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Remembering It’s Not About You

August 9, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

I finally got around to reading the report WolfBrown generated following a study of what motivates donors in the San Francisco Bay area, “It’s Not About You … It’s About Them: A Research Report on What Motivates Bay Area Donors to Give to the Arts and Artists.” As you might imagine, it encourages people to focus on the interests and needs of the potential donors rather than the needs of the organization.

Much of it is very interesting. The study revealed five different motivation groups in which donors fell- Values-Driven Intrinsics, Community Altruists, Progressive Artist Champions, High-Touch Social Givers, Supportive Audience; and discussed what characteristics each group possessed as well as the percentage of the audiences these segments comprised. The report included a number of case studies on Bay area arts groups and identified the way the groups’ approaches successfully met their donors’ needs and interests.

Rather than doing a lengthy summary, I just wanted to cite the things that popped out for me. The first was regarding elements that influenced relationships:

Live conversation: Talking directly with potential donors can increase their interest in an artist and his or her project. Direct conversations can also energize the person seeking the contribution….

• Online giving: Two-thirds of FFAMC donors have made donations online, and more than 60% of those who have not given online would consider doing so. …

• Giving time as well as money: FFAMC donors are almost twice as likely to be volunteers with organizations to which they give than are donors to large institutions….

• Contact pre-gift is more important than post-gift: Two-thirds of all donors surveyed indicated that they prefer to have attended an organization’s performances before they make a contribution. 42% of FFAMC donors indicated they prefer to get engaged with an organization personally before they make a gift; only 21% of FFAMC donors suggested they need a lot of postgift attention.

• Write your thank you notes: Most FFAMC donors and donors to other cultural organizations desire timely acknowledgment of their gifts, information about the impact of their contribution and regular notice of upcoming programs or invitations to special previews or openings. There are outliers at both ends of this spectrum – people who want a lot of information and some who prefer very limited post-gift contact. Asking a donor which kind of contact they
prefer is an important part of getting to know them.

I was actually surprised about the pre-gift contact being more important than post gift. I can understand that developing a relationship with an organization is a strong motivator for that initial gift, but it is interesting to know people don’t value post gift contact as much. Which is not to say they don’t want acknowledgment. I wonder if this might be regional or even generational based since so many of the donors in this study were younger than the usual arts attendee/donor. But perhaps our assumptions about what all donors want has been flawed from the start.

The other thing that caught my eye was the way The Shotgun Players survey their audiences. When we have conducted surveys, we try to keep it short but also try to capture as much pertinent demographic information as possible. The response rate is mixed, but generally very light. From the way I read this report, The Shotgun Players asks two questions on a raffle questionnaire, a serious one about motivation or demographics and a silly one related to the show, “During our Rosie the Riveter show, it was “If you were a power tool, what kind of tool would you be?” They get a 85%-90% response rate. It was a sort of “duh” moment for me when I recognized getting the answer to one important question a show from a meaningful number of people is more helpful than getting a handful of people to answer 6-8 questions.

Later in the report were some comments that belied the idea that artists don’t want to get involved in the business end of things. (And even if the idea is true, the sentiments expressed by an artist may provide a challenge to think differently where administrators may sound like nags.) Philip Huang said of his grant seeking experience:

“I liked the matching requirement very much. I would have never done this project on my own, without the match. I never would have changed artistic direction, or changed medium on my own without the endorsement of the FFAMC grant. I believe that artists should chase things slightly outside of their personal comfort zone. For me, fundraising from individuals was definitely that. Having an externally imposed timeline and an externally imposed mandate was good. I think the match was also a motivator for my donors. Once I got clarity about what I needed and I asked for it, people responded to my sense of propose and vision.”

Finally, what I thought was really excellent were instructions in the appendix prepared by Alan Brown on how to conduct the interview portion of the study. I have read a lot of studies over the years and I have never seen something like this included. There was just a very accessible and comfortable element to the instructions. Had I been conducting the interviews, the instructions would have calmed any anxiety I felt. And from various parts of the instruction, it appears Brown was training people who were not professional researchers and may have in fact been members of the commissioning organization.

“Sitting down with ticket buyers and donors and asking them about their experiences sounds simple enough. In reality, few cultural institutions or funders conduct qualitative research on a methodical basis, and many have slipped out of touch with their constituents.”
[…]
During most interviews, a great deal of data is communicated non-verbally, through body language, hesitation, gestures, and intonation. No matter how good the researcher, it’s just not the same as experiencing the interview in person. This is why the exercise is participatory – you’ll be doing the interviewing….With the researcher out of the way, the “filter” between you and your interviewees is gone.”

Some of the instructions are just good reminders for talking to donors and supporters in informal settings.

Good interviewing also requires a good set of questions. Asking the wrong questions (or avoiding the hard questions) is a waste of time. You may feel good by the end of the interview, but nothing is gained. Asking the right questions the right way, however, can unleash passionate, emotional, or even angry responses – which can be extremely informative.
[…]

Which brings us to the hardest part of interviewing – listening. A good interviewer is a good listener. Listening requires a great deal of concentration. A good listener understands what the respondent is saying, and also thinks about what the respondent is not saying, or trying to say…. A good listener hears when the respondent is having difficulty answering a question, and re-phrases the question or illustrates a response drawing from her own experience. “Maybe I can help you with this question by telling you how I would answer it for myself…” Perhaps the most difficult aspect of interviewing is simultaneously concentrating on what the interviewee is saying and also having a sense of where the interview is going – whether to probe deeper or move on to the next question.

Some questions are direct, while other questions involve asking people to tell personal stories. For example, “Can you remember when you felt especially proud of a gift you made?” Storytelling can be extremely useful in getting people to explain important events in their lives and to open up about difficult issues….”

Audience Relations, Fundraising

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Ceding Control Of Your Message (Just A Little)

August 3, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

I am experiencing the slight panic that goes with having other people promote your events over social media more frequently these days. It is difficult to cede control of my information dispersal to other people, largely because it is increasingly involuntary.

Because services like Google and Twitter allow you to see what people are saying about my organization, I often find that people are forwarding incomplete information or mangled information. Some of it is a result of copy and paste which left some information behind or the necessity to truncate text for Twitter. What people are choosing to include in information to their friends often isn’t what I think sells the show. In some cases I can imagine that maybe a detail has significance to a person and their friends. Other times what they send is so nondescript, I can’t help but chalk it up to laziness and I hope that the mere idea that a friend has brought it to their attention inspires people to attend.

The temptation to correct or emphasize a point can really be strong at times. All I need to do is create a separate account of my own to set things aright. Just have to hope they don’t get too suspicious about the lack of posts or friends my brand new account has connected with it. But the consequences of injecting myself into someone else’s conversation for the purpose of correcting their information about our organization or being caught in an inauthentic masquerade are probably more damaging to us than a few incorrect dates and prices.

I have a similar situation with a local group with which we are partnering to produce a show. One of the board members is sending out press releases about the show on behalf of their organization. Personally, I think my writing is much better and paints a more complete picture. I send our partner some emails asking that certain bit of information be clarified, added or corrected.

But as many of you well know, personal relationships matter. That board member had people clamoring to write advance stories and conduct television and radio interviews in the course of a couple days. I didn’t know that a couple of the magazines even existed. In fact, one of them is just starting up and our event will have significant space in the first issue.

Personal relationships, be they virtual or other wise, seems to trump accuracy of information when it comes to getting people involved. Or perhaps it glosses over the consequences of poor information delivery. Though ultimately the annoyance of those who show up at the wrong time or expecting to pay a different price may be borne by the arts organization rather than the friend.

Arts in an Age of Technology, State of the Arts

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Mandatory Non-Profit Salary Caps

August 2, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

Last week, the NY Times had a story about how lawmakers are really scrutinizing the salaries of non-profit leaders. The paper notes that New Jersey recently passed a provision that “includes a limit on what nonprofit groups can pay their chief executives if they are providing social services under state contracts. The cap, based on a formula that also applies to for-profits providing such services on behalf of the state, is part of a broader effort by Gov. Chris Christie to rein in salaries on state workers.”

It seems to me that it may not be a very long jump to apply the same scrutiny to arts organizations who receive government funding. It may not be in the next few years, but it could be coming. It wouldn’t surprise me if NJ was the first to do it too given their “cut off your nose to spite your face” attempts to reduce arts funding a year and a half ago.

My initial impulse was to write something about how the government was coming after the non-profits because they couldn’t rein in the salaries at big corporations which made big campaign contributions. I also wanted to moan about how money equals access and the need for more visible and active advocacy if the arts didn’t want to be victimized by such unwarranted scrutiny. Charity Navigator is cited as saying only 2/10th of 1% of non-profits in the U.S. actually pay their leaders six figure salaries. But you get one story about Joe Dowling making $680,000 at the Guthrie Theatre and suddenly everyone else is eyed suspiciously despite their 10 year old car that has clearly needed a new muffler for the last 6 months.

And you know, I may still follow that impulse and further rant. But I want to ask. If the NJ state government is so concerned about efficiency and effectiveness in their contracts with social service agencies, are they also going to look at whether people are being paid too little? There is likely much more waste in employee turn over due to retraining costs and time spent than there is with paying the executive too much. Charity Navigator President Ken Berger is said to disagree “with the argument, popular among many nonprofits, that to attract top talent to manage complex organizations, they must compete with for-profit businesses.” A six figure salary is often cited as outrageous in the article so lets grant that you can find and retain talent for about $90,000. But is the government concerned that non-profits may be losing a series of talented to the for-profit world because those organizational leaders are only being paid $25,000?

There is an argument often made that the government should be turning over a lot of its functions to non-profits because they can do the work more efficiently. If that is the case, the government is likely to be increasingly concerned about the salaries of the top executives. But if they are going to depend on non-governmental social service agencies, they should also be sure that there is a certain standard of care being provided to people. That requires good training, but also appropriate pay to help maintain the continuity of delivering that standard. If they are going to care what is being paid at the top, they should also be concerned what is being paid at the bottom. But it is likely the government will focus more on the results than the process the company follows to obtain them. It is much simpler and more popular to target executive pay as the reason for substandard service delivery than other harder to quantify measures. Cost cutting is equated with money well spent but what works for sneakers has a different result in social services.

But in the arts, other than educational outreach, governments have a different agenda than they do with social services. Unfortunately, it is often appropriateness of content that often raises concerns rather than quality of services.

In any case, even though most of us have no fear of being accused of having too high a salary, the examination of non-profit salaries appears to be a continuing concern. It bears watching how it all unfolds.

Government Relations

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Competitive Bidding For All!

July 28, 2010

by:

Joe Patti

With all the other services offered online, I have often wondered why no one is offering a procurement bidding system. Perhaps there are such an assortment of laws from state to state it is too expensive. But if Google can navigate China’s laws and politics to give away its service for free, there has to be some money to be made.

Since I am ultimately talking about a benefit for the arts community, I would be happy to a service specifically tailored to help the industry developed. Baumol’s cost disease may say technological advances can’t reduce the number of people needed to play Beethoven, but that doesn’t mean we can’t save on our purchases of gaffers tape!

The service I am referring to is something similar to what I use at work. As a state employee, I have to get competitive bids for any goods or services above a certain dollar threshold. We use an online solicitation system which runs the bidding process for us. Even if we know something is going to fall far below the mandatory use threshold, we will use the service if we think we can get a better price somewhere.

Vendors sign up to be alerted when bid requests in certain broad subject areas are posted and then if they are awarded the bid, they pay a percentage of the price and that is what keeps the system running. The percentage on our system is 1/2% which is very competitive with other states. There are some basic bells and whistles for vendors too in terms of tracking and historical reporting. What I like best is that it exports all the salient details of the winning bid to a purchase order.

The two big complicating factors for my department as part of a state entity is 1) Necessity to accept the lowest bid or fill out copious paperwork explaining why you hadn’t and 2) Being VERY specific with your bid details lest the lowest bidder not have a feature you assumed would be included.

Making the requesters stick to these conditions in an open market setting would be difficult. But it would also not be any different than how things work right now. Private citizens and companies throw business to their favorite vendors all the time even if they aren’t the cheapest option. There are also plenty of sales personnel who invest a lot of time and energy meeting someone’s specifications only to have customers go elsewhere or be lured away by a competitor who convinces them they really want a feature they offer.

One of the reasons I suggest this is because there are often times that the difference in bids is significant. Some times so significant that we wonder if the lowest bidder got the stuff off the back of a truck somewhere. Other times, the margin is much closer, but frequency of purchasing makes the savings add up. The benefit to us is that the reach of our bid requests are much further than had we called around locally for competing bids. Even though we have to wait about a week to allow everyone time to bid, we save all the time we would have spent searching catalogs or the internet or calling around to find the best price.

There is a chicken and egg element to this which is why if someone set this up to service the arts and culture industry, it would probably have to be on a national scale. Arts organizations won’t sign up and use it unless there are a lot of vendors on it and vendors won’t bother with it unless there is a big customer base. Its existence would have to be widely advertised outside the theatrical supply and services sector. There are probably a number of companies who don’t think of themselves as serving the arts and won’t sign up. But of our best deals have come from companies who don’t cater to theatres.

If anyone knows of a service like this that the general public can use, I would be interested in learning more about it. If there isn’t anything like this but there are a lot of people interested in some sort of service, maybe Drew McManus will take the project on after his Venture Project software is launched.

Arts in an Age of Technology

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