Management Philosophy

Today was a good day on many levels.

I got to sleep in a little because I was going to a meeting of my booking consortium in town so driving in to the office only to have to turn around and drive back an hour later didn’t make sense.

The consortium meeting was essentially called to provide an opportunity for those who aren’t attending the Western Arts Alliance Conference next month to discuss what types of groups they would like those of us who are attending to watch for.

Many of the attendees at the meeting brought along season brochures for their upcoming season and passed them around proudly. (Including me!) Since many of us are hosting the same performers, it was interesting to see each organization’s interpretation of the same artist.

Ironically, as Mr. Budget, I was looking at the interpretation first. I brought a couple copies of the other brochures back to my graphic designer and her first observation was about the amount of money the other places must have to afford such extravagant brochures.

I honestly thought her simpler design was much more powerful than the more expensive pieces. You get it in the mail, you open the first fold and BAM! the image there is so captivating you want to pay attention to the rest of the information.

The funny thing is, I gave her the same budget as last year. Then I purposely wrote less in my letter to patrons and in the descriptions so that there was more room for images and white space.

She comes back with a design on a much smaller space than last year and I ended up having to cut more text!

On the other hand, it cost about $1,500 less than last year so I edited quite happily.

One of the women at the meeting thanked me for suggesting they put a sampling of the music artists would be playing on their website. (Actually, inspired by Andrew Taylor’s post, I had suggested using iTunes to supplement a season brochure, but I will take the gratitude anyway. Unfortunately, her site is a little rough and it is tough to find the links.)

Next good thing was that I really wanted to suggest bringing a performer from last season back next season. I am still getting comments about how good he was, my radio ad rep keeps muttering about his disappointment over missing the performance and it is the artist’s 40 anniversary season.

But I fear it might be too soon to bring him back.

Fortunately, I don’t have to say a thing. One of my other partners mentions the same thing, I offer some supportive comments and while it isn’t a done deal, it wasn’t a hard sell at all to get the ball rolling.

Then when I get back to the office, I get an email from an agent saying he believes the group he represents would be happy to attend a reception thrown for them by adoring fans. This is great because not only will the fans be happy, but it will help me promote the show. (Though honestly, it is already selling so well we could be sold out before they even start their national tour.)

The last good thing was sort of a mixed blessing. We had scheduled the meeting for 4 hours but only took 1.5 hours to finish our business. Unfortunately, thinking I wouldn’t be back for 3 hours more, my staff moved cabinets and desks into my office so they could clean where they had sat. It was a little hard getting to my desk to say the least.

All in all though, a good day.

The cleaning of a virus on my computer while I was writing my entry yesterday apparently prevented me from posting it. In some sense it was fortuitous because I was posting a follow up to an earlier entry on the Honolulu Symphony’s new management structure.

At the time, most of what I knew about the situation was unsubstantiated gossip so I didn’t want to post details. Regrettably, most of what I had heard was true according to an article in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin that came out today.

Due to some conflict on the board, the woman who was going to be the new CEO resigned along with at least one board member. The consultant who suggested the formation of the CEO position was apparently offered the interim president position but has declined.

This whole situation is really a shame. It appears as if the CEO appointee had begun to approach the position with quite a bit of zeal, especially considering it was an unpaid position.

I would have personally been interested to see how the position worked out. I had stated my misgivings in my earlier entry and they were shared by some of the other arts administrators with whom I discussed the developments in the story. But I can’t imagine that the consultant, who was once the executive director of the San Francisco Symphony, would have suggested a management structure with the obvious flaws I feared it might have. It would have been interesting to see if his solution was viable.

One aspect of the story I didn’t quite like was the implication that people were perhaps using their large donations to get their way. Yes, it is true that people who give 1 million dollars wield a great deal of influence and might often remind people of that fact when things don’t go their way.

However, there is no explicit evidence that they did so in this case. It seems unfair that their actions are modified by the amount of money gave (X, who gave $Y did…) while poorer folks just plain take action. It just implies they only based their decisions on money invested while everyone else is motivated by other myriad reasons.

There is something interesting/puzzling going on locally with the Honolulu Symphony organizational structure. I was going to let Drew McManus over at Adaptistration because he is the authority on the strange world of orchestras. But dang it, the whole thing is making me curious so I gotta say something.

And if Drew doesn’t like it, well he is 5,000 miles away 😛 What’s he gonna do? He has friend here though. If you hear I got killed in a freak oboe accident, you will know it is him!

Anyway, enough jabbering here is the story.

Honolulu Symphony President Steven Bloom is stepping down apparently to leave symphony management altogether. The chair of the board will be taking over administrative duties until a replacement can be found. Here is the interesting part–they are going to appoint a volunteer CEO of the Symphony who will oversee whomever the replacement is.

According to the Honolulu Advertiser:

“As the symphony’s CEO, Cayetano would “oversee the administration of the symphony and … the president of the symphony would report to and be accountable to her,” Jackson said. “But her main role will be building the board and working on fund-raising.”

The interesting thing is this. Usually, the president/executive director of a non-profit answers to a volunteer board of directors of which there is a chair. The board sets policy and approves plans for the general direction of the organization. The president/executive director oversees the staff efforts in the execution of these general policies. Often he/she may go to the board for approval of a program the staff has proposed that will help in the pursuit of the organizational mission.

As the top administrator, the president/executive director is usually paid. However, the symphony is proposing an unpaid CEO position to whom this person will report. Presumably, the CEO will report to the board.

A bunch of questions come up. Since it ain’t easy running a symphony, how much time a week will the CEO be devoting to the job? Is the president pretty much doing the same as before, but essentially under more direct supervision of a board representative? Will the CEO oversee the staff then as well?

Is current president leaving because he resented the fact someone was being appointed to be his personal watchdog? (According to another article, the CEO position was the suggestion of an outside consultant.) If the person is only supervising the president, it could have that appearance.

But that might be better than the alternative where the CEO is supervising the whole staff. Since it is an unpaid position, the CEO might be part time and some decisions might have to be deferred for her return. Either that or any decision made by the president in her absence could end up conflicting with hers.

This is all wild speculation though. Knowing as little as I do, I wouldn’t normally give voice to it. However, I did want to take the opportunity to talk about possible pitfalls in such an arrangement since exploration of management decisions is part of the blog’s purpose.

Given that the board chair is only a part-time resident, it might be that they are just looking to have a consistent representative of the board authority on the island.

I am interested to see what the full story is. The articles talk about this person focussing on board development and fundraising. If the CEO is taking some of these responsibilities away from the President, I might applaud the move given my entry on how leaders don’t have the time to focus on the organizational future for all fundraising they must do.

Between Drew and myself, I am sure we will get the full story out sometime soon. (Actually, I shouldn’t speak for him. I don’t know if he is intrigued enough to pursue it himself. I am sure I will end up consulting him to put what I learn in context in any case.)

I have had a report sitting on the desktop of my computer for a few weeks now and have just gotten a chance to read it. It is a report done by The Grantmaker Forum On Community & National Service (now Philanthropy for Active Civic Engagement) called The Cost of a Volunteer

The paper was a result of the days after President George W. Bush called for citizens to devote 4,000 hours to volunteer service. There was a concern that the current infrastructure of most nonprofits couldn’t support the deluge of so many well-meaning individuals. The Grantmaker Forum made an effort by way of survey to discern what the hidden costs of free labor might be.

Two common approaches to determining the value of volunteer work are calculating the opportunity cost for the volunteer (the gains the volunteer could make if using that time for employment or recreation) and figuring the cost of replacing the volunteer with paid staff.

The value-added equation is almost always established as a no-cost concept; that is, that volunteers
simply and strictly augment the capacity of professional staff. This calculation avoids two critical questions: What resources are needed to sponsor volunteers? And where do those resources come from?

The literature review section of the survey results is rather interesting and illustrates the difficulty connected with quantifying the cost-benefit ratio of volunteerism. One study found “a return of between $2.05 and $21.24 for every $1.57 expended.” Another said it costs $300 per volunteer and another came in at about $1,000. I suspect some of the difference springs from the type of volunteer programs they studied and the the extent of staff oversight necessary. (Big Brothers/Big Sisters has to do background checks and scrutinize the relationships of adults and kids whereas a theatre might just spend an hour or so training volunteers.)

Another reason why it is hard to quantify the costs for volunteering. It isn’t just the salary to pay the volunteer coordinator and the cost of the materials, phone bill, etc that needs to be calculated. It is also the time the other staff members (doctors and nurses in a hospital, for example) spend supervising the volunteers that needs to be included.

One very interesting observation that the study makes is that half of the participants in the survey were unwilling or unable to accept more volunteers at the time. “This finding fundamentally
challenges the assumption that the only requirement to engage more citizens in volunteer
service is an effective call to serve.”

The study also points out that behind every great volunteer, there is a great professional staff. They mention that without the support of a well organized staff, volunteer intensive programs like tutoring and food banks would be hard pressed to succeed. Volunteering doesn’t just happen, it takes dedication and organization.

When I was organizing an outdoor arts and music festival I needed 500 volunteers for that one day. I had a long to do list, but the daily notes marked on my calendar were the number of volunteers I needed to have recruited by that day to reach my goal of 500 by festival day. If I was falling behind, I would come back to work and make calls to people who had volunteered in the past and hadn’t signed up yet. (A good database is also key to good volunteer recruitment!)

Because volunteer managers don’t want to waste people’s time by not having the staff to provide supervision/direction needed for tasks, they are in the unenviable position of having to turn people away even if there is a huge task to be addressed.

The other problem is that organizations have a surfeit of volunteers at some times (nights and weekends) but few at other key periods of time such as summer vacation periods. Other organizations have fairly involved volunteer training programs and can’t easily accept additional people in the middle of a training cycle.

Another observation the report makes is that changing expectations are requiring a shift in the care and feeding of volunteers

The classic volunteer of forty years ago was a housewife who had enough time available that she was able to commit to a regular schedule for her volunteering – four-to-six hours per week. With this time commitment and regular schedule, she could be relied upon to shoulder significant organizational responsibilities. The 21st century volunteer is more likely to be employed, have professional skills to share, have a limited amount of time available, and have greater need for immediate gratification. The 21st century volunteer seeks ‘short-term assignments with a high level of personal reward.’ Today’s volunteers want to see change happen quickly as a result of their contributions and are less likely to commit over a long period of time on a consistent basis.

One volunteer program leader explained that 21st century volunteers require a kind of job sharing approach to their volunteer service. “We do more short-term projects that are more interesting. People want instant gratification from their volunteer experience.” The classic volunteer asks, “What can I do for you'” The 21st century volunteer says, ‘What can you do for me'”

In some cases, people are looking to volunteer to add to their skills in order to make themselves more marketable. They aren’t content with simple jobs like filing papers, but would rather perform a task that engages their skills.