Monday, October 25, 2004

Overbuilt: The Sequel

There was a healthy spike in readership and comment related to my recent post about how the nonprofit arts might be 'overbuilt'. Interestingly, many comments agreed with the general feeling of an overbuilt and overstretched industry, but quickly focused on the individual organization's size and scope:

I have to agree that we are overbuilt, but on a micro level as organizations. I've always called it the Bigger Better Mentality. And though I hate it, it's always my job for a board - ''make us bigger and better.''

In a similar vein, another comment suggested that individual nonprofits face many forces leading them to be bigger than they need to be:

Perhaps we are overbuilt not in the arts and culture industry in general, but rather in the professionaly structured sector of the industry through the emphasis on incorporatating amateur organizations that may not need incorporation. More generally, it seems to me, anecdotally, that our industry has pushed professionalism (by which I mean professionally structured non-profit orgs) as an indicator of quality and sustainability, leading amateur (some community theatres for example) organizations to professionalize without need, causing undo strain on the organizations, and diverting and spreading thin available arts and culture funding that feels compelled to support professional level organizations. These organizations get saddled with structures that are needlessly cumbersome and often too much for the participants to navigate. This grows the industry on the lower rungs, making the fight for funding by organizations on the lower rungs even more difficult.

Another reader explored one way to balance an imbalanced market, by merger and consolidation:

For the past few years, I have been speculating that the next 'trend' in arts non-profits will be mergers or strategic partnerships. I have not seen much evidence of this yet, and the examples I have seen 'break both ways' -- that is, some have worked well and some have failed. It appears situational, and based on factors I don't fully understand and therefore cannot evaluate or 'track'. But there does appear to be opportunities out there. The ego investment each organization has in developing its unique identity seems to inhibit most organizations from even considering such opportunities. Certainly the very sense of 'cause' that develops an organization's mission and 'culture' would be brought into question if it was to consider merging with another organization -- even, and especially, one with a similar mission. Often, the organizations that have the most promising opportunity to merger see each other as competitors. Complicating this a bit (I'm speculating now) is the structure of non-profits with boards and staff. As an ideal, it really requires getting both the board and staff of each of the two (or more!) organizations to agree for the need to merger for it to really work. That's an enormous task and, unfortunately, one most likely to be brought on by the advent of dire financial circumstances rather than through thoughtful, dispassionate planning -- not a recipe for success regardless of the consensus to merger.

Perhaps the strongest reaction came from fellow blogger Drew McManus, who took issue with the whole idea of 'market imbalance' and the other economics terms explored in the post:

I don't accept the false notion of structural deficits, lack of music in public education, or any other cock-and-bull comparison to supply and demand that some people like to trot out as the root of the evils that are plaguing this industry.

I believe this industry can be fixed; not just for the here and now, but for the long term.  Orchestral classical music has no where to go but up, so why on earth would anyone suggest that it needs to go the other way?

Keep the thoughts and comments coming! Send me more...

posted on Monday, October 25, 2004 | permalink