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You And Your Audience Don’t Agree On What It Means To Be Entertaining

January 2, 2024

by:

Joe Patti

Okay, to start 2024 off with something to ponder for the whole year, I want to direct you to a piece I wrote on ArtsHacker a couple weeks ago about how your definition of entertaining as an arts professional may not match your audience and community’s definition.

All credit to Colleen Dilenschneider and her colleagues at IMPACTS Experience whose research showed (subscription required) that the most entertaining exhibit based entities in the world are Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial followed by the Gettysburg National Military Park and then The Louvre.

You may be thinking, “yeah this doesn’t surprise me, I have seen those pictures of people taking flirty selfies at concentration camps, this just reinforces that people have no sense of decorum and are just centering themselves.”

But that isn’t what the IMPACTS research is indicating at all. While some arts organizations and professionals may see the term entertaining as roughly synonymous with Superficial, Trivial, and Frivolous experiences, the top adjectives people use to describe places like Normandy and Gettysburg in open ended questions are Inspiring, Beautiful, Meaningful, Powerful, and Moving. As Dilenschneider writes, people associate entertainment with meaningful experiences, not meaningless ones.

Often, the context and setting contribute to the sense that an experience is entertaining. So the solemnity and scope of cemeteries and battlefields tend to create meaning for an experience. Similarly, arts districts and famous neighborhoods lends a heightened sense to experiences.

From Dilenschneider’s piece:

People believe the Sydney Opera House to be the most entertaining performance-based organization in the world, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that every single performance presented within its walls is reliably and equally entertaining. Instead, this location may be most strongly cited because the art, architecture, and iconic nature of this space extends beyond individual performances. Similarly, seeing a performance “on Broadway” contributes to higher entertainment scores

Now not everybody operates in an iconic venue or district and that is fine. As I wrote in my ArtsHacker piece:

….when asked what entertaining mean in the context of cultural organizations, “something you want to share” and “unique” followed terms like “inspiring, engaging, meaningful, relevant, and fun”. It is absolutely possible to create experiences which are meaningful, relevant, unique and something people want to share within the context of a smaller organization in a manner that larger organizations are entirely unable.

Take a look at the ArtsHacker piece for more info and consider subscribing to Dilenschneider’s page. She and the IMPACTS team have consistently provided some great data interpretation, particularly during the Covid pandemic. I barely touched on all the content and commentary they provided on this subject.

War Cemeteries Are The Most Entertaining Places In The World, Just Not In The Way You Define It

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Info You Can Use, State of the Arts

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Dayton Live’s Fun Beyond The Scenes Videos

December 26, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

You probably aren’t searching the Interwebs for trenchant observations on arts administration the day after Christmas. But still, you can learn a little something from some entertaining videos colleagues have created over the last year.

So allow me to give a shout-out to Dayton Live’s Chief Creativity Officer, Gary Minyard for the audience etiquette video he and his team, (and dog), created for younger folks planning a trip to the theatres:

I wanted to see what else they may have put out during the year and found a compilation of “Tiny Dressing Room” concerts that the casts of touring shows sang. Obviously a take off on NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series, but no less fun:

Minyard had also done a video about all the venues Dayton Live runs in an informative, engaging manner. This video from August was probably something of necessity because the organization held a big re-branding announcement in March 2020…basically the day before everything shutdown for Covid. Once things were up and running again, they probably saw the need make another effort to introduce people to the organization and its spaces.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, Marketing/PR

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Always Good To Vet Before Giving And Be Wary Of Stolen Non-Profit Identity

December 20, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

As we move through the middle of the holiday season, it seems like a good opportunity to remind people to do a little due diligence so they don’t fall prey to some charity scams. Back in September For Purpose Law Group posted about a case of stolen non-profit identity that was exploited to make a lot of money. PetCo Park in San Diego, like many athletic venues around the country, allows charities to staff concession stands in return for a cut of the revenue.

When a group known as “Chula Vista Fast Pitch” wound down their operations and filed a dissolution notice with the state, two guys basically assumed the organization’s identity and applied to participate in the charity food service program at PetCo Park and then subsequently at other athletic venues.

While it was something of an open secret that the charity didn’t really exist, it was able to continue operating for years, reapplying to the program multiple times. It took reporting by the non-profit news organization, Voice of San Diego, to finally close the whole scam down.

Something else that doesn’t seem to exist at our baseball stadium is any meaningful vetting process for organizations applying (or reapplying each year) to participate in this coveted program. See Monday’s VOSD article along with: The Fake Charity at Petco Park Has Also Been Working at Snapdragon Stadium (August 29, 2023); Fallout Over Fake Nonprofit Continues at Snapdragon Stadium and Petco Park (August 30, 2023); and More on that Fake Charity that’s Been Raking in Cash at Petco (August 31, 2023).

It was a years-long lucrative fraud perpetrated in plain sight. But it was exposed and shut down in less than a week.

[….]

“At Petco,” Will Huntsberry points out, “Chula Vista Fast Pitch brought in $3.7 million in net sales over a five-month period earlier this year, according to receipts obtained by Voice. Charities generally get roughly 10 percent of their net sales at Petco. Ten percent of $3.7 million is $370,000.”

Extrapolating these figures over nine full years, at multiple venues, and including special events, Chula Vista Fast Pitch likely took in huge sums of money that should have gone to a local charity in good standing and operating for the benefit of the community.

Everybody wants to operate on good faith and believe that charitable organizations are benefiting worthy causes. Scams like this place a greater burden on other charities who operate legitimately and have to make additional efforts to prove it to funders. There are tools out there like Pro Publica’s Non-Profit Explorer potential donors can use to do some preliminary vetting of non-profits to which they intend to donate.

Fundraising

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NPR’s Fortunes Changed By Billions And Billions Sold

December 19, 2023

by:

Joe Patti

Last month there was an interesting story in the Washington Post about the $220 million bequest left to NPR 20 years ago by Joan Kroc, widow of former McDonalds CEO Ray Kroc. What I found interesting was that while the money helped to expand NPR’s capacity in a very real way, it has also been something of a double edged sword when it comes to additional fundraising.

NPR spent some of the money, but put about $194 million into an endowment from which they have drawing off the interest. However, because NPR constantly expresses their gratitude for a gift which significantly impacted the direction of their organization, 20 years later people think Kroc is continuing to give money and there is no reason to make a donate themselves. Similarly, Congress cites the gift, questioning why NPR continues to need money.

“Kroc’s bequest has also periodically been invoked by congressional Republicans and conservatives intent on cutting the federal government’s annual outlay to public radio and TV. Most of those funds go to member stations; NPR receives almost no direct federal support. But that nine-figure gift from a multibillionaire remains a politically potent talking point.”

It raises something of a quandary about how do you appropriately acknowledge the generosity of a large, but one time gift, without dissuading others to donate as years pass. Perhaps somewhat ironically, Joan Kroc herself could have potentially been dissuaded from making her gift if she learned another had made a significant donation because she shared a common confusion about NPR’s identity.

Ken Stern, a veteran public radio executive who once served as NPR’s chief executive, wrote in 2013. Joan Kroc, he wrote, “frequently confused NPR (as many people do) with other public media organizations ranging from PBS to BBC to other public radio producers.”

Indeed, Kroc had apparently intended to make a donation to PBS, but her staff couldn’t ever get someone on the phone so she instructed them to move on.

As you might imagine, the NPR staff thought fondly of McDonald for a time after receiving the gift. The last line of the Post article says they enjoyed Big Macs on the day they announced receipt of Joan Kroc’s gift back in 2003.

Fundraising, Working In The Arts

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