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Corralling The Wild Volunteer

June 30, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

The Wall Street Journal had a story entitled Docents Gone Wild sharing some stories about museum docents going off script, treating visitors rudely or diverting people away from works of art they didn’t approve of.

The take away for me wasn’t so much that you have to keep an eye on those crotchety senior citizens as much as the retirement of the Baby Boomer generation provides an opportunity to mobilize a large cohort of people on behalf of the arts. Only it will require some effort to effectively engage and train them.

In some respects this idea is a complement to the series on arts and aging/healing that Barry Hessenius hosted last month. That series dealt with the idea that there is an unmet need that the arts can respond to that is only going to grow as the Baby Boomer generation ages. However, currently most arts organizations lack the capacity to do so.

In terms of enlisting retirees as volunteer or in a type of semi-retired/second career role, arts organizations’ ability is a little more developed, but can still be improved. These retirees are people who are transitioning out of careers as highly skilled professionals and will likely enjoy a longer, healthier post-retirement lifestyle than their parents had.

They may want to contribute more than just ushering, envelop stuffing and phone answering during their retirement. If they can’t find an activity to hold their interest, they may choose another activity that they feel is better suited to the energy and ambition they feel they have.

Arts organizations may be wary about involving additional older folks on their boards of directors when they are desperately seeking younger voices, but it wouldn’t surprise me if some organizations managed to create special task groups that mobilized to advocate and lobby for them with government entities.

For all the foibles their docents may exhibit, I am pretty impressed by the rigor of the training program these museums have instituted for their docents. Not that I would increase the training we give our volunteers for its own sake, but it makes me wonder if we are investing enough attention to our training as well as care and feeding of our current volunteers even before addressing the issue of being prepared for new arrivals.

As I was I writing this post, I had a vague recollection of some futurist like John Nasbitt (Megatrends 2000), Faith Popcorn (Popcorn Report) or Alvin Toffler (Future Shock) coming out with a book in the last 10-15 years that said retirees would gather into fairly insular communities termed something like Yogurt Communities because they would value “active cultures” or cultural activity. I wonder if anyone can remember it because I can’t find it. I was curious to do a check back to see if predictions were coming to pass.

Info You Can Use, Volunteers, Working In The Arts

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Marketing Begins At Home

June 29, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

I do a lot of talking about how marketing is the business of everyone in the organization, not just the department bearing that name. Everybody needs to be invested in the organization and its goals. I often use the example of telling your organization’s story while you are in line at the supermarket.

A lot of what I and others write about in this vein stresses the importance of relating your story to external audiences. But I have slowly come to recognize the success of those efforts really depends on your success in relating that story to internal audiences first.

Even if the whole organization is supposed to be responsible for telling the story, its likely that the story may only remain fresh and alive for the people in the marketing department who deal with it everyday. They are the ones that have to take the full page press release and compress the information and concepts for consumption on webpages, social media, 30 second PSAs, posters and print ads. They are constantly having to distill information in order to maintain its essence.

Something I have noticed in my own experience is that staff and board members who helped with the programming and writing of brochure descriptions don’t seem to know as much about the performances as I do. Then I realized it was because I am interacting with marketing materials and having conversations about opportunities for interesting education services on a weekly basis.

Despite being deeply involved with the process for a fair amount of time, other board and staff members end up months removed from their efforts.

Arts organizations advertise and send out emails to remind the general public about events we previously announced in an effort to engage them as the time approaches. There probably needs to be a corresponding internal effort as well. You can send staff emails, briefing sheets and talk about events in board and staff meetings, but emails get deleted and people often just want to get out of those meetings.

However, people often have a tendency to avoid work, right? Water cooler type conversations about why upcoming events are going to be interesting can make a deeper, more lasting impression on people and help to make them better advocates. Especially because instead of receiving a general announcement, they are getting the message customized for them.

Even if other employees are insiders to a degree, they can often serve as the initial sounding board/guinea pigs for approaches you will use with the general public. Volunteers may especially be valuable in this regard since they are probably invested enough in the organization to provide feedback, but may be disconnected enough from the inner workings that they are only slightly more aware of the organization’s activities than the average attendee.

In many respects, marketing definitely begins at home. Even if everyone is working together to make every event a success and are clearly invested in seeing everything come off well, it is far too easy to assume everyone is equally as knowledgeable about the value of the event.

Marketing may be the business of everyone in the organization, but there are always going to be people who know more and are more passionate about events than others. Whether they are officially part of the marketing or artistic team or not, it is always going to be incumbent on them to pass on the knowledge and instill the passion in the other employees to enable them to be effective representatives.

Advocacy, Audience Relations, Boards, Marketing/PR, Working In The Arts

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Donor Achievement Unlocked- Screaming Fan

June 24, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

I had made a suggestion to the community board we partner with on our presenting season that they think about changing the names of their giving categories. My rationale was that the current categories are strongly oriented toward classical music, but that genre only compromises 10%-20% of the programming in any season.

They asked me to provide some suggestions at the board meeting in August. Since I want to have names that give a broader, more diverse sense of the type of programming we partner on, I have been jotting ideas down in a pretty stream of consciousness manner.

At one point, I realized some of the terms were likely unfamiliar and might require explanation. I considered that could be a good thing. If positioned correctly, it might help donors to more closely identify with the work we do.

By this point, I was thinking that what I working on might make for a good blog post so when I say, “help donors to more closely identify with the work we do,” I mean all of us.

That is when it occurred to me that a revamp in donor categories to include a description might be another area that could contribute to the effort of shifting focus toward the donor/audience that Trevor O’Donnell advocates for with arts marketing.

To a degree, this idea partially resembles the “Achievement Unlocked” motif of video games and some of the categories and stretch goals on Kickstarter. I am also pretty sure I have seen some arts organizations who employ this basic concept.

In no particular order, here is some of what popped into my head for a handful of the terms on the list I have assembled. Some or none of these may get used as inspiration strikes me.

Green Room – This is where all the energy gathers before exploding on to stage
Screaming Fan – With you cheering us on, we never run out of energy.
Stage Manager – Though you are behind the scenes, nothing runs smoothly without you
Running Crew – You do the heavy lifting and make sure the spotlight focuses on everything great on stage.
Comedy Team – Like Abbot and Costello, Stiller and Meara, Key and Peele, we do our best work when we have a great partner supporting us.

It occurs to me that if fund raising efforts were approached with a sense of the next level of giving being an “achievement” to unlock, it might encourage giving from younger people and lead to increased giving over time.

What that would look like is a lot of categories at the lower end of the scale at very small intervals ($1-$25, $26-$50, $50-$100, $100-$200) so that people felt they were progressing quickly through (or skipping) levels early in their giving history. At the higher end of the scale, the intervals between levels of giving would be much greater ($2500-$5000, $5000-$10000) which pretty much reflects the process of advancement in games.

If anyone has ideas for category names, descriptions, etc, I would love to hear them.

Fundraising, General Musings

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Who Are The Must Reads In The Field…..

June 23, 2015

by:

Joe Patti

…and how do you know?

I frequently promote ideas Seth Godin posits on his blog and show how they connect with the arts.

I do it so frequently, you may be astonished to learn this ain’t one of those times.

And really, someone probably isn’t worth reading if your thought processes always align.

Last month he made a post essentially calling people out for not being aware of the leading voices in their area of endeavor.

He ends the post with:

The line between an amateur and professional keeps blurring, but for me, the posture of understanding both the pioneers and the state of the art is essential. An economist doesn’t have to agree with Keynes, but she better know who he is.

If you don’t know who the must-reads in your field are, find out before your customers and competitors do.

Too much doing, not enough knowing.

While I am secure in the knowledge that I am undoubtedly one of the must-reads in my field and need only listen to the voices in my head if I wish to be enlightened, even I have to ask who the heck has the time to identify and follow all the must-reads in their field.

Twenty years ago, it was possible but now there are so many insightful minds expressing themselves I have a hard enough time keeping abreast of everyone I follow. I often discover to my chagrin that the people I thought I had included in my Twitter and news feeds aren’t in there.

I would agree with the general concept that arts professionals could do a better job staying abreast of new ideas and trends that will help them work smarter over shorter hours. I will also concede that my ability to read a lot of material and distill it into blog posts is partially attributable to the fact I, (by way of metaphor), have a small lawn to mow and I don’t devote a lot of time weeding my flowerbeds.

I don’t know how the rest of you manage.

There are two main problems with institutionalizing the concept of must-reads.

One that is significant for the arts is the attitude of “how could you not know about X?” which has, fairly or unfairly, contributed to the image of the arts as elitist. (Do such people exist in great numbers? While I have often been intimidated by the idea of their disapproval, I have rarely encountered them outside of the “no clapping between movements” crowd.)

The second problem is that when you create a list of must-reads, you inevitably omit a worthy or include an unworthy, the focus turns to the validity of the list and it ceases to be useful as a guide.

For most people, the must-reads are going to be those who direct you to other interesting thought leaders. While I am eschewing list making, I think everyone can agree that ~~my blog~~ You’ve Cott Mail fits this description of a must-read and is a good place to start seeking people to follow.

Art(ist) Education, Arts in an Age of Technology, Leadership, State of the Arts, Working In The Arts

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