Forgive me if I don’t get overly excited from this week’s NEWS that OPERA America has awarded nearly $200,000 in “Audience Development” grants to 16 opera companies.
Their announcement proclaims that the “Audience Development grants help opera companies to implement community engagement activities that develop new audiences for American opera and music-theater, engage diverse audiences, deepen current audiences’ understanding and appreciation of new and existing American works, and increase the participation of audiences in a company’s activities.”
- The process decides grant winners based on their ability to promise rather than on the actual accomplishment of any meaningful objective.
- While OPERA America claims to represent “nearly 150” professional opera companies – only 29 of them bothered to apply for this grant opportunity. (The rest, presumably, didn’t think the cause of audience development or the $’s available were worth their time or attention.)
- That “the ability to fully evaluate the project” appears in the evaluation criteria essentially acknowledges that clear & objective evaluation is often beyond the capacity of many organizations.
For sure, OPERA America deserves praise for offering “Audience Development” grants in the first place. I mean them no disrespect. Frankly, I wish other foundations and agencies would make similarly substantial commitments to the cause of audience development.
My point is to respectfully suggest that grant making for the cause of audience development is due for a complete overhaul – and that the process should begin with 3 key questions:
- Where is the achievement? – How might these grants be re-structured to reward ACCOMPLISHMENT rather than promise?
- Where is the inspiration? – How might these grants motivate MUCH MORE of the field to invest time & attention in the cause of audience development?
- Where are the lessons? – How might these grants help create a body of evidence from which people/organizations in the future can learn and grow in their efforts to advance the cause audience development?
I wish more funders would consider the X PRIZE strategy – which is founded on the premise of bringing about “radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity…by creating and managing large-scale, high-profile, incentivized prize competitions that stimulate investment in research and development worth far more than the prize itself. ” (I think that it is impossible to watch any of the videos on the X Prize site and not come away INSPIRED for that cause!)
Imagine if OPERA America would offer just a single $200,000 prize to the first opera company that could achieve some very specific, desired & audacious audience development goal:
- Such a prize would then be awarded after a clear, meaningful & measurable goal was ATTAINED.
- The prize would be sufficiently large to INSPIRE creative & strategic action by many more organizations, and
- Organizations would be motivated to LEARN from the experiences of others, as they pursue their quest to attain the goal.
Updating the grant-making process is an important way to UNLEASH the immense creative power of the arts & cultural sector!
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Hi Matt,
I thank you for bringing up this viewpoint. I agree that organizations need to be held more accountable for the money that they are receiving. I believe that having evaluation points at certain times of the year might work nicely as a solution. The organizations would receive a portion of the money to get started, and then after the first evaluation point, they would receive the second portion if their first goal was accomplished. Perhaps two evaluation points could be considered.
I do feel that more organizations should be applying for these grants, however, I actually like the fact that Opera America has divided the big prize so more organizations can receive the funding they need for audience development. Most organizations would not plan for audience development without seed funding. I don’t completely understand this since audience development can start at the price of a cup of coffee, one person at a time, but under the misconception, at least they will be starting to implement audience development programs with this funding. This brings me to my second point.
As far as the grant being “only” $12,500, I am a firm believer that audience development takes more time and effort than it does money to get started. Audience development takes time and the process occurs over the long run, not the short term. In fact, if you do audience development properly, volunteers and donor support would make up for a small budget for most audience development programs. Audience development is about building relationships, not about spending a ton of money for an over-the-top event or program.
All in all, I completely agree about the accountability issue. I do feel though that if this money motivates these organizations to begin their audience development programs, the money will be worth it. I have faith that Opera America has screened for ideas that were worthy of funding. I hope that the organizations that have received the awards will use the money wisely.
Thank you so much for pointing this out, Matt. This doesn’t look anything like an audience development initiative.
Based on the description, it’s some sort of education/outreach/artistic program that has little in the way of quantitative parameters. Any legitimate audience development program would call for clearly defined goals and objectives, well articulated tactical sales plans and specific metrics for measuring exactly how many dollars and bodies the program generated relative to the investment.
This may be a worthy program as it is, but calling it audience development is counterproductive. If we’re serious about wanting opera or any other traditional audience-dependent art form to “flourish for years to come,” we have to understand the difference between soft, qualitative programs like these and hard, quantitative, bottom line-driven audience building endeavors.
Dear Mr. Lehrman,
We read your recent post regarding OPERA America’s Audience Development Grants and are happy to respond to some of your claims.
Audience Development grants are awarded only to projects focusing on works by an American composer or librettist within the timeframe specified in the guidelines. This means that of the 124 opera companies eligible to apply, at least 29 are presenting works of American opera during the granting period – nearly 25% of the professional opera companies in the United States. This is significant evidence of the strength of American opera in the U.S. today and cause for optimism about the future of the art form in this country.
Due to the limited funding available, Audience Development grants support a specific element of larger audience development programs. Since the projects take place in the future, we are only able to judge the merit of a particular effort by its potential for success, not by its demonstrated outcomes. Applicants are asked to describe prior audience development efforts as well as their evaluation processes so that, in the future, we are able to measure the impact of our investments. OPERA America pays the final portion of grants only after receipt of written evaluations and telephone interviews are conducted by OPERA America staff. The learning from these interviews is communicated to the entire membership through Annual Conference sessions, articles in our magazine and technical assistance to members on an individual basis.
OPERA America funds up to 50% of the total project budget to ensure that the company has a vested interest in the project. Thus, if the average award is $12,500, then the budget for the specific element of a larger audience development program must be at least $25,000. Once again, these grants fund specific activities that accompany productions of American operas. Broader audience development programs, undertaken by virtually all of our member companies, are not funded through this program.
OPERA America remains deeply grateful to the funders who have enabled us to support the creation and production of new American works and related audience development activities for 25 years. Over that period of time, we have awarded grants totaling more than $11 million and created a sea-change in American opera. OPERA America is firmly committed to the advancement and growth of our art form and development of appreciative audiences. Through projects such The Opera Fund, we are helping to ensure that the future of opera remains vital, diverse and vibrant.
Sincerely,
Marc A. Scorca
President & CEO, OPERA America
I like where I think you’re trying to go with this post. Indeed, it doesn’t seem that OA did a thorough job of defining and understanding “audience development” before awarding those grants.
I think it would be a mistake to have an X Prize for the Arts, unless there is an expectation that non-arts (and for-profit) entities would be the ones to pursue the prize. Don’t get me wrong: I like the idea of the X Prize, and I think the actual X Prize is focused on exactly the right sorts of issues that the X Prize is meant to help address.
As an alternative, I would suggest a model that is more like the Echoing Green Fellowship. No, it doesn’t fund results like the X Prize does. But it does reward entrepreneurial behavior (a type of behavior that funders frankly do not do a good job of incentivizing), and it is also a prestigious award.
I’m not bothered by a grant that provides an award for a promise. Typically those grants come with the requirement that an organization that doesn’t fulfill that promise must return the money. But that has more to do with project funds. What is more important — if we’re looking at an organization that is trying to innovate — is that the people have done their research and that they have the capabilities, the vision and the strength to carry forward even when the possibility of failure is imminent.
An X Prize for the arts? Imagine asking an arts organization to make an investment worth 10 times its budget to compete for a prize that is worth only two times its budget, with the vague possibility that the organization will recoup its costs due to whatever extraordinary innovation they come up with. Now imagine asking ten organizations to compete for that prize. Only one of them gets the prize, and three or four others get a consolation prize. That’s where I have trouble buying into an X Prize for the arts.
Like I said, though… I like where you’re going with this post. I think there is a huge need for new sources of arts funding that are more genuine investments toward audience development and entrepreneurship. These days I’m starting to see some of the “old guard” arts funders beginning to get defensive — claiming that they have a history of addressing the issues raised in the recent GIA report on arts funding.
Dynamite, Matt. And so very true. I’m going to link to this from my blog.
I think an underlying problem, here and in other situations, is that the people involved don’t actually think they can build an audience. If they did, they’d take serious steps, rather than make these tiny supposed innovations whose success is very rarely tracked, or discussed afterward.