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Why Do I Have To Call Dun & Bradstreet To Apply For A State Arts Grant?

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As we move further into the new year, many grant deadlines are starting to creep up en masse upon arts organizations. As you are filling out all the mandatory fields in your grant application, you may be wondering why you have to have a DUNS (Data Universal Numbering System) number in addition to your Employer Id Number (EIN), especially since they are both the same number of digits.

You may also be wondering why a commercial data firm like Dun and Bradstreet gets to dole out these numbers, instead of a governmental entity. Well, I don’t have all the answers, but I did provide a good number of them in an ArtsHacker post on the subject a couple weeks ago.

As I write in that post,

The simple answer is that your EIN is associated with your IRS tax records and the DUNS number is associated with your business credit score.

[…]

One reason the DUNS numbers are separate from EIN is that a DUNS number is tied to a physical address. This makes sense in the commercial for-profit realm since a branch of a company in California may have better credit than one in Florida, but there aren’t many non-profits that are so large that they have a single EIN but require different DUNS numbers.

Learning that your DUNS number is associated with your credit score may be cause for concern—how many non-profits are going to have a great credit score after all?

Given that overhead ratio has been used as a measure of effectiveness for non-profits, it isn’t out of the realm of possibility that someone is going to get the bright idea that credit score is a good shorthand for deciding whether a non-profit is being run well. This would be a really bad idea since the standards used to assess credit worthiness of a for-profit entity are inappropriate for non-profits.

But you know, non-profits should be run more like a business right?

In any case, if you would like to know a little more about DUNS numbers and how to get one for your organization, (or see if you already have one), check out my ArtsHacker post.

What Is A DUNS Number And Why Do I Need It?

You Don’t Know Entertaining

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There has been a fair bit of evidence that people are not generally aware whether the place they are having their entertainment experience is a non-profit or for-profit business. An experience appeals to them and they participate. All those efforts invested in curating a balanced season of offerings may receive less recognition and appreciation than you think.

According the Colleen Dilenschneider, what the general public perceives to be an entertaining experience doesn’t align with the definition of non-profit curators/programmers either.

Leaders of cultural arts organizations tend to perceive an entertaining experience to be one that is simplified and dumbed down compared with the educational experience they offer. Participants have a much broader definition of what constitutes entertainment.

Surveying perceptions of memorial sites like USS Arizona Memorial, Arlington Cemetery, Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the September 11 Memorial & Museum, Dilenschneider’s company, IMPACTS found that memorial sites,

Considered as a collective, they are generally viewed as entertaining! People find these sites relevant and meaningful – and thus find them entertaining. This is the opposite of what some internal industry leaders believe “entertaining” to mean!

In general, cultural organizations are seen as entertaining entities. That’s great news because entertainment value motivates visitation while education value tends to justify a visit. Moreover – as we’ve discussed – entertainment value is the single biggest contributor to overall visitor satisfaction.

If you recall my posts on the most recent CultureTrack study, one of the most consistent motivators to participation across all disciplines was to have fun. Dilenschneider has presented information before from other sources that reinforces this result as well.

Later in her post, she presents another chart showing

“Memorial sites are perceived as both educational and entertaining, again challenging the notion that “entertainment” is necessarily vapid, empty, or meaningless.”

and makes the following important observations:

1) “Entertainment” means engaging

A synonym of “entertainment” is “engaging.” The opposite of “entertainment” is disengagement. Why would cultural organizations be disappointed to learn that they are not disengaging? I posit it’s because we’ve created and promulgated the baseless cognitive bias within our industry that entertainment and education are opposing forces, and that one comes at the expense of the other. In reality, they must work together to lead a successful cultural organization.

[…]

2) “Entertainment” is not the opposite of “education”

As shown above, cultural organizations are generally seen as both educational and entertaining! An idea that one value necessarily comes at the expense of another is generally unfounded. If it were true, these numbers could not both be high at the same time – and yet they are!

[…]

Entertainment value and education value are not the same thing, but their relationship much more closely resembles that of partners than of enemies. They may benefit by being considered individually at times, but they do not necessarily function independently.

A great deal to think about in relation to how we frame our thinking about what we are doing.

One thing I misinterpreted was her assertion that “…entertainment value motivates visitation while education value tends to justify a visit.” I read that as something viewed as entertainment impels people to participate while something viewed as educational is seen as an obligation — you have to go to the opera because it is good for you.

But when I watched the accompanying video (below), I realized the perceived educational value aligns directly with the motivations found in the Creating Connection initiative. Desire to see and learn something new and different and wanting a child to learn/see something different are part of the perceived educational value.

 

You Keep Throwing These Terms Around. I Just Want To Know..Will I Get Paid?

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Earlier this Fall I had a friend who was relatively new to the business of presenting performances. An agent had rattled off a series of numbers as part of the performance fee deal an touring group was looking to get and my friend had no idea how to interpret those numbers.

I realized these type of arrangements probably confuse a great number of people in the business, both presenters and touring artists, so I wrote an Arts Hacker post about some of the more common deal structures for performances.

If you are a presenter and you don’t know what $40,000/10% NBOR/60-40 split on overages refers to, it is difficult to decide if you can meet your budget for the show.

Likewise, if you are a musician going into a music venue and they are offering you a percentage of net deal, before you accept you’ll want a pretty good sense of what the potential gross is and just what expenses the venue will be subtracting out before you get paid.

 

Common Deal Structures For Touring Groups

Unexamined Initiatives Are Not Worth Implementing

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It is no news flash to even casual readers of the blog that I am involved with Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection program to build public will for arts and culture. Last week, they ran a webinar just to present the basic research and program. In recent months they have been featuring two case studies where people talk about how their organizations are putting the research and messaging into practice. This session was aimed at giving people more complete information about the program.

As much as I have been a fan boy cheer leading the program, what I really appreciated about the webinar last week was the number and type of questions people were asking of the presenters.

It was an indication of just how serious people were thinking about implementing the research that webinar attendees were questioning the research methodology. I think people in arts and culture field are wise to scrutinize whether a new approach to doing business is a popular fad soon to fade or has some rigorous thought behind it. They have little enough time and resources as it is and don’t want to waste it on initiatives lacking substance.

What I really appreciated was when one person, identified as Zi Li, asked about case studies on failed programs because they were interested to learn why those program failed.  My friend Carter Gillies often mentions the problem of survivorship bias  where you only study the successful cases rather than gaining insight from those that failed.

The music on the Awesome 80s radio station is always going to be better than the music today because you are comparing the cream that rose to the top and endured the last 30 years to all the music being performed today, both good and bad.

If you are new to the concept of Creating Connection or just want a refresher, take a look at the video from the webinar which includes all the questions and comments made that day.

Americans For The Arts Unleashes A Pinwheel of Arts Power!!

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Americans for the Arts just rolled out their Social Impact of the Arts pinwheel this week. Instructions and ideas about how to use it may be found in a blog post and/or video made by Clay Lord, Vice President of Local Arts Advancement.

As you know, I apply a pretty critical eye to anything that might make prescriptive claims regarding the ability of the arts to solve all sorts of problems.  As always, I am concerned about people using data like property values increasing 20% due to the presence of a cultural organization and a correlation between taking arts classes for four years scoring 100 points higher on SATs as a primary measure of value of the arts.

I will say that it is clear A LOT of effort went into assembling the data and putting these materials together. It can provide a valuable resource when advocating for the arts and finding practices to emulate.  Between the amount of data points and ease of use, my pinwheel of arts power moniker is pretty deserved.

The topics covered are much wider than the economic and educational benefits we often see cited in relation to the arts. There are sections on diplomacy, innovation, faith, infrastructure, health and wellness, social justice and yes, culture, economics and education. Each of the 26 “slices” of the pinwheel brings up a “Learn More” button in the center that allows you to download a printable PDF specific to the topic with footnoted sources that you can bring to meetings with policy makers to show them what is backed by research.

Arrows on either side of the center hub will take you to examples of practice, reading lists and organizations associated with the topic. According to the video presentation Lord made, they were still populating that content.  Since that video was made at the conference back in June, they have likely added a lot more content since then.  I haven’t checked every slice of the pinwheel, but haven’t been able to find an area that lacks any of those three categories.

The downloadable PDFs have reading lists, examples of practice and organizations included, but the respective categories accessed via the pinwheel hub provide more direct access to the information in each section.

My hope is that the easy availability of data and examples of impacts in a wide range of applications will enable people to advocate for the arts cross a broader spectrum of rationale. Likewise, I hope people find it easy to draw inspiration from the successes organizations have had making artistic and cultural practice part of their effort to create connections and impacts in various endeavors.

Show Of Hands- Conference Professional Development Sessions Mostly BS Or Sources of Valuable Info?

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While I wasn’t scheduled to sit on any panels at the ArtsMidwest conference last week, I did end up leading (or at least shepherding) one.

Actually, I made a tongue-in-cheek claim I was hijacking the session because it was originally cancelled but I decided it should go on if there was enough interest.  What had been scheduled was a book club type discussion of Nina Simon’s The Art of Relevance. The person who had been scheduled to lead the session couldn’t make it so I decided if enough people walked up and expressed disappointment at seeing the cancellation notice, I would pull the sign down and make sure it happened.

Sure enough, two other people quickly came up and said “awww” so I pulled down the sign and took over the room. We ended up having about 15 people attend, half of whom had read the book and the other half who intended to read it and wanted to know more.

Given that mix of experience and perspectives, it was pretty easy to provide a valuable and informative session. (Though if I had had more notice, I might have tried to get a computer so we could show one of Nina’s TEDx talks)

Earlier in the week, there was another session that had been cancelled because the presenter couldn’t make it. This one was geared toward helping people take a look at the physical surroundings of an arts venue from a different perspective to identify what features might be sending unwelcoming messages to some groups.

From the session description:

“Oftentimes the greatest asset of any arts program is its physical space, and yet it’s frequently overlooked when it comes to access, inclusion and diversity…if we aren’t paying attention we can inadvertently send the wrong messages. Like tourists with fresh eyes participants will go on a walking tour of the Indiana Convention Center and explore how to identify and mitigate the psychological, emotional and physical reactions that occur in response to a physical space.”

I had seen this at previous conferences and had conflicts so I intended to participate this year and I was a little disappointed that it got cancelled.

I overheard a number of other people express similar disappointment at it being cancelled and then rhetorically ask if the conference couldn’t have just found someone else to run the session instead.  My feeling is that being sensitive to and aware of these problematic features is a pretty specific skill set.  It isn’t as easy to find a suitable substitute as it was for me and others to step in and lead the book club discussion.

I mentioned this to a couple of those making these comments and they seemed pretty reluctant to concede this was the case. This reaction made me wonder if conference attendees perceived the content of these sessions to be marginally valuable BS that presenters spouted and therefore was easily substituted on short notice by other people who happened to be around.

And yes, granted a lot of times conference content can be full of empty platitudes about how everyone must love the arts but sessions like these are more about specialized practical skills and less about advocating for the value of the arts.

I suppose a more charitable read could be the perception that everyone in attendance but oneself is a highly qualified expert practitioner and therefore could step in to provide illuminating perspective on the problem.

But if it is the assumption that half of what you are hearing is B.S., then arts conferences have a challenge about communicating their value for professional development.

Thoughts?

Create, Re-Create, Recreate

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I was reading a piece in CityLab about Repair Cafes which strike me as a good complement to MakerSpaces and creative activities that arts and cultural entities may host.   The concept was started in Amsterdam by Martine Postma who was disturbed by how much repairable equipment was sitting at the curb on trash day.  She sells start up kits that allow you to use the Repair Cafe logo and puts you in touch with the other Repair Cafe’s around the world.

But beyond reducing what is sent to the landfill, personal empowerment plays a large role in the Repair Cafe concept:

What she’s discovered was that it wasn’t that people liked throwing away old stuff. “Often when they don’t know how to repair something, they replace it, but they keep the old one in the cupboard—out of guilt,” she said. “Then at a certain moment, the cupboard is full and you decide this has been lying around [long enough].”

[…]

For the time being, communities are doing what they can to encourage people to fix things. Libraries like the one in Howard County, for example, have started renting out tools and creating “makerspaces” where members learn to both repair and create. Elsewhere, cities have hosted MakerLabs, FabLabs—short for fabrication lab—and Innovation Labs for both adults and children. Bike shops and nonprofits alike have fished scrapped vehicles from the landfill to repair and donate to the underserved community.

The social and personalized elements of the Repair Cafes, makerspaces, etc may be part of the value and appeal. After all, you can watch a YouTube how-to video to fix something that breaks. If you don’t have confidence in your ability to effect the repairs, having someone available to teach you the skills to do so in the process of fixing your stuff might motivate you to act. This despite the fact it is more trouble to haul your broken equipment somewhere versus tossing it in the trash.

It is also easier to toss stuff away rather than hauling it to Goodwill or the Salvation Army, but people donate goods to non-profits all the time because they know it is better not to let things go to waste.

Just as recognizing your capacity to be creative is empowering,  learning to fix items can instill a degree of pride and self-satisfaction which is why I feel it is such a close companion effort to creative activities.

#19NTC Topics-Oh Yeah Do I Got Ideas For You

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Last week Drew McManus did a call out to the non-profit arts community to submit proposals for the Nonprofit Technology Conference in March 2019. (Proposal deadline is August 17)

Last year, I was excited by the topic Drew was presenting – “Everything Tech Providers Wished You Knew About Writing A RFP (plus the stuff they want to keep secret)

So in the spirit of getting more stuff I am interested in learning about proposed, I am gonna give you a list of some of the things I think would make good topics in the hope some of you will submit something.

  • Data Privacy and Security From Perspective of Communities of Color – I have already reached out to one of the people who made a presentation for the Hispanic National Bar Assn in NYC, but anyone with an interest should submit on this topic. Given that non-profits serving communities of color often need to establish a relationship of trust, this seems like an important subject to address.
  • Analyzing The True Cost of Programs – favorite topic of mine. Related idea:
  • Using Evidence/Data to Rebutt the Concept of Overhead Ratio As A Measure Of Effectiveness
  • Shared /Online Procurement Goods/Services
  • Effective RFP Generation – both internal & external processes
  • Using Geofencing To Better Understand Target Communities – can geofencing help you better understand a community based on where they travel around the community?
  • Ethics of Using Geofencing For Marketing  – i.e. I can geofence a local theater and target people based on the idea that they enjoy attending performances or with the intent of stealing the audience.
  • In-Person/Conference Based Professional Development vs. Online/Technology Delivery. Are there some subject areas better suited to one format over the other?
  • Shared services/technology arrangements – in terms of both back office and program delivery
  • Delete the Facebook Account? – Communication strategies when faced with a concerted social media assault
  • Conforming with Google’s new criteria for Adwords Grants – i.e. https://nonprofitquarterly.org/2018/05/07/nonprofits-can-keep-adwords-grants-following-major-changes-restore-lost-accounts/
  • Energy Saving Performance Contracts
  • Use of technology to provide regular cues to keep strategic plan alive and relevant – i.e. using software/apps to periodically to nag/remind you of milestones in time line, provide encouragement, remind you of ideas you had during the planning session
  • Effective Hiring – from job description to orientation/training  this topic is large enough to be multiple sessions can hit on everything from online job boards/job app apps to new state laws requiring salary range and forbidding asking about salary history

There are plenty more ideas where these came from, but I feel like this is a good broad range of subjects. I have already reached out to a few people encouraging to propose based on topics they are well-qualified to address.

If any of this inspires you in any sort of direction, submit a proposal.  If you got questions, let me know. Like Drew, I am on the conference session committee. Honestly, the conference organizers are really good about providing opportunities for people to ask questions at scheduled office hours and open Q&A sessions, and an online proposal prep group in which you can solicit feedback on proposals you are developing. All these resources are listed on the proposal pages.

When Fantasy Morphs Into Reality

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You just have to read this recent piece on the ArtsPlace America website about a fictitious marketing campaign created as a graduate school thesis project that became reality.

Peter Svarzbein’s thesis project had residents of El Paso, TX excited about the return of a trolley system that went defunct about 45 years ago.

….part performance art, part guerrilla marketing, part visual art installation, and part fake advertising campaign. The project began with a series of wheatpaste posters advertising the return of the El Paso-Juárez streetcar, and continued with the deployment of Alex the Trolley Conductor, a new mascot and spokesperson for the alleged new service. Alex appeared at Comic Cons, public parks, conferences, and other public spaces to promote the return of the streetcar, while additional advertisements appeared across El Paso, sparking curiosity and excitement for the assumed real project.

Eventually, Svarzbein admitted that the project was a graduate thesis masquerading as a streetcar launch,…

But when Svarzbein heard the city of El Paso was preparing to sell the art deco trolley cars, he rallied community support for the restoration of the trolley cars and passenger service. His initiative gained the support of both the city and state department of transportation, garnering a $97 million grant to help get the cars running again.

I love what happened next,

In one of the most surprising twists in this long tale, shortly after this funding was awarded, he rode the wave of public support for the once-fictional project to win a seat on El Paso’s City Council. He is now the City Representative for District 1, and an artist is now at the table.

In his remarks about the creativity he employed to rally support for the restoration, Svarzbein reflected on the role of an artist in the community,

“there is a sort of responsibility that artists have to imagine and speak about a future that may not be able to be voiced by a large amount of people in the present. I felt that sort of responsibility. If I couldn’t change the debate, at least I could sort of write a love letter to the place that raised me.”

Varied Advice & Insights On Creative Placemaking, Economic Impact

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As a follow up to yesterday’s post on the Creative Placemaking conference I attended, I wanted to share some general thoughts and ideas I had picked up.

Regardless of whether the setting is urban, suburban or rural, there are a number of communities experiencing really difficult times. A number of panelists discussed the need to address the community trauma before you ever talk about economic stimulus. You can’t just walk in and position something as a solution to the problems in the community until those problems are aired and people have a sense that they can move forward from there. Otherwise the issues will likely continue to fester and undermine the foundation of what you are trying to accomplish.

When it comes to investment and grant making in rural communities, it probably won’t come as a surprise to anyone that one of the factors contributing to the low level of investment is geographic remoteness. David Stocks of the Educational Foundation of America (which ironically is not involved in education) talked about how program officers will need to invest a lot more effort into bringing support to rural communities.

They might need to take a plane to a regional airport and then drive 2-3 hours before they reach a community. There is also the issue of trying to identify what organizations would make good anchor partners for the work they do.  There is a need for both funders and community organizations to work at expanding their relationship networks to increase the chances that their orbits will intersect.

Marie Mascherin who works for New Jersey Community Capital, characterized her organization primarily as a lender. She talked about how lenders viewed placemaking activities which was a perspective you rarely get. All the same, she warned those in attendance that her organization was atypical in that they got a lot more involved with the community and projects they were working on than most similar lending organizations.

John Davis who was involved with bringing vitality to both New York Mills, MN and Lanesboro, MN passed on a piece of advice he had received from a college professor – don’t make excuses, even about money, for not finding a creative solution. Basically, don’t let lack of money (or other things)  become default excuses about why things can’t be accomplished. In a rural setting where resources are scarce, you pretty much have to try harder to find creative solutions.

(Honestly, “work even harder and don’t make excuses,” wasn’t something I wanted to hear, but wasn’t exactly news.)

Davis also talked about an argument he made to a local government that was balking at renovating a building. He noted it would cost them $35,000 to demolish the building or they could invest $35,000 into renovating the building and have a more valuable property they could sell later if his project failed.

His project didn’t fail, but that concept dovetailed in an interesting way with a comment Ben Fink of Appalshop made about a prison project being proposed near Whitesburg, KY. He said that the $300,000,000 prison was being sold to the community as, at best, creating 300 new jobs. He noted that was $1,000,000 a job–compare that to how much benefit $1 investment in arts and culture has for a community.

It occurred to me that is something to look into and leverage proactively with governments and decision makers. Rather than waiting until it comes time to ask for funding to be renewed, when a discussion comes up about providing tax breaks or subsidies for companies, it might be useful to mention that $1 invested in creative placemaking/arts/culture/education in the community is more efficient.

While I am on the subject of economic activity, in one session I bluntly asked Jeremy Liu of PolicyLink about the veracity of economic impact claims being made by organizations and communities. He said if they are using analytic tools like those offered by Implan, the numbers are dependable.

In the past I have mentioned my concern with arts and culture organizations arguing for funding or policy changes citing the benefits of art and music on learning and test scores when such benefits are only weakly supported or have been debunked.

What has worried me is that decision and policy makers will learn about the lack of evidence for these claims and perhaps actively wield it against the arts community. By the same token, I have often wondered at the rigor behind claims of economic impact of creative activity in communities and feared what might result if they are debunked.¥

A few other tidbits people offered-

Don’t become hyperfocused on placemaking. Don’t value place or a project over the community. Even if you are in a group, no project is completed in isolation.

If you recall in the very beginning of my post yesterday I mentioned that I gained an appreciation and broader perspective on the different roles that contributed to a placemaking project from governments to funding/loan group to community members to the people executing the work, placemaking is a function of many entities working together.

I feel like I am citing him a lot in these last two posts, but I appreciated Ben Fink’s insights about establishing relationships with people in the community. He said the first real shared connection you will make with someone is rarely associated with the project you are trying to accomplish. As an example, your aim may be to solicit participation in a building renovation for a maker space but the initial basis of your relationship is a shared interest in 19th century steam engines.

He said that building community support and participation happened in the same way friendships develop. It is heavily dependent on the dynamics at the formation of the project. If participation is by invitation only, one person ends up being in charge. If you form a clique of interested parties, it becomes insular. But if the project begins with the intention of leaving the door open, interested people will start to gravitate toward the project as they see work happening.

¥- None of this compromises my assertion that while arts and cultural activity may generate economic activity, steady employment, positive social outcomes and quality of life, the none of this is a measure of the value of arts and culture.

When HiPPOs Attack

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Being the voracious consumer of arts administration theory and philosophy, I jumped on the slide deck Drew McManus and Ceci Dadisman put together for their session at the Association of Arts Administration Educators conference.

The topic they covered was “Effective Data Driven Decision Making,” which may sound uninteresting until you realize that the main thrust of their session was providing guidance for dealing with a major barrier to progress in an organization, the HiPPOs.

In his post on Adaptistration reflecting on his conference experience, Drew expresses some surprise that conference attendees hadn’t heard of HiPPO decision making before. I suspect people are familiar with the practice, but just don’t know that particular term.

HiPPO stands for Highest Paid Person’s Opinion.

I am pretty sure everyone has had the experience where they put a lot of effort into developing a plan/proposal, supporting it with research, surveys, etc., perhaps going through multiple layers of people to get their buy-in and approval only to have the final decision maker summarily nix it.

Usually the rejection is based on a personal opinion or gut feeling about what should be done, despite the fact that the people they pay to do research, analyze data, and be subject matter experts say otherwise.

This slide from Drew and Ceci’s presentation summarize it pretty well.

Accompanying this and other slides in the presentation are scads of notes Drew and Ceci graciously supply. Including the following tips about HiPPO behavior:

How to tell if you’re a HiPPO (or work for one). HiPPOs ask:

  • How much traffic is coming to our website?
  • What are our conversion rates?
  • What are the top exit pages on our website?
  • How many average monthly leads do we generate?
  • What is the average site visitor time on site?
  • What are our click-through rates on the homepage slider?

In short, if your data requests sound like grant applications, you have yet to establish a positive data culture.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking about effective data driven decision making in terms of having to collect even more information for reports no one is going to read. Think about this in terms of creating a work environment in which data analysis and expertise is honored across the whole organization (Drew & Ceci also address siloed decision making) and acted upon rather than disregarded on one person’s word.

Basically, the goal is to reduce how frequently you utter the phrase, “So what did I do all that work for…” at work

Go check out the slide presentation and accompanying notes.

The Only Bank Where The Assets Appreciate In Value Upon Withdrawl

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Barry Hessenius proved that we often don’t think of the most obvious things in a post he made last weekend encouraging people to create Story Banks to support your advocacy work.

Rather than having to identify an appropriate story every time we might have use for one, a Story Bank is a readily available, ongoing catalog of those stories, which can be used for a myriad of purposes.

[…]

Those can chronicle personal impact and value, can preserve the organization’s history and legacy, and can categorize beat practices and past mistakes.  While data and evidence based decision making is essential, stories can give data and evidence meaning, and enhance how we use data and evidence to make smart decisions.  It is our stories, particularly of impact and value, that support the argument of the preference for the intrinsic value of the arts.

I collect social media posts, positive comments, anecdotes, letters, etc into a file on an on going basis to support final grant reports. I don’t want to reach the end of a grant period and be scrambling to gather the materials. However, it never occurred to me to make those files available board and staff members in support of formal and informal advocacy and solicitation efforts.

But rather than waiting on someone to say or write something nice, Hessenius suggests a more active approach. He encourage organizations to survey their staff and board for stories about how the organization or the arts in general have impacted lives (including their own–not just what they might have heard from others). Then turn to donors, supporters and volunteers for their stories and then finally audiences.

Hessenius admonishes readers not to forget to include kids since their stories can be most poignant.

He points to a toolkit FamiliesUSA has assembled about creating and maintain a Story Bank as a resource.

Google Adword Grants – Use ‘Em Well Or Lose ‘Em

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Yesterday, Non Profit Quarterly had an article mentioning that a goodly number of non-profit organizations had their $10,000 Adwords Grants shutdown by Google for not meeting standards that were rolled out in January.  Drew McManus warned this was a possibility back in January in an ArtsHacker post.

If you have an Adwords grant from Google, you may want to check on your status. NPQ warns that if your account gets suspended, Google has additional criteria for getting it restored.

A lot of the criteria seem aimed at making sure the non-profit organization is actively trying to make effective use of the grant. The click through rate on your ads has to be above 5%. You can’t just use one keyword and the keywords need to be associated with your mission. Your geographic target needs to reflect the communities you serve.

Not mentioned in the ArtsHacker post and associated articles, but appearing in the NPQ piece is that Google is apparently verifying that the links in Adwords are going to websites owned by the grantee. So if you use a third party site to provide ticketing or process donations, you need to be very careful. It does appear that you can get the use of those sites cleared by Google.

Additionally, your website should be entirely dedicated to your non-profit purpose.

Owned and operated website

Your organization must own the domain that users land on when they click your ad.

High-quality website

Your website must function well and not contain broken links.
Your site must have a robust and clear description of your organization and mission. Each web page must have sufficient information for visitors to understand your organization’s purpose.
Your ads, keywords, and website may not make claims that promise results after a consultation, service, or purchase. Claims on your website must cite verifiable references to provide transparency to users.

Commercial activity

Commercial activity must not be the main purpose of your website. This includes sales of products and services, consultations, lead generation, and providing referrals.

[…]

Another noteworthy change is that grantees can only direct paid search users to approved domains, so be careful when using donation sites or landing pages that are located on related subdomains before receiving approval.

If any of this makes you concerned, take a look at the NPQ article and revisit the terms and conditions of your Adwords account.

Museum Hackers Target The “Not For Someone Like Me”

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In the last week I have seen mention of Museum Hack, in both Bloomberg (h/t Artsjournal.com) and Washington Post (h/t Nina Simon). The company does customized tours of museums from a particular frame of reference.

For example, their Badass Bitches Tour,

…shares stories of female artists, muses and subjects. (Versions of the tour are also offered at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, M.H. de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco, National Gallery of Art in the District and the Getty Center in Los Angeles.) Over the course of two hours, we hear about witches and their love of psychedelics; we view works dedicated to the African goddess Oshun, who has inspired the art of Beyoncé; we peer into the dollhouse-like miniature rooms conceived by artist Narcissa Niblack Thorne; and we chew on the fact that works by women, historically, are largely underrepresented in art museums.

Whereas,

…a tour tailored to “finance bros,” for example, will immediately take them to the most expensive object in the museum, with a blunt discussion of its worth—an entry point to engage the newbie audience.

For Harry Potter fans, there is “The Completely Unofficial and Definitely Unlicensed Boy Wizard Tour”

Their core mission is to “go after people who think museums aren’t for them.”

This was a top response in the recent Culture Track survey among people who don’t participate/attend/visit arts and culture organizations. It is also a goal of Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative. Not to mention Nina Simon’s whole raison d’etre.

According to the news stories, Museum Hack is increasingly being hired by cultural organizations to train their docents to present the content in a more accessible manner in terms of language, context and delivery.

My first thought was that there might be a lot of push back from cultural institutions who felt like this was dumbing down the experience what they have to offer.  (Though the fact Museum Hack brought $200,000 in revenue to the Metropolitan Museum of Art last year is something to be dismissed.)

The thing is, people who regularly visit museums already have different motivations for doing so that may not align with the assumptions or goals of the institution. I have written about John Falk’s Identity and the Museum Experience before. What is described as the motivations of the a Experience Seeker pretty much aligns with the tour designed for “finance bros.”

While the experience provided at a cultural institution can often delight, you can’t control what type of experience people expect to have.  Falk’s identity scheme acknowledges that the same person might not return to the same museum with the same agenda. They may be acting as a facilitator for others during one trip and simple seek to recharge the next time around.

From what I have read their focus seems to really be more about storytelling and forming an engaging narrative about what is found in the museum rather than trying to exploit pop culture trends.

I have often seen titles for university courses that invoke pop culture associations that don’t always follow through and deliver on the promise of an engaging course.  There is probably less to complain about in terms of misrepresentation in a two hour museum tour than a 14 week university course.

One thing I was curious about that I didn’t see mentioned in either of the two articles was how many people who have never entered a museum have used their service versus how many regular museum attendees are signing up for the change of perspective.

I can believe that someone who never entered a museum might pay $59 for a tour that resonated with their interests. It would be good to know how often that happens because it could further refute the argument for free admission days.

Research already shows that free admission days are largely attended by those already in the habit of going to museums. Indications that people are willing to pay for an appealing experience might go some distance to bolstering museum finances.

Respect The Authority of The Resource

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Hat tip to Nina Simon for calling attention to a post about how the Barnes Foundation is working toward changing their user experience. Even though the Barnes Foundation art collection was moved from a residential area to Philadelphia, efforts were made to replicate the close quarters environment of the original house. This complicates matters because it is easier for more people to access a place whose interior space hasn’t increased.

(There have been decades long conflicts related to Albert Barnes’  detailed instructions about the way the collection is displayed which informed the design of the new space.)

Shelley Bernstein, Deputy Director of Audience Engagement and Chief Experience Officer for the Barnes Foundation wrote about the poor impression people received before they even entered the door.

We had a no photo, no sketching, no bags, no coats, and “stay behind the line” policies. All of these things were well intentioned and all were in place in the name of collection safety — a very important thing — but, still, it was a lot of “no” to those we were trying to welcome. And we were trying to tell visitors about all these “nos” before they would enter the collection.

[…]

You can see this surface in online reviews, “… had to be told the exact etiquette before entering which makes it feel like they treat their visitors as if none of them has ever set foot in any other major museums/collections before(???)”

Bernstein set about trying to change how all these rules were communicated as well as exploring which policies could be changed. While she originally intended to scrap the no-photography policy, she realized with half the rooms only having 100 square feet that people could occupy, allowing free rein on photograph wasn’t going to work. So they piloted different policies over the course of a year to see which worked best in their environment.

Perhaps most importantly, they created staff training materials for interacting with visitors based on a process known as Authority of the Resource (ART), that the National Park Service uses in their training. This approach makes citing the rules the last step rather than the first. Even better, Bernstein has shared those materials, which includes signage and the National Park Service discussion of the approach, for others to reference.

Authority of the Resource (ART) shifts the focus away from the concept of enforcement power and toward the requirements to preserve the resource. There are obviously going to be people who don’t give a damn and want to do what they desire, but it does shift the initial interaction away from “because I said so and I am the authority figure.”

From the Park Service’s article.

“…the visitor ends up thinking about laws, regulations, badges and the ranger’s presence rather than focusing on the natural authority inherent in the requirements of a healthy ecosystem.

[…]

“…the AR technique goes one step further and asks the ranger/manager to subtly de-emphasize the regulation and transfer part of the expectation back to the visitor by interpreting nature’s requirement.”

Here the the Barnes Foundation training pamphlet. Clicking on either image will take you Bernstein’s Dropbox copy of the document.

You Have To Know How They Define Community Before You Can Tell Their Story

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I don’t know what inspired me to do so, but last week I visited ProPublica’s website and learned that Free Street Theater and ProPublica Illinois were teaming up to offer theater-journalism workshops across the Illinois.

What caught my eye was that they put out a call for invitations to communities in manner reminiscent of the process Marc Folk said The Arts Commission of Toledo employed when soliciting feedback from different n eighborhoods of that city.

In addition to going to Toulon, IL, Free Street and ProPublica Illinois will be visiting Urbana, Carbondale/Jackson County, Rock Island/Quad Cities, and Rockford during May. So if you live in or near any of those places, check it out.

They did a trial run at the end of March in Chicago and have posted some of their reflections already. One of the things they recognized immediately was a need to do a better job of making people aware that they were having these workshops.

In the course of playing various games, they discovered that the terms people use to define their community, including how they defined community, had some bearing on how they composed the narrative about themselves.

We played a game in which we were asked to line up according to how strongly we agreed with various statements, from “We are living in a war zone” to “I love ice cream.” You’d be surprised at how many interpretations there are of what a war zone is, and how many people have strong feelings about ice cream.

In small groups, we talked about a time we each felt misrepresented in a news story, and how that directly affected us and our communities. It led to revealing conversations about how we each defined “community.”

[…]

At the end of the night, we returned to the sticky notes to ask: What do we want the story of our community to be? This is an important question — for us and for this project — that journalists rarely ask. But they should. If journalists don’t know how a community views itself, journalists don’t know what that community has at stake when it is represented or misrepresented.

If we never bother to ask — in real, concrete ways — it can seem like we don’t care. Journalists know how to fact-check names and statistics. But how often do journalists fact-check the underlying narrative of a community?

Since there is an ongoing conversation in the arts about how people want to see themselves and their stories depicted in performances and other forms of creative expression, these reflections by ProPublica reporter Natalie Escobar should pretty much be shared by those identifying with the arts and culture community.

Probably The Only Time Comic Sans Is Appropriate In A Planning Document

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Back in February CityLab covered an effort by residents of the Frogtown neighborhood of St. Paul, MN to get people invested in contributing to the Small Area Plan for their neighborhood.  This was in part driven by the experience the Frogtown Neighborhood Association voted to refurbish an historic theater in town but the mayor choose to direct the money to a police shooting range because the theater wasn’t in the neighborhood’s small area plan.

Because Small Area Plans, like strategic plans tend to be dry documents that get put on a shelf never to be consulted, the Frogtown Neighborhood Association were determined to make their plan a living document with which people interacted. They did this by placing the plan and the feedback they received from hundreds of residents into the framework of a comic book.

What I admire about the document is that they create 8 characters who are experts on major areas of concern like land use, housing, transportation, education, arts, health and wellness, economic vitality and resource allocation.  They make each of these people representative of different demographic segments like long time residents, house owners, apartment renters, kids, married couples, single college grads, etc.

By doing so they put a face and connect expertise to different people in the neighborhood so it is more difficult to dismiss people as gentrifiers or cranky malcontents standing in the way of progress.

They reiterate their goal quite a few times across the book to employ design thinking to “Sculpt our community into a mixed income, arts, entrepreneurship and education centered urban village.”

Because it is a planning document it is still pretty text heavy, but this is an example of what is contained within the book.  As I sort of implied before, you could probably do worse than applying this approach to your strategic plan.

 

Kickin’–Erm, Springboarding Infographics Up A Notch

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Hat tip to Andrew Taylor for calling attention to ever awesome Springboard for the Arts’ “Year In Review” report which consists of a short letter from Executive Director Laura Zabel but more prominently features the following infographic which you can print and color.

I feel like this is a great example of the underlying message and goal of the Creating Connection I keep advocating for.

It basically tells people, “Springboard for the Arts is an organization that promotes arts, culture and creative expression, all things in which you can participate…so pick up crayons, markers or colored pencils and get started.”

If you are like me and are inspired by this sort of thing, share it! (Or maybe color it first and then share it)

 

Being On The Right Side of Copyrights

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I recently had a piece on ArtsHacker addressing questions about copyright which I see as a complement to an earlier piece I wrote for ArtsHacker that directed readers to tools that can help determine if a work is still under copyright.

This more recent piece includes a guide created by Harvard Law School’s Technology and Intellectual Property Legal Clinic.

Part of the stated aim of that guide was to help those creating protest art understand what uses of a public figure’s likeness is permitted.

But as I write on ArtsHacker, what I like about the guide is that it talks about how to identify those who hold the copyright of a work and what information you should provide when contacting them for permission to use their work.

Perhaps just as important for creative folks looking to expand their reach, the guide discusses how to license and merchandise your own work.

Check out both posts.

Even More Useful Info On Copyright And Intellectual Property

Copyright, Public Domain, and Fair Use Guidance Provided Here

Knight Fdn Looks To Fund Technology Connecting People With Art

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A heads up to people who have, (or know people with), innovative ideas using technology to connect people with arts and culture, the Knight Foundation is looking for project ideas via the Knight Prototype Fund.

Unlike some of the other projects the Knight Foundation funds, these projects don’t need to be set in the communities it traditionally supports which is why I wanted to bring it to everyone’s attention. As the prototype term suggests, they expect some of the concepts to be in the early stages of development.

Applicants don’t necessarily have to work for an organization. We’re looking for ideas from arts organizations, artists, technologists, designers, educators, researchers and others inside or outside of institutions who are eager to experiment. We’re open to diverse approaches and perspectives on the use of technology to connect people to the arts, and seek to identify projects that have the potential to be replicated by others in the field.

What can we build to help arts organizations expand their use of technology? How can we use the qualities of new mediums to create unparalleled experiences? How can we replicate solutions, so that more in the field benefit? How can we learn more about the people we are trying to reach and design solutions that understand their needs? How can arts institutions provide magic outside of their four walls? How can cultural organizations breathe warmth into technology?

[…]

We hope to invest in projects that have provocative questions at their core that can only be answered through the act of making them a reality. Grantees will join together over a nine- month sprint to learn innovation techniques and test ideas.

They anticipate the average grant will be around $50,000. Deadline is March 6. They are hosting an online Q&A from 1 to 2 pm ET on February 21 (connection instructions at bottom of the page)

As an example of the type of thing the Knight Foundation has been doing lately, they partnered with the creators of Pokemon Go to see if similar games or tools could help build community.

It sounds like they would be open to projects that pushed the envelop even further as well as repurposing existing tools in a manner few people have considered.

One of the things I most appreciate about what the Knight Foundation proposes is that they are going to provide applicants with training in innovative methods as well as bringing them together to learn from each other. This acknowledges that innovation isn’t generated in a vacuum or emerge from a lone genius working in a garage, but rather builds on past work in new ways, often in collaboration with others.

Money May Make The World Go Round, But Education Drives Participation

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In a recent “Taking Note”, National Endowment for the Arts’  Director of Research & Analysis,  Sunil Iyengar mentioned that in the coming year the NEA will commission some monographs exploring the role of taste and preferences in arts participation.

He later points out a study conducted in Spain that touches on this very notion.  With the obvious disclaimer that the cultural norms of Spain differ from that of the U.S., I wanted to point out a couple interesting observations the Spanish researchers made.

They categorized study participants as either “absolute” or “recoverable” non-attendees. The absolute non-attendees were those who were “impermeable to cultural policy” and would not attend for any reason whatsoever. Recoverable non-attendees were those who had not attended recently but  shared characteristics with people who did. Among the “recoverable” are people who might have had children and will become increasingly open to participating as their kids got older.

The researchers categorized willingness to attend across cultural events, visits to historic/cultural sites or attend cinema.

In all three cases, education works independently of income, in positively affecting attendance. Even the effect of income on arts participation is shown to be “more significant” for people at the higher versus lower education levels.

[…]

The researchers conclude that as education rises, interest in arts attendance grows dramatically. For example, changing a respondent’s education level from “primary education”-only to “higher education” would cut his or her likelihood of being an “absolute non-attendee” by 50 percentage points—for all three arts activities.

Again acknowledging that Spain and the US are different situations, I was pretty astonished to see a 50% reduction absolute non-attendance closely associated with education level. In the conclusions, the researchers suggest cultural policy should be more closely integrated with education policy with an eye to the way technology changes expectations and mode of content delivery.

What I also found interesting was that income level doesn’t seem to have the same impact on attendance that education does for arts events and cultural site visits. Cinema is more price sensitive.

At the same time, the category of “recoverable non-attendee” (that is, a person who just feasibly might have attended an arts event) remains inflexible when income levels are raised, for both cultural-place visits and live performing arts attendance. The authors thus remark on the “clear polarization” among Spaniards when it comes to either high demand or absolute non-interest in these activities.

The way I read this was that people with high levels of education are more likely to attend regardless of income level. Whereas people of low education level don’t take on the characteristics shared by “recoverable” attendees as their income level rises. The first section I quoted above appears to say people with high levels of education become more likely to attend frequently as income goes up, but people with high levels of education and low income will have a tendency to attend at some point.

I scrutinized the original research report (which is in English) for a plain statement either supporting or refuting my reading of this, but I didn’t find a statement that clarified the matter for me.

What I was ultimately hoping to find was something that showed preference (or lack thereof) shaped by education was a greater barrier to participation than price. This would resonate with recent research results from a number of sources that suggest price isn’t as large a barrier as has been assumed.

A caveat to my caveats: While I continue to assert the differences between Spain and the U.S., the Spanish researchers themselves say their findings match that of U.S. researchers so don’t read my disclaimers as a diminishing the validity of the Spanish research on U.S. behavior.  I am just making it clear that I am not ignoring the distinction.

In the three activities, a very large group of absolute non-attendees is observed that it will be difficult to interest in cultural activities, especially in live performances and sites of cultural interest. This result is very general and similar to that obtained by Ateca Amestoy and Prieto Rodríguez (2013) for the United States.

Artists Are The Only Asset Found In Every Community

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The video of ArtPlace America’s CEO Jamie Bennett’s keynote at an Invest Health convening came across my feed recently.  What I found valuable in his speech was that he laid out an argument for the value of the arts that didn’t pivot to economic statistics.

Around the 6:50 mark he starts to talk about the factors that influence those who move into a community in making the decision to stay: social offerings; openness to new ideas and people; and aesthetics.  He says arts and culture bring all those things and helps people feel rooted in a community.

His definition of art and culture is inline with that expanded definition embraced by everyone from the National Endowment for the Arts and respondents to the recent Culture Track survey. It is the parks and food trucks as well as the opera houses.

He talks about arts and culture as a facilitator of social cohesion citing the observations of drumming circles and informal arts by an anthropologist working at the Field Museum in Chicago.  Bennett said that the anthropologist found that the act of “…art making, doing and experiencing art together, acts as a master identity.”

He goes on to say that this was based on observations of immigrants and first generation Americans living in Chicago who participated in drumming circles. As each performed drumming particular to their own cultural background, the group bonded.   Bennett says this observation is important because it potentially illustrates that arts and culture is a pathway for integrating society that doesn’t involve assimilation–“I don’t have to become more like you to become more closely bonded.”

The a-ha moment for me came around 9:15 when Bennett mentions that artists are the only asset that exists in any community. Not every community has a waterfront to develop, transportation infrastructure or an anchor institution (i.e. higher ed, medical) around which to build industry.  You can count on those who practice and participate in the arts being in your community. With some investment, those people/groups can form the basis around which community cohesion can be cultivated.

He talks about the process of Creative Placemaking as something that has to be particular to each community -“resident centric, locally informed and holistic.” You can’t copy what works somewhere else and expect it to work in your community.

While the local arts community is well-placed to respond to the needs of their community, the challenge to them is to shift their perspective to focus on creating solutions for challenges in their geographic community rather than thinking about responding to their community of donors, subscribers and peer institutions.

As an example, he cites the efforts of Springboard for the Arts in helping to mobilize 600 artists to help mitigate the negative impacts of two years of light rail construction on residents and businesses in St. Paul, MN.

Bennett says the success of this project ran contrary to many of the assumptions and expectations people have. He points out the solution came from artists who already lived in the community. No one was brought in from outside to help save the neighborhood. All the positive associations about arts and culture the project inspired didn’t require the construction of an arts center, nor was it dependent on a physical arts oriented facility or cultural district. The focus was on the human beings involved.

His comment that really intrigued me and I hope is true, is that many of the businesses in the area who benefited from the 150 events the 600 artists created have started diverting promotional money to commissioning work because they saw the events brought in more business than advertising did.

Bennett’s thought process might not immediately satisfy a government official or policy maker that wants the promise of quantifiable results. However, there is something compelling in the argument that the arts and culture community is an already present asset that can be mobilized to effect.  If they are soliciting support employing this rationale it will be incumbent upon many arts and cultural entities to start focusing on addressing the challenges in their region rather than doing more what they have done in the past.

 

All That Great Research Ain’t Any Good If You Are Reading It Wrong

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If you are like me, you have been excited by the increased quantity and quality of research being made available about arts and culture issues and practices!

Even if you aren’t as excited as I am, you may be finding some research reports to be helpful and interesting to your daily operations.  The format and presentation of information over the last five years or so has really made dense concepts easier to understand.

I encourage you all to head over to a post published today on Arts Hacker where I talk about the potential to misread and misinterpret research findings.

Earlier this month Colleen Dilenschneider wrote about some really egregious misreadings of research findings by cultural executives.  While these anecdotes were entertaining, I thought maybe she was exaggerating the problem a little bit.

However, when I was reading Board Source’s Leading With Intent study in preparation for writing a blog post earlier this month, they had a section which specifically cautioned about misreading their graphics and emphasized the need to carefully read captions explaining what was being depicted.

The Arts Hacker post deals with all of this in greater detail and illustrations. Whether you think you are apt to following into the trap of misinterpreting data or not, it is worth the quick read to help be more mindful of this tendency.

With Great Research Comes Great Responsibility

 

Your Resolution To Create Connections With Arts And Culture Starts Today! (or maybe tomorrow depending on when you read this)

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For over two years now I have been talking about Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative to build public will for arts and culture.

While readers have had an opportunity to review the materials on the website, few have been able to attend the Arts Midwest presentations and ask questions in person.

Well you are in luck! Tomorrow, Tuesday, December 19 @ noon CST Creating Connection program manager Anne Romens will be hosting a webinar to discuss the project and findings. You can register by following that link.

Anne also hosted a webinar on the subject last week. The video of that webinar is available if you don’t have the opportunity to participate on Tuesday. You’ll want to pay attention around the 33 minute mark for the shout out to some work I have been doing.

Even if you don’t think you will become the full throated advocate for the project that I am, at the very least you can come away from the webinar with some tips on how to change your messaging and promotional materials to be more audience and experience focused.

The webinar comes at the right time to allow you to resolve to do a better job in the New Year so check it out.

Increased Funding Options For Artists Nationwide Via Springboard For The Arts

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If you hadn’t seen the press release floating around social media, Springboard for the Arts announced that they partnered with the microlending platform Kiva to provide artists a loan of up to $25,000 for 36 months at 0% interest.

Springboard executive director Laura Zabel probably laid out the best rationale for pursuing a loan versus a grant:

“Grants are great, but when you apply for a grant or fellowship, you’re putting that timeline and power and agency in someone else’s hands, to decide if you get that money,” says Laura Zabel, Springboard’s executive director. “At Springboard, we like platforms or mechanisms that put the power back in the hands of the artist. It’s a much more active way that you can pursue building your business.”

Since many of you may know that many of Springboard’s activities are focused in Minnesota, I should emphasize that this program is available to any artist anywhere in the U.S.

It probably also should be noted that this is only one of a few microloan programs for artists and it appears to be the only one that isn’t limited by geography or discipline. If nothing else, Springboard is breaking new ground by offering alternative funding options to artists.

According to the FAQ about the program, as a Kiva Trustee, Springboard for the Arts endorsement means they can “provide matching funds to help artists reach their fundraising goals on Kiva’s platform and a wide network of business support to help artists build and expand their businesses.”

The way Kiva funding is generally set up, the artist needs to come up with 20% of the funding and the Kiva community covers the other 80%, thereby putting less of a burden on an artist’s family and friends. It appears that Springboard will match what an artist raises with a loan as well, providing access to a larger pool of money.

Springboard has a whole curriculum of business skills for artists, consultations and other resources to help support those looking to develop and execute a business plan, regardless of whether they are participating in the loan program.

Since you have to attach a business and a repayment plan to the Kiva loan application, those education and planning materials may be a good place to start for people.

Has Cost Suddenly Become Less A Barrier To Participation?

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Back in October I wrote a couple posts about the newest iteration of the Culture Track report.  The operative word there is iteration. The study is conducted every three years in an attempt to track the shifting trends in perception and participation in cultural activities by the general population.

In my excitement to talk about the findings, I didn’t really take the time to examine the “shift” element that is intended to make this data so valuable. While preparing to do a presentation on the current findings, it occurred to me to take a look at the past finding as a point of comparison so I downloaded the 2014 data.

Even in a superficial scan of the 2014 materials, this next graph jumped out at me.

The legibility is a little tough at full size so I cropped it down to the top 10 responses about barriers to participation. The blue bar is the 2011 responses and the mauve is the 2014 responses.  A mauve only bar indicates they only started asking the question in 2014.

Now look at a representative sample of the top responses for the 2017 survey. One caveat – as best I can tell, the 2011 and 2014 didn’t break out these results by discipline as they did in 2017. Nor did they break it out by barriers for attendees and barriers for non-attendees. That may skew the results in some manner.

In the 2017 responses, regardless of discipline, among those that participate. The number one barrier was “inconvenience.” For the majority, number two and three were “didn’t think of it” and “rather spend time in other ways,” respectively

Among those that didn’t participate, every number one barrier, again regardless of discipline, was “Its not for someone like me.” For the majority, number two and three were “inconvenient” and “didn’t think of it.”

For nearly every discipline, with both participants and non-participants, “It’s Value Is Not Worth the Cost” is number five. (Except for zoo participants where it is fourth and dance participants where it is sixth.)

This significant change in placement really left me wondering what happened in the last three years.

Is cost no longer as big as factor? Does separating out the responses by discipline and participation level provide a truer picture of what presents a barrier to people? Did the researchers ask the questions in a different way that lead to different responses?

This last issue might have been an influence. In 2011 and 2014 they asked if the economy had impacted respondents’ cultural participation and how that manifested. These questions, which seem to have been absent from the 2017 survey, may have primed people to think about costs and their ability to pay.

There was also a question on 2011 and 2014 asking how cultural organizations could make it easier to participate. Lower cost of admission was number one. This question also doesn’t seem to have been included in 2017.

The lack of questions in 2017 suggesting economic factors were a problem and part of a solution may have diminished frequency with which people agreed or strongly agreed that cost was a factor as a barrier. From the information I have been able to find about how each survey was created and conducted, I can’t say if any of these things could have been an influence.

Cost isn’t the only category that make a significant shift. Look at where “I’d rather spend my leisure time in other ways” falls. In 2017 it is usually third or fourth but it was ninth in 2014. I can’t think anything so compelling that has emerged in the last 3 years that has caused people to shift it up in their priorities.

I would like to think that we can attribute these differences to the fact that the researchers are getting a lot better about the way they ask these questions and parse the data.

“This Is Not The Art I Am Looking For” — What To Say About Creative Work If You Aren’t A Jedi

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There was a pretty interesting article and ensuing discussion on a Harvard Business Review article about providing and receiving feedback on creative projects.

As much as I have written about arts and culture related topics, I don’t think I have really addressed how to provide constructive feedback in a creative environment before. If nothing more, the article provides some things to reflect upon in regard to one’s own practices.

Author Spenser Harrison discusses the results of a study he and a collaborator conducted which found that feedback was most effective when it was solicited out of curiosity and when it was given by people who recognized their feedback was subjective.

Asking for feedback out of curiosity. … Sometimes requests for feedback are overly narrow…There are often underlying reasons for asking a specific question like this, including limiting a coworker from attacking your work or showcasing something you’re proud of (in which case you really don’t want feedback — you want admiration).

This approach, however, limits the potential of creative work, because it doesn’t allow for the possibility of novelty. Changing one color, for example, may not push the boundaries to create something that peers and potential customers haven’t seen before.

Our research showed that highly curious individuals asked extremely open questions like “What do you think?” or “Where could I go next with this?” These designers received significantly more feedback than those asking narrow questions, and their final designs received higher scores…In this way, creative work is like dancing: Questions born out of curiosity signal that the creative worker is looking for a dance partner.

Provide feedback based on subjectivity.

[…]

When providing feedback to creative workers, signal that your opinion is exactly that: an opinion. This seems deceptively easy. Doing it requires providing feedback that includes first-person pronouns: I, me, and my. “I see…” or “What strikes me is that…” or “My opinion is…” Many managers find this difficult, because they have been trained to solve concrete problems, not to consider what something really means. Providing feedback on creative work means setting aside the managerial impulse to plan and retain control. Doing so allows managers to understand that their opinions provide potential trajectories a creative worker might try — not the “right” road to take.

I have had people use that tactic of limiting the scope for feedback before but hadn’t recognized the motivation behind it. (I suspect I have used it a couple times myself.)   As much as managers would love to be able to exercise Jedi mind powers and get everyone to agree this is not the art they were looking for, other approaches are necessary.

What I really helped expand the concepts presented in the article were some of the observations made in the comments. The one I appreciated most was made by Gabby Rosi who probably spoke for a situation a lot of people find themselves in when asked to evaluate work created for their use.

…My typical dialogue goes like this: “this is a good start… I like how you did XXX… what do you think about this…” when I really want to say is “this is way off the mark.” Occasionally, I end up not including this person in a project because it is uncomfortable for me. Yes, not the best approach that I want to change.

In his response, author Spenser Harrison offered the following:

First, Kim Elsbach (UC Davis) has done really fun research on Hollywood pitch meetings…If we deem the person as not creative then we often feel a pull to provide remedial feedback like your “this is way off the mark” comment or we try to train them on what to do.

In some of my earlier work with modern dancers and R&D designers, we saw that feedback, especially in early phases, was most helpful as a question. That is, before we can criticize the idea, we need to understand the pool of ideas that the idea came from and the exploratory process that led to that pool. Often when creators feel they have a feedback provider up to speed with their creative process they’ll explicitly ask, “what should I do next?” That’s the golden opening for providing some gentle advice.

Placemaking As Imagined By The People Who Live There

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The Shelterforce website had an interesting article about some data collection techniques being used for Creative Placemaking efforts. Author Keli Tianga’s description of a crowdmapping process was the approach that most intrigued me.

In crowdmapping, participants get out on foot and survey a neighborhood for its existing creative and cultural assets. “Every small group gets a small section of [a neighborhood’s] overall map to work from—this is so they can focus their efforts and share ideas with one another,” said Leo Vazquez, executive director of the National Consortium for Creative Placemaking.

Teams are given color-coded stickers, and mark places on the map they’ve identified for their potential. Large, blank walls on the sides of buildings can become canvasses for murals; empty, fenced-in land owned by private business can become a site for temporary large-scale sculpture installations; community gardens can also become venues for outdoor music performances, and small parks can become designated spots for contemplation or solo art-making.

In the process, I made special note of being outside and observing how a community moves and interacts with one another and with space—where people are gathered, which streets have the most pedestrians, which playground is the most popular are all things to remember when at the point of trying to reach people “where they are.”

Crowdmapping’s virtue is its practicality and democracy—it requires no prior training, and everyone’s viewpoint is useful…

What appealed to me most was that is such great participatory activity that can go a long way toward solving the problem of involving people who are most impacted by decisions but may not show up to formal meetings. People who don’t feel like they are represented or have their voices heard can gain a measure of confidence that their contributions matter when they are made responsible for imagining/suggesting what a neighborhood might become.

The article discusses how places like Baltimore are using these type of maps, overlaid with other data about social and economic indicators to make decisions about how to deploy resources.

Keli Tianga also writes about some really intensive one on one discussions that were conducted in Cincinnati as part of a process called “design thinking.”

Following a link to a story about the design thinking process on the ArtsPlace America site provided some usefl insight about why people are reluctant to participate in community meetings soliciting feedback about development plans.

…we discovered barriers that hadn’t been considered before. Many of the events weren’t physically accessible to Walnut Hills’ older residents. Other residents said they didn’t feel safe leaving their homes, or were afraid that by vocalizing their concerns they’d be labeled as “snitches.” Finally, some admitted that they thought attending these meetings would only encourage and accelerate the gentrification of their neighborhood.

[…]

High Fives was ultimately seen as a huge success for both the RF and Design Impact. Residents who hadn’t previously participated in listening sessions or community council meetings stepped up to plan what High Fives looked like, when it would happen and how to get other residents involved. Those who felt less comfortable leading tasks still contributed by spreading the word or distributing signs, a reminder that “resident leadership” can look different depending on the person.

If Your 990 Were Being Interviewed, What Would It Say?

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If you are gearing up for Giving Tuesday and getting all sorts of great promotional materials out in circulation, you may want to consider what potential donors might see when they start to investigate your organization to see if you are worthy.

I had a post that appeared on ArtsHacker today based on a helpful Non-Profit Quarterly article that charts out what sort of information is communicated in each section of your 990 filing.  Obviously, there is nothing you can do between now and Giving Tuesday to change the impression people infer from your 990 filing. Presumably your solicitation strategy extends beyond the next couple weeks meaning there is still an opportunity to affect the information people receive in the future.

The ArtsHacker post that appeared today also drew on some other pieces I wrote. One about the potential for lawsuits by beneficiaries, marginalized board members, donors who use the increasingly easy access to 990 filings as the basis for a claim.  Another dealt with the IRS’ increased scrutiny on good governance and whether an 990 indicated appropriate policies were in place.

As I also point out the 990 doesn’t need to be a major source of worry. The form provides a section for supplementary materials.

“… where you can attach additional information you think is pertinent. This may be a discussion of changes in operational and philosophical direction that resulted in an atypical shift in your finances. This is also an opportunity to mention any points of pride or information of interest to make a case for your worthiness to those who may be perusing your 990 filing to learn more about your organization.

 

 

End of An Era, Who Will Pick Up The Torch

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Over the last week you may have seen mention that after 10 years in existence,  Createquity will be ceasing operations at the end of the 2017 calendar year.

This is a great pity. One of the goals founder Ian David Moss had as he developed his blogging project into a think tank was to facilitate arts administrators’ ability to understand research findings since they so often didn’t have the opportunity to review, much less finish research reports. Just last week, I cited one of his recent entries as the basis for a post.

It will probably come as no surprise that difficulty finding suitable funding for Createquity’s efforts is the basis for the decision to cease operations. Ian discusses all the options they weighed and opportunities of which they tried to avail themselves.  Ultimately, in summary he says,

These are among the reasons why the arts field has, since the 1980s, dug a formidable graveyard for failed think tank initiatives, some of which have become so buried under the weight of history that I only learned about them for the first time earlier this year.

The project I most regret seeing fall by the wayside is their effort to chart what we know about the benefits of the arts in improving lives.  Createquity graphed out research studies about the benefits of the arts on a scale that indicated the quality of the evidence and whether the research said a benefit existed.  This information is extremely important to know if you are going to advocate for arts and culture and cite research findings. Looking at Createquity’s evaluation, the evidence that supports commonly made assertions about the benefit of arts in educational and social outcomes is weaker than it is made out to be or there is a lack of corroborating research.

Think about it this way. TV news programs often have short segments where they talk about the amazing benefits of dark chocolate, red wine, acai berries, etc., but when you take the time to really examine the evidence you discover you would have to consume three times your body weight daily to realize those benefits.

Funding for arts and culture entities is already tenuous as it is, (to whit, Createquity), the sector doesn’t need to have people denouncing it for making overblown claims. (And as I have often argued, we shouldn’t be invoking the utilitarian value of the arts to justify it anyway.)

There the end of his post, Moss talks about the preparations they are going through over the next few months. They will be publishing summary articles about the work they have done.  (One on cultural equity was published today.)

They intend to make their work available to anyone who might wish to continue where they are leaving off.

Over the next couple of months, we will be polishing up our internal training materials and resources to make it as easy as possible for people in the arts community to carry on aspects of the work we’ve started in their own spaces and in their own names. And in November and December, you can expect to see some parting thoughts from our team to philanthropists and researchers seeking to optimize their investments in the arts in the decade ahead. Our goal in all of this is to activate the latent potential of our work over the past ten years into the most accessible and actionable content possible.

I think there are many who join me in hoping that someone will be able to continue the important work they have started.

Considering The Essence Of Being Mainstream Or Culturally Specific

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Earlier this month Ian David Moss wrote a piece challenging the arts and culture community to evaluate the language and mindset in which we frame artistic and cultural expression and practice.

He make a case that:

Separating our concepts of “mainstream” and “white” could allow us to treat European art forms as just one of many types of cultural expression within a mix of organizations and communities, instead of privileging them as the historical default.

Starting this post off with that may raise a sense of defensiveness in readers and a reluctance to continue reading which is probably why Moss doesn’t bring it up until the last quarter of his post. Nonetheless it is an issue that is becoming increasingly relevant.

Moss says there is something to consider in response by Justin Laing, a former senior program officer at Heinz Endowments, to a post last year about cultural equity,

Moss provides further context noting:

…The logic on researchers’ part is that “culturally-specific” organizations explicitly target a specific demographic population, whereas “mainstream” organizations target everyone.

[..]

But many cultural equity advocates see orchestral music as unabashedly and irredeemably white: it originated in Europe, the vast majority of composers presented (even by Latin American and Asian orchestras) are European or European-descended, and most of the people who enjoy it are of European origin. To them, when we talk about culturally-specific organizations, that includes symphony orchestras–and ballets, and operas, and encyclopedic art museums. And it’s not at all obvious to them why certain culturally-specific organizations should continue to receive such a disproportionate share of public and philanthropic support compared to other culturally-specific organizations.

Moss acknowledges there are arguments to be made for the universal appeal of these forms, citing Venezuela’s pride in El Sistema and the fact that many arts organizations have been successful at attracting attendance from Black and Latin communities.

This week Artsjournal linked to a Dance Magazine piece talking about how Philadelphia was a hub for black ballerinas from the 1930s-1950s. (Article has video interviews with some of the women that trained as dancers during the period.) There is a sense of hope that there is a trend in this general direction again.

He points out that while there is crossover appeal, it is also clear that opera, ballet, symphony, et. al are by no means the most popular art forms in the U.S. and are perhaps more appropriately labeled as culturally specific rather than mainstream if they are indeed not serving everyone.

This is where the concept of divorcing “white” from “mainstream” comes in. (Moss’ emphasis)

Were the field to adopt this new understanding, an unavoidable question would face every organization celebrating European cultural heritage in the midst of a substantial nonwhite population: is our foremost loyalty to our art form or our local community? In answering, boards and executives would need to realize that true commitment to the latter could mean dramatic changes, changes that would make their organizations unrecognizable to the individuals who founded them. Yet reaffirming a primary commitment to an art form with clear ethnic roots–which, I want to emphasize here, is an equally valid choice under this paradigm–would be a signal to the world that the organization’s diversity and inclusion efforts can only reach so far. And yes, that may make it untenable to go after large sums of money from foundations and government agencies on the premise of being a local “anchor institution.”

So much of this paragraph reminded me of a post I wrote last year citing a similar piece on the topic written by Ronia Holmes where she writes,

All that being said—I don’t think arts organizations are bad entities filled with bad people doing bad things…They really do believe in diversity, equity, and inclusion, and really do want to offer meaningful, authentic moments of connection.

The problem is that most organizations are not built to do that, and are constantly struggling with it because of expectations that they should be something they are not. Every year, organizations jump through hoops to secure restricted grants that necessitate yet another outreach program or diversity week or community partnership, hoping that if they impress the funders enough they will be given money that can be used for what the organization actually has a mission to do.

If real, authentic, genuine community building isn’t central to your mission, if it isn’t your raison d’être, then you shouldn’t be doing it. Because chances are that not only are you doing it badly, you’re doing it at the expense of your real mission. The mission of most arts organizations—the real mission—is simple: to present an art form. And that’s ok. We need organizations that prioritize preservation, development, and presentation of an art form, and I for one don’t think any organization should be penalized for it.

Both Holmes and Moss are acknowledging the existence of the same dynamics. I can’t imagine they are the only ones thinking along these lines which suggests that perhaps there is both potential and need to have additional conversation and thought in this direction.

It may be uncomfortable to discuss and acknowledge much of what is involved and needs to change, but the general framework of this paradigm is a fair and generally constructive way forward.

(I would suggest, however, that being completely forthright and declaring your mission is to preserve and perpetuate European cultural heritage is not going to be constructive on oh so many ways.)

Does Cultural Track Data Challenge Assumptions About Your Community?

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As I promised in my last post, I took a deeper look at the Culture Track reporting over the weekend.  More specifically, I took at a look at both the Top Line deck and Supporting Data documents which are available for download. I didn’t review the raw data.

The Supporting Data document is presented with visual graphs which makes it easy to interpret. Though I also hungered for some analytical commentary from the Culture Track folks about what the greater implications might be.

A few observations from Supporting Data in the hopes of making the opportunity to dig in irresistible for readers.

First of all, the charts seem to belie the idea that Millennials are  abandoning cultural experiences. Except for watching TV (which includes streaming) they lead in every category. This is only one of three pages.

 

Now you may be saying, sure but participation once a year isn’t a high hurdle.

However, that generation also leads in frequency per month too.

 

If you remember what I quoted and wrote last week about the perceptions of those who were high frequency attenders, this has some important implications.

People who attend three or more cultural experiences per month are 94% more likely to cite “it doesn’t change” as a barrier to more frequent cultural participation compared those who attend one or fewer cultural experiences per month.

Given that what people define as a cultural experience is pretty broad, the chances that your average attendee is participating in three or more experiences a month is pretty good. Being 94% more likely to feel lack of change is a barrier to participation is pretty significant.

While you shouldn’t take all this information at face value without digging in and questioning the basis of the findings, the fact the data depicted may contradict your assumptions can be enough to get conversations started reevaluating long held beliefs.

The study authors slice and dice the data through a number of different lenses which make for interesting viewing. Most every question is presented in terms of generation, race/ethnicity, community size, education level, marital status and parental status.

So for example, the following information about where people get advertised and non-advertised information about cultural activities is presented in these contexts. (There is also a chart for offline information sources which I haven’t included)

 

Perhaps of most interest to different arts and cultural organizations, they break down motivators and barriers for participation for 12 different disciplines/cultural activities.

Below is a sample for art museums. There is also a chart with barriers for non-participants for each area.

 

 

NOTICE: The Response I Give May Only Reflect My Current Preferences

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You may have already heard that the CultureTrack report was released yesterday. Compiled and released every three years by LaPlaca Cohen, the report helps track the ways in which attitudes toward culture are shifting.

I haven’t read the full report yet. Just looking at the summary on the animated and interactive site they set up for the report, I knew this would probably be something I returned to a couple times. So for your homework, review the site and we will talk about it more on Monday.

….Unless I get distracted by something else.

What first alerted me to the release of the study was an advance piece on Artsy titled “37% of Art Museum Visitors Don’t View Them as Culture,” which did its job in getting me to read more.

Sure enough the article notes that,

“For many respondents, going to the park or eating at a food truck counts as a cultural experience, while attending a museum does not.”

This wasn’t far off from some of the responses my organization got last winter during our listening tour where people listed going to the speedway as a favorite cultural experience.

Another interesting finding highlighted in the article was largest motivation to engage in cultural activities was to have fun.

Cultural activities continue to be a source of leisure and relaxation for many. The survey found that 81% of audiences are motivated to attend a cultural activity because they want to have fun. A desire to feel less stressed was tied in third place, along with “experiencing new things,” with 76% citing both as reasons for participation. 71% cited learning something new as a reason to participate in culture.

This doesn’t mean that levity must replace education at museums, noted Harnick, but rather that the two cannot be divorced from one another. Culture offers the opportunity to connect with other people and take a pause from daily life—today’s audiences are full of anxiety and looking for a chance to relax, a conclusion that gels with other findings that show high levels of anxiety among the general population.

I spoke to someone today who suggested the current political environment in the country might be contributing to that sense of anxiety.

In terms of barriers to participation, feeling that the experience wasn’t “for someone like me” topped the list.

I can’t really cover all the findings I found interesting, but here are a few to consider.

In terms of loyalty, people rated trustworthiness, consistent quality and customer service as the top three factors. Pricing and discounts were fifth and sixth. Social media and advertising were 10th and 11th with 15% and 13% of responses, respectively. So pricing and advertising aren’t big factors in building loyalty.

Since there is a discussion about whether people want to experience culture as a passive observer or an active participant, I was interested to read that 28% of people wanted their experience to be active and 24% wanted their experience to be calm. But as with everything, there was a bit of nuance illuminated by the data. (their emphasis)

Cultural audiences—like everyone—are multidimensional, and they have different needs and wants at different times, or even simultaneously. In fact, 15% of cultural consumers who chose “calm” as one of their top-three descriptors of an ideal cultural activity also chose “active,” while 24% of those who chose “reflective” also chose “social.”

In the same section, was another valuable insight about the desire for new experiences by active culture consumers (Their emphasis).

People who attend three or more cultural experiences per month are 94% more likely to cite “it doesn’t change” as a barrier to more frequent cultural participation compared those who attend one or fewer cultural experiences per month.

Given that what people define as a cultural experience is pretty broad, the chances that your average attendee is participating in three or more experiences a month is pretty good. Being 94% more likely to feel lack of change is a barrier to participation is pretty significant. I hope there is something in the report that provides more detail about what types of experiences people are participating in and what they feel isn’t changing. Is it the programming? The overall experience?

The section on the role of digital technology in a cultural experience was also quite interesting. People responded that they felt digital enhanced their experience, provided deeper understanding and allowed them to share their experience with friends.

However, the lack of opportunity to use digital made people feel they were able to focus and become more invested in the experience, made the experience feel more authentic and less complicated.

There is a lot more to learn from the detailed study. Or perhaps it is better to say, there is a lot more I hope to learn from the detailed study.

Perhaps the takeaway is, people are more nuanced than the feedback they are giving you at the moment. Whether it is an audience survey, a comment made on social media, or to the box office a statement should be view as “this is how I feel right now, but in other times and situations, my preferences may contradict what I just said.”

Stuff To Think About: The Profitability Equals Value Assumption

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You haven’t been working in the non-profit arts and culture sector long enough or you haven’t been paying close enough attention if you haven’t heard/read someone say that an arts organization shouldn’t exist if it can’t be self supporting.

If you have found yourself at a lack of response to this argument, you might read up a little on a blog post Seth Godin made earlier this year where he addresses the mistake of equating profitability with value.

Profit is a good way to demonstrate the creation of value.

In fact, it’s a pretty lousy method. The local water company clearly creates more value (in the sense that we can’t live without it) than the handbag store down the street, and yet the handbag store has a much higher profit margin. That’s not because of value, but because of mismatches in supply and demand, or less relevant inputs like brand, market power and corporate structure.

[…]

I hope we can agree that a caring nurse in the pediatric oncology ward adds more value than a well-paid cosmetic plastic surgeon doing augmentations. People with more money might pay more, but that doesn’t equate to value.

The best way to measure value created is to measure value, not profit.

The purpose of society is to maximize profit

Well, since profit isn’t a good measure of value created, this isn’t at all consistent. More important, things like a living wage, sustainability, fairness and the creation of meaning matter even more. When we consider how to advance our culture, “will it hurt profits?” ought not to be the first (or even the fifth) question we ask.

Pay attention to the last line of this next quote from Godin because it is basically verbatim a core point made by the Potter-Warrior-Philosopher Carter Gillies.

The only purpose of a company is to maximize long-term shareholder value.

Says who? Is the only purpose of your career to maximize lifetime income? If a company is the collective work of humans, we ought to measure the value that those humans seek to create.

Just because there’s a number (a number that’s easy to read, easy to game, easy to keep track of) doesn’t mean it’s relevant.

Okay, so Carter may not be a warrior, but he does fiercely fight to advance the notion that just because we can measure it, it doesn’t mean the measure is relevant.

One of my favorite quotes from Carter that runs along these lines is in a guest post he made on Diane Ragsdale’s blog.

The way we mostly talk to these people is we have found that our ends, the things we value in themselves, can be the means to their own ends. They value the economy? Well, the arts are good for the economy! They think that cognitive development is important? Well, the arts are good for cognitive development! We make our own ends the means to their ends.

But this never teaches them why we value the arts. It is not a conversation that discusses the arts the way we feel about them. Its not a picture of the intrinsic value of the arts, because in talking about instrumentality we always make the arts subservient. That’s never only what they are to us. Sometimes we just have to make the case for a lesser value as the expedient means to secure funding or policy decisions. It’s better than not making any sense at all.

Just as Godin says, concepts like economic impact and cognitive development can produce numbers that are easy to understand, game and keep track of which helps when making the case for funding and policy. But none of these numbers are expressions of the core value of arts and creativity. Why those of us in the field value it.

It takes more effort to explain a complex concept like the value of arts and culture which is why Arts Midwest and others are engaged in a long term project to build public will for it and create an environment in which a similarly shorthand expression of value is possible.  I don’t think anyone will necessarily equate the value of arts and culture with clean water and pediatric nurses. The goal is an environment where the value of arts and culture is generally assumed.

Back in June Diane Ragsdale made a similar post exploring the different concepts of value and cited an idea that there are different types of “economies” that exist, each with a different “currency” that serves as a valid measure of value and relevance. In this context, we wouldn’t equate the value of clean water and pediatric nurses with that of arts and culture any more than we would equate the winner of the World Series with the most effective Coast Guard cutter crew.

Insight Into Creating Public Art Works

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Last week Americans for the Arts had a blog salon covering lessons learned from public art projects. As a person who is always interested in the process people went through to execute their project, I read many of the entries with great interest.

Two stood out for me. The first was Jessica Witte’s discussion of how she got people involved with the creation of an intricate 400 foot long seed drawing near the St. Louis Arch. She gave examples of how previous works lead to the project and then how she executed the project.

I appreciated that she mentioned the different considerations that went into the project. Things like chalking out the design the night before are pretty obvious but she also discusses how she made sure there was water, picnic tables and food trucks available to encourage people to linger and explore.

She also reached out to non-profits whose mission aligned with the project early in the planning stage which she noted will constitute a network of advisors and assistance for future projects.

She hired Art Ambassadors to help her welcome people, explain the project and encourage them to join in. Part of this effort also involved crowdsourcing the documentation of the project.

Throughout, she reflects on how she would improve the project for the next time.  I appreciated all the detail as a resource of things to consider if doing a similar type project.

 

The other entry I liked was Daily Tour les jours’ post about how they prototyped the Musical Shadows installation in Mesa, AZ. I may have posted on the project before, but I can’t find the entry. Here is a video of the final result:

Again, for me learning about the process was interesting. I would never have imagined that an early stage involved placing post it notes on the ground of a concrete plaza in order to get some initial feedback about the concept from people.

There is a short video of them using a piece of paper on the end of a cordless drill to help make a shadow over their sensors. That apparently helped them determine “the spacing of the sensors would have a large impact on the interaction, and forced us to begin considering different sensor layouts”.

Then there was field testing of various types including getting feedback from people about what sounds worked best. In total, they list eight different prototypes before delivery.

This entry made me appreciate just how much work goes into projects like this. Embedded in that are lessons about failure and revision that are valuable to remember.

I hope you will explore the entries a bit more and even take a look at the whole salon since there is likely something in there that will impress you in ways that didn’t strike me.

Being Smart About Lawyer-Board Members

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Non-Profit Business Advisor recently published a piece to make non-profit organizations aware of the potential problems related to having a lawyer serve on the board. Back in 2016 I provided similar information on ArtsHacker.  I wanted to revisit the topic due to how easy it is for both the lawyer/board member and the rest of the organization to misunderstand the role the lawyer is fulfilling

The general aim of both pieces was to emphasize the need to distinguish the context in which advice and comments are being made.

Some of the questions both raise are:

When the lawyer board member makes a comment, is it a legal opinion or personal opinion? Are people according the member’s personal opinion more deference due to their profession?

When they provide their professional opinion, could it be clouded by the fact they earlier advocated or voted for a related course of action?

Is a conversation covered by attorney-client privilege?

Loss of Attorney-Client Privilege. Are you communications with the rest of the board protected by the attorney-client privilege? If it’s clear that the communications are to be attorney-client communications, they should be protected by the privilege. However, such protection may be lost if it’s not clear that you are communicating only as a lawyer or if the communication is recorded in minutes to which other persons have access.

If a lawyer represents a statement as professional advice, do they actually have the specialized knowledge and experience to offer that advice?

Actually, as I notice the strong similarities between my ArtsHacker post and the recent Non-Profit Business Advisor article, I realize that both were drawn from lawyers at the same law firm so either of the links here represent a good resource for exploring the nuances of this topic more carefully.

It’s That They Think Ticket Prices Are Too High

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A little while ago I came across a presentation by the Wallace Foundation that seeks to aggregate a number of studies to provide insight for building millennial audiences.

If you have been following the research about performing arts audiences for any length of time, there probably won’t be much in the presentation that will surprise you. The barriers to participation, for example, are familiar: cost, no one to go with and the variety of available choices.

However, if you are new to the topic or just seeking a review, the presentation is a good tool. The visuals are easy to navigate and provide some useful insights.

Of particular interest was the topic of cost and younger audiences. In response to the objection that the cost is too high, I have often heard colleagues note that young people will easily drop more money at a bar on a week night than a ticket would cost.

As it so often is, cost is just an excuse for something else. In this case, it is the assurance that one will enjoy the experience.

Among the responses quoted in the Wallace presentation are the following:

“It’s not about the cost or whether I have the money, but just about the investment and the risk.”

and

“I can see myself paying $100 for a show I’ve wanted to see for a long time, but not more than $50-60 for a normal show, and really more like $20 to 30 if I can.”

What was most interesting was that millennials tended to overestimate the cost of the ticket by a significant margin. Check out this chart.

One of the suggestions in the presentation is obviously to find a more effective way to communicate the pricing.

As I looked through the findings, I realized there was a lot in common with the recent survey findings communicated by Ballet Austin which noted audiences were open to experimenting with unfamiliar works if they were provided with information that assured an enjoyable experience.

I subsequently realized the Wallace Foundation funded Ballet Austin’s research so the common elements are to be expected. (And explains why I was experiencing deja vu reading some of the survey quotes.) The Ballet Austin results are worth a read for the detail not mentioned in the presentation document.

One other image I wanted to share, especially for those who may not take my advice to view the full presentation, is this handy chart on experiences millenials in general seek from different performance disciplines. (As they say, your mileage may vary.)

Don’t Deny Your Creativity!

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Earlier this month, Kathryn Haydon addressed the insidious personal belief that one is not creative.  I use the term insidious because I view the belief as something that undermines something essential about a person. While belief that one does not draw well may be erroneous because you haven’t given yourself time to develop the skill, denying you have the capacity to be creative denies something that one possesses almost naturally at birth.

While you may have to work at getting better at a certain set of skills as you get older, Haydon cites studies conducted with the same subjects over a period of decades that almost seems to show people work at being less creative.

Basically she says people perceive themselves as being less creative for two reasons- they compare themselves to those held up as examples of creativity and they fear judgment for being wrong.

It just might be that the main reason you think you’re not creative is because you compare yourself to others who are famous for their creativity (Steve Jobs, Pablo Picasso, and Lady Gaga) or to people in your own life who are known for their creativity.

When you’re in a comparison mindset, you inadvertently diminish your own creative ability. You envision Picasso and your highly divergent friends on a pedestal that you cannot possibly ascend.

[…]

Society has perpetuated the myth that creativity has to be comparative, and if comparative, mutually exclusive: “If Picasso is creative then I am not.”  This reasoning is incorrect.

and later,

…fear is the only thing standing in the way of training it back. (Fear can also come in the form of saying, “I’m not creative” to protect yourself from risk. You now know that this is false, so if you keep using this line it is heretofore a cop-out. Everybody is creative.)

It is no mystery that society and our educational system emphasize discovering the right solution rather than discovering the creative solution which stacks the decks against creativity.

In order to get back in touch with your creative ability, she suggests some exercises like “Try thinking like someone else: an alien, a rock, a stray cat, a high school math teacher.” She cautions against deciding to go all-in, 100% on creativity in one shot like a resolution to start a diet on Monday.

In other words, don’t let the first risk you ever take be taking out a second mortgage on your house to try a new business idea. Start instead by doing something that gives you slight discomfort, like driving a new route to the grocery store or sharing an unconventional insight in your next meeting. As you practice taking small risks you will become more comfortable sharing the fresh perspectives that you have gained by practicing your creative thinking.

For people in the arts, talking a new route to work may seem a little elementary a step, but for some people it might be a significant step. It could be a version of “failing fast,” especially if they turn off the GPS while taking an unfamiliar route.

The strategies for cultivating creativity are all just on a relative scale of risk taking and potential failure. For an arts organization it might be new programs. For an individual, it is looking at something with a new perspective.

Stuff To Ponder: Familiarity As A Proxy For Certainty

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Two years into a six year research project, Ballet Austin has started learning things about their audiences that run contrary to their assumptions. While the audiences in every community are different, what they have learned provides a lesson that you may not know your audiences as well as you think you do.

One of the biggest assumptions Ballet Austin made was that audiences became more open to new works as they became more familiar with them and thus followed a roughly linear progression of attendance. What they learned was that people were open to a cross-section of genres and the biggest determinant was how confident people were that they would enjoy the experience.

In other words, the market research suggested that encouraging people to attend the ballet more often was less about increasing their familiarity with productions and more about bridging an uncertainty gap. “Familiarity is about information,” notes Martin, “whereas uncertainty about how an experience will feel is much more personal. You can give somebody a lot of information but that’s not necessarily going to reassure them that they’re going to belong in that audience.”

[…]

Audience uncertainty partly grew out of how Ballet Austin was presenting information about its productions. The research showed that images as well as the language used in promotional pieces, ads and even program titles, often created a disconnect. “What we thought we were saying was not what people were hearing,” Martin says.

The problem was especially glaring for abstract productions. Based on the promotional materials in some cases, prospective audience members simply couldn’t fathom what they would be seeing. An ad for a recent program, “To China With Love,” featured an image of two dancers seeming to float among clouds, which many found ambiguous. One person mistook it for a mattress ad. The confusion made Loignon wonder if Ballet Austin should consider cutting back on print ads for abstract ballets and investing more in online videos that show the work itself.

The fact they were considering focusing more of their resources on having video representations and eschewing print was interesting to me. If you have ever read Trevor O’Donnell’s thoughts on the imagery used in print marketing by arts organizations, you know that he is pretty solidly against depictions like that of the two dancers floating in the clouds for the very reason Ballet Austin discovered.

Ultimately though, I was encouraged by the recognition that familiarity was a proxy for certainty. Audiences can be open to adventure if they receive help in feeling confident about their choices.

If you read the whole piece you can learn about the various tactics Ballet Austin has employed in an attempt to close the uncertainty gap for audiences.

Another process I was interested to read about was how they created social interaction experiences. There is often a lot of talk about the need to create social situations to attract millennials. Ballet Austin’s experience doing this really illustrates the importance of constantly tweaking and perhaps defining success by quality of experience rather than quantity.

Though it has taken various forms, an event known as Ballet Bash! is meant to facilitate social gatherings before a performance and during intermission. One time, Bash! included a DJ for a pre-performance party with refreshments. The cost outweighed the benefits, however, so Ballet Austin cut the DJ and instead offered carefully selected music in an area at the Long Center with spectacular views of Austin’s expanding skyline. That iteration was modestly attended. For a later production, Ballet Bash! was replaced by a social lounge in a smaller, more intimate wing of the Long Center’s mezzanine. At recent performances, around 15 people were sitting in small groups during the hour before the performance and intermission, which Ballet Austin considered a promising start.

There are other imaginative social and interactive experiences Ballet Austin created for their audiences that attracted larger numbers. I wanted to include the paragraph above in order to ask the obvious question about whether your organization would consider the participation of 15 people a promising start. From the context of the paragraph, I would assume this approach balanced their goals for cost with desired outcomes.

As a cross-reference to this research, you can also check out California Symphony’s Orchestra X blog and this post in particular about what their research discovered. In short, it was nearly every other element of the experience except the programming that was an impediment to audience enjoyment. Ceci Dadisman provides some perspective on this on ArtHacker today.

The Gravity of Culture

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Seth Godin made a post last week about maintaining a commitment to quality in your work. (my emphasis)

When you seek the mass market, there are two paths available:

You can dumb down your message and your expectations, and meet your audience where they stand. You can coarsen your lyrics, offer simpler solutions, ask for less effort, demand less work, promise bigger results…
Or you can smarten it up, and lead despite your goal of mass, not chase it.

The very fact that “dumb down” is an expression and “smarten up” isn’t should give any optimist pause.

Culture is a gravitational force, and it resists your efforts to make things work better.

So what? Persist.

My first impulse was to mentally acknowledge he was right about how the impulse to improve isn’t common enough to bring a term like “smarten up” into common usage. I read his comment about culture resisting efforts to make things work better as an indictment of a society that demands satisfying results that require little of them in return.

However, when I got to thinking about it, those who embrace and define high culture often don’t want practitioners of low/pop culture to transition upward. There are a fair number of examples of pop artists who decide they want to pursue a more rigorous path as they mature. They are criticized for lacking the excellence required or expected of someone who has dedicated decades training in some discipline of high culture.

Certainly, some of these people may lack the seriousness, nuance and general quality of a long time practitioner. There may be valid concerns that in their popularity, they are misleading their fans into believing they represent the higher levels of achievement when a perceptible gap exists.

But for others, after 10-20 years of sincerely trying to “smarten up,” they are probably going to be operating at least at or above a level of 80%-90% of achievable excellence. That puts them on par with a lot of people who, like them, have spent decades solely devoted to the high culture discipline.

Except that the latter group will be labeled an X discipline artist while the former pop artist will forever have a modifier like crossover-X discipline artist. Essentially, you get branded if you try to step out of the original lines drawn around you.

So like Godin says, culture can be a gravitational force. It can feel like you are constantly being pulled to lower your standards, but it can also feel like you are being pushed away from ever being recognized as having achieved your ambitions if you try to become more proficient.

Yes, ideally things could get to a place where people and their efforts could be fairly evaluated but will it ever really be possible to create truly objective evaluations that are free from these sort of judgments?

I frequently cite Jamie Bennett’s comment that people have an easier time viewing themselves on a continuum with famous sports figures than they do with famous artists. As I think about it, I wonder if people are getting a message that they shouldn’t try to see themselves on an arts continuum.

Theatre of Education

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There is a lot of conversation in the performing arts about potential audiences not seeing themselves or their stories up on stage. If this is something that concerns you, you may want to take some pointers from a New Yorker article about an immersive play experience in Chicago.

Set in an old school, Learning Curve, was created in cooperation with “fifty teen-agers … drawing on their own experiences, and on dozens of interviews with teachers, parents, administrators, and peers” in an attempt to communicate what it is like to attend Chicago city schools.

Similar to other immersive theater pieces like Sleep No More and The Donkey Show, attendee-participants follow a “choose-your-own-adventure” track through the experience.

Each scene lasts just a few minutes but manages, with depth and candor, to make a serious point about the personal and political stew that is public education.

My track that evening brought me to a chaotic advanced Spanish class, where a flustered teacher fought for control of her students while impatiently accommodating a timid new pupil. A real teacher in attendance remarked afterward, “Yup, that’s exactly what school’s like.” Next, I visited a distracted guidance counselor, who informed me that several of my classes were no longer available owing to budget cuts. “You can thank Rahm for that,” he said, referring to Chicago’s mayor. In another intimate scene, I spied a teacher cheating on standardized tests. When caught, she defended herself. “What am I supposed to do? Let the state slap you in the face and call you failures?” Later, I took this same test, frantically filling in bubbles with a No. 2 pencil while tortured by the ticks of an amplified clock. How quickly that very particular brand of panic returns! But then I assisted in a clever prom proposal, in a janitor’s closet, complete with a guitar and a disco ball, and remembered that, for all of high school’s angst, it provides many small moments of wonder.

While the work was intended to illustrate the experiences of the students, whom the article author terms “silent shareholders,” it engendered “sympathy for the elusive authority figures in their lives” among the student creators. Teachers, seeing students depict them, in turn recognized some of their choices contributed to the stresses their students experience.

Looking at the immersive format in this context, it seems obvious (though it hadn’t occurred to me earlier) that it can be used for more than presenting exciting re-imagined tellings of Shakespearean stories and be a tool for dialogue and social change.

Did anyone in the Chicago area happen to see the show and wants to share their own impressions?

This Is What You Said, This Is How We Are Fixing It

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If you haven’t seen the first iteration of ArtsHacker’s Most Creative People In Arts Administration, hop over there now and check it out.

Or actually, wait until you read the rest of my post, then go over there…

If there was one thing I learned as a member of the review panel, it was that there are a lot of unrecognized arts administrators doing great work out there. This year Juan José Escalante, Executive Director of José Limón Dance Festival and Aubrey Bergauer, Executive Director of California Symphony both deservedly tied for top honors.

One thing that impressed me about Bergauer’s nomination were support documents that included the symphony’s blog. To be certain, there are only a few entries on the blog, but the one I appreciated the most discussed the results of discussion sessions they conducted with Millennials and Gen Xers.

The post reviews all the issues the discussion participants raised and then lists what the symphony has done to address these issues. This is important because one of the key rules of surveying is don’t ask for a feedback on an situation you don’t intend to take action on. Not only did they take action, but they used the blog to communicate what that action is within the confines of their operating environment. (i.e. They don’t control the ticketing system of the venues at which they perform.)

The blog post is a treasure trove of great feedback for any arts organization since there is very little that is specific to the California Symphony. The things discussion attendees wanted to know but weren’t finding easy to access included things like: why is this music a big deal?, how long will it run?, what will the experience be like?, what are each of the instruments called?

The music selected for the program mattered least.

There were a lot of quotable sections of the blog. Here are some of my most favorite favorites.

Read the Manual:

Then, they get to step 4): make a decision on why they want to attend a specific concert, and our response is essentially “WHY CAN’T YOU FIGURE OUT WHY RACHMANINOFF’S SECOND SYMPHONY IS A BIG DEAL? LOOK IT UP IF YOU WANT TO KNOW!” (marketing failboat — why do we set up our sites this way, and then wonder why the sales funnel is getting choked up at the add-to-cart step?).

Everyone Else Is In The Know:

One participant asked if there is “a separate webpage for younger people we could make?” What was so interesting about that comment is that this person assumed that they were in the minority as far as understanding answers to these types of questions. The assumption was that other, older people are much more familiar with the symphony when in reality, there is no magical age at which one suddenly becomes an aficionado.

Comment from a discussion participant:

“It was so impressive — I didn’t expect it to feel THAT different than Spotify.”

On Pricing:

Even the discussion group brought up (on their own, without any prompting) the idea that they’ll all shell out big bucks for Taylor Swift. So price alone is never an isolated issue; it’s all about the perceived value one is receiving in exchange for that price. What we did find interesting was the comment of, “I’m more likely to go to three $25 performances than I am one $75 or $100 performance.” Many others chimed in with agreement to that statement.

Okay, now you can go over to the Arts Hacker site. Thanks for reading.

Donor Baggage Revisited

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I am going to be away for about a week for the holidays. As always, I have prepared some posts to fill in for my absence.

Since we are coming to the end of the year and non-profits are making last minute pushes for donations, I thought a piece I wrote in June 2008 about the baggage donors bring to giving requests might be particularly appropriate.

Particularly the following:

In any case the advice generally focuses on a somewhat formulaic planned approach. Just as dating tips rarely acknowledge that other people have the baggage of past dating experiences which will impact the relationship you are trying to cultivate, I rarely hear/read a similar acknowledgment in connection with fund raising.

One of the anecdotes mentioned in the story was about a wealthy developer who never gave more than $1,000 at a time to Temple. When Fredricks asked why, she discovered that even though he could afford to give more, he harbored fears about running out of money that went back to his childhood.

She recognizes that the people who ask for money like presidents and trustees also have varying degrees of comfort with the subject. “They should be treated the same way donors are—as individuals with different emotions about money—and given simple requests, she said. Instead of giving a reticent board member a list of prospective donors, Fredricks suggested starting out with the names and biographical information of two current donors and then asking the trustee to call them to say thank you.”

What We Know And How Well We Know It

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Createquity just released a valuable tool for arts advocates. They compiled the data from all the studies they could find to provide a comprehensive report on Everything We Know About Whether and How The Arts Improve Lives.

I haven’t had an opportunity to dig deeply into the data and ponder what it all means. What I find most helpful is their graphical depiction about where findings about the value of arts fall on two axis – how strong the quality of the evidence is and does the evidence indicate that a benefit exists.

So you can easily see that there is low evidence that cultural engagement can help encourage healing after traumatic events and that the quality of the evidence is weak. On the other hand there is strong evidence that arts participation in early childhood promotes social and emotional development.

The good news is that no survey found that there is an absence of benefit to the arts. Some people may be disappointed to learn that there is very mixed evidence, leaning toward negative, that arts education may improve scholastic attainment in terms of test scores, grades, etc and that the quality of the research backing that is very strong. As recently as 2016 research has “found no or minimal effects for arts and cultural participation or education on attainment measures.” Even the positive research say “overall, the impact of arts participation on academic learning appears to be positive but low.”

I had heard things along these lines and had started collecting information to verify if this might be the case and assess how valid the findings were. Fortunately, the folks at Createquity have done a lot of the heavy lifting in this regard.

Despite what may seem like disheartening news, a large amount of the findings fall into the “evidence that a benefit exists” category with many having medium to high quality levels of research in support of the findings. Many of those in the low quality evidence sector are only there due to lack of research on the subject.

Createquity admits this project is a work in process. As more evidence emerges, they will update it. If they find that the basic premises and interpretations of the researchers is flawed, they will revise the materials.

So often we hear about so many different research findings about the arts it is difficult to assess the value of the findings. Createquity provides a much needed degree of clarity by putting the research on a continuum. Advocacy becomes much easier when you know what you are saying is corroborated with evidence and you know just how strong the evidence is.

Stuff To Ponder: Expanded Approaches To Pay What You Want Pricing

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A few weeks ago economist Alex Tabarrok wrote about a strange “pay what you want” promotion a shoe company was running. It struck him and many commenters of the Marginal Revolution blog as a psychological experiment with a goal of getting most people to select the set middle range price.

In that same post he linked back to 2012 post where he provided an analysis for why “pay what you want” can make sense for charities and performing arts organizations. The analysis may be difficult to understand, but the bottom line is:

Probably more importantly, pay-what-you-want pricing is going to be advantageous when the seller also sells a complementary good, such as concerts, which benefit from consumption spillovers from the pay-what-you-want good.

Basically, when you offer an option to pay what you want, there should be accompanying options like food, merchandise, other participatory activities that you can earn revenue from. It doesn’t necessarily have to be the movie theatre model where a bag of popcorn is $10. Offering pay what you want simply because you think it is a good idea without any sense of how you can offset the loss of revenue isn’t prudent. If end up with a higher per ticket price than you had before, that is great, but don’t plan on it.

One of the commenters on the 2012 post noted that the site HumbleBundle allows you to pay what you want, but also posts the average price paid in real time.

Currently, if you pay more than the average of $4.14, you can unlock additional content and if you pay more than $14 there is another level of content you can receive.

Having some sort of bonus content or access people will receive for exceeding the average is a smart idea. It rewards those who act early before the average increases as a result of people paying to receive that content (or just being generous). This content or access could be better seating, merchandise, concessions, meet and greet opportunities, invites to other organizational activities, etc.

I got to thinking about how my ticketing system can tell me what the average selling price of my tickets are on demand. I could theoretically manually update that information on the lobby screens simply as a point of information at various intervals just as a bit of psychological social pressure on people to pay close to that or a little more. While I might also choose to update that information on our website, I am not sure the sense of social pressure would be as significant for online sales.

However, if ticketing software providers created a way to export that information to update in real time like HumbleBundle does, it might be possible to create a sense of tension and excitement in lobbies just prior to performances. (Or if handled correctly, even online). Granted, it could be done manually but I know I have better things for my staff to do than constantly run reports and post data to a public screen.

Watching it tick steadily up with every purchase is much more interesting. Especially if you are experience the dual satisfaction of seeing how much money was being raised for the organization while knowing you got access cheaper than a lot of other people – “Whoo hoo!! We collectively moved the price to $15.63 (but I got mine for $4.85!)”

Thoughts? What experiences, if any, have you had? I know a number of places are doing pay what you want/can, but I am not clear if they are supplementing their income with related goods and services or if they have found a way to energize audiences around the practice in a productive manner.

Who’s Afraid Of The Big Bad Accounts Ledger?

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This weekend I got to do something I waited an entire year to do…go to Decatur, IL. Your first response may be to wonder why the heck I was looking forward to that for an entire year. The reason is because the Society for Arts Entrepreneurship Education conference was being held at Millikin University.

At last year’s conference, I had learned about Millikin’s student run arts businesses and was eager to see it in person. I will just say the experience did not disappoint. Though I am still slogging through my notes from various sessions at different student run ventures so my readers will need to be patient for at least another day before learning more about that portion of the experience.

What I wanted to discuss today is a session I attended on one of the bugbears central to arts entrepreneurship — financial literacy. When people talk about artists needing to be more business minded, that is probably one of the top three issues they envision needing attention.

Of the seven people on the panel, two were accountants that work closely with artists, Jessica Jones and Elaine Grogan Luttrull. It was something that Jessica said that really gelled the whole subject for me. She mentioned that there is an emotional and cultural barrier everyone experiences when it comes to money and finances. It isn’t just people in the arts and it isn’t about numbers being inherently intimidating. She said that she has helped engineers and scientists who work with numbers all day and they have the same issues as everyone else when it comes to finances.

I don’t remember if it was Elaine or Jessica who mentioned it, but they were somewhat opposed to the concept that people should learn “basic skills” because the term means different things to different people. A CPA can look at materials and identify revenues sources in seconds whereas other people need to make an effort and consider the skills far from basic. Jessica commented that you can’t just carve out a top 10 or 20 list of things people need to know, rather people need to become comfortable with the language, concepts and terminology so they know what to ask and how to understand a conversation about their financial situation.

Ken Weiss from University of North Carolina reinforced this idea saying that it isn’t just important for people to know terminology, but the relevance. His school does a session on intellectual property, copyright, trademarks, etc. with a guest speaker who gets the students engaged by helping them understand how these issues help their career.

This idea emerged multiple times in different sessions at the conference. People discussed how their students had the “a-ha!” moment when they came to the realization that they needed to know something for themselves and not just because the professor said they need to know it.

One of the two CPAs spoke about how helpful it was for people to learn what resources were available in terms of things like software to handle accounting, sales records, etc., and then create operational plans and procedures based on whatever resources were most suited to their needs.

That way you aren’t constantly faced with the prospect of processing your numbers and you can spend the majority of your time doing the work you love. Sometimes the biggest impediment is being unaware that these resources exist and being intimidated by the thought of keeping track of it all. Ultimately it comes back to haunt you when it comes time to report your income for taxes.

Others on the panel commented that some arts disciplines were worse than others in recognizing the need to teach students skills to help manage their careers. However with the general concern about university students taking on so much debt, many schools are moving toward making financial literacy a skill that all students must possess.

Info You Can Use: Revise Your View Of Contracts

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I don’t regularly crosspost about things I have written on Arts Hacker. I sort of feel like I am cheating readers by trying to make one post do double duty on two websites.

However, I have a post today about a session on contracts conducted by the partners at GG Arts Law at the recent Arts Midwest conference.  As I mention in that post, contracts and legal issues always seem to be a concern for arts managers. I have attended multiple conferences in different regions and contracts and law sessions are always well attended, even if they deal with the exact same subject matter as the year before.

What grabbed me about this session was that Brian and Robyn from GG Arts Law started by telling attendees to shift their thinking about why contracts exist and what they are used for.  On television and in the movies, we often see someone suffering under the constraints of a contract they signed and perhaps they get saved by some obscure provision on the bottom of page 731.

While that might be closer to reality for big corporations, it isn’t really applicable on the scale most arts organizations operate on.

Which isn’t to say it doesn’t happen or people don’t try. I believe it was Brian from GG Arts Law that related a story about a contract that was being translated from Spanish where the person was only going to translate part of the contract because they intended to spring a “gotcha!” on the other party using the contents of the untranslated portion.

What Brian and Robin tried to convey was that contracts should be used to memorialize the details of an agreement at the end of a conversation rather than be used at the start of a conversation.  If someone follows up an inquiry by immediately sending their contract, don’t be afraid to start taking notes or marking it up with the changes you want. There are no iron-clad, non-negotiable industry standards no matter how much people may swear there are.

Even though people are often intimidated by contracts or see it as a bludgeon with which to enforce behavior, that isn’t really what it is for.

Take a look at my post and give the concepts there some serious thought. It may change your whole relationship with the contracting process.

There will be two other posts about contracts coming up on Arts Hacker. The second should appear on Wednesday and is a continuation of my goal to provide general information about contracts. The third is more focused on collaboration and commission contracts and will appear at some point in the future.

Non-Profit Arts Version Of “The Talk”

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From what I have been reading, the new Fair Labor Standards Act regulations regarding overtime pay is going be pretty tough for non-profit arts organizations to handle. If you aren’t up on the news, the salary threshold part of the overtime exemption criteria will rise from $23,660 to $47,476. Anyone making less than that or who doesn’t meet the other criteria for exemption will need to be paid overtime.

Generally, most of the criteria hasn’t changed so the big issue for non-profits is the salary threshold. Last month, American Theatre did a pretty good job of covering how the new rules will impact theaters specifically. There have been articles about non-profits in general, but few that discussed how arts organizations were planning to address the change.

The reason I say this new requirement is going to be tough is because some of the comments of the interviewees made me cringe. One person mentioned the benefit of staffing their organization with young 20-somethings to take advantage of the fact they would still be living at home and under their parents healthcare. Another respondent estimated the cost of living in their anonymous mid-size Midwest city was $20,000/year which I suspect is misinformed. The lowest costs of living, even for small Midwest cities, I found hovered around $25,000.

While I cringed at some of the tactics people were generating to deal with the projected expense they were going to incur, I didn’t view them as particularly extraordinary. The alternative approaches being considered are absolutely typical of the problem solving process arts organizations engage in. This is the sort of unorthodox creativity you have to employ to pull things off in the non-profit arts.

The problem is that depending on stop-gap measures and pressure of organizational culture will no longer be viable in the face of this new salary threshold and expectations of a work-life balance that new employees are bringing to the workplace. The gulf will literally and figuratively be too wide to straddle.

This is going to be one of those situations that is going to result in a lot of negative news before it gets better. Doubtless there will be cases we will be amazed have lingered only to explode somewhat scandalously a decade down the road (or sooner since the salary threshold for non-exempt moves to $51,000 in 2020).

The situation is likely to force long delayed conversations between arts organizations, their funders, boards, audiences and employees about what is really required to operative effectively.

The only consolation is that this conversation will still be way easier than talking to your kids about sex.

I don’t think I am being especially prescient when I say now would be a good time to develop a cogent response to the statement “Arts need to be self-supporting or close,” and start distributing the talking points to everyone. It is guaranteed that sentiment will be expressed constantly.

At the same time, a serious discussion about business plans and legal structures employed by arts organizations may become unavoidable. We may see groups recreate and reinvent themselves. Especially if non-profits are permitted to retain their assets as they transition into a corporate entity with a different tax structure.

All this being said, the American Theatre piece discusses how organizations are already making efforts to implement constructive measures to prepare for these changes.

Maybe around this time next year when people have been operating under the new rules for 9-10 months, I will suggest to Drew McManus that ArtsHacker do a series on some practices and restructuring efforts that initially seem to be working. The salary changes are going to have too significant an impact on the arts industry not to share advice about what has been successful for the organization and beneficial to employees.

In the meantime, I will work on learning more about the implications of FLSA rules in order to provide tips about how to prepare for the changes.

For example, many organizations may not know that use of comp time to offset “binge-and-purge” schedules around production time is already illegal  and is about to become more so for a wider range of employees.

But this kind of comp-hours time-shifting isn’t kosher under FLSA provisions. If a non-overtime-exempt employee works 60 hours one week, say, they can’t offset that by clocking just 20 the next week; they’ll be earning their regular salary for the 20-hour week and time-and-a-half for the hours over 40 in the 60-hour week. This was always the case under the FLSA, but with the new $47, 746 threshold, it will apply to many more employees than before.

Info You Can Use: Success May Result In Reduced Donations (Big MAY)

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I was surprised by a recent piece on Non-Profit Quarterly reporting the results of a recent study finding that the more successful an arts organization was in attracting an audience, the more donations will decline.  The theory the researchers had was that success made an arts organization look less needy.

I was skeptical of this based on what I have observed, so I did a little digging to find the full article which appeared behind a paywall in Public Performance and Management Review. The details of their finding are a little more nuanced.

Even though the researchers make the statement in their conclusion that,

“The evidence suggests that better performance outcomes in terms of increased awareness and attendance have a negative rather than a positive influence on charitable giving.”

The discussion of their findings seems to suggest this is only true in regard to foundations.

For a 10% geometric mean increase in an organization’s attendance, the amount of all contributions received in the following year decreases by 0.72%

If we separate private giving into its three components (individual, corporate, and foundation giving), this negative relationship is statistically significant for foundation grants only. The amount of all charitable giving decreases by 0.08%

They don’t really make any statements about how individuals and corporations handle their giving in response to increased attendance and awareness.

Other Items of Interest:

Some other interesting things they found was that:

“It is worth noting that the amount of donations appears to be unresponsive to both government funding and program revenue.”

Basically, donation amounts don’t seems to be impacted by the amount of government funding or program revenue an organization receives in a year.

•Giving away free tickets may slightly help donations

“The result for increased free access lends some support to the first hypothesis: a 10% increase in the number of free tickets provided by arts and cultural nonprofits results in a 0.34% increase in contributions. This positive relationship is, however, only marginally significant.”

•Younger organizations tend to receive greater support than older organizations.

Donors, however, appear to prefer relatively young organizations, at least in the case of arts and cultural nonprofits. When we divide private giving into its three components, organization age has a negative relationship with institutional giving but is not a significant factor for individual donors.

Big Surprise

Despite what we read about donors really scrutinizing administrative overhead, for arts and cultural non-profit organizations at least, high overhead is not penalized.

…donors to arts and cultural nonprofits do not care about fundraising efficiency, which is measured by the average cost to raise one dollar. As the cost to raise a dollar increases, donations increase rather than decrease. On average, a 10% decrease in fundraising efficiency (i.e., an increase in the fundraising cost to raise a dollar of donation) leads to a 0.72% increase in the total amount of contributions. In other words, an organization would solicit slightly more donations, as compared to other organizations of similar type and size that spend less per dollar raised.

[…]

This finding is counterintuitive and provides no support for the prevailing assumption that donors view high costs of raising funds negatively. The results show that donors to arts and cultural nonprofits, especially foundation funders, reward rather than punish nonprofits that spend more to raise a dollar of donation.

The idea that the appearance of success is what helps you raise money is what provided the impetus for my deeper investigation. I think we all have a feeling that a few big organizations seem to attract big donations. Because the researchers are only looking at data collected via the Cultural Data Project, the social cachet of being seen to donate to a popular organization isn’t factored into the results. The authors do acknowledge that popularity and visibility do seem to be factors.

They suggest that big organizations are attracting larger donations because they are pouring more money into their fundraising budgets and aren’t being penalized for incurring the overhead expense.

I was interested by their observation that organizational size didn’t seem to impact corporate giving. I would assume visibility in the community, and therefore the ability to make a business more visible, is a factor in corporate giving more than organizational size.

Caveats

The researchers admit that since very little research has been done on these specific questions before, more study is required to gain an accurate picture. They say the statistical significance of the relationship between increased success and reduction in donations is marginal.

They also note that they use attendance as their measure of success which may be a poor criteria since it has no bearing on the effectiveness or quality of the experience for an audience member.

Likewise they note that using website visits as a measure of awareness might not be valid for many organizations whose communities may depend on print media, mailings and word of mouth to raise their awareness.

Value Of The Arts At Most Intrinsic-It Fixes You For You, Not For Other People

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I am traveling to the Art Midwest Conference today where I will first take a seminar about using Google Analytics which Drew McManus promises will be akin to a heroic journey. Since I have intentionally opted not to fly through Chicago O’Hare this time around, hopefully his seminar will be the only heroic saga I undertake.

As always when I travel, I have dug back into the archives a little for some posts. Back in 2008 I wrote about a column on the value of the arts that Robert Fulford wrote.

Last month I wrote about how it was inadvisable in the long term to talk about the instrumental value of the arts in terms of education and economy. Fulford notes that the “makes you a better human being” argument is equally fraught with peril.

The arts won’t make you virtuous and they won’t make you smart, but they are nevertheless my faith, firmly installed in the part of me where some people put religion.

Great art, alas, has sometimes been loved by monsters, famously the Nazis. George Steiner, the eminent critic, delivers the bad news: “We know that a man can play Bach and Schubert and go to his day’s work at Auschwitz in the morning.”

[…]

On a more trivial level, we also can’t claim that immersion in the arts will create a lively mind. Art education has produced armies of learned bores. I knew a man who had Shakespeare, Verdi, Beethoven and the rest of the gang played at him by the greatest performers of his time, night after night for a lifetime. Did no good. He remained gloomy, narrow and hopelessly addicted to conventional wisdom. He was like the oaf in Love’s Labour’s Lost who has “never fed of the dainties that are bred in a book, so his intellect is not replenished….”

Fulford says the value of the arts is what you, as the individual gets out of it. Presumably while the arts didn’t improve his gloomy friend for others around him, his friend found some value to himself in it. Right there is probably the value of the arts at it’s most intrinsic.

What, then, does it guarantee? Those who give it their time and love are offered the chance to live more expansive, more enjoyable and deeper lives.

[…]

The arts also let us live, imaginatively, within the world where they are produced. They give us an alternative human narrative — and perhaps that’s their most generous gift to us. History as seen through the arts doesn’t portray demagogues and soldiers as the greatest figures. It’s a history where delicate, fascinating traditions are handed down the generations, developed, subverted, forgotten and rediscovered, all within a drama that makes reality created by politicians seem pale and predictable.

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