Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management
NewsRoom Contact Us

No One Has Been So Energized About You Visiting The Bathroom Since Your Parents Potty-Trained You

by:

Joe Patti

If you want to read a great story about taking the initiative to provide great customer service, check out the story about Tonya Heath, head usher at the Forrest Theatre where Hamilton is being performed in Philadelphia.  She has undertaken one of the most important tasks of all — guiding the women’s restroom line at intermission.

After two weeks of porcelain chaos, she knew she had to do something.

So she assigned herself to bathroom duty and now ropes in at least two other ushers to help her. It would be devastating, she says, for someone to miss the beginning of Act Two.

[…]

Heath climbs on top of a piano bench outside the bathroom and makes an announcement:

“Ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention please. We are at minute five out of a 20-minute intermission, which means I have 15 minutes to get you into this bathroom. I’ve formed a serpentine line. And it works. It only takes about six minutes from that door to get you in this bathroom.”

“All I need you to do,” Heath tells the crowd, “is trust me and trust your sisters.”

[…]

But then the lights flicker, the ladies in line seem to collectively gasp: “Nooooo,” women say. They don’t want to miss even a minute of Hamilton, a show for which people paid as much as $499 a seat. Should they throw away their spot?

“All right, my loves, we are approaching minute 13. That was a scare tactic,” she says. “That’s how we get people into their seats a little bit faster. We’re only at minute 13. I promised you 20 minutes. We have about seven to eight minutes to get you back upstairs.”

Heath sings her instructions: “Stay in lineeeee.”

The crowd that a few seconds ago seemed terrified is now clapping and cheering.

This is one of the best examples of embodying the ideals of relationship building using the arts’ inherent home field advantage I have come across in a really long time. The only issue with promoting her as a reward is that she might be taken out of direct contact with audiences and her natural talent would be difficult to teach to others. (None of which should used as an excuse for not promoting and paying her more, of course.)

I also have to give some props to Philadelphia Inquirer write Ellie Silverman who put in the effort to add some tips at the end of the article about where to use the restroom in the neighborhood before you get to the theater; how to tell when intermission is arriving so you can be prepared for the mad rush to the restrooms; but also not to assume there are any boring parts you can skip out of to use the restrooms during the show.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

No Comments

Perception Is More Powerful Than Money

by:

Joe Patti

Today was the big day for our community’s On The Table discussion. If you aren’t familiar with the nationwide program, it is a day different groups in a community host discussions on any topic they feel needs to be addressed–including just leaving things open for whatever comes up. In our community, there were hundreds of tables hosting thousands of people doing everything from having breakfast with the mayor to discussing urban revitalization, homelessness, law enforcement, entrepreneurship, preserving oral history–you name it.

I hosted two separate sessions about Arts Midwest’s Creating Connection initiative. I will probably reflect on that in a future post.  Perhaps the most valuable bit of insight for arts and cultural organizations didn’t emerge from a conversation in my venue, nor do I believe the slated topic of conversation was about the arts.

My marketing director was having a conversation with a woman who is an artist and currently works for a foundation which funds arts initiatives. This woman admitted that she regularly attends performances at a local theater and always see the big sign encouraging her to subscribe. However, she has never subscribed because she perceives that as something old people do. She also admitted she kicks herself later for paying full price when she could be getting a good discount by subscribing.

While this is only a single anecdotal case — notice that she would rather pay full price in order to avoid being associated with her perception of a subscriber. Perception was a much greater motivator than price. That is something to think about when price is cited as the primary impediment to participation.

When she was attending a discussion at my On The Table event, this same woman talked about her previous job working for an organization that had a gallery of work by local artists. Before she started working there, she had never entered the gallery due to concerns about whether she would be allowed to enter and if she was dressed properly.

Looking at the same gallery through the windows from the street, I would describe it as having a welcoming homey quality, but that isn’t what she saw.

Her candid conversations just reinforced for me the research findings that point to just how strong an influence one’s sense of belonging has in whether people participate in an experience or not. It is the invitation to participate, how the invitation is framed, who extends it and what the experience is that matters much more than the sticker price.

Another thing that came to light was just how difficult it is to communicate the existence of opportunities that align with people’s interests. One of our ticket clerks is a law student. Above our lobby are six floors of county offices housing everything from the district attorney, county court officials, and state/local/federal law enforcement.  A number of those offices were hosting On The Table discussions about law enforcement, courts, and sentencing as a resource for the general community.

Not only did the law student not know conversations with people with whom she would be interested in speaking were occurring, she wasn’t aware that the entire On The Table program existed. Other staff felt like we couldn’t escape information about it on social media, television, radio, posters, etc., especially in the last month. Our clerk had no concept such a program existed in the world.

Part of the blame for this falls on our shoulders. Prior to today, we apparently never told one of our most trusted employees in our most public facing office that the events would be occurring across the lobby from where she sat in case anyone asked questions.

Though by the same token, she apparently doesn’t look at the event listings on our Facebook page and website with any frequency to familiarize herself with videos and other content associated with upcoming events. But even that just illustrates how difficult it is to get information in front of people and register with their attention.

Arts in an Age of Technology, Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, General Musings, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

2 Comments

Colorblind Grant Evaluation Measures Aren’t

by:

Joe Patti

There was an opinion piece on the Chronicle of Philanthropy website today by Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund, discussing how the evaluative measures often employed by funders tend to discriminate against non profit organizations lead by, and serving, people of color.

He writes,

What I did not realize then was how colorblind application of financial assessment and funding practices can make it harder for organizations led by and serving people of color to get grants and make the most of them.

The problem often originates in the fact that these organizations don’t have access to networks of influence and financial resources that other organizations do.

So requiring dollar for dollar matches for grants or using rates of donations by board members as a measure of engagement and investment are difficult criteria for many non-profits to meet.

The same problem arises when using budget size as a point of assessment.

Determine grant size based on the value of the work rather than the current revenue of the organization: When you recognize the structural barriers that prevent many well-run and effective organizations from gaining traction, you come to see how distorted the link can be between an organization’s size and capacity. And the formal accounting rules that determine what counts as revenue make the problem worse. For example, pro bono legal advice from a corporate law firm counts as revenue. The many hours a volunteer spends reading to young people in a community center does not.

A better approach: Rather than creating rules that peg grants to a share of revenue, spend time understanding the value the work would generate and the full cost to undertake it.

Obviously, these evaluation measures don’t just present problems for organizations run by and for racial minorities. Many non-profit organizations run by racial minorities lack resources, but not every non-profit lacking resources is run by and for racial minorities.

Bugg-Levine provides a link to a guide recently issued by the Nonprofit Finance Fund which charts racially-based financial analysis and provides suggested alternatives.

There are some issues you might not immediately anticipate. For example, having access to a wealthy private donor allows organizations to take government contracts which tend not to cover full costs. Having the imprimatur of a government contract provides other funders with a greater degree of confidence in the organization, leading to better funding opportunities. But not having a relationship with a wealthy private donor makes it difficult to secure the government contract in the first place.

Another example identified in the chart is that:

Funders associate small organizations with community authenticity

Organizations will intentionally limit their revenue (often below $1 million/year) to remain eligible for “small organization” grants, because some funders will cut them off when they become larger. But, they still can’t make the leap to effectively compete against larger organizations for larger grants, given the dearth of funding options for organizations in the $750,000-$3 million/year revenue range.

Even an organization’s accounting method can be a source of bias. The indication that the organization employs accrual based accounting vs cash based accounting  favors better funded organizations that have the resources to pay for accrual accounting services because,

If an organization is using cash-basis accounting, which counts money when it is received or spent, rather than when it is earned or billed, their finances appear less stable. This can lead to suspicion about the soundness of their leadership and overall financial health, and create a perception that making a grant to this organization is riskier than if they were using accrual accounting

Advocacy, Finance, Fundraising

No Comments

The Enduring Power Of Antici……pation

by:

Joe Patti

From the “I wish we could figure out the formula and bottle this” file, we hosted a showing of The Rocky Horror Picture Show on Friday.

The staff at the theater had been advocating for a screening for years before I started working here. I can perhaps understand why it hadn’t been scheduled before. The screening rights are nearly three times any other movie, especially if you want to show it around Halloween, and Fox Pictures apparently also needs to sign off on it. (Rumor has it, Disney is locking down Fox’s movie catalogue so Rocky might even become more difficult to show in the future).

Based on our usual movie attendance, we figured we might have 350 people attend given Rocky Horror’s cult film cachet. We ended up with 900 people attending. We rarely sell even 25 tickets in advance of the date and we had 750 ticket sold prior to opening the ticket office that night.

A number of readers will think to themselves, of course it drew that size an audience, it is a legitimate force of nature unto itself. The movie was a regular midnight show in cinemas across the country throughout the 70s and 80s. Heck, there are still movie houses that continue to host screenings year round. It is the only movie where it is acceptable to shout at the screen. In fact, not knowing the raunchy, off-color ritual call outs marks you as an outsider and subjects you to embarrassing hazing in front of the entire audience.

(And yet apparently, clapping between movements of a symphony causes more anxiety than the prospect of literally being marked as a virgin of the experience and jeered at and pelted by a raucous mob of people, eh? Maybe the expressions of disapproval in an orchestra hall are too polite?)

The simple truth is, a smaller audience wouldn’t be unexpected.  The screenings have become a lot less frequent than they once were. I remember when the movie came out on VHS tape, I thought it would be the death knell for the whole tradition if people could watch the movie in the comfort of their own home. The whole social aspect and “oral tradition” would be lost.

Granted within a decade or so, you could download a script from the internet that prompted you with the correct responses and actions, but that does nothing to prepare you for the experience.

There definitely has been a decline in familiarity with the show and its traditions. The guy playing Rocky in our shadow cast lost his  show virginity a month ago when the cast went to Atlanta to see the shadow cast at a place that runs the show year around.

Having a large audience in our community was by no means a foregone conclusion.

We worked to make the usual experience even more of an experience. We had a shadow cast that really put in a lot of rehearsal to make their presence an asset to the show.We posted interviews with each member on social media in an effort to garner attention and support from their family and friends.

We had karaoke, hosted by a local burlesque troupe, start in one of our bar spaces two hours prior to the screen time to help people get into the mood.

We also created prop bags, both to enhance the experience of people who had never participated, but also as a way to keep the food elements (toast, rice, etc) out of our recently renovated historic venue. There was still A LOT of clean up involved, but we were able to protect the condition of our space.

This is what is looks like before 900 people need to use newspaper to shelter themselves in a squirt gun rainstorm.

Since the Rocky Horror tradition is about 45 years old, the most interesting part of the experience was having 20-30 years accompanied by parents who convinced them to attend based on the experience those parents had when they were in their 20s.

We were really hoping for a swath of 50-60 year olds decked out in costumes, but there weren’t as many as we were praying for. (Barry Bostwick performed here 6 weeks ago. At 74 years old, he could have still rocked the corset and fishnets.)

Only in America can multiple generations strengthen their relationships yelling insults at a 45 year old movie and thunderously stomping their approval at the entrance of a sweet transvestite from transsexual Transylvania.

Audience Relations, Building Public Will For Arts And Culture, State of the Arts

2 Comments

Previous 1…185186187188189…769 Next
Joe Patti's Musings on practical solutions for Arts Management

/ Find It!

/ Recent Comments

Butts In The Seats by Joe Patti is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.
LinkedIn