Seven Hour Thank you Letter

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I have just started the first fundraising campaign the theatre has had in about three years. Prior to assuming the job, the temporary theatre director was also the executive director of another arts organization. Because of the conflict of interest with soliciting donations, he didn’t run any campaigns.

At the 1.5 week mark, we have had some modest returns though we have also seen donations from people who haven’t previously contributed which is always good.

Because the current thank you for your donations note has been used for many years, I have been working on a new thank you letter. Now it may seem like an easy thing, but I had a theme I used in my appeal letter and wanted to complement that theme with my thank you letter.

Essentially, I am trying to educate my audience about what sort of things their money is going for. It always seems to me like fundraising campaigns underscore the sexy aspects of what the money goes toward and downplays the less prestigous stuff. Either that or the appeal is so vague, you don’t know what the money is going for.

I take my inspiration, in part to a post on Artful Manager from two years ago where Andrew Taylor suggests arts organizations have a discussion about “worst practices.” My letter is a long way from mentioning mistakes we made, but that entry got me to thinking that references to less sexy, but essential needs, over time will more broadly inform my audience about elements beyond the curtain line that they can impact and feel good about.

My aim is to let people know what sort of things the money supports without making it sound so unsexy they don’t see any worth in giving again. While we aren’t buying reams of people, we are making purchases that are important to the safety of our operations and contribute to hospitality for our artists. If you aren’t in the business though, it is difficult to appreciate the significance of the materials and how grateful we are to have the funding.

Thus why it has taken me seven hours across three days to write the dang letter. I had a lot to say and then distilled the concepts down to a shorter letter, rewrote that, showed it to people, rewrote some more, rewrote, rewrote, etc, etc.

I did much the same thing with the appeal letter. But of course, I was asking for money at the time so my incentive was obvious, right? My thank you note is part of what I hope will be an ongoing relationship with my donors and ticket buyers so it is just as important as the appeal.

I want to take every opportunity I have to tell them the different aspects of my theatre’s story while attempting to avoid cliche phrases and common platitudes. I want to set my organization apart from the letters they are getting from the other non-profits by writing something different, something interesting…something brief…something sincerely gracious. And it all has to look effortless.

But it ain’t.

What Our Products Can Do For You

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Back when I was registering my copy of Dreamweaver software at work, I apparently neglected to deselect a box asking them to send me info on their products by email. I usually ignore and delete the emails because I have better things to go than pursue the opt out process.

However, through either coincidence or targetted marketing, Macromedia (the guys who make Dreamweaver) got my number because the last two emails have caught my attention. The first email was about success Southern Utah University had using their software. (Granted, I might not have looked closer had I not worked at the Utah Shakespeare Festival which has its HQ there).

The second email contained a link to a short movie about the NY Philharmonic using their products. I hate to appear like I am pimping the software by posting the link here as much as I do like Dreamweaver for my modest web design needs. However, I think it is one thing to read blog entries about how technology can work for your organization and another thing to see how many ways it can be applied. It is worth watching just to look at how your website can work for you.

One warning before you watch this. While you can do all of this with the Dreamweaver program and it is fairly easy to produce a very respectable product, what the Philharmonic has done is very time consuming. Some of it requires advanced understanding and programming abilities. (Some of it only looks tough.) Note that the NY Philharmonic’s tech staff is larger than the entire staffs of most arts organizations and they farmed the work out to a design firm.

Without further ado, the NY Philharmonic Dreamweaver ad!

Everything Old Is New Again

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Proof that instead of adopting new methods acknowledging that emerging entertainment technology is drawing our audiences away, we should stick to the old, well-known ways!

Well, sort of.

I had to chuckle at the irony of a pay for TV shows proposal I came across on Slate today. It is so groundbreakingly…familiar.

MIT’s Henry Jenkins, for one, has already written extensively on potential business models for online, on-demand television. Jenkins outlines a subscription model where viewers pay in advance for an entire season of downloadable episodes, providing the startup capital needed to fund production. Episodes would also be available at a higher cost on a per-episode basis, providing a steady stream of additional funds.

Just goes to show while you are learning from technology, it is learning from you too. And there is still more to learn from technology for performance organizations. A year or so ago, Andrew Taylor suggested having snippets of music on iTunes to whet the appetites of subscribers. Why not have movie snippets of proposed performances as well?

Many theatres take pictures for their brochures of upcoming shows using actors who aren’t cast in the pieces dressed in costumes that won’t be worn in the production. Why not take an exciting section of the work and provide a two minute snippet on your website or on a DVD for people to peruse. (This sort of thing is becoming less and less expensive to do.)

Based on a bit of Henry Jenkins proposal, existing subscribers could be given an opportunity to help create an upcoming season that is more likely to sell both because they feel an investment and they are picking shows that most appeal to them.

Imagine a subscription based model where viewers commit to pay a monthly fee to watch a season of episodes delivered into their homes via broadband. A pilot could be produced to test the waters and if the response looks positive, they could sell subscription which company had gotten enough subscribers to defer the initial production costs.

One might argue that allowing people to voice their opinions, even if it were in specific categories (choose which of these period comedies you like, which of these American dramas, etc), will produce an undistinguished, bland season.

Except…1) Your organization ain’t a democracy, choose what you want but don’t be surprised if the option that got 30% of the votes only fills 30% of your seats. (Might be best to allow people to rank them rather than yes or no so that psychologically people don’t decide they aren’t interested in attending at all because the one they didn’t vote for won.)

2) Video actually provides you with an opportunity that text in a brochure doesn’t convince people to attend more cutting edge stuff by presenting it in an interesting way that lets people judge if it is something they may enjoy.

3) Probably some other benefits I haven’t thought of yet.

Now you just gotta negotiate with unionized performers about what section of their contracts you gotta pay them under.

Always A Vacancy

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My wanderings across the digital landscape brought me to a study on the Compass Point website. (they provide services to the non-profit sector.) The study, Help Wanted: Turnover and Vacancy In Non-Profits, is about four years old, but it examines why it is so tough to keep a non-profit organization fully staffed. (There is a similar one studying the challenges of Executive Directors, too)

The study was performed in the San Francisco Bay area and encompasses all non-profits from arts to social services, but there are some very interesting lessons to be learned.

From the executive summary, we learn the following facts:

-8% of the paid staff positions at nonprofits are vacant.
-30% of these positions have been vacant for four months or more.
-24% of the vacancies are management positions.

Which employees are leaving and why
– A striking 47% of the people leaving nonprofits are non-program staff: administrative assistants, bookkeepers, CFOs, development directors, etc. Executive directors report that the three most common reasons for staff resignation are: a great job offer elsewhere, dissatisfaction with compensation, and the cost of living in the Bay Area.

So okay, the whole cost of living in Bay Area isn’t applicable elsewhere.

There were some interesting results about where people are going.

Where exiting employees go:
The most common destination of exiting nonprofit employees is other nonprofits; 34% move on to another nonprofit agency. Moving to the for-profit sector accounts for only 20% of nonprofit turnover.

This is a good news/bad news thing. While it is great that people are sticking to the non-profit sector and continuing to enhance the sector’s ability to serve the public as a whole, non-profits are not only competing with each other for funding and, in the arts, audiences, but now have to compete for personnel as well.

Other additional interesting facts-
Of those organizations surveyed, only 13% had a person dedicated to human resources. Most everyone else had the fuctions shared by one or more other people. 47% of the respondents indicated that the executive director was the sole person developing hiring, recruitment and retention strategies.

What I found most interesting because I had never stopped to think otherwise myself is that executive directors felt a 0% turnover rate was an ultimate goal. And really, I would have immediately agreed. The study also said that EDs didn’t have any expectations that some positions would turn over more frequently than others.

The truth of the matter is, the study showed “certain positions as having a normal turnover rate of 60% per year, while other positions may have a turnover rate of 15% per year.” The study notes that obviously high turnover in some positions (or dependent on the size of the organization, any position) can have a more adverse effect than turnover in others.

Different plans for retention and replacement need to be made with realistic projections about how swiftly a change is expected. According to the study, the reality of the day is that many people view being in the same job for over 5 years as letting their careers stagnate. People are going to move around despite best efforts at keeping salaries and benefits competitive.

Knowing this fact doesn’t make life as an executive director any easier though. Many EDs interviewed were reluctant to discuss the impact of this prevelant trend with their boards because they felt a high turnover rate would reflect badly on their management skills. Many people in the study admitted they held on to incompetent folks because they were afraid they wouldn’t be able to find a replacement at all. The other problem with a tight labor market is that programs the non-profit planned on offering have to be limited or cancelled outright for want of staff people.

So an executive director, anxious that their board will learn about the high turnover rate keeps ineffectual workers, distributes the work of the vacant positions as well as a portion of the inefficient ones’ to the rest of the overworked staff. In order to relieve the pressure on them, the ED has to cancel other programs which brings the demoralizing realization that the organization isn’t as effective as it once was. (And lets face it, most non-profit workers are surviving on their idealism, not their pay.) It is any wonder the report on executive directors says that while EDs are just as likely to stay in the non-profit sector when they too move on, they don’t take executive director positions.

The end of the report offers strategies for avoiding turnover where it can be, accepting and planning for it where it can’t be and minimizing the impact when it does happen. These recommendations are across the board to boards of directors, non-profit organizations and funders/providers of technical assistance.