Whether we're talking to friends or strangers, how do we talk about the value we create? Mary Lou Aleskie, Executive Director of the International Festival for Arts & Ideas, shares why she believes we should stop talking about "the value of the arts" and start talking about the experience of arts and culture as a gateway to civic engagement and participation. http://youtu.be/b_S6kgrofto Advocate for the Arts! Click on the Twitter logo to share this with someone outside the arts. Start a … [Read more...]
Arguing for the Arts in Contemporary Society
Think about the folks in your community. Think about what they will do tonight. There are countless options for how they can spend their time, their money, their loyalty. Arts may be in that mix. It might not be. This is the context in which our community makes decisions and we need to be aware of that. In this video, Patrick McIntyre, Executive Director of the Sydney Theatre Company conveys the need to discuss the benefits of the experience we provide. Patrick highlights that this task is tricky when arguing the value to allies such as … [Read more...]
Everyone’s a Potential Partner: Building Value Together
Welcome back. We’re continuing our look at arts advocacy, particularly how do we broaden our base of support if we rarely hear from anyone who isn't already a fan. What if we shifted our mindset to see everyone as a potential partner or participant? The world and our communities would be teaming with opportunity. That's Springboard for the Arts' Executive Director, Laura Zabel's, view and it's working quite well. In this video Laura shares how she is energized by what's possible and how looking at opportunities through this frame has opened up … [Read more...]
Extreme Users: Look Outside the Everyday Audience Member
We’re talking about advocacy for the arts over the next few days. Specifically, what's our value... not only to our loyal patrons but also to those with whom we may not have engaged yet. In the human centered design world, that's called sampling extreme users. It's an incredibly valuable practice that helps us better understand our community and our customers. Professor of Management at the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan, Jeffrey Sanchez-Burks discusses how looking at both extremes – those who participate every day and … [Read more...]
Your Museum as an Essential Community Space
NAS produces publications, videos and other management tools to inspire those working in the field to take a fresh look at their work and the challenges they face. Over the last few years we have amassed quite a large catalog of content. We’ve sent NAS staff members into the archives to pick their favorites and share them here. This week NAS’ Program and Accounting Coordinator, Pearl Bickersteth, shares one of her favorite NAS videos. Museums are often thought of as places for quiet, introspective, cultural learning experiences. Nina Simon, … [Read more...]
The Earthquake is Coming. How Do We Withstand it?
Crisis is everywhere. We are surrounded by it. It’s in the news headlines, in the text we just got from a family member and even in the daily operations of our organizations. Crisis can be both internal and external, personal and public. Personally, it feels as if we are surrounded yet distant from this word and its meaning. When it is not taking place in our backyard, we often don’t think or feel the effects of a crisis so intensely. The ways in which we react to crisis situations are shaped by our identity. I believe organizations have … [Read more...]
Do you need the matrix?
What is a board matrix? A board matrix (composition grid, etc.) for the governing board of a nonprofit organization is a tool that methodically attempts to first inventory the needs of an organization at board level, then the alignment between these needs and both current and potential board members. These needs can include skills & competencies, intrinsic qualities (race/ethnicity, gender, age, residence, sexual orientation), resources, networks or anything the organization values. Matrices range wildly in complexity, from simple to … [Read more...]
The Courage to Fail
Several years ago, while trying to broaden my culinary skill, I had a dear friend over to dinner and I tried a new recipe. I was attempting to make crepes with a small, stainless-steel pan. I’m pretty sure I missed an ingredient in the recipe, the pan was significantly too small to make the delicate, thin crepe, it stuck to the pan and cooked a little too long to make the perfect texture. The crepes ended up rubbery, thick and completely disgusting! My friend, who was a gracious guest, offered that we could grab a bite out instead and call it a … [Read more...]
Skunk Works: A Place for Innovation
What happens when you try to create something new in your organization? You might be lucky enough to be able to go off in a corner and sprint through the design work without any disturbances. But more likely, you are encumbered by some pesky obstacles otherwise known as policies and procedures. You work tirelessly, are just inches from a reaching a Eureka! moment, only to have one of the following happen: You get thrown out of the conference room because you didn’t sign up for the time slot You get dragged into staff meeting You need … [Read more...]
Evaluating to Increase Impact
Evaluation appeals to my intense curiosity to figure out how and why things work and don’t work. Many high performing organizations that I have come to know generally use a combination of formal and informal evaluation to build learning loops towards increasing strategic success. That is, they hire experts to increase internal knowledge and staff capabilities and to work with them on particularly complex inquiries, where it is critical to understand the elements on which a program will fail or succeed. And, they look to their staffs to … [Read more...]
Placemaking: Leverage, Alignment and Moving Mountains
Leverage. “Give me a place to stand and I shall move mountains with it.” This was Archimedes’ take on it back in the 3rd century B.C. Given that arts and culture organizations are in the business of moving mountains, leverage and a place to stand (alignment) are the keys to their success. In physics a lever amplifies an input force to provide a greater output force. That lever pivots on a fulcrum and where you place that fulcrum makes all the difference. As does finding the right lever, ideally one that produces no friction. To think … [Read more...]
An Unlikely Partnership: Reinventing Swan Lake
Developing audiences, deepening engagement and expanding creative horizons are some of the biggest concerns of the leaders we work with at National Arts Strategies. With increasing entertainment options and access to technology, organizations feel the need to make their work more innovative and appealing to modern consumers, but many struggle in figuring out how to do so. For some, exploring new forms of collaboration can be the answer to remaining relevant and competitive in today’s environment. Earlier this year, Ballet Memphis Founding … [Read more...]
Tell me about a time…
Hearing about how our colleagues in the field address challenges can be extremely motivating and energizing. But sometimes, it’s hard to see how the steps one organization took can be translated to our own work. There’s no carbon copy solution to the issues facing the field but we can certainly benefit from understanding others’ experiences. What’s important is to find the key lessons that emerge from an experience rather than focus on the how-to of a particular example. At NAS, we love digging into stories from the field to find these learning … [Read more...]
Partnerships: From Good to Great
One of the most important responsibilities for any nonprofit is to understand how you can best leverage organizational assets to serve your mission and your constituents. But often, our assets alone aren’t plentiful enough to let us deliver on our mission with the level of impact we’d like. Partnerships are one way to do more without the requirement of additional internal resources, but it’s important to enter into a partnership for the right reasons. Regardless of shared vision or a great rapport, making the most out of collaborations requires … [Read more...]
Stories from the Field: Measuring Impact
Over the past three or four years that I’ve worked in the US cultural sector, I’ve noticed that arts organizations are experimenting with the way that we count. Or, perhaps it is more accurate to say that we are developing more holistic ways of measuring what really counts. The recent Counting New Beans study challenged theaters to go beyond economic impact or numbers of “butts in seats” to measure the intrinsic value of their work. Similarly, many organizations are striving to measure intangibles such as attitudinal change or increased … [Read more...]