a lack of responsiveness from his board. He formed a second board with a former member of the first board. This second board voted to dissolve the first board and install themselves as the governing body. According to both articles, the founder ended up fired and being lead away by police in the presence of both board presidents, each claiming they were in charge.

The short answer about who is in charge is always the board. They bear the responsibility of the governance of the organization. But given that organizational founders are generally the ones who institute the formation of a board asking the initial members to serve, does a founder have an ability to choose his/her own board? There is a point where the ability to select board members passes from the founder’s hands. My suspicion is that absent a provision giving the founder or executive director the power to make appointments, this occurs once bylaws have been completed and properly filed.

The next logical question is, when a board is not living up to its responsibilities, what recourse do people have in replacing them? Presumably the board can be sued for not meeting their responsibilities and a court could dissolve the board and order the formation of a new one. I have never heard of this happening, though I am sure it has, so I can’t be certain. It may not be the board as a whole which is dissolved and only those whom have been proven to be remiss in their duties who are removed from the board. But basis of this would be whether members attended the required meetings and were diligent in their review and handling of organizational matters. If it were not essential or required that the members return calls or attend the organizational events, it might be difficult to have the board dismissed. If they were moving forward with the strategic plan and operating budget at a rate a court found reasonable, again it could be difficult to unseat them.

If the allegations of mismanagement originate from within the organization, as it did in this case, then there is also the stress of having the board and staff in a confrontational stance complicating the situation as well. As I mentioned, I am sure there have been times when boards have been dissolved because they failed in their duties, but I wonder how many of those instigated by staff. If anyone on staff is going to do it, it would be the founder given how much they have invested in the organization. Staff members may have provided materials to support the case against the board, but it has to take a lot of moxie for a staff to declare a company is ill-served by its board and initiate legal proceedings.

Yes, We Get Snow Here

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In about five weeks we will be producing a show about the Hawaiian snow goddess, Poli‘ahu. Yes, Hawaii has snow every winter on Haleakala and Mauna Kea. It is upon Mauna Kea that Poli‘ahu and her sisters are said to reside. There are actually a lot of very interesting tales about the goddess and her sister, including a sled race against a disguised Pele, the volcano goddess.

We are working with the same company who created a Hawaiian opera based on the myth of the Naupaka flower back in 2006. One of the things that excited me about doing the 2006 show was that the artistic director was taking an approach to storytelling that was ambitious of itself, but fairly new in relation to Hawaiian culture. I thought the show might provide a good model and inspiration for other groups since Hawaii is undergoing something of a cultural renaissance. Since then we have presented a show produced by a partner organization about Kahekili who essentially played Uther to Kamehameha’s Arthur in the unification of the islands.

I had been pleased to learn that the artistic staff creating Kahekili had looked at the Naupaka performance when they were planning to remount their work created a decade earlier. In our early discussions about the Poli‘ahu, the artistic director talked about the lessons and ideas he took from the staging of Kahekili. The idea that there was an artistic conversation of sorts driving the evolution and development of works happening before my eyes really excites me.

This may not seem like big deal in most places where everyone seems to give homage/steal the best of what they see other people doing. There are strict lines of tradition and orthodoxy in hula so even if you explicitly say you aren’t doing hula, but only hula inspired work, your product must still be respectful. Likewise, anything dealing with royalty or divine entities must exhibit suitable reverence. The production of Poli‘ahu is also integrating Siberian and Yupik Eskimo chant and dance so even more attention must be paid to avoid offending someone.

Of course, we also face the challenge of trying to convince people who are familiar with the traditional performance to take a chance on the unorthodox. We have sold out these performances before so we are leaving the door open to add additional shows. But four years ago, the people who seemed to understand what we were trying to do were those least steeped in the traditional arts. In fact, one of the arts reporters who is familiar with the company’s work asked how this production would be any different from their previous work. I almost blessed the opportunity to speak to someone who was a little jaded about it all because I didn’t have to work overcome the inertia of unfamiliarity before even explaining the concept.

I can tell by the way the ticket sales are going that this show is going to be sold by word of mouth and trusted sources rather than print and broadcast media. There are shows six months down the road that are selling about as well on the strength of the brochure alone. They will probably be 1/3 sold before I even revisit my plan to promote them.

Fortunately, we have been working together this summer to line up the interest and involvement of many of these trusted entities and that effort should bear fruit very soon. Once some of that becomes public and visible, we will start reaching out to individuals in the hopes of getting the phrases “I saw…, I heard…” entering conversations, tweets and Facebook postings.

Standin’ In A Line To See Bob Dylan

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Interesting piece in the San Francisco Chronicle via Artsjournal.com about Bob Dylan’s ticketless concert experiment that had a lackluster result. Basically, in attempt to avoid the high ticket fees tacked on by ticketing services and scalpers, Dylan decided to charge much less for tickets than at other venues. The catch was that you had to line up no earlier than noon, with cash only. Admission started at 5:30 pm for the 8:00 show, but you couldn’t leave because you had no ticket to gain readmittance with. According to the article, the 2250 seat event didn’t sell very well.

The folks at the Chronicle, and indeed many of the commenters on the piece, attributed the low turn out to the lack of a convenient way of securing tickets before going. Many people said the assumed they wouldn’t be able to get in by the time they traveled down to the venue so they didn’t bother. People wanted to be certain they could get in before making the attempt. It is likely also partially a statement about Dylan’s popularity with people that they frequently mentioned being able to get down there after work rather than saying they would have snuck out of work to attend. Other bands may have seen better attendance with the same plan if their fans were willing to go to extremes to attend.

But it also provides some insight into how people are approaching their entertainment experiences these days. There was a time after all that people would wait on line for hours and pay cash to get into a show. Granted, it was a few decades ago. Today people complain about all the additional fees ticketing services charge, but the way they prioritize their lives allows the ticket sellers to increasingly charge them for the convenience. It is somewhat interesting to me that the interactions with big ticketing services like Ticketmaster really shapes my relationship with my patrons and their expectations.

I get people who easily spend more in gas and time trekking in to avoid the $2 service fee, all of which goes to keeping the system running, vs. $10+ charged by Ticketmaster. We have no problem selling to people who walk in, but it often seems their righteous indignation is costing them more than it is saving. It may be the principle of the thing, but that principle is much more significant when the price is higher.

On the other end of the spectrum, we have people who often assume there is a restricted window of time in which they can purchase tickets and who are flabbergasted to learn the tickets went on sale months prior with all of our other events.

There is certainly great benefit to be derived from restricting access to increase the perceived value of the event. Scarcity can create demand. The question is whether this is a suitable procedure for an organization whose mission is to serve the community and cultivate understanding and appreciation. Sure everyone at the theatre needs to eat and anything that helps you keep ticket prices at a level that enables you to meet payroll is valuable. But do you really want to be engendering a sense of anxiety and distrust in your audiences to achieve that? Though since many people can’t discern profit from non-profit, the anxiety and distrust may be yours regardless.

There are probably a number of elements that contributed to Bob Dylan’s experiment having less than pleasing results, including having just played in nearby Oakland. (Though certainly no one in San Francisco goes to Oakland for their entertainment.) I suspect that one of the biggest factors was creating too many conditions to be met with too little certainty.

Info You Can Use: Sponsorship and Fundraising Webinars

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Fractured Atlas is tackling sponsorship and fund raising in September with a series of webinars on Tuesdays and Wednesdays throughout the month. It looks like the sessions address Fractured Atlas’ criteria for the programs they run in these areas but also give tips for approaching companies for these things in general. Though if you are interested, you might check. The September 15 session seems to be geared for those who have been accepted into their sponsorship program.

If you have not heard of Fractured Atlas before, ” We help artists and arts organizations function more effectively as businesses by providing access to funding, healthcare, education, and more, all in a context that honors their individuality and independent spirit.” They are always working to expand their reach nationally and I think the timing of the webinars is an example of that. At first I thought they were running them 8:30 -9:30 AM which would put it in the wee hours of the morning for me and not be of much help. On second look, I realized it was in the evening which would serve me and everyone in the time zones between here and the U.S. East Coast much better.

Ritual And The Arts

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So this weekend I am acting as a master of ceremonies for a wedding reception. The request was made based, I kid you not, my curtain speeches before performances. I guess that teaches me not to give discounted tickets to my friends. They also chose me for my sense of humor. I am supposed to make some humorous remarks about the bride because her sister doesn’t speak English fluently enough to tell everyone how the bride tortured her when they were younger and how devoted they are to one another.

Mostly I agreed because there wouldn’t be a DJ at the reception so I will be spared the two wedding reception songs I hate the most. Celebrate by Kool and the Gang and The Chicken Dance. Also, if I am up at the mic, I won’t have to participate in the catching of the garter!

As simple as this wedding is, there is still a fair bit of ceremony and protocol involved during the reception –more so than the actual wedding ceremony. It made me realize that people have a real need, despite protestations that they want to keep it simple, to have some propriety and procedure involved in order to validate the whole proceedings.

I got me wondering about all the complaints about the intimidating formality of attending arts events. Do people really want things to be as informal as they say they do? When you spend as much money as you do on a ticket, do people have a natural inclination to validate the experience with some sort of ritual to mark the occasion? The problem may not be that there is formality surrounding the arts event, it may simply be that the rules are unfamiliar.

You can easily spend more on tickets to a football game. If you have ever attended one of these events casually either not being a die hard fan or regular attendee, it is easy to feel intimidated by the fact that people have tail gate set ups that rival some restaurants with fiercely held opinions about barbeque.

Or just attend a comic book convention and try to follow the minutiae referenced by die hard fans.

I would mention attending a showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show for the first time, but regrettably few theatres show the movie any more. I blame the VHS release of the movie for letting people watch it at home and therefore become disconnected from that particularly exhilarating audience participation ritual.

As a newcomer, any of these experiences can be intimidating to those who don’t know the rules. But aside from making fun of nerdy males for having poor social graces, no one says that the die hard fans need to make their area of interest more accessible as is done with the arts. If you want to join in, you have to learn the rules of football and how to hitch your grill to the back of your truck. If you want to hang out at the comics convention, you’ll need to know obscure facts like the first non-clone stormtroopers were recruited in the year 9 BBY. And you know you will need to bring props, learn when to use them and learn some of the common call backs for the Rocky Horror Picture Show.

Being a show virgin at Rocky Horror can have more public consequences than going to the theatre or symphony for the first time. So why are people so put off by the thought of going to the theatre? Best I can think of is that it may seem more possible to master the arcane details of these other pursuits, even though it is much easier to study up in advance of attending a performing arts event and fake your way along by keeping quiet and watching everyone else.

Also, knowledge of the arts can often be tied to a measure of your worth as a person. Are you educated and cultured enough? While the same can be true of some sports in many parts of the country, there are friends and family members around to teach you the rituals surrounding the sport in your daily life. This is often not the case with the arts.

So I guess we get back to the old nature and nurture situation. Desire for ritual may be a natural part of being human, but our comfort level in approaching and learning new rituals is a function of what areas of knowledge we receive nurturing in.

Concert And Brew

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So something of a tangential post to my entry yesterday featuring churches whose design and technology rival performing arts venues. Today’s topic– performance spaces you want to work at based on superficial qualities like the name or appearance alone. This is an audience participation post so feel free to add your dreams and stories in the comments box.

I will start mine out with a little confession. I used to hear promotions on the radio for Live at the Concertgebouw. The Concertgebouw is one of the premiere music venues in the world located in Amsterdam.

Not knowing this, however, I thought they were saying Concertebrau which I imagined was a concert hall in which Germans enjoyed their two great passions, classical music and excellent beer. I pictured Germans reclining, great steins in hand and reveling in the music. Since it was pretty much accepted gospel that Europeans had a much greater appreciation of classical music than Americans, I figured attendance was a commonplace past time at which beer was present.

My second theory was that there wasn’t a lot of beer involved, but that the Germans envisioned the creation of great music much like the crafting of a great brew–involving a lot of investment of time and balanced elements but ultimately intoxicating. That was a little more wishful thinking.

Not that the crossing of a concert and beer hall was very realistic. I was almost disappointed to learn that the real place was in Amsterdam. Can’t tell from the website if they serve beer.

The other places that have caught my imagination just on the basis of outward appearances are the Chocolate Church in Bath, Maine; Albuquerque’s KiMo Theatre with its cool interior featuring skulls with glowing eyes and swastika. Though I have never been there, I have mentioned my infatuation with the whole idea of the John Michael Kohler Arts Center a couple times in this blog. Same with Wolf Trap. I don’t know what they are like now, but long ago I got my hands on an American Players Theatre brochure and thought it had some pretty clever and enticing writing. Enough that I still think I need to get to Wisconsin one summer soon.

I am sure there are other deserving arts organizations who have been the beneficiaries of my lust at a distance, but I can’t think of them at the moment. There are a couple that have not requited my lust and thus must suffer not being mentioned.

Any places that have fired your imaginations, gentle readers, if only based on a cool name or well designed brochure?

Buildings That Say We Want You To Stay

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A hat tip to the Stuff Christian Culture Likes blog for the link to the photostream of Jody Forehand, a regional director for Visioneering Studios which does a lot of church design. I don’t want to get into a discussion about the influence of mega-churchs or the morality of such conspicuous consumption in church buildings.

I just wanted to point out just how theatrical the settings are. Even excepting the toon town design of the children’s worship area of Central Christian Church, I am sure most of us would be envious of the design and technology of each of these gorgeous buildings. Then there is the staffing. There is a lot of work that goes into organizing and mobilizing the largely volunteer staffing for some of these buildings every week.

I know there is a sense of obligation which brings people to these churches and their satellite campuses that people don’t feel toward the arts. The notes on Elevation Church say it is the broadcast hub for three locations serving 7000 people at 10 services a weekend. But as I have often said on this blog, perhaps there is something to be learned from churches. This is a situation where people aren’t charged an admission fee, there is music, but much of the time is spent listening to a person reinterpret a classic text for today’s audience or talk about their experiences. While one of the speakers may have a lot of experience traveling around speaking on the same subject, much of what is said by the speakers has not been extensively workshopped or rehearsed over many weeks. And yet, there is enough investment in the church to construct multi-million dollar buildings.

Even if people aren’t there out of a sense of obligation, there are spiritual needs that are met at worship services, even if they are heavily theatricized, that a main stream play or musical can’t provide. For many it is preferable to hear a single person talk about the life of crime they lead than it is to watch a well rehearsed performance about a criminal that mended his ways. Honestly, I don’t think communities are well served by theatres that only do morally unambigious shows with happy endings. Though there is a price to be paid for that decision.

But one thing that is clear from looking at this buildings is that they were designed to serve the communities. Even though the main use of the facilities is in a large room with theater style seating for hundreds, there are large areas devoted to children and large lounge areas and lobbies to mingle and hang out in. Even though there are multiple services each day, the place isn’t designed to move one group out and bring another group in. They don’t care if people stick around, in fact they want people to stay because that provides an opportunity to get a person more invested in the organization.

That is something of an alien thought for most performing arts groups because their model is based on selling a seat to a different person each performance. If a person wants to buy a seat for the next show, that is great! But if they just want to stick around and take in the whole vibe and experience again, that can cut into the bottom line.

But maybe it is time to rethink this approach, especially with organizations that are focused on serving a specific community. Internet communities create value by having people stick around and interact–the longer the better. Granted, even with the largest internet companies, the question always arises as to how they end up making money providing these services for free. And it is relatively easier for an internet company to add more capacity by buying more server space vs. a performing arts organization trying to expand their physical space as more people decide to hang out and interact.

Finding a model that works for theatres will take some imagination and perhaps even some tact. I have been reading quite a few articles lately that talk about how coffee houses which had been offering free WiFi have started turning it off because people have been camping out at tables all day long while nursing a single cup of coffee. So it isn’t as if theatres would be out of touch idiots for recognizing the need to empty and refill seats in order to stay in business.

Really, when people are hanging around the churches, they probably aren’t returning to the seats in the worship center anyway. There are other areas for them interact with people and many of those people will ask if they are interested in increasing their involvement and commitment to the church. This might involve anything from volunteering in some capacity to joining an affinity group (young parents, young singles, female professionals, etc).

Implementing these sort of programs are within the abilities of many arts organizations. Much of it can be accomplished with the help of well directed volunteers. Though granted many are willing to invest more volunteer hours into their spiritual lives than into the local arts organization. Certainly many find spiritual fulfillment in the arts.

100% Fundraising Expenses

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Some what apropos of my post on mandatory salary caps for executives of non-profits is a post by Dan Pallotta on the Harvard Business Review blog in which he makes suggestions that would likely see government entities really start screaming.

Palotta advocates for salaries of non-profit staffs on par with those of for profit businesses. But the bulk of the post is spent on the premise that low fund raising expenditures are actually inhibiting charities from doing the most good. His argument is that instead of touting 10%-15% expenditures on fund raising and remaining too small to make a big impact on a problem, charities should be spending 50%-100% on fund raising.

“The less an organization invests in fundraising the less it can grow. The less it can grow the more human suffering persists. We have institutionalized a mechanism for insuring the persistence of human suffering and called it “charity.”

[…]

“If we are serious about the value of human life, then we have to start thinking about 50 to 100% fundraising rates for the organizations chartered to save human lives. Those organizations should take no pride in telling donors or anyone else how low their fundraising costs are. Quite the opposite. I want to support the organization that’s going for scale, not the one that’s stuck where it is. Why would I support a cancer organization promoting its low fundraising investment while cancer remains uncured? We have the whole reward system backwards.

(Qualification: I’m not sanctioning inefficiency. That’s a completely different conversation. Everything I’m advocating assumes maximum efficiency.)

What we are doing is not working. A world in which 10 to 15% fundraising ratios are the norm is a world in which our charities are woefully too small to confront social problems on any meaningful scale. It’s a world where growth occurs – if it occurs at all – at the pace of molasses — the pace of death — and where human suffering continues on an unimaginable scale with no end in sight.”

If you are like me and you are thinking if an organization is spending 100% of the money it raises on raising more money then no one is getting cured, then you are absolutely correct. That is exactly what he is proposing. Presumably, you would use all that money to find a new way to convince people to donate since you wouldn’t have any examples of those whom you have helped.

If you read down into the comments section where Pallotta responds to some of the questions, you get a little more detail. Addressing the idea that the fund raiser never gets around to doing anything, Pallota says,

“Think of it this way. Humanitarian organizations regularly engage in certain activities – a direct-mail campaign – designed to acquire new donors. Sometimes those campaigns can go for several years running 100% costs. But then comes the pay-off – huge fundraising databases with no new expense associated with them You turn that engine on and then you start producing revenues for programs and for the cause at volumes many, many times larger than you could have if you never made the investment and never tolerated the 100% cost ratios for a certain period of time. Understand? “

In response to the question posed by a commenter named Shaun, who asks “who wants to be the person who gives money just to solicit more money?” Pollota answers, “Think of it this way: if I told you your dollar could go directly to the needy, or that it could go to an ad campaign that would generate ten dollars for the needy, which would you choose?” To which another commenter, RachelAC, replies, “I might prefer that my $1 go to the needy now, rather than $10 going to the needy in five years.”

I think RachelAC’s response expresses the crux of the matter for me. In an ideal situation, Pallota’s approach works. But my concern is that the fund raising entity gets so enthralled by their success in raising money, that they never stop and fund the solution. As RachelAC implies, in many situations the dollar today can make a difference where the $10 comes too late. Though granted, whenever a solution to a massive problem comes, it arrives just moments too late for some.

My even bigger concern is that the officers will embezzle the money and run off as they have with so many charities in the past. The fact they are apparently not making as much as they could be according to Pallota only means the incentive to do so increases. I would prefer to know the thieves only absconded with the little I gave rather than what they parlayed it in to.

Big problems can require audacious approaches to solve them. I can see where the piecemeal approach isn’t getting people closer to a solution any faster. But will people continue to give if a theft on the same grand scale were to occur? I think the faith you lose in a charity when it betrays your trust cuts a lot deeper than when a company or person you have invested with misappropriates your money. You enter a relationship with the latter knowing there is a chance you will lose your money. With investments, we are told to diversify. Does it make sense to do the same with our philanthropy or are we just short changing an already under capitalized effort?

“The Monster Outside The Door”

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No, the title of this entry is not another riff on my new lizard mascot in the blog header. Last month I made a post quoting Robert Hewison in an article from The Art Newspaper saying citing the economic value of the arts is bad because “But the Treasury doesn’t buy it. They can see through the “multiplier” calculations of the cultural boosters.”

Today I came across a link on Artsjournal.com to economist John Kay’s website wherein he expounds upon that subject and advises valuing art for its cultural and commercial value.

“Thousands of people build hospitals and surgeries, and many small and medium-size enterprises manufacture hospital supplies. Illness contributes about 10 per cent of the UK’s economy: the government does not do enough to promote disease.

Such reasoning is identical to that of studies sitting on my desk that purport to measure the economic contribution of sport, tourism and the arts. These studies point to the number of jobs created, and the ancillary activities needed to make the activities possible. They add up the incomes that result. Reporting the total with pride, the sponsors hope to persuade us not just that sport, tourism and the arts make life better, but that they contribute to something called “the economy”.

The analogy illustrates the obvious fallacy. What the exercises measure is not the benefits of the activities they applaud, but their cost; and the value of an activity is not what it costs, but the amount by which its benefit exceeds its costs. The economic contribution of sport is in the pleasure participants and spectators derive, and the resulting gains in health and longevity. That value is diminished, not increased, by the resources that need to be diverted from other purposes.

Similarly, the economic value of the arts is in the commercial and cultural value of the performance, not the costs of cleaning the theatre….

…The relevant economic questions are whether the cultural and commercial value of the performance offsets these costs and whether these benefits can be translated into a combination of box office receipts, sponsorship and public subsidy. The appropriate economic criterion, everywhere and always, is the value of the output.”

I have often felt that economic benefit surveys often seem to grasp at straws in an attempt to find any activity tangentially related to arts events. Though I will grant you that if a downtown area empties out at night, it doesn’t matter how scarce parking is, the spaces in a garage are worthless. Activities that put cars in that lot help keep people employed. But then, the parking company can claim they provide economic benefits to the arts by providing a safe place to park within walking distance of the venue in an area with scarce parking. Your audience may even value the close parking enough to factor it in to their attendance decision. But as the arts organization in question, do you see the parking lot as keeping you employed? You might. But if everyone starts adding up the reciprocal value they offer to each other, the result may end up being ten times the actual amount of money changing hands in that particular business district.

When you think about it in that context, then Kay’s insistence that the only appropriate economic measure is the value of the specific output becomes more apparent. And it is logical to think that value only exists when the benefit exceeds the costs. The problem the arts have is that the measure of the benefit is so nebulous that we are driven to find some concrete method with which to prove that benefit does exceed the amount granted and donated.

Plenty of people are willing to say that the arts aren’t worth very much in today’s environment. Many are just as willing to listen and believe them and that makes all of us in the arts really nervous and sends us scrambling for evidence. Kay doesn’t offer much help in making that argument and in fact, he raises the stakes a little by adding commercial success as a measure of the value. That doesn’t leave much hope for the group that only had 80 patrons, but touched them incredibly and deeply, only it is tough to demonstrate the degree.

Which is not to say he doesn’t wholly believe there is an intrinsic value to the arts.

“We need to put out of our minds this widely held notion that there is such a thing as “the economy”, a monster outside the door that needs to be fed and propitiated and whose values conflict with things – such as sports, tourism and the arts – that make our lives agreeable and worthwhile. Activities that are good in themselves are good for the economy, and activities that are bad in themselves are bad for the economy. The only intelligible meaning of “benefit to the economy” is the contribution – direct or indirect – the activity makes to the welfare of ordinary citizens.”

I am not quite sure if he is differentiating between economic value benefit to the the economy since presumably having a job cleaning a building would directly contribute to the welfare of an ordinary citizen. Assuming he is separating the two, I would use those concepts to make the following point—

Ultimately, economic benefits are replaceable and interchangeable. Back in 2007, I covered an article that noted that a group seeking funding for the arts in England cited priorities that would be served by the grant that were among the exact same benefits then Prime Minister Gordon Brown promised the 2012 Olympics would provide.

Studio 54 contributed to the economy by employing cleaning people when it was a Broadway Theatre, radio and television studios for CBS, a disco, and then back to being a theatre again when it was purchased by Roundabout Theatre. Let say all these entities existed at the same time and are arguing which gets to use the building based on economic benefit they bring. Who gets to use the building?

Now lets say the criteria used is the cultural value each organization brings. Now who gets to use the building? Maybe it is CBS both times. In the first example, they might win because they would be spending the most on payroll and other expenses. In the second, they might win because their programming reaches more households and thus touches more lives. But when it comes to determining the value offered by a night club notorious for its hedonism and excess versus theatres, the decision may be tougher to make.

My point is, while it is hard to define in concrete terms, cultural value is a much more specific property of an organization than economic benefit and is worth citing as a reason for others’ support.

What Does The Lizard Represent?

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So a few changes around the blog today. I sent a few pictures of the objects on my desk to Inside The Arts fearless leader, Drew McManus to be used to spiff up the blog header and give it a new look. I sent a picture of my copy of Peter Drucker’s Managing the Non-Profit Organization among other things. Drew said the other pictures didn’t come out right, but I suspect he just felt I was getting full of myself and trying to make myself look deep and important so used the old lizard instead. (I also sent him pictures of the yo-yos and Wheel-O that also sit on my desk, but perhaps he felt that gave the wrong impression.)

But since we tend to be a little misanthropic about the state of the arts from time to time here on Inside the Arts, I also suspect that maybe the lizard and the “Culture Dinosaurs” album cover may be a sign of things to come.

With that in mind, I am about to introduce a topic reversing past statements about how the arts should be positioned.

In the past, I have argued that the value of the arts should not be spoken about in terms of prescriptive benefits – listening to Mozart will make your kids smarter being one of the more famous claims. But we can’t entirely deny that the arts are deeply steeped with pretty much every element that make us human – history, storytelling, movement, music and memory. As such the arts are a vehicle for just about every theory and idea Carl Jung espoused from archetypes to collective unconscious and can constitute an important therapeutic tool.

Psychology Today has had a series called The Healing Arts running on their blog over the past year. Every couple weeks since February, art therapist Cathy Malchiodi has been doing a countdown of her top 10, “Cool Art Therapy Interventions.” She is down to number three so presumably the top two will be coming in the next month or so. Among those therapies she has listed are mask work, mandala making, family sculpture making, photo collages and visual journaling. You can see pretty quickly how some of these activities could help a person express themselves better or introduce calm and focus. Asked to guess what activities might be helpful, I would likely mention these at some point.

Something I would not have listed because it seems so basic is Creating Together. Except for those artists who crave a solitary existence, I don’t think many in the arts would deny that part of what draws them to the arts is the collaborative experience. Even if you don’t achieve some sublime synchronicity while working with others or interacting with audiences in your daily experience, the communal act, even when simply fooling around, can bring something to each participant. About a year ago, I talked about the possible influence of high emotional satisfaction being a possible motivator for involvement in the arts. That, or something closely related, may also contribute to the therapeutic usefulness of the arts.

Why Don’t You Want To Talk To Me?

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I often write, as do so many others, about the importance of establishing a relationship with your audience/donors/community. However, according to a blog post on the Harvard Business Review, our customers may not want a relationship with us. Well, not with arts organizations specifically, but rather with businesses in general.

The post, “Why Your Customers Don’t Want to Talk to You” begins by asking,

“Have you ever walked into an airport, seen that there is nobody in line at the check-in counter, but still made a bee-line for the self-service kiosk? Better yet, have you ever waited in line for an ATM machine even though there is nobody in line for the teller inside the bank?

If you answered “yes” to either of these questions, you’re not alone. Most customers these days demonstrate a huge — and increasing — appetite for self-service, yet most companies run their operations as if customers prefer to interact with them live.”

The authors cite data showing that businesses assume their customers prefer live service twice as much as self service, but that customers are “statistically indifferent about this … By and large, this indifference holds regardless of their age, demographic, issue type, or urgency.” The authors aren’t sure why this is, but offer a hypothesis

“…maybe customers are shifting toward self service because they don’t want a relationship with companies. While this secular trend could be explained away as just a change in consumers’ channel preferences, skeptics might argue that customers never wanted the kind of relationship that companies have always hoped for, and that self service now allows customers the “out” they’ve been looking for all along. “

But what was really helpful about the article were the comments about customer expectations and when people may prefer one type of interaction over the other. And if you don’t believe me, scroll down and read the comment left by Matt Dixon, one of the article’s authors who says as much as he enjoyed writing the post, he is enjoying the comments more.

The reasons why people prefer not to deal with a live person run the gamut- not wanting to be upsold, incompetence/poor customer service from staff, wanting to take time with decision making, not feeling pressured to justify choices to a machine and having already done research on line.

The plus side for humans is avoiding the maze of choices on voice mail systems or having a problem that doesn’t seem to fit the options provided. The human better not sound like they are proceeding through a menu of choices! And of course people aren’t entirely convinced technology is dependable. Two of the calls I fielded today were questions about whether orders had gone through.

One comment by a poster named Will Kenny caught my attention.

“Much of the problem is how companies have defined “relationship,” and many of them simply meant “some way to stay in contact with the customer, to sell more stuff.” In other words, a “relationship” is formed, in these companies, when the company has found a way to continue talking to the customer.”

I felt a little guilty because often that is pretty darn close to the subtext of what we mean when we talk about developing a relationship with our community. It is tough to get past that because we are running businesses and have bills to pay after all. We probably have much more sincere relationships with our next door neighbors than we do with our customers because we babysit each other’s kids and make chicken soup when someone is sick. But those same gestures create a positive impression about the organizations we work for in people’s minds too. And those type of sincere gestures on the corporate level –including just plain listening well–can help strengthen organizational relationships, too.

Arts organizations are in a medial position in all this. So much of what we produce can be researched using other sources. You can read scripts, watch videos, listen to recordings and read reviews. People can avoid contact with us if they like. However, because of the intimidation factor involved with the arts, we are also called upon to be experts, and compassionate experts at that, who can explain without alienating. We save money by having technology handle information requests well and replace a real person. But we also save by having knowledgeable and skilled people who answer the questions. I think there is something to be said for small organizations where some times everyone ends up grabbing the phone because it forces everyone to be able to speak confidently about matters outside their immediate area.

As The Brochure Folds, The Saga Continues!

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For those of you who were following the trials and tribulations of my attempts to design a season brochure per the requirements of the post office, I must confess….the post office won. *sigh*

By which, of course, I mean that I could have designed it anyway I wanted if I were willing to pay the price. The changes the print house suggested did add a slightly disjointed element to the design, but since I decided most people who kept it would be looking at the other side of the brochure most of the time, it wasn’t worth the extra cost.

I have been trying to find a clear illustration of what we ended up with, but really haven’t been able to. The instructions the print house gave us in the course of trying to convince us to change the design just confused us so I didn’t want to use that. But if you are curious, grab a piece of paper and make your own mock up! We used a larger sheet than your standard 8.5 x 11 paper, but you will get the idea.

Hold piece of paper in landscape orientation. Fold the right side to the left so that the crease is on the right side. Fold the paper in thirds starting from the top. Top third folds down, bottom third folds up so it lays on top. Draw a little indicia on the right hand corner. That is the mailing side facing you. The post office likes the piece to go in with the full crease on the bottom and the creased ends on the right side. The open ends are on the top and left side.

If you rotate the page on the vertical axis and write the name of your arts organization, you see where we had our theatre name. The problem is, if you open the brochure up now, you will see the top panel is the mailing label upside down. We had a real striking image we wanted to use across the middle panel where the name of the theatre was, down to the bottom panel. I decided I could live with the mailing panel being upside down since the rest of that side looked good. With most of the important content about the shows on the other side, I figured most people would tack it up with that side facing out and rarely see the inverted panel on the back.

Any way, that was my solution for this situation. The printer is going to be having a seminar on the postal service regulations and our graphic designer plans to go. Based on what she learns and knowing how the post office likes things, next year we may start out our design concept differently with an alternative orientation and folding pattern. The one interesting thing I haven’t gotten a chance to follow up on is that both the post office and the printers said we would likely need three tabs to hold the mailing closed. All the brochures my staff and I received at our homes only had one. I am just wondering why. (I also wonder what it says that I am writing reminders to check up on adhesive tab rules.)

Remembering It’s Not About You

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I finally got around to reading the report WolfBrown generated following a study of what motivates donors in the San Francisco Bay area, “It’s Not About You … It’s About Them: A Research Report on What Motivates Bay Area Donors to Give to the Arts and Artists.” As you might imagine, it encourages people to focus on the interests and needs of the potential donors rather than the needs of the organization.

Much of it is very interesting. The study revealed five different motivation groups in which donors fell- Values-Driven Intrinsics, Community Altruists, Progressive Artist Champions, High-Touch Social Givers, Supportive Audience; and discussed what characteristics each group possessed as well as the percentage of the audiences these segments comprised. The report included a number of case studies on Bay area arts groups and identified the way the groups’ approaches successfully met their donors’ needs and interests.

Rather than doing a lengthy summary, I just wanted to cite the things that popped out for me. The first was regarding elements that influenced relationships:

Live conversation: Talking directly with potential donors can increase their interest in an artist and his or her project. Direct conversations can also energize the person seeking the contribution….

• Online giving: Two-thirds of FFAMC donors have made donations online, and more than 60% of those who have not given online would consider doing so. …

• Giving time as well as money: FFAMC donors are almost twice as likely to be volunteers with organizations to which they give than are donors to large institutions….

• Contact pre-gift is more important than post-gift: Two-thirds of all donors surveyed indicated that they prefer to have attended an organization’s performances before they make a contribution. 42% of FFAMC donors indicated they prefer to get engaged with an organization personally before they make a gift; only 21% of FFAMC donors suggested they need a lot of postgift attention.

• Write your thank you notes: Most FFAMC donors and donors to other cultural organizations desire timely acknowledgment of their gifts, information about the impact of their contribution and regular notice of upcoming programs or invitations to special previews or openings. There are outliers at both ends of this spectrum – people who want a lot of information and some who prefer very limited post-gift contact. Asking a donor which kind of contact they
prefer is an important part of getting to know them.

I was actually surprised about the pre-gift contact being more important than post gift. I can understand that developing a relationship with an organization is a strong motivator for that initial gift, but it is interesting to know people don’t value post gift contact as much. Which is not to say they don’t want acknowledgment. I wonder if this might be regional or even generational based since so many of the donors in this study were younger than the usual arts attendee/donor. But perhaps our assumptions about what all donors want has been flawed from the start.

The other thing that caught my eye was the way The Shotgun Players survey their audiences. When we have conducted surveys, we try to keep it short but also try to capture as much pertinent demographic information as possible. The response rate is mixed, but generally very light. From the way I read this report, The Shotgun Players asks two questions on a raffle questionnaire, a serious one about motivation or demographics and a silly one related to the show, “During our Rosie the Riveter show, it was “If you were a power tool, what kind of tool would you be?” They get a 85%-90% response rate. It was a sort of “duh” moment for me when I recognized getting the answer to one important question a show from a meaningful number of people is more helpful than getting a handful of people to answer 6-8 questions.

Later in the report were some comments that belied the idea that artists don’t want to get involved in the business end of things. (And even if the idea is true, the sentiments expressed by an artist may provide a challenge to think differently where administrators may sound like nags.) Philip Huang said of his grant seeking experience:

“I liked the matching requirement very much. I would have never done this project on my own, without the match. I never would have changed artistic direction, or changed medium on my own without the endorsement of the FFAMC grant. I believe that artists should chase things slightly outside of their personal comfort zone. For me, fundraising from individuals was definitely that. Having an externally imposed timeline and an externally imposed mandate was good. I think the match was also a motivator for my donors. Once I got clarity about what I needed and I asked for it, people responded to my sense of propose and vision.”

Finally, what I thought was really excellent were instructions in the appendix prepared by Alan Brown on how to conduct the interview portion of the study. I have read a lot of studies over the years and I have never seen something like this included. There was just a very accessible and comfortable element to the instructions. Had I been conducting the interviews, the instructions would have calmed any anxiety I felt. And from various parts of the instruction, it appears Brown was training people who were not professional researchers and may have in fact been members of the commissioning organization.

“Sitting down with ticket buyers and donors and asking them about their experiences sounds simple enough. In reality, few cultural institutions or funders conduct qualitative research on a methodical basis, and many have slipped out of touch with their constituents.”
[…]
During most interviews, a great deal of data is communicated non-verbally, through body language, hesitation, gestures, and intonation. No matter how good the researcher, it’s just not the same as experiencing the interview in person. This is why the exercise is participatory – you’ll be doing the interviewing….With the researcher out of the way, the “filter” between you and your interviewees is gone.”

Some of the instructions are just good reminders for talking to donors and supporters in informal settings.

Good interviewing also requires a good set of questions. Asking the wrong questions (or avoiding the hard questions) is a waste of time. You may feel good by the end of the interview, but nothing is gained. Asking the right questions the right way, however, can unleash passionate, emotional, or even angry responses – which can be extremely informative.
[…]

Which brings us to the hardest part of interviewing – listening. A good interviewer is a good listener. Listening requires a great deal of concentration. A good listener understands what the respondent is saying, and also thinks about what the respondent is not saying, or trying to say…. A good listener hears when the respondent is having difficulty answering a question, and re-phrases the question or illustrates a response drawing from her own experience. “Maybe I can help you with this question by telling you how I would answer it for myself…” Perhaps the most difficult aspect of interviewing is simultaneously concentrating on what the interviewee is saying and also having a sense of where the interview is going – whether to probe deeper or move on to the next question.

Some questions are direct, while other questions involve asking people to tell personal stories. For example, “Can you remember when you felt especially proud of a gift you made?” Storytelling can be extremely useful in getting people to explain important events in their lives and to open up about difficult issues….”

Ceding Control Of Your Message (Just A Little)

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I am experiencing the slight panic that goes with having other people promote your events over social media more frequently these days. It is difficult to cede control of my information dispersal to other people, largely because it is increasingly involuntary.

Because services like Google and Twitter allow you to see what people are saying about my organization, I often find that people are forwarding incomplete information or mangled information. Some of it is a result of copy and paste which left some information behind or the necessity to truncate text for Twitter. What people are choosing to include in information to their friends often isn’t what I think sells the show. In some cases I can imagine that maybe a detail has significance to a person and their friends. Other times what they send is so nondescript, I can’t help but chalk it up to laziness and I hope that the mere idea that a friend has brought it to their attention inspires people to attend.

The temptation to correct or emphasize a point can really be strong at times. All I need to do is create a separate account of my own to set things aright. Just have to hope they don’t get too suspicious about the lack of posts or friends my brand new account has connected with it. But the consequences of injecting myself into someone else’s conversation for the purpose of correcting their information about our organization or being caught in an inauthentic masquerade are probably more damaging to us than a few incorrect dates and prices.

I have a similar situation with a local group with which we are partnering to produce a show. One of the board members is sending out press releases about the show on behalf of their organization. Personally, I think my writing is much better and paints a more complete picture. I send our partner some emails asking that certain bit of information be clarified, added or corrected.

But as many of you well know, personal relationships matter. That board member had people clamoring to write advance stories and conduct television and radio interviews in the course of a couple days. I didn’t know that a couple of the magazines even existed. In fact, one of them is just starting up and our event will have significant space in the first issue.

Personal relationships, be they virtual or other wise, seems to trump accuracy of information when it comes to getting people involved. Or perhaps it glosses over the consequences of poor information delivery. Though ultimately the annoyance of those who show up at the wrong time or expecting to pay a different price may be borne by the arts organization rather than the friend.

Mandatory Non-Profit Salary Caps

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Last week, the NY Times had a story about how lawmakers are really scrutinizing the salaries of non-profit leaders. The paper notes that New Jersey recently passed a provision that “includes a limit on what nonprofit groups can pay their chief executives if they are providing social services under state contracts. The cap, based on a formula that also applies to for-profits providing such services on behalf of the state, is part of a broader effort by Gov. Chris Christie to rein in salaries on state workers.”

It seems to me that it may not be a very long jump to apply the same scrutiny to arts organizations who receive government funding. It may not be in the next few years, but it could be coming. It wouldn’t surprise me if NJ was the first to do it too given their “cut off your nose to spite your face” attempts to reduce arts funding a year and a half ago.

My initial impulse was to write something about how the government was coming after the non-profits because they couldn’t rein in the salaries at big corporations which made big campaign contributions. I also wanted to moan about how money equals access and the need for more visible and active advocacy if the arts didn’t want to be victimized by such unwarranted scrutiny. Charity Navigator is cited as saying only 2/10th of 1% of non-profits in the U.S. actually pay their leaders six figure salaries. But you get one story about Joe Dowling making $680,000 at the Guthrie Theatre and suddenly everyone else is eyed suspiciously despite their 10 year old car that has clearly needed a new muffler for the last 6 months.

And you know, I may still follow that impulse and further rant. But I want to ask. If the NJ state government is so concerned about efficiency and effectiveness in their contracts with social service agencies, are they also going to look at whether people are being paid too little? There is likely much more waste in employee turn over due to retraining costs and time spent than there is with paying the executive too much. Charity Navigator President Ken Berger is said to disagree “with the argument, popular among many nonprofits, that to attract top talent to manage complex organizations, they must compete with for-profit businesses.” A six figure salary is often cited as outrageous in the article so lets grant that you can find and retain talent for about $90,000. But is the government concerned that non-profits may be losing a series of talented to the for-profit world because those organizational leaders are only being paid $25,000?

There is an argument often made that the government should be turning over a lot of its functions to non-profits because they can do the work more efficiently. If that is the case, the government is likely to be increasingly concerned about the salaries of the top executives. But if they are going to depend on non-governmental social service agencies, they should also be sure that there is a certain standard of care being provided to people. That requires good training, but also appropriate pay to help maintain the continuity of delivering that standard. If they are going to care what is being paid at the top, they should also be concerned what is being paid at the bottom. But it is likely the government will focus more on the results than the process the company follows to obtain them. It is much simpler and more popular to target executive pay as the reason for substandard service delivery than other harder to quantify measures. Cost cutting is equated with money well spent but what works for sneakers has a different result in social services.

But in the arts, other than educational outreach, governments have a different agenda than they do with social services. Unfortunately, it is often appropriateness of content that often raises concerns rather than quality of services.

In any case, even though most of us have no fear of being accused of having too high a salary, the examination of non-profit salaries appears to be a continuing concern. It bears watching how it all unfolds.

Competitive Bidding For All!

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With all the other services offered online, I have often wondered why no one is offering a procurement bidding system. Perhaps there are such an assortment of laws from state to state it is too expensive. But if Google can navigate China’s laws and politics to give away its service for free, there has to be some money to be made.

Since I am ultimately talking about a benefit for the arts community, I would be happy to a service specifically tailored to help the industry developed. Baumol’s cost disease may say technological advances can’t reduce the number of people needed to play Beethoven, but that doesn’t mean we can’t save on our purchases of gaffers tape!

The service I am referring to is something similar to what I use at work. As a state employee, I have to get competitive bids for any goods or services above a certain dollar threshold. We use an online solicitation system which runs the bidding process for us. Even if we know something is going to fall far below the mandatory use threshold, we will use the service if we think we can get a better price somewhere.

Vendors sign up to be alerted when bid requests in certain broad subject areas are posted and then if they are awarded the bid, they pay a percentage of the price and that is what keeps the system running. The percentage on our system is 1/2% which is very competitive with other states. There are some basic bells and whistles for vendors too in terms of tracking and historical reporting. What I like best is that it exports all the salient details of the winning bid to a purchase order.

The two big complicating factors for my department as part of a state entity is 1) Necessity to accept the lowest bid or fill out copious paperwork explaining why you hadn’t and 2) Being VERY specific with your bid details lest the lowest bidder not have a feature you assumed would be included.

Making the requesters stick to these conditions in an open market setting would be difficult. But it would also not be any different than how things work right now. Private citizens and companies throw business to their favorite vendors all the time even if they aren’t the cheapest option. There are also plenty of sales personnel who invest a lot of time and energy meeting someone’s specifications only to have customers go elsewhere or be lured away by a competitor who convinces them they really want a feature they offer.

One of the reasons I suggest this is because there are often times that the difference in bids is significant. Some times so significant that we wonder if the lowest bidder got the stuff off the back of a truck somewhere. Other times, the margin is much closer, but frequency of purchasing makes the savings add up. The benefit to us is that the reach of our bid requests are much further than had we called around locally for competing bids. Even though we have to wait about a week to allow everyone time to bid, we save all the time we would have spent searching catalogs or the internet or calling around to find the best price.

There is a chicken and egg element to this which is why if someone set this up to service the arts and culture industry, it would probably have to be on a national scale. Arts organizations won’t sign up and use it unless there are a lot of vendors on it and vendors won’t bother with it unless there is a big customer base. Its existence would have to be widely advertised outside the theatrical supply and services sector. There are probably a number of companies who don’t think of themselves as serving the arts and won’t sign up. But of our best deals have come from companies who don’t cater to theatres.

If anyone knows of a service like this that the general public can use, I would be interested in learning more about it. If there isn’t anything like this but there are a lot of people interested in some sort of service, maybe Drew McManus will take the project on after his Venture Project software is launched.

Info You Can Use: Taking Your Marketing Mobile

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A member of the Performing Arts Administrators group on LinkedIn suggested a link to two marketing guides by Kodak. One was on using social media and the other is about using mobile marketing. Both are free downloads.

I looked at the mobile media guide most closely because I have the least idea of how to use that as a technology much less as an effective marketing tool. My initial impression that parts of it wouldn’t be easy to set up were correct. Getting a short code –the four to five digit number to which people text a word or phrase is complicated to arrange.

“Use a short code on a service provider or get a service provider to work with the aggregators on obtaining carrier certification and provisioning according to your planned campaigns and needs. Since every new service requires a new certification, make sure you cover as many services as possible before submitting the campaign for approval, to avoid having to go through the certification process again.”

Both documents provide good background and glossary of terms for those who aren’t familiar with the technologies. They provide examples of campaigns they have conducted, many of which are on a scale and involve resources most arts organizations only dream of. That being said, Twitter allows people to follow your feed on their service by texting to a number. If you created a dedicated Twitter account for promotional efforts, you can have information and links to all sorts of specials sent to people’s mobile devices without dealing with the carrier certifications. It appears you just need to text “follow (feedname)” to 40404 in the US. The code is different in other countries.

Kodak encourages people to evaluate if the technology is the correct fit for their organization. They also offer Do’s and Don’ts for campaigns. The one they provide for mobile marketing seems obvious as a step for keeping spam off mobile devices.

“The rule for viral messages is that they can only be sent by non-commercial entities who manually select a recipient to receive it. Messages forwarded by automatic means, originating from a commercial source, or offering inducements to forward messages are definite “don’ts”.”

At first I just thought it was an ethical rule, but since the next section advises you to consult a lawyer about what is and is not permissible, I wondered if it might be a Federal law created to squelch spam before it started. As always, the best rule of thumb with most communication media remains true — be careful you aren’t annoying people.

Do Androids Make Good Critics

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Science fiction often has a motif of technology seeking to become human. Its a story as old as Pinocchio or even Pygmalion and Galatea. Star Trek: The Next Generation series had an android named Data who painted and played music as part of his quest to achieve humanity. His work was often praised for its technical proficiency but lacking that intangible quality of self that artists imbue in their work. There is often a sense of pity that for all the sophistication possessed by the entity, the gap can’t be bridged. Perhaps it is out of ego that we create these stories which suggest there are some things in which technology can’t surpass us.

But what happens when we abdicate our aesthetic judgment to technology? Via Tyler Cohen’s Marginal Revolution blog, is a link to a prototype camera that rates the aesthetics of the picture you are about to take. Move the camera around to different angles to improve the percentage to achieve a better picture. According to the Today and Tomorrow web page, right now the camera, Nadia, communicates via Bluetooth with a Mac that does all the evaluating. The camera was created as something of a statement about the artistic experience, but you know it won’t be long before someone develops this as a feature for digital cameras. I’ll bet they get it linked up with Google Maps to automatically create notes about the best place for tourists to stand in relation to monuments.

Also on the Today and Tomorrow page is a camera that actually inserts smiles on people’s faces regardless of their expression. So if you are standing in the ideal spot to take pictures in front of the Grand Canyon, but your moody teenage offspring are scowling, the picture and memories need not be ruined. Say the camera creators:

“To achieve this camera takes a picture but overlays it with a smiling mouth drawn from a pre-existing pool of pictures with smiling faces. To generate to maximum level of exaggeration the replaced smiling mouth impression is matched as realistically as possible to that of the initial portrait taken.”

Again, the camera was created by German art students and is not a commercial development for cameras. But as the creators point out, digital cameras can already automatically retouch pictures in real time.

I know a couple photographers who figure they are the only ones keeping the makers of camera film in business since everyone else is going to digital. I am not going to debate characteristics of film photographs which are lost in digital. I am sure they have been beaten to death in books, blogs and magazines ad infinitum.

The question I want to ask is the I asked earlier–what are the repercussions of abdicating judgments to a piece of technology? In our science fiction, we always assume we retain the characteristics we value into the future and some are envied by those who do not possess them. But what if we, as a whole, don’t really care about some thing enough to work at developing and retaining them?

For those of us in the arts and our long time patrons, we know that developing discernment takes time and experience. One of the primary instructions to formal students and interested others has always been–go see stuff and then see some more. But it is conceivable that an artificial intelligence fed the judgments of thousands could synthesize an authoritative one of its own. It may not be perfect, but it would be enough to get by, right? Oh wait, Pandora already does this for music and Amazon does it with…everything.

But you know you can’t trust those Amazon reviews. People can manipulate them! A computer algorithm is an objective source! For those who are intimidated by the arts it may provide a sense of confidence that gets them to attend events more often. There are no critics to agree or disagree with. You take your device (and I am imagining more widely than just photographs) to a performance or gallery, let it absorb what you are seeing and hearing and rate it.

Except what if you point it at the stuff you already know you like and it says it sucks? What does the device know? It was programmed by elitist arts lovers. It has no credibility with you! What if it is like Pandora and has a feature that suggests you might like x because you like y based on a computer program? That might be bad for the arts people because it just reinforces people’s consumption of experiences they pretty much already like. It can’t sneak in suggestions to encourage people to take chances too much because it will lose credibility.

Also in my experience with Pandora, technology can’t yet measure that intangible quality based on beats per minute. Some people are great because of so many other factors. I stopped using it very quickly when I hated nearly everything it suggested alongside my favorite groups.

Do people care about learning about quality or about what already appeals to them? Is there too much work and risk involved in experiencing the unknown even at a highly accurate computer’s recommendation?

The use of such technology doesn’t have to necessarily have such a stark dichotomy, of course. Devices that evaluate aesthetics can help Pro-Ams sharpen their skills at creating things. They may only enable people to advance to a certain level, but can bring great enjoyment in the process.

It is a complicated subject all around. About as complicated as the idea that being able to create high quality original works is exclusively a trait of humanity.

Do You Fight For Your Rights?

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Artsjournal is doing another one of their special week long conversations on a topic. This week it is the issue of artists and intellectual property rights. There are too many topics being bandied about to summarize them all, but as you might imagine one of the central themes is in regard to the whole tension between wanting to protect your creative rights and the ability and desire of the public at large to integrate or reimagine your great ideas into their own.

Bill Ivey does a good job of summing up the need for changing how rights are controlled.

“The notion that artists and companies share the same values when it comes to the character of our arts system is a crock. Companies worry about the theft of assets; artists worry about obscurity. These two concerns overlap at times, but often they don’t. What’s the real benefit to an artist of copyright protection that reaches beyond three-quarters of a century? What’s the real benefit to an artist if your publishing company or record company uses licensing fees to prevent your composition from being sampled. or prevents your film clip from being part of a documentary. We need to begin the organizational conversation Marty envisions by figuring out what an artist-oriented regime of laws and regulations would look like.”

There is also a discussion about whether artists are investing appropriate time and attention into protecting their rights. There was actually some pretty extensive discussion, tied together by Tim Quirk, refuting the idea that artists are/should be primarily focused on their art and can’t be bothered with mundane details of business and rights management. Quirk says:

“I had always assumed this ridiculous idea that artists are delicate otherworldly creatures who can’t and shouldn’t concern themselves with prosaic business or policy matters was being fed to them (along with other helpful notions, such as being a drunk or an addict is all part of being creative) by malicious middlemen and mendacious media.

But now I’ve read Vickie’s insightful analysis of how this dynamic is perpetuated by art schools and universities, and Bill’s observation that “things like intellectual property, media policy, unions, performance rights, and so on not show up in art schools or music conservatories, they have precious little traction in arts management programs.”

He goes on to acknowledge that intellectual property laws and the convoluted system of entities that administer them are really tough to comprehend and can be frustrating, but it is something that is worth mastering. It was interesting to me to read Bill Ivey’s thoughts on how this was an area that arts training programs fell short in. When I was pursuing my MFA, I had direct experience with different contracts, including negotiating music performance rights. Even still, the first thing I mentioned at my degree defense when asked what additional instruction would have been helpful during my studies was more contract and rights law. This was 15 years ago so I am surprised to learn that more isn’t taught given all the challenges technology presents in this area.

Though to be fair, as Brian Newman notes, there is a lot to be taught already. I was intrigued to learn in one of his posts that in film at least, the very people who are now clamoring for film makers to become involved in policy debates helped to dismantle the organizations which could have been instrumental in driving that discussion. I wonder if that is the case in other disciplines.

“In the world of film, we used to have a very strong network of media arts centers around the nation. As foundations shifted priorities (and the NEA’s support changed dramatically), however, many of these organizations have shut down or refocused energies to where the money is – social issue action, youth training or corporate support for large activities, like film festivals. When attending a Grantmakers in the Arts conference a couple of years ago, I was amazed that there was a group of funders upset that they couldn’t get filmmakers active in the policy debate – but they had helped disband the very network that could have served to rally filmmakers around these issues.”

Intellectual properties rights is likely to continue as an important topic for years to come so it is worth following the whole conversation. I have barely represented the breadth of it here. They are covering nuances between people who live or die by the strength of protections versus people who need loose protections to thrive and further develop their work. There is also the inevitable discussion of how money determines whose voices and interests are being heard and transformed into policy and law.

Buying From The Source

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I recently became a member of my local public radio station. I “came out” as a non-member while a guest on the Spring Fund drive and declared I was ready to sign up. My hope was that it would inspire others to do the same. What I didn’t mention was that while I really enjoyed the high quality news and information, what tipped me into the membership column was the show This American Life. I am crazy about the show and wish I had gone to see host Ira Glass speak at the Arts Presenters conference when I was there a few years back.

The thing is, I am not usually listening to the radio when the show is on so I generally consume the program over my computer while I am at home. Consume is an appropriate word because there have been times where I have listened to three shows from the archive in one sitting. (Well, often I am dusting, mopping the floor or folding laundry, but you get my point.) Not long ago, before you could listen to any episode, a short segment would play with Glass asking you to donate to support the rigorous story gathering process they engage in.

If you aren’t aware, generally your donation to the radio station goes to pay for the programming you hear. Your support of the station indirectly supports shows like This American Life. It made me think–I am not listening to the show on the radio. Even though my donation is going to support the show, should I perhaps not be supporting the show more directly? I am using their internet bandwidth to listen to the show. Coupled with some other recent occurrences, I realized this sort of thinking may end up impacting arts organizations in the near future.

In the last week or so, National Public Radio decided it was changing its name to NPR just like Federal Express changed to FEDEX some years ago. Their decision is based on the fact that the content is no longer only delivered and received over the radio and can be heard on the web and in podcasts, among other media. In fact, often you can scan the transcripts of a segment on their website rather than listening at all. They are beginning to increase their focus on online presence and delivery of content. But what if the individual shows do their own fund raising? It might be possible that they will undermine the local stations’ fund drives. This American Life does some really impassioned and well argued promos for the local radio fund drives. But as funding gets tighter, might shows like their shift focus to their own survival?

The national office of PBS is looking at making a nationwide fund raising appeal directly to donors and it is making local television stations nervous that it might undermine their own efforts. It might be a bad idea if it did since PBS needs the television stations as a distribution system. Unless they are seeing more people interested in viewing their content online rather than on television.

But nothing can compare to live performance right? Well, as you may be aware, the Metropolitan Opera has a fairly successful program where they broadcast their shows to movie theatres. And a writer for the London Telegraph says watching the National Theatre in a movie theatre is better than attending the event live. You already have the opportunity see the National Theatre productions at about 50 cinemas around the US this summer.

One thing NPR has going for it is the variety of programming it offers. If I donate $50 to This American Life, that is all I have supported. If I donate the same or more to my local NPR station, I am supporting a wider variety of programming I enjoy. That is the potential advantage the cinema owners have. There is a possibility of curating a wide experience from the very best in the field. This is what I and many others around the country do now, only the guys with the movie screens won’t have to pay for hotels and travel which immensely increases the pool from which to select. Their curated season might include opera from the Metropolitan Opera, classical music from the Philadelphia Symphony, theatre from the Guthrie Theatre and Oregon Shakespeare Festival. While I would argue you miss half the experience by not attending the latter two in person, such a program would bring excellent performance to people who don’t have the means to travel. (Though you will still have to shush those damn kids in the back rows.)

Of course, it also changes expectations of performances by everyone else. So the question is, will a rising tide raise all ships as people become more interested and less intimidated by the attendance experience or will the cinema events cannibalize local audiences who would rather see the Broadway production rather than the local production or the bus and truck tour. Likely it is a time will tell situation which hinges upon how wide the cinema project spreads and how invested those with the means become in creating and promoting these shows.

They May Be Big Brother, But At Least They Have Good Customer Service

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So last week I was deluged with phone calls for the college admissions and records and financial aid offices. For a long while I thought the phone system went haywire and the voice mail system was misdirecting my calls. I pleasantly redirected peoples’ calls, silently reminding myself that it wasn’t their fault and as I am fond of saying, marketing is everyone’s job. I may be king of my castle, but I am a member of a larger organization whose interests I serve.

I soon discovered though that people were actually directly dialing my number and were not being redirected by a voice mail system. I also discovered that people only have a really vague idea about where they get pieces of information. Eventually I deduced that people were being misdirected by search engines –specifically Google. I did a search for the college on Google and to my horror found that my office number was listed as the main switchboard number. This was only true for Google. Yahoo and Bing didn’t have erroneous information.

I am not sure how it happened, but my theory is that someone tagged the theatre on Google Maps and put our phone number. My building is one of the few on campus tagged on Google maps and somehow it may have become the default phone number. Once it became the top search result, everyone started calling.

Fortunately, Google has a link that allows you to submit corrections. In fact, if you have an account, you can fix it right away. So I submitted a couple corrections from different IP addresses and submitted one from my Google account. It took about 48 hours, but the listing disappeared…..

…And was replaced by a listing for the ATM machine in the library, the location of which was also tagged. Since the telephone number listed is that of the bank, I am willing to bet that the bank has been getting calls from people who haven’t been paying attention.

But the story doesn’t quite end there. Today I received a call from someone at Google Maps verifying where it was exactly that the erroneous listing was directing people. Google may be massive, but they apparently aren’t too unwieldy to fix and then follow up on problems in a timely manner. You often don’t get that sort of response from utilities and companies whose service you actually pay for.

Probably the big lesson here is that even when you are depending on other people’s labor to contribute and correct content, the endeavor can never entirely be without cost. It would be inconceivable for Google and Wikipedia to collect and present in a meaningful way the amount of information they do if they depended solely on paid staff, but they still need to create a structure and invest resources to monitor the veracity and suitability of the material they provide. In fact, I just read today that Google doesn’t outsource the review of content flagged as inappropriate and provides counseling to the staff that processes it.

I don’t mean to turn this into a plug for Google. The whole experience just reveals the importance of monitoring and addressing mistakes and that it is possible to do so no matter what your size should you make the conscious decision.

Bringing Hope In A Hopeless World

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Interesting piece in The Art Newspaper on why the arts should be funded in austere times. The article is basically an argument about the value of the arts. What immediately caught my eye was the story author Robert Hewison tells about the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts, the UK’s predecessor of today’s Arts Council. In 1940 when some felt it was illogical to be doing so, the British government committed £2 million in today’s money to the council ““to show publicly and unmistakably that the Government cares about the cultural life of the country. This country is supposed to be fighting for civilisation.” The end of the article notes that the creator and first chairman of the council was “the economist John Maynard Keynes. He believed that in a recession, governments should stimulate the economy.” It was Keynes approach that many were encouraging the Obama Administration to follow to deal with the current economic environment.

Hewison summarizes why the economic benefit of the arts doesn’t work-

“But the Treasury doesn’t buy it. They can see through the “multiplier” calculations of the cultural boosters. They understand the meaning of “opportunity cost”. The money spent on artistic steel and glass could have been spent on an arms factory—and created more employment.”

and notes why the prescriptive argument of how the arts help solve myriad ills isn’t desirable-

“The New Labour government liked this argument, and directed that the arts council should use the arts “to combat social exclusion and support community developments”. The ACE found itself having to meet targets for health, education, employment and the reduction of crime—not truth, beauty or a sense of the sublime….

…. It is difficult to demonstrate a value-chain between art and social enhancement, and difficult to measure the social enhancement itself. Ministers for culture became embarrassed by this…”

Granted the conditions in the US aren’t the same as in the UK. For one thing, I could only dream of a funding structure that had “47% box office, 31% from the arts council, 12% from local authority sources and other public funding, and 9% from trusts, foundations, donors and business sponsorship.” Yes, that is 53% government funding.

The same weaknesses in those arguments exist on both sides of the Atlantic. Right now people are pondering how to make a case for the intrinsic value of the arts backed up by some measurable results for policy makers. While I think there is potential for making the case, it isn’t as easy to do as with previous arguments. There aren’t talking point lists being circulated for the intrinsic value the way they have been for the economic and prescriptive value arguments. It takes a person skilled in persuasive speech or writing to make a compelling argument in this area.

Some of Hewison’s arguments seem tinged with a desperation to employ the arts to preserve society through war or some other cataclysm.

“The value in use of the arts is that they help a society make sense of itself. They generate the symbols and rituals that create a common identity—that is why art and religion are so closely linked. Like religion, the arts give access to the spiritual. Art is a link to previous generations, and anchors us to history. Culture is a social language that we would be dumb without. “

and

“The precautionary principle tells us we have a duty to future generations to ensure that our cultural assets are passed on to them. We also have a selfish interest in sustaining the richness and diversity of those assets.”

and

Culture creates social capital, expressed as trust generated by a shared understanding of the symbols that the arts generate, and a commitment to the values they represent. It sustains the legitimacy of social institutions by ensuring that they are accepted, not imposed. Societies with an equitable distribution of cultural assets will be more cohesive, and more creative. Wellbeing, which is the true end of economic activity, depends on the quality of life that culture sustains.

My only qualms with that come in the context of Ben Cameron’s speech that I covered yesterday. I have this sense is that the manifestation of art and culture that Hewison wants to preserve differs from the direction the arts are going. I think Hewison links culture and religion in a manner that evokes monasteries preserving knowledge through the Dark Ages. I think the reality is closer to the religious reformations Cameron referenced. Both can seem pretty cataclysmic as the unfold. Even though a great deal of what is being created seems ephemeral at best, there are things being created with longevity which can serve to anchor us in history.

The question is, will the government want to support these new manifestations. Perhaps even more importantly, will people whose whole success is due to operating outside of the traditional structures want that support? I am sure it would make many in the different levels of government happy if they could find enough people to say so. (Just for the record, I am not ready to give it up yet!) Right now I think everyone dreams of a either a new operating method that doesn’t require so much funding or a new funding method that will sustain their operations. Perhaps one or the other will emerge to relief the situation.

Even though it seemed to me that Hewison was looking for a hedge against the collapse of society in some post-apocalyptic world (and perhaps I was just imposing my own fantasies on his words), he isn’t wrong to say that expressions of arts and culture do provide stability and that governments have an interest in sustaining them.

Rationally, the government should be putting more funding into the arts because of the social capital they generate. There is a sound economic argument that when the market fails to provide certain kinds of goods thought useful, then it is necessary to intervene—health and education are the usual examples. The economics of the arts are particularly prone to market failure, for it is not easy to make the advances in productivity that technology facilitates in manufacturing

The Artisan Reformation Has Begun

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Nod to Andrew Taylor for providing a link via his Twitter feed to a speech Ben Cameron made at the Association of Arts Administration Educators conference. Cameron talks about many of the worrisome issues I have covered here in the past – finances, shrinking audiences who procrastinate on ticket buying, organizational succession by young arts leaders who want to reshape rather than maintain what they have inherited.

But as he moved past providing this context for his comments, he made one of the more interesting observations about the change that will be necessary in the arts by comparing it to the religious reformations of the 16th century. It seems there is ever a confluence of art and religion. He leaves some room for optimism while noting the necessity for nimbleness (my emphasis).

Both reformations have been spurred by technological breakthrough—the invention of the printing press and the subsequent widespread public access to scripture occasioned by the printing press certainly has parallel in the redistribution of knowledge with the invention of the Internet. Both reformations challenge old business structures—god forbid that the decimation of monastic orders is the metaphoric fate for today’s major institutions but only time will tell. And both reformations essentially challenged the necessity of intermediation in a spiritual relationship, challenging the notion of the gatekeeping priest or now artist.

Now the Religious Reformation did not obliterate the Catholic Church. Just as 500 years later, many people around the world still find deep meaning in high mass and formal religious institutions, I for one believe that the historic institutions that we have funded to date at their best will continue to be worthy of our investment…

…But the Reformation more notably reshaped and broadened the universe of how religion would operate, who would be empowered to act, giving rise to new denominations, new religious rituals, new opportunities for the common layperson to assume responsibility for her own spiritual experience. Similarly in the arts, we are witnessing an explosion of arts organizations operating in new ways and the emergence of the hybrid artist: amateurs doing work at a professional level—a group dubbed elsewhere as the Pro-Ams—….and professional artists who choose to work outside of the traditionally hermetic arts environment, not from financial necessity but because the work they feel called to do cannot be accomplished in the narrow confines of the gallery, the concert hall or the theatre.”

He suggests that the training of arts administrators should include many of the traditional subjects of audience development, fund raising, accounting and entertainment law. But he says that for the next generation of leaders internships and practical experiences “with the political campaign, the sports complex, the environmental justice center” may be just as valid as a similar experience at an arts organization. He cites the MIT five step model of cultivating new businesses, “idea generation, training, mentoring, legal counsel and finally delivery to market capital” and wonders if this along with a more interdisciplinary focus might not serve students and the evolving industry better.

Even though his basic message isn’t anything new, the models and ideas he invokes are intriguing. Both the text and audio of his speech are available so you can pick your poison. You can even download the source audio and listen to his speech on your commute to work or while hiking.

Crucial Policy Decision: Unwelcome Solicitations

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The Chronicle of Higher Education has a series of articles about sexual harassment in fund raising today. Unfortunately, you need a subscription to read them, but if you have a subscription to the Chronicle of Philanthropy, the same articles appear there.

I really had no idea that sexual advances on development officers by donors was such a prevalent problem. But upon reading the main article, it makes sense that the potential would exist.

In many cases, those women are appealing to older, powerful men for large donations. To succeed, fund raisers must build long-term relationships with donors. And they often visit donors in their homes or meet them in social settings where alcohol and personal information are plentiful.

To be sure, unwelcome sexual advances are not a daily occurrence for most fund raisers. But the problem happens often enough that they and the organizations that employ them should have better guidance on what they can do to prevent and deal with harassment, says Polly Aris Stamatopoulos, a Washington consultant to nonprofit groups.

Ms. Stamatopoulos says she has rejected inappropriate sexual requests from donors and observed several incidents in which other donors or trustees made sexual overtures toward fund raisers she supervised. People who raise money for a living, she says, should be required to take “a class in the sexual politics of fund raising.”

It occurs to me that this may be an even bigger problem in the arts where the development office is often comprised of one person with few people to turn to for support or to shift a donor to. Given that the executive director is often the primary fundraiser in many organizations, the situation can even be worse with no one but the board to turn to for support. One of those interviewed in the articles spoke of feeling an obligation to keep the donations coming. Her sense of obligation was entirely self imposed because when she spoke to her supervisors after tolerating the advances for two years, they readily assigned the donor to another staff member. The donor never gave to the organization again. It isn’t hard for me to imagine that in some situations staff supervisors or board members would discourage the affected person from rocking the boat too much lest they endanger fund raising efforts.

Most organizations have sexual harassment policies that cover employee behavior, but I suspect few have explicit statements that employees should expect reasonable treatment from patrons and donors as well. Dealing with advances from members of the public is much more complicated than similar situations with employees. That only means that clear policies should be generated so that people can confidently and knowledgeably handle the situation.

It makes sense for organizations to train fund raisers about how to carry themselves as a representative of the company in social situations far away from the work environment. Instruction on how to handle every manner of uncomfortable situations, including unwanted advances is a logical component of such training. But I am guessing it not the sort of training many arts organizations provide.

The Chronicle of Philanthropy is hosting an online discussion on Wednesday, July 14 about coping with unwanted advances if anyone is interested in exploring the topic.

More On Mergers And Alliances

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I have had non-profit mergers on the mind of late due to some personal experience so it is no wonder that two entries on the subject from different blogs caught my attention today.

The first was a book review by Gene Takagi at Non-Profit Law blog. He recommends Nonprofit Mergers & Alliances by Thomas A. McLaughlin. Takagi starts out referencing a quote from the book supporting the old truism that it is best to enter a negotiation in a position of strength.

“Indeed, the book had me at “hello” or, rather, its first sentence: ‘The best time to consider a merger or an alliance is before it is necessary, when coming together with another organization will mean combining strength with strength, and when the collective energies and the creativity of the two or more entities can be used proactively instead of being sapped by the demands of crisis management.’ “

This concept is actually central to the commentary made in the second blog post I saw today, Drew McManus talking about Philadelphia Orchestra and Philly Pops decision not to merge. The former would have absorbed the latter. Drew cites the troubles the Utah Symphony and Utah Opera had with their merger. The orchestra and pops adopted a gradual approach to the merger and that revealed some of the potential difficulties they might face as a single entity. Both organizations will work in close partnership, but retain separate governance structures.

As you might imagine from the title of the book he reviews, Takagi notes that there are different stages to both mergers and alliances and lists them out. According to Takagi, the book outlines the pros and cons to both approaches and provides some good advice about very complex undertakings.

The book may be a good resource for the next generation of non-profit leaders. Apparently McLaughlin feels that “nonprofit services are fragmented and how consolidation is part of a nonprofit’s life cycle.” Given all the talk about mergers of late, I believe there is more behind that statement than just an attempt to sell a book about how to accomplish such things.

As The Brochure Folds

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I am in the process of having our season brochure designed for the upcoming year and it seems like the way the brochure is folded is taking great precedence over the actual content of the piece. Because of postal regulations about the way items may be mailed the printing houses are suggesting we change the way we fold the brochure. It will be the same size and shape as we had planned, but will require fewer seals to hold it closed when we mail it. Fewer seals means a savings in the printing and mailing.

Except that the way the brochure opens is very important. More to the point, what people see when they first open the brochure is very important. A few years back, the first thing you saw when you opened the brochure were the compelling eyes of an Indian dancer. People opened the brochure and had a real “wow” experience. Last year we used a different designer and she took another approach to the arrangement of the information. Instead of an image, the first thing you saw was text. It wasn’t as ideal a situation in my mind, but the design positioned information in a better place for those who attached the brochure to refrigerators and bulletin boards as reminders. (We get a lot of ticket orders throughout the year from people who keep our brochure.)

The text people first saw last year when they opened the brochure dealt with our flex subscriptions and volunteering. Both areas saw an increase in participation last year proving that I really need to pay attention to what is on that first panel. I will be getting a full size sample to proof from the designer tomorrow. You can be assured one of the first things I will do is figure out how it folds and open and close it many times to determine what our patrons’ experience is going to be like.

I mention all these factors, of course, by way of pointing out the practical application of the various considerations you might employ when designing brochures.

Info You Can Use: Understanding Financial Statement Basics

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If you are new to a position as board member or administrator of an arts organization or if you have simply resolved to become better educated about your business’ financials, Inc magazine offers a series of articles comprising a quick primer on what they all mean. This month’s article is “How to Understand an Income Statement.” This is a good place to start if you don’t know the difference between an income statement and a cash flow statement.

It is especially a good place to start if you don’t know how a company can be extremely profitable, but unable to pay its bills each month. There are also articles on how to identify why you can’t pay your bills each month too.

If you have no idea where to begin and what is important to look at, they have articles on tracking the pertinent numbers and help you with a basic understanding of what they are and why they are important.

Of course, it is good to remember that there are some measures which a non-profit doesn’t adhere to — like profit ratios on ticket sales when it is already known that earned revenue isn’t going to cover experiences.

Silly Violinist, You Dance In Train Stations

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Toward the end of my work day, I received an email from a patron making a wide flung appeal:

“Opera has long been one of the arts that I don’t care about or support, but watching this video somewhat changed my mind.”

The video he refers to is the one below of the Opera Company of Philadelphia emerging from the crowds at Reading Terminal Market to perform a piece from La Traviata. The patron makes an appeal for someone on his email list to make this sort of thing happen locally and suggests a market as a site.

From my point of view, this is just part of a recent trend. Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and Washington National Opera did the same song in a Whole Foods. Another opera group also did La Traviata, though a different piece, in Valencia, Spain.

Opera seems to be for markets and musical theatre for train stations. Groups in Wellington, NZ and Antwerp, Belgium chose to give flash mob performances of “Do Re Mi” from the Sound of Music in local train stations. Perhaps Joshua Bell and Tasmin Little were ignored when they played anonymously in train stations because they chose to perform classical music rather than musical theatre and played music rather than danced.

To me it seems like an imaginative promotional stunt that will probably wear itself out pretty quickly given that everyone seems to be doing La Traviata and Sound of Music, regardless of geographical distance. But right now the idea is new, fresh and exciting to my local audience. So the question is–Are flash performances viable and how do you keep it fresh so the audiences don’t get jaded? These sort of performances can break down barriers to attendance by showing how accessible the material is. It will be necessary to make formal performances just as accessible though otherwise people will feel betrayed by a bait and switch.

People might be emboldened to stage similar events themselves, (please not High School Musical, please not High School Musical), and this could mark the start of a new populist form of performance (or a revival/revamping of some of basic staging concepts of the old pageant wagon mystery plays.)

Army For The Arts

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Americans for the Arts recently linked to a blog post and testimony video that Brigadier General Nolen Bivens, U.S. Army, (Ret) delivered to Congress on the importance of the arts to national security. He discusses how the arts contribute to cultural understanding and method of diplomacy around the world in places of conflict that the Army operates as well as places the country wants to maintain good relations. He also mentioned the usefulness of the arts in the therapy of soldiers.

Interesting enough, just about the time Gen. Bivens was giving this testimony in April, Vinita Rae Smith was recording an interview discussing her retirement as theatre manager of the Army Community Theatre after a 40 year career as a civil service employee of the Army. She gives a sense of the state of the theatre arts in the Army these days. She has the distinction of opening the only theater the Army has ever constructed for the express purpose of being a theater -Ft. Knox, Kentucky. Every other theater has been re-purposed from some other use. One of theater she worked at was renovated from a laundromat. That theater is still used to show movies, but the stage is no longer structurally sound enough for live performances.

She didn’t mention what the Richardson Theatre which she recently ran used to be. The woman participating in the interview with her reminisced that before Vinita arrived, they used to have to wait until the movies were over at 11:00 pm before they could start rehearsing so they didn’t generally finish until 1-2 am. Vinita made changes that resulted in a more sane schedule.

But while Vinita improved the situation for live theatre on her post, the same can’t be said for all Army bases worldwide. She mentioned that Germany used to have 30 theatres, now there are about 14. Korea had 13 and now there is one. Some of it is likely a result of the decreasing number of troops stationed in these countries and the reduced need for services. But I also suspect Gen. Bivens might have been indirectly advocating for support of the arts in the military too. Even before she thought of retiring, it was generally acknowledged that Vinita was holding her program together by force of will. You get that sense as you listen to her talk about the expectations the Army has for programs like her’s. Her replacement is coming from Germany. I both wonder if he will possess the force of personality to maintain the program and if the program he leaves in Germany will survive his departure.

Walking The Oregon High School Arts Beat

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Oregon Public Broadcasting recently had an episode their show Arts Beat where they directly addressed the value of arts education in schools. There is also a “sidebar” video of three people talking about how they integrate creativity into their jobs and invite people to talk about what their lives would be like had they not had arts in school.

The science teacher in the main video, Michael Giesen, was the 2008 National Teacher of the Year and you can easily see why based on the way he gets his students acting, moving, drawing/model making and interacting in the process of learning about science. (In case you think music is left out, Giesen and his guitar figure prominently in the lessons.)

There seems to be a disconnect present though. Giesen is rewarded for his creativity up to the national level, but I suspect a teacher trying to initiate such a process from scratch might be told the activities they had the student engaged in were extraneous and consuming time best spent trying to master basic competencies for testing. (Though perhaps not in his school or district.) I am sure Giesen’s students do just fine on the testing because he creates so many powerful associations to the material through all the activities he employs. I just wonder how much latitude a teacher working toward that goal would be provided as they made missteps in the process of refining their approach.

It is the competency requirements that John Baker, the choir director in the second segment of the video feels erodes his program. At one time he had 90 people in his girls choir, now he has 14. He says his principal thinks it is because kids don’t want to sing, but he believes it is that there are so many requirements the students need to fulfill, they have little opportunity to take his class.

His students learn music theory, sight reading, sing in four languages and need to develop critical thinking skills. But all this aside, the video shows the students performing some very interesting looking and sounding pieces. I can’t think but that many students would be at least a little intrigued by the classes. The first reaction I had to the snippet at the beginning of the video was that I didn’t know they had choral pieces like that. There were a few more seconds like it later in the video.

Baker’s fear is that because his program is so strong and winning competitions, no one is paying close attention to how much it is diminishing. He fears that when he retires and people notice the inevitable differences between the new person and the institution of 3 decades, they will attribute the weakness of the program to the unsuitability of his replacement. In fact, Baker seems to believe his position will become part time before he retires.

The last part of the video deals with the lack of funding and time allocated to arts experience in schools. This is a common theme nationwide. What was most interesting about John Baker’s segment was that he didn’t attribute his problems to either of these things. He didn’t talk about his funding being cut or say that the administration was necessarily undermining him.

His problem seems mostly to be due to a shift in values. Either his principal is right and kids don’t want to sing or he is right and required focus of students’ education is moving them away from his program. It is rare to hear of a school arts program in distress due to a philosophical rather than financial shift in priorities. Perhaps it happens more frequently than I realize and it is just the budget cuts getting all the press.

Info You Can Use: Considerations Before Forming A Non-Profit

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Last month, as many non-profits were faced with losing their status due to a change in the tax filing laws, Board Source President/CEO Linda Crompton suggested the situation might be good for the non-profit world by removing duplicative and ineffective/inactive non-profits. Because non-profits really aren’t required to generate a business plan or survey the need and competition before filing for status, she feels there may be too many non-profits in existence.

No for-profit company would start up without doing a thorough analysis of the competitive landscape; that analysis would be baked into the business plan and would inform all other decisions — one of which might be “not here, not now.” It’s incumbent upon our sector to school itself on this point: just because we have an idea, and a mission, and a great, good heart, does not mean that we need to start our own, brand-spanking new organization to fulfill that mission. The same truth applies to organizations in all stages of their lifecycle. Boards should be asking themselves: are we still relevant? Are we fulfilling our mission effectively and sustainably? Is there another organization across town doing the same thing, only better? Should we be discussing merger, or even dissolution?

I have mentioned a number of times over the years that I have often many arts organizations have been started that could have easily been part of an existing group or that could have merged with other groups when it was clear that their service area couldn’t support both groups very well. I will admit that I have seen many more groups in merger talks over the last few years since the economy has gotten worse than I had during previous economic down turns. It was good to see people considering this route. But I have also seen new groups peel off because of personality differences or a desire to perform a slightly different genre. Admittedly there is a difference between classical and modern realism, but Shakespeare festivals manage to produce both without compromising their souls.

To be honest though, I don’t know if the IRS would be in a position to evaluate whether there was or wasn’t a need for any type of non-profit, be it an arts organization or social service agency. Imagine the work involved in developing criteria to measure if there was a sufficient support base for the organization in a community. Imagine the bad press the IRS would get for denying someone non-profit status for a social service organization serving a very emotionally charged cause.

Which doesn’t mean due diligence shouldn’t be done. In a comment to Linda Crompton’s entry, Don Griesmann links to an entry on his blog in which he enumerates all the considerations that should be made before creating a non-profit. He also footnotes his arguments with the largest number of stories on the difficulties faced by non-profit organizations I have ever seen.

His entry came at the end of 2009 and he proposed that no new non-profits should be allowed to be created in 2010 unless a whole multitude of conditions were met. A brief sampling:

•Unless you understand the nonprofit will not be “your nonprofit” and you have enlisted an incorporating board that is interested in the concept and capable of performing the necessary tasks of incorporating and operating the organization and

•Unless you understand there is no “free money” from the federal or state governments. The federal government distributes funds through scholarships, fellowships, contracts, grants and loans. Each requires an application, meeting eligibility requirements, demonstration of a task to be undertaken, proof that the task was performed and the money used appropriately and in many instances a report evaluating the use of their funds…

….•Unless you have a concept of what it costs to develop and operate a nonprofit in terms of shared leadership, time, thought, study, serious planning, hard work, evaluation and annual reporting as well as money and
•Unless you have no intention of attempting to raise more than $5,000 a year for the next 5 years…

…•Unless you have performed due diligence and created a board of mixed talents, diversity, shared passion and vision concerning a truly unserved issue or need supported by some empirical evidence. If the need is an underserved need, why not join with the current providers and increase the service or product? And
•Unless you understand that there simply are not grants available to pay for the incorporation process. If you and others cannot raise the first $1,000 or so to incorporate, then where do you think you will get the money to run the organization? When someone asks, as many do, does anyone know where I can get a grant to start my nonprofit, we should either not respond or tell the truth – you are not ready to start a nonprofit. Go volunteer at a local nonprofit….

One of his next “unless” includes having a business plan that answer 19 different questions. One of his other conditions might be that you shouldn’t form a non-profit if you don’t have the patience to read his whole entry. While it is very long, it asks many pertinent questions and raises many points that ought to be considered. It is good to see people starting to advocate for this level of consideration prior to forming a non-profit.

Of course, non-profit status covers a lot of situations, including block associations and other purposes that wouldn’t necessarily be competing for grants from a shrinking pool of resources. These will certainly benefit from being well planned, but aren’t likely to struggle to stay in existence or become a drain on their community if they don’t meet every criteria.

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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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