Audience Relations

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.”
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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….”

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.

Lies, Damn Lies and Are We Ever Going To Use These Survey Results?

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My Google Alerts informed me that the phrase butts in the seats was used recently in what turned out to be a reprint of a 2008 article on MinnesotaPlaylist. The topic of the December 2008 issue was “Know Your Audience.” In addition to the original piece that brought me there, a couple others caught my attention as well.

The first article, Joseph Scrimshaw’s “Humans With Pulses,” addresses the idea that everyone will enjoy a quality artistic product if only they are aware of it.

“I’m beginning to think that failing to be specific about who you want in the audience presents a risk to both the profit and enjoyment of theater. There is a tendency for artists to believe that any cross section of people will enjoy their work. After all, theater is good. Theater reaches out to people. It’s easy to reason, “This piece of theater I have created is good, so why shouldn’t any human with a pulse enjoy it?” Music is good, too. When I was fifteen years old my two favorite musical acts were Frank Sinatra and Guns N’ Roses. I chatted with my Grandma about one and with my friends about the other. Unfortunately, there was no chance in hell of any crossover.”

Scrimshaw talks about being aware of the specific segments of the community who might be interested in a performance and why. Granted, the venues he seems to work in sound like they are at the smaller end of the spectrum and thus can serve very narrow segments of the population–like knitters. His description of the audience at his knitting-based, murder mystery comedy sounds like the diverse group everyone yearns for-

“We had knitters from 18 to 82, multiple ethnicities, sexual orientations, and genders. The knitting demographic trumped all because they had an investment in the show: They wanted to see if this Scrimshaw guy (who’s supposed to be funny) had anything interesting to say about this craft that is their hobby and their passion.”

Using the topic of demographics as a segue, John Middleton provides an amusing look at the whole idea of scrutinizing demographics in “They, the People”

She and her husband—let’s call him David—went to Mexico last year and have been thinking about a trip to Europe. However, they’ve both lost a lot of money from their 401(k) accounts and what with Nancy’s allergies and recent weight gain and David’s high cholesterol and occasional erectile dysfunction, that romantic trip to the moors of England might have to wait.

“Whoa!” you’re saying. “This is creepy. Does he really know this stuff or is he just making it up?”

I know this stuff. Visit the raw data (PDF) and draw your own conclusions. Remember, demographers don’t lie.

I actually checked out the raw data, and believe it or not the survey actually asked about all these aspects of the participants’ lives. Here is the real stuff to remember:

It’s true demographers don’t lie. But remember, these numbers are simply a tool. They are descriptive. They do not tell us what plays to do or how to do them. They simply allow us to think about Nancy and her life. They remind us that we’re not just asking Nancy to plunk down twenty bucks to see a show; we’re asking for an investment of her time. She has to find out about our production, decide to go, come up with a night she and David are both free, leave work in time to dress, figure out where our theater is, find parking, and so on. Are we making this process as easy for Nancy as possible?

You see, demographers are not soulless, art-killing philistines. We’re here to help.

However, if you still have doubts about the usefulness of demography, let me tell you something: You are not alone. There is a tiny checkbox labeled “terror” in the heart of every demographer. The system of gathering respondent data is filled with imperfections from start to finish. One flawed remembrance here, one inflated self-aggrandizement there—each insignificant on its own, but they start to add up. Then as we extrapolate the data, every imperfection becomes multiplied many times over until we have nothing left but a spider’s web of half-truths and sweat-soaked guesses. We crush this seething mess into solid-seeming charts, tables and graphs in order to give it the look of Truth, but we know: Demographers lie! And if you think this is only true of demographics, you’re kidding yourself.

Filling out the theme of surveying and data is Sara Stevenson Scrimshaw piece, “Doing Data.” What was immediately interesting to me was her story about studying in London and wanting to do her Master’s thesis on whether theatre and dance organizations used the data they collected. Her advisor couldn’t understand why.

“His response was of course all organizations use data, that wasn’t interesting, I should focus on what they were doing with the data or whether they were satisfied instead. He had worked for years with Theatrical Management Association, a service organization for theaters in the UK, and he had started an audience data collection and dissemination program in 1990—fifteen years before I was coming to him with this topic. So he thought my concerns were old news.”

But Sara knew this wasn’t how it was in the US where data was collected, but rarely acted upon. Part of the reason she felt was because people don’t know how to effectively use the information that passes through their hands. This is what she found in the course of her research:

“I was also surprised that less than 50 percent of organizations collected demographic information, as that is frequently needed for grant reporting. The results also showed that over 50 percent of organizations did not consistently have access to their own box office data—meaning that they had to rely on other methods to collect data about their audiences.

Do I have any recommendations? I think using data is simple and complex at once. The most important things are fairly easy: looking at the data, analyzing it for trends, inspecting to see if there are any obvious gaps. However, the key is really using the data to understand your audience—asking who they are, where they are, why they come to you, then using that data to help inform your future decisions. Do you want to compare yourself to other organizations? Do you want to reach people you currently aren’t reaching? Is your audience who you thought they were? Audience data can help to answer all of these questions more honestly.

[…]

…I don’t believe that there is a magic formula or a correct answer. Instead, I think it’s a process of using little pieces of information to help create an overall picture.”

I have to agree that it is both simple and complex to use data. For me it is as much about the suspected dearth of information from certain segments of our audience as trying to accurately process the information I do have. I know our audience surveys aren’t being filled out by a representative portion of our audience because we barely get any completed by people in the 20s and 30s, but we see a lot of them passing through the doors.

Likewise, so many people purchase tickets at the door where we don’t have the time to collect information not directly related to the ticket purchase that the only data I have is from the lesser percentage that plan ahead. I could send reminder postcards to people who make their decisions last minute and perhaps improve my relationship with them. My software tells me exactly what time they made their purchase–if only I knew where they live or who they are!

I don’t want to be making decisions about how to serve all of my audience based on what I know about 20% of them. I figure that is a formula for retaining slightly more than that 20% but that is all I have to work with at the moment. Though that isn’t to say we can’t ask audience members to help us serve them by making note of their account numbers so we can better track simple things like attendance preferences. We may still miss a large segment of the audience, but we will narrow the gap a little and let people know their presence is important to us.

What Do You Do With A Stolen Actor?

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I attended a talk by minor theater deity Richard Schechner last week at an open event for the International Brecht Society Conference. He was speaking about environmental theatre (aka site specific). We just finished a site specific work last month so I was interested to hear what a person who had been doing it for decades had to say on the subject.

There were things he spoke of which matched my original desire for the work but which got scaled back by the artistic team due to various limitations and considerations. The good thing was that one of the people on the artistic team was there listening as well so we will have a common frame of reference for our next event. The talk was scheduled for longer than I thought it would be so I couldn’t stay until the end to ask questions or speak to those friends also in attendance.

I wish I had been able to speak with him because I would have liked to know how he might balance making a performance a more interactive experience with the alienation/intimidation factor of what he was doing. Some of the things he spoke about struck me as “only in a big city like NYC.” He made groups split up on entering so that they would be forced to explore the space more trying to find each other. And if they didn’t like it, they didn’t have to see his show because he had a full house every night. (That option came up a lot as he spoke about the performances he had done.) He also spoke about leaning folding chairs against the wall and letting people set them up wherever they liked without consideration of whether it would be in the way of the performance or technical operations.

My first thought was that while people may crave a more interactive experience, many are already intimidated by the thought of attending as a passive observer. How much worse might their anxiety be if they set themselves up right in the middle of some intense action? I mean I think there is too much contact when I go to a Cirque de Soleil show and one of the performers somersaults right into my lap. Okay, well that is probably too much contact for anyone, but even watching the performers move around the room playing with audience members raises some anxiety that I may be next. Though if you don’t introduce people to the concept, people can’t become more accepting of that type of interactivity. I would imagine setting has a lot to do with it. A performance in a nightclub where you expect to be bumped into and jostled might not cause the discomfort that the same activities in another place would.

The thing that really intrigued me were the rules he set up for his performances. In his production of Dionysus in 69 which is based on The Bacchae, Pentheus has an opportunity to avoid being killed. The actor goes into the audience and picks someone and starts to caress them. If the person doesn’t resist and the actor obtains satisfaction, by his own definition, from their physical contact, Dionysus loses, Penethus lives and the play ends. Schechner said there were only two times that death was avoided. Once, Pentheus ended up in a fairly torrid embrace with an audience member and left with her when they came up for air. The second time, a group of people who had seen the show and decided Pentheus was getting a raw deal abducted Pentheus when he went into the audience. The audience was dissatisfied that the show wouldn’t be concluded and Schechner called for a volunteer who would be fed the lines and actions as he/she was stripped down, anointed with blood and underwent a simulated dismemberment. Schechner said a 16 year old boy stepped forward and you could see him trembling with both fear and excitement. That is one of those powerfully visceral moments that theatre people constantly seek. Everyone is engaged in the moment because even though it is scripted, no one knows what is going to happen.

He told of another instance, I believe with Mother Courage, where they chose 15 people to come up on stage. If you were chosen you could either go up, pass being chosen on to the person next to you or leave the theatre with no recourse to return. But the show wouldn’t continue until they had 15 people. Schechner said one evening the audience apparently decided to test their resolve and the show was delayed at that point for four hours. I would say this is another one of those authentic moments in theatre, though less sought after.

I am sure people have played with the idea of propagating rules for a performance that can end it all in a potentially dissatisfying manner, but it is one of those “new to me” situations which fires the imagination. There may not be anything new under the sun, but parts of this production from 40 years ago might point the way to creating a more interesting environment for people who haven’t considered themselves as theatre attendees.